From Mumon Roshi's instructions on zen...

I haven't posted anything in a while on zen, and thought this would be a useful thing to record:

To regulate breath is very important in zazen. The ancients knew that any person can understand breathing, so that teaching the control of breathing is extremely important.

　Concerning the breath, there are four ways of meditation explained in the Tendai texts. They are fu, zen, ki, soku. Fu implies snorting breath. This is not good. Zen means purring breath which is also not good. Ki means disordered breath, sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow. Lastly, soku means the most perfect breath which is continuous and quiet as if it were faint breath. We have to shape our breathing into such long deep breaths. The ancients made a strenuous effort to practice such breathing. Some of them even placed feathers on their noses while meditating. For correct breathing : exhaling, pull in your abdomen; when you've exhaled all your air completely, you will naturally inhale; air will flow in and your abdomen will expand. While exhaling, include the counting of your breaths. Continue this ring of consciousness, repeating the counting without any pause at all. If a pause occurs at this time, illusions and mirages will come into your zazen at once. If even one illusion is raised, cut it immediately with your concentrated breathing.

　With the physical posture and breath controlled, start zazen in a relaxed way by naturally concentrating your strength in your abdomen. We must now control the mind or, as the text states it, "Think not of good and evil." It is, however, unimaginably difficult to control the mind. The Buddha said, "The mind is like a venomous serpent, a wild animal, or a sworn enemy." You might think that while sitting in such quiet circumstances nothing arises to disturb the mind, but it is not so. The quieter the circumstances become, the more disordered the mind may grow. Many things may appear, one after the other. Even the great Hakuin Zenji confessed that while he was doing zazen, he remembered such a small event as the lending of a few bowls of rice and beans many years before to the next door neighbor. It is strange that we remember the things we do not usually even consider. In the meditation hall only the sound of the bell and wooden clappers enter through our senses, but many things arise in the mind to be considered. We come to realize how much man thinks about the unnecessary ; how corrupted man's mind is. Our mind is polluted like a muddy ditch from which marsh gas constantly springs. We cannot imagine what will appear or spring up. Buddhism calls this dirt encrusted mind alaya, which means an accumulation of subconscious images. To cut away this mass of delusion with the sword of prajna-wisdom, so that we may discover the bright mind of the real self, is called the controlling of mind.

　As the text says, we should not think good or evil, advantage or disadvantage, love or hate. This no mind state where nothing exists is the correct posture of the mind. Dogen Zenji says, "Don't think anything." He recommends controlling the mind, pointing to the real self which is the mind of nonthinking. Since illusion and delusion, like mist, have no substance, they will disappear if we do not focus on them. In Zen Buddhism we also throw away all illusions by concentrating our mind on the problem the koan suggests. Therefore, the text says, "Be aware of illusions, then they will disappear." Cut all illusions. Concentrate your whole mind on the koan, day and night, without any dualistic consciousness. Then, naturally, the inward and outer worlds, self and universe, subject and object, become one. In due time, the event we have sought is realized, yet it cannot be explained. At that moment we experience the inexpressible comfort of spiritual freedom, and the unique flavor of zazen springs up from the deep.

　This experience is not yet satori-awakening ; it is not yet "seeing one's true nature" or "becoming Buddha." In the Mumonkan an old Zen text called the "Gateless Gate," it is said,

Once breaking through [the mass of great doubt] as if with the sword of General Kwan¹, one gains the great freedom at the juncture of life and death to kill the Buddha when he meets him, to kill the Patriarch when he meets the Patriarch and so receives the freedom of enjoying the situation wherever he may stand.

　We must have such a breakthrough experience where we realize real subjectivity and real freedom. There man becomes the master of the world and there evolves his life of negating and creating freely.

　Zazen is, in this way, more than control of posture, breath and mind, but also, on a wider scale, circumstances, family and, fially, society. Therefore, zazen is not easily accomplished.

Indeed, it takes years to do this to the point where such freedom is achieved. But without such freedom, how can anyone live a life that is conciously directed anywhere with any likelihood of going to where one would want to go?

Practice makes perfect; if one does not develop a discipline to have the body and mind do what needs to be done, than quite simply, what needs to be done will only be done in a haphazard, ad hoc, suboptimal way if at all.



1. "Kwan" actually means "barrier" here.

Who is this Joe Wilson guy anyway?

Well, go to Wikipedia:

Joseph C. Wilson IV (born November 6, 1949) was a United States career foreign service officer and later a diplomat between 1976 and 1998. He served as ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe under President George H. W. Bush, and helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton. He was hailed as "truly inspiring" and "courageous" by George H. W. Bush after sheltering more than a hundred Americans at the US embassy in Baghdad, and mocking Saddam Hussein's threats to execute anyone who refused to hand over foreigners. As a result, in 1990, he also became the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein (Wilson, 2003).

Wilson achieved wide notoriety due to his involvement in the verification of intelligence regarding Iraq. In 2002 he was sent to Niger to investigate the possibility that uranium-enriched yellowcake had been sold to Iraq. Wilson concluded that since yellowcake mining is managed by an international consortium and supervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency, this was unlikely (Wilson, 2003).

Controversy ensued when the British government issued a white paper asserting an imminent threat from Iraq, on the basis of intelligence that later proved to be a forgery. In his 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush referred to attempts by Iraq to acquire uranium from Africa. The Bush Administration explicitly affirmed (Fleischer, 2003) this was based on a reference to Niger, but the later Butler Report confirmed the existence of what they found to be credible intelligence that Iraq was attempting to acquire uranium from Niger, see Yellowcake Forgery, and less certain intelligence that Iraq was attempting to acquire uranium from the Democratic Republic of Congo...

Whatever one can say about Wilson, one cannot say that Wilson's detractors have anything that approaches the courage that Wilson showed in Baghdad.

Nor can one say that he was chosen for the Niger mission purely out of "nepotism." If so, it'd be a reverse nepotism to be sure- who'd want to go to Niger?

It's really easy to use the "chickenhawk" term here, especially since the folks who are smearing Wilson, and who are making tortured apologias for Rove aren't the kind of people who personally do brave acts, really brave acts, that involve life or death. Those people are entitled to their opinion, but those of us who are reality based might be forgiven for considering the character and integrity of Wilson's detractors.

What a colleague of Ms. Plame's thinks of Rove's betrayal

Link

Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985. All of my classmates were undercover--in other words, we told our family and friends that we were working for other overt U.S. Government agencies. We had official cover. That means we had a black passport--i.e., a diplomatic passport. If we were caught overseas engaged in espionage activity the black passport was a get out of jail free card.


A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she would have been executed.

The lies by people like Victoria Toensing, Representative Peter King, and P. J. O'Rourke insist that Valerie was nothing, just a desk jockey. Yet, until Robert Novak betrayed her she was still undercover and the company that was her front was still a secret to the world. When Novak outed Valerie he also compromised her company and every individual overseas who had been in contact with that company and with her...

...The Republicans insist on the lie that Val got her husband the job. She did not. She was not a division director, instead she was the equivalent of an Army major. Yes it is true she recommended her husband to do the job that needed to be done but the decision to send Joe Wilson on this mission was made by her bosses.

At the end of the day, Joe Wilson was right. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was the Bush Administration that pushed that lie and because of that lie Americans are dying. Shame on those who continue to slander Joe Wilson while giving Bush and his pack of liars a pass. That's the true outrage.

I can't but agree. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why anyone would try to defend Rove's behavior here; the idea that somebody would jeopardize the National Security interests of the United States of America for purely political purposes is the very antithesis of patriotism.

"Steep" Rise in Tax Revenues? Read the fine print...

Get prepared for a barrage of Repub propaganda to distract from Rove's approximate alleged treason:

WASHINGTON, July 12 - For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion...

The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be "significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion."

The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.

Most of the increase in individual tax receipts appears to have come from higher stock market gains and the business income of relatively wealthy taxpayers. The biggest jump was not from taxes withheld from salaries but from quarterly payments on investment gains and business earnings, which were up 20 percent this year...

And now for the fine print:

In addition, while a lot of the increase in tax revenue flows from the improving economy and higher incomes, part of the jump stemmed from a special factor: the expiration of a temporary tax break that allowed companies to write off their investment in new equipment much more rapidly than normal.

That tax break reduced revenue by about $61 billion in 2004, but it merely postponed taxes that companies would have to pay once their equipment was fully depreciated.

Other financial hurdles may be down the road. Mr. Bush's intention to extend his tax cuts indefinitely, and to add new ones, would drain more than $1.4 trillion from government coffers over the next 10 years.

So while the economy improved somewhat, we're still on a collision course.

Expect oil prices to go up more.

More damning information on Rove

This is flying fast and furious- the weak defenses that "Rove didn't know what he was doing," or "it's not clear she was covert" are evaporating as the morning dew on a hot summer day...

Josh Marshall posted here, pointing to this old Washington Post story, which pretty much kills the "it's not clear she was covert" defense:

The leak of a CIA operative's name has also exposed the identity of a CIA front company, potentially expanding the damage caused by the original disclosure, Bush administration officials said yesterday.

The company's identity, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, became public because it appeared in Federal Election Commission records on a form filled out in 1999 by Valerie Plame, the case officer at the center of the controversy, when she contributed $1,000 to Al Gore's presidential primary campaign.

After the name of the company was broadcast yesterday, administration officials confirmed that it was a CIA front. They said the obscure and possibly defunct firm was listed as Plame's employer on her W-2 tax forms in 1999 when she was working undercover for the CIA. Plame's name was first published July 14 in a newspaper column by Robert D. Novak that quoted two senior administration officials. They were critical of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for his handling of a CIA mission that undercut President Bush's claim that Iraq had sought uranium from the African nation of Niger for possible use in developing nuclear weapons.

The Justice Department began a formal criminal investigation of the leak Sept. 26.

The inadvertent disclosure of the name of a business affiliated with the CIA underscores the potential damage to the agency and its operatives caused by the leak of Plame's identity. Intelligence officials have said that once Plame's job as an undercover operative was revealed, other agency secrets could be unraveled and her sources might be compromised or endangered.

A former diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said yesterday that every foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities.

"That's why the agency is so sensitive about just publishing her name," the former diplomat said.

Next up: the Repub party tries vainly to smear people who want Rove to face justice for his actions, but the folks at TPM Cafe smack Mehlman down:

I don't want to be the first one to NOT follow directions, but let me point out one GIGANTIC problem with that press release. Its all about Joe Wilson. The crime, if one is determined to have taken place, is the exposure of Valerie Plame as a covert operative. What on earth does that have to do with her politics, his politics, or what happened before, during or after the trip to Niger. All that is provides is the reasoning for Karl Rove to have done what he allegedly did.

The question remains, did Karl Rove use his position to expose a covert CIA operative? You might add 'in efforts to discredit Joe Wilson', but honestly, is it relavent? Is it relavent why he would have done what he did? Maybe to Republicans, but not to the law.

It shouldn't matter if Joe Wilson wrote an op-ed calling Bush an alien from Mars. Its not a crime to lie (excepting perjury), if you believe that Joe Wilson was lying, how is it still NOT a crime to expose his wife?

By talking Mehlman's bait, the discussion turns to the merits of Wilson's case and not to the crime itself.

And increasingly, a crime is what it appears to be, and a serious one at that.

If this is the best "defense" the Repubs can make (read the whole TPM Cafe thread for the lie-by-lie of Mehlman's piece), then Rove really will be frog-marched, and pronto.

Update This from NRO (!) is pretty damning all by its lonesome:

Luskin also addressed the question of whether Rove is a "subject" of the investigation. Luskin says Fitzgerald has told Rove he is not a "target" of the investigation, but, according to Luskin, Fitzgerald has also made it clear that virtually anyone whose conduct falls within the scope of the investigation, including Rove, is considered a "subject" of the probe. "'Target' is something we all understand, a very alarming term," Luskin says. On the other hand, Fitzgerald "has indicated to us that he takes a very broad view of what a subject is."

Finally, Luskin conceded that Rove is legally free to publicly discuss his actions, including his grand-jury testimony. Rove has not spoken publicly, Luskin says, because Fitzgerald specifically asked him not to.

I don't know about the last sentence (yeah,right, Rove's being real kind to Fitzgerald 'cause deep down he's just a puddy-tat), but it's pretty clear that "subject" might just mean "target" here.

Further Update:
For those who just can't accept the above information, and why the prosecutor, Fitzgerald is so interested in Rove, Transparent Grid explains it all for you:

Section 421, like many crimes, is all about definitions. Who is a “covert
agent” and what is a knowing disclosure? Freepers have been calling into liberal
talk radio today rasing the canard that Valerie Wilson/Plame was really not
covert. They glom on to Fox News propogranda that “everyone” in Washington knew
Plame was C.I.A. Well, apparently her longtime neighbors didn’t even know. The
Tillotsons thought she was a soccer mom according to the New
York Times. But who cares what the freepers believe, it is the law that
counts and the definition of “covert agent” in § 426(4) is straightforward - it
is an employee of an intelligence agency “whose identity as such an officer,
employee, or member is classified information” and has served outside the U.S.
in the last five years. Hence, whether or not people in the know in D.C. knew
but kept their mouth shut is of no moment, what matters is if the C.I.A.
considered her covert...

The gravaman of the legal analysis comes down to whether Karl made a
knowing disclosure. The disclosure element is defined in §426(3), “The term
‘disclose’ means to communicate, provide, impart, transmit, transfer, convey,
publish, or otherwise make available.”

...The question is whether Rove knew that Plame was a “covert agent.” Here
is where one can conclude that Rove is in trouble. One with general common
knowledge would assume that Plame was an employee of Brewster, Jennings. It is
only by virtue of either someone having disclosed the classified details that
she was an agency employee to Rove or by Rove’s own access to the classified
information that he would have been in a position to know what her true role
was.
Knowledge, like any required mental state in criminal law, can be proven
by circumstantial evidence. The U.S. Supreme Court has specifically ruled that
“knowledge” can be proven by establishing a “high probability” that the
defendant knew the true circumstances of the fact...

Rove was in a unique position to know Plame’s true role as a CIA employee.
First off, keep the chronology in mind. Wilson’s New York Times column, “What I Didn’t Find in
Africa,” was a bombshell, because he was the first insider to directly
challenge a major premise of the justification for war. The publication date was
July 6, 2003. The Robert Novak column which outed Valerie Plame as an operative
was published on July 14th. It was on July 11th, though, that Cooper sent the
e-mail detailing his talk with Rove. This would mean that a decision was made to
use the Plame information as a tool to discredit Wilson at some point between
the 6th and the 11th. We also know that not only Rove disclosed such
information, but so did Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
(See The
Plame Game at the Village Voice.)
Now this is why Rove had access to
such sensitive information. As Pacific Views has pointed out, Libby and Rove were part of the 8 person White House Iraq
Group which also included Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Stephen Hadley and
Condoleeza Rice. As you can note, these are not military strategists. Their role
was to create the environment that made war inevitable. The Iraq Group spun the
propoganda that created the climate of fear which led to war. The Pacific Views
piece cites the study by retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner who traces the orgins of the Iraq Group and how it manufactured the Iraq
crisis. These were the individuals who were the most invested in the WMD fiction
and would have wanted to respond aggressively to Joe Wilson’s efforts to expose
at least part of the fraud which had appeared in Bush’s January State of the
Union speech.
Where this leads us is where this piece began. The focus of
most reporting has been on whether the language in Cooper’s e-mail is sufficient
to charge Rove with violating §421. That question hardly matters. What counts is
what Rove actually said to Cooper. When Cooper writes that Wilson’s wife
“apparently” works for the agency. Was “apparently” his characterization or
Rove’s? What I sense is that Cooper wasn’t laying out every detail in his
e-mail, which is common. More importantly, the focus on the content of the
e-mail misses the point of where I believe the nature of the crime actually
lies....

What I think we have here is a conspiracy to disclose Plame’s covert role
to burn Wilson. If that is the case, it may not matter if Rove didn’t say all
the magic words to meet every requirement of §421. Title 18, Section 371 defines
and provides punishment for conspiracy to commit any offense against the United
States where “one or more persons do any act to effect the object of the
conspiracy.” If found guilty, punishment is for up to five years in prison. A
conspiracy does not have to completed. The law requires that two or more people
agree to commit the offensive act and that at least one of those people commits
an act to move the conspiracy along. So, for example, in a narco case, three
guys may agree to ship a kilo of cocaine into Arizona. As soon as one of them
rents the plane, the conspiracy charge can be brought against all three. Merely
talking about it is not enough.
Here we have both Libby and Rove disclosing
most of what Novak published. We don’t know how Novak got her name, but radio
host Randi Rhodes said today that Plame’s name was in Wilson bio on the Internet
at the time of his July 6th op-ed piece. So it could be that Libby, Rove or
someone else told Novak or he figured it out on his own. That detail may not
matter if members in the Iraq Group had already set out to burn Wilson. Once one
of the men or women who agreed to out Plame picked up the phone the conspiracy
was ripe.

What is increasingly evident is that a) this is worse than Watergate, and b) it's like Watergate and the Pentagon Papers rolled into one.

Because what it shows is the reason for going into war was so bogus that they had to basically compromise the security of the United States of America, and possibly jeopardize the lives of operatives to get their glorious little war.

Frogmarching Rove? It is my opinion that that would not be a sufficient deterrent.

For those still in denial about Valerie Plame's status...

Atrios clears it up for you here and here.

Valerie Plame's name was not secret. The fact that she was married to Wilson was not secret. The fact that she worked for the CIA was.

And the fact that apparently the National Security Advisor didn't have a need to know about who was recommending Wilson to go to Niger, and why, but she did know that it was at a level in the agency that was apparently classified should tell folks something.

Overlooked in all the Rove Hoopla.

This articule in the Nation (evidently subscription only) shows just what a disaster Bush's policy has been to keep us safe from "bioterror."

Avian flu is coming - it's not if but when- and there is no infrastructure set up to deal with it.

This is the sort of thing that could make 9/11 look like a stubbed toe by comparision.

And Bush is doing nothing about it.

Joe Tierney doesn't get karma...

Link

Hackers are the Internet equivalent of Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber who didn't manage to hurt anyone on his airplane but has been annoying travelers ever since. When I join the line of passengers taking off their shoes at the airport, I get little satisfaction in thinking that the man responsible for this ritual is sitting somewhere by himself in a prison cell, probably with his shoes on.

He ought to spend his days within smelling range of all those socks at the airport. In an exclusive poll I once conducted among fellow passengers, I found that 80 percent favored forcing Mr. Reid to sit next to the metal detector, helping small children put their sneakers back on.

The remaining 20 percent in the poll (meaning one guy) said that wasn't harsh enough. He advocated requiring Mr. Reid to change the Odor-Eaters insoles of runners at the end of the New York City Marathon.

One thing I like about Buddhism is its creativity in depicting bliss and torment; I think a Buddhist version of Richard Reid's karma would be Reid going through and endless procession of security barriers at airports, taking his shoes off, putting them back on as he fumbles with his luggage. Of course, Bush probably awaits a similar fate.

This is not a horrible sacrifice, actually, it's just the way it's done in America is rather unmerciful.

So maybe they could improve the situation by giving everyone who goes through security a small prize on the other end; a chocolate, or a trinket of some sort.

But really we should be trying to get people from avoiding such hellish existences.

It's Rove all over...

He's not ready to have a fork stuck in him, but Salon puts the pieces together to explain even to righties why Rove must go:

There are still plenty of questions about Karl Rove's involvement in the
Valerie Plame case, and we trust that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will
eventually get to the bottom of them. But given what we know today, the very
best that anyone can say of Karl Rove is that, on July 11, 2003, he broke the
cover of a CIA analyst in order to discredit criticism of the way George W. Bush
used intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.
That's not partisan hyperbole; incredibly, it is Karl Rove's defense.
In order to show that Rove and his colleagues in the White House weren't engaged in a conspiracy to reveal Plame's identity, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, says that Rove had another goal in mind when he told Time's Matthew Cooper that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA analyst: It was all about politics.
When Cooper called Rove on July 11, 2003, Wilson had just written an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times in which he said that his investigation into the allegation that Iraq had purchased uranium yellowcake from Niger had left him with "little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Cooper asked Rove about the Wilson report at the end of their telephone conversation. Rove's response? According to Cooper's e-mail message to his editor, Rove warned Cooper "not to get too far out" on Wilson's allegations because the source wasn't credible. Rove said that neither Vice President Dick Cheney nor CIA Director George Tenet had assigned Wilson to the Niger investigation. Rather, he said, the job came from Wilson's own wife, who was, Rove told Cooper, a CIA analyst working on WMD issues.
So you see, Luskin tells the New York Times, "A fair reading of the e-mail as well as the context in which the conversation took place makes it clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame's identity." Rather, Luskin tells the Washington Post: "What [Rove] was doing was
discouraging Time from perpetuating some statements that had been made publicly and weren't true."
.... But none of that can change the fact that Karl Rove revealed the identity of a CIA agent in order to discredit criticism of the president's use of intelligence in the run-up to a war that has now claimed the lives of at least 1,755 Americans.

And that's what we know so far.

Even if no laws were broken, this is still not the sort of thing that people would stay employed for if they were average, everyday people: if I had a security clearance and I left a classified document on my desk unattended- even accidentally- I'd be fired, and wouldn't be very likely to get a clearance again.

So it should be with Rove.

Even if you claim he didn't knowingly broke the law, there is no way a claim can be made that Rove did not provide aid and comfort to our enemies by releasing classified information- even inadvertantly.

Rove must go.

But I woudn't be surprised to see an indictment or two at this point, either, given the way McClellan's behaving.

Scotty McClellan longs for the days of Jeff Gannon and Les Kinsolving

It seems the DC press corps has finally figured out that a) Karl Rove's legal problems are a real story, and b) McClellan's acting, well, kind of the way a guilty person (guilty of what I don't know) would act.

Weird Oedipal Crap Driving our Domestic and Foreign Policy?

This diary on Kos shows Karl Rove as not some evil genius, but rather, a sexually conflicted, emotional basketcase of a modern major chickenhawk.

Sunday entry

• It appears like Rove is up for at least perjury, and possibly the big enchilada: violating the espionage act.
  
  
  Not surprising, actually.
  
  
• The Observer notes how far our manned space program has fallen:
  
  

  Of the five of these spaceships that have been built, two have been destroyed in service, killing 14 astronauts.
  
  It is now considered safer to ride on one of Russia's creaking old Soyuz rockets - designed in the Soviet era and once derided as orbiting rust-buckets - than fly on a craft that was originally hailed by Nasa as the most sophisticated flying machine ever built.
  
  In fact, this week's flight of Discovery, scheduled to lift off from the Kennedy Space Centre on Wednesday, is really only a test mission to try out ways of repairing the shuttle in orbit in case another catastrophe starts to unfold and threatens what remains of Nasa's ageing fleet of spaceships...
  
  Nasa has developed a variety of patching methods to cover holes in the shuttle's outer skin: mainly forms of putty or bandages.
  
  Uncannily, this kit bears a striking resemblance to the contents of a bicycle tyre repair bag and reveals the administration's desperate levels to keep its space fleet in operation. Nor is it clear that its extra-terrestrial grouting kit will work in space. 'Some things you cannot test on the ground,' admits Steve Poulos, a Nasa manager at Houston.
  
  So what will happen if a hole is found, a space repair proves useless and Collins and her six crewmen are marooned in space? The answer, says Nasa, is its 'Safe Haven' plan. The crew will bail out of Discovery, climb into the International Space Station (their mission destination) and wait - amid rapidly dwindling oxygen and water supplies - for a rescue shuttle to arrive from Earth.
  
  Given that it will take at least 32 days to get one aloft and that the space station will only be able to support Discovery's crew for 45 days, this safe haven has a narrow window for success. 'It is a high-risk option and we don't want to have to risk it if we don't have to,' says Wayne Hale, deputy manager of the shuttle programme.

  
  
  We can hit a comet, though.
  
  

Follow the money...around "Operation Interdependence®" [sic]

This post at Kos which points to this satirical post here, led me here...

Operation Interdependence® is a civilian-to-military delivery system® that serves as a program for Americans to demonstrate their support for our deployed military.

Across the nation, men and women are given orders to deploy on a regular scheduled deployment. These deployments are known to the public and allow our service members and their families to plan. However, special orders are given as well for our nation's military to deploy at a moment's notice.

Operation Interdependence® is designed to support regularly scheduled deployments. Information is given to military officials in order for the military leadership to have a grasp on our support. We do not nor do we want to interfere with special deployments, unless specifically requested by the deployed forces. It is imperative to all participating
with O.I.®, to learn that care packaging can produce an unintended consequence, pulling a service man or woman from vital training only to be placed in a special deployment with training minus the hours lost due to attending to care packages from home.

We are essentially creating the work force from this side of the fence, and contributing to removing a logistical tail that tends to present some required decisions other than focusing on the battle plan. Everything we do must put the decision makers in the best position to carry out the strategies that will secure our freedoms.

I couldn't find anything on their site that talked about their finances, which, I would have thought, would be a question that would be asked of them frequently.

But I did see a link called "patents," which, when clicked, a helpful pop-up appears that declares:

Patents

This site and services provided by Operation Interdependence™, Inc. is protected by copyrights and one or more of the following United States and international patents:

· U.S. Patent and Trademark Certificate of Registration Number 2,825,195

· U.S. Patent and Trademark Certificate of Registration Number 2,803,850

Ah so... the plot thickens...so I'm invited to go to the USPTO to find...

Word Mark CIVILIAN-TO-MILITARY DELIVERY SYSTEM
Goods and Services IC 039. US 100 105. G & S: Parcel delivery services, namely, transporting and delivering gift packages from American civilians to deployed American military personnel. FIRST USE: 20011219. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20011219
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 78227342
Filing Date March 19, 2003
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1B
Supplemental Register Date October 9, 2003
Registration Number 2803850
Registration Date January 6, 2004
Owner (REGISTRANT) Operation Interdependence CORPORATION CALIFORNIA 574 E Dougherty Street Fallbrook CALIFORNIA 92028
Disclaimer NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE "DELIVERY SYSTEM" APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN
Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
Register SUPPLEMENTAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE

And:

Word Mark CROSSING THE LINE TOGETHER
Goods and Services IC 039. US 100 105. G & S: Parcel delivery services, namely, transporting gift packages from American civilians to deployed American military personnel. FIRST USE: 20011219. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20011219
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 78227333
Filing Date March 19, 2003
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1B
Published for Opposition December 30, 2003
Registration Number 2825195
Registration Date March 23, 2004
Owner (REGISTRANT) OPERATION INTERDEPENDENCE CORPORATION CALIFORNIA 574 E DOUGHERTY STEET FALLBROOK CALIFORNIA 92028
Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE

Now that's kind of odd: patents are not trademarks.

In fact, as the USPTO proclaims:

Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights are three types of intellectual property protection. They are different and serve different purposes. Patents protect inventions, and improvements to existing inventions. Trademarks include any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods. Service marks include any word, name, symbol, device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce, to identify and distinguish the services of one provider from services provided by others, and to indicate the source of the services. Copyrights protect literary, artistic, and musical works. For general information, publications and other copyright related topics, you may visit their Web site at http://www.copyright.gov. Copyrights information can be obtained from the U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20559 or you may call 202 707-3000 or 202 707-6737 (TTY).

So, it seems, that "Operation Interdependence®" really isn't intending to represent Americans, but itself.

Why?

Where's the money go?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Family Research Council - Racist?

I'll report, you decide:

The ABC Network cancelled the "Welcome to the Neighborhood" series, the latest entrant in Reality TV. Good thing...The show featured seven families competing for a rather nice house in a cul-de-sac of $350K + homes in Austin, TX. The unofficial Texas capital motto is "Keep Austin Weird," but even this city had limits.

To win, the candidate family had to be accepted by the current families living in the neighborhood. Losers would be brutally voted off the premises each week. The show had something to offend everyone... featuring a homosexual couple; a black couple; a Hispanic couple (with lots of kids); an Asian couple (who owned a restaurant); a white couple (country-comes-to-town); a devil-worshiping witch (kid you not); and a Republican couple with tattoos.

Ah, yes, how offensive: gays, blacks, Hispanics, Asians- they're not like "regular Americans," according to the organization whose head has no problems getting access to David Duke's rolodex.

Now when will the religious right walk denounce Tony Perkins and his band of bigots?

(Liquid List, via Atrios)

As an American of European descent married to a Chinese woman I find this kind of talk Unamerican, divisive, and repugnant.

As usual, Gwynne Dyer gets it right...

Rather than respond to the London attack by triumphalist name-calling, Dyer, who unlike the 101st keyboarders actually lives in London, knows what's really going on:

During the whole of World War II, about 30,000 Londoners were killed by German bombs and three-quarters of a million lost their homes. Then, between 1971 and 2001, London was the target of 116 bombs set by various factions of the Irish Republican Army, although they only killed 50 people and injured around 1,000. And not once during all those bombs did people in London think that they were being attacked because of their values and their way of life.

It was clear to them that they were being attacked because of British policies abroad, or the policies of Britain's friends and allies. The people who organized the bombs wanted Britain out of World War II, or British troops out of Northern Ireland, or the British Army out of the Middle East (or maybe the whole G-8 to leave the rest of the world alone). Nasty things, bombs, but those who send them your way are usually rational people with rational goals, and they almost never care about your values or your way of life.

Londoners understand that, and it has a calming effect, because once you have grasped that basic fact you are no longer dealing with some faceless, formless, terrifying unknown, but just a bunch of people who are willing to kill at random in order to get your government to change its policies. We don't even know for certain which bunch yet. It could've been Islamist terrorists, or some breakaway IRA faction, or even some anarchist group trying to make a point about the G-8. But that doesn't matter, really...

I do recall thinking, however, that it was a good thing the bombs had gone off here, not in some American city. Even in London, terrorist bombs will be used by the Bush administration as an argument for locking people up, taking away civil liberties, even for invading some other country. One bomb in an American city, and it would have a free run down to 2008.

Whereas in London, it doesn't work like that.

So true. And, the political manipulativeness of 9/11 by the Bush regime is exhibit number 1 that we're a whole lot less safe with George W. Bush as president (although the raw statistics on terrorist attacks are equally compelling evidence).

Thanks righties.

He's right about something else, too: knowing why your enemy opposes you and their rationale for doing so and their approach gives you information that you need to prevail against them; whereas irrational and mindless name calling doesn't do anything.

Evolution and silliness on the right

I had meant to blog about Christoph Schönborn's uninformed attack on evolution from the NY Times yesterday, but was busy.

He prattles dogma without understanding stochastic phenomena:

Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.

We can ignore the "evidence" for "bad design" (the birth canal of the human compared to a newborn baby's head size, the blindspot, etc.) because the real issue is the terms "neo-Darwinian" (straw man), and "unguided, unplanned process of random variations."

I've said numerous times that "random" doesn't imply or rule out being guided or planned- it merely rules out being completely determined based on prior history; any possible transition mechanism is not fully describable.

Schönborn's anti-scientific thinking (read the whole article for its fuzziness and sloppy thinking) is repeated in a TNR article referenced by Digby; who notes it's one of those rare times that you can praise Charles Krauthammer and Richard Brookheiser with an "almost" for Tucker Carlson.

The rest of the folks' quotes cited by Digby are quite shocking in their lack of integrity or knowledge.

One more post on London

I was living in Manhattan in '93, during the WTC bombing. My father was still working in the building, but luckily at the time he was in a relatively safer place- Cairo, Egypt, on business.

I remember the messy commute back to NY from Long Island where I worked at the time; I remember thinking, "Whatever they're (the bombers) are for, I'm against it simply because of the commute," which was abominable- I was on the Triboro bridge for one hour.

The reality is, the situation in London's actually not that much worse than the '93 WTC bombing- it's certainly no 9/11 in terms of the number killed or injured and the property damage.

It's roughly on a par with the Aum Shinrikyo subway attack in 1995.

Thus the prognosis- you read it here first- is no lasting damage like 9/11.

Watch what Fox and CNN say instead.

A straightforward example of interconnectedness, or how to save for retirement in the Bush era...

Link

Explosions Hit Bus and Subways

in London

LONDON (AP) -- At least six blasts rocked the London subway and tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday, police said, killing at least two people and injuring nine, prompting officials to shut down the entire underground transport network.

The near simultaneous explosions came a day after London was awarded the 2012 Olympics and as the G-8 summit was getting underway in Scotland. Initial reports blamed a power surge, but officials were not ruling out an intentional attack.

"There have been a number of dreadful incidents across London today," said Home Secretary Charles Clarke, Britain's top law enforcement officer. He said there were "terrible injuries."

One witness, Darren Hall, said some passengers emerging from an evacuated subway station had soot and blood on their faces. He told BBC TV that he was evacuated along with others near the major King's Cross station and only afterward heard a blast.

Police confirmed an explosion destroyed a double-decker bus at Russell Square in central London and said they suspected a bomb caused the blast. Dow Jones Newswires reported that police said there were explosions on two others buses.

A witness at the Russell Square blast said the entire top deck of that bus was destroyed.

Link 2

Mutual Funds: Commodity Funds

Commodity Funds Can Add Diversity to a Portfolio Focused on Stocks and Bonds

May 26, 2005 — If you own both stock and bond funds, you probably consider yourself well-diversified. But research by Lipper Inc. suggests broad exposure to commodities like gold, oil and copper can go a long way toward rounding out a mutual fund portfolio, as long as you understand the risks.

One of the reasons stocks and bonds are paired together is that they can perform differently from each other — when one declines, the other typically advances. For even more diversification, professional investors often add other asset classes, such as real estate and commodities, that theoretically can zig when stocks or bonds zag.

"When the stock market drops, you don't necessarily notice it at the gas pump," said Patricia Jennerjohn, head of Focused Finances in Oakland, Calif. "The price of oil will drive the market as far as sentiment goes, but it's not necessarily correlated in terms of performance."

Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that invest in commodities and real estate investment trusts have made it possible to use these alternative investments even in very small portfolios. For commodities in particular, there's a wide array of products, from funds that invest only in gold or natural resources to all-inclusive indexes that hold everything from crude to cotton.

"Commodities are clearly a separate asset class and would be a good diversification addition to an investor's portfolio," said Andrew Clark, a senior research analyst at Lipper. "They're on a very strong ride up, so you may want to be overweighted in them more than you might have been in the late '90s."

Indexes Funds For Small Investors

For small investors looking for an edge but not a roller coaster ride, a broadly diversified commodities index is probably best. Natural resources funds do not provide any real diversification because they are highly correlated with both large-cap and small-cap stock funds, Clark said. And while gold offers diversification, it comes with a high degree of volatility and twice the risk of small-cap stocks.

"When the stock market drops, you don't necessarily notice it at the gas pump," said Patricia Jennerjohn, head of Focused Finances in Oakland, Calif. "The price of oil will drive the market as far as sentiment goes, but it's not necessarily correlated in terms of performance."

Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that invest in commodities and real estate investment trusts have made it possible to use these alternative investments even in very small portfolios. For commodities in particular, there's a wide array of products, from funds that invest only in gold or natural resources to all-inclusive indexes that hold everything from crude to cotton.

"Commodities are clearly a separate asset class and would be a good diversification addition to an investor's portfolio," said Andrew Clark, a senior research analyst at Lipper. "They're on a very strong ride up, so you may want to be overweighted in them more than you might have been in the late '90s."

I am but a very small potato in this big world, but it seems that what this shows is it is people who can't do relatively trivial things like put a piece of one's IRA into funds like the above who are really getting screwed.

And that's the poor.

Figures aren't available for 2004, but median incomes in this neck of the woods have been stagnant through 2003, and declined slightly for inflation.

Whether it's the "terrorists" or Bush and his friends: well off people and the prepared and informed small-fry will make money, and the poor will be the ones who really suffer.

Bush, certainly has not made us any safer- I expected that.

But at least today I'm not going to get creamed in my retirement savings. I might even make a buck or two today.

Yeah, folks, all he's really doing is getting progressives like me wealthier, because we're placing bets that he's going to screw the economy.

Update

Evidently, oil prices are - oddly enough- down.

If al Qaeda wanted to do a "Madrid" to the G8, that'd be kind of odd- as long as there's no cover-up by Bush/Blair (or news of collusion with the terrorists) all this is going to do is piss people off. And possibly scare a few conservatives.

And evidently that- I suppose- is supposed to steel the West to attempt control of the Iraqi oil supply.

That's as may be (and notably al Qaeda has not targetted the oil infrastructure as of now), but the long term trend is still up, up, and away for oil, as long as we have folks in power who would rather spend lots of effort and energy to maintain control over oil supplies instead of finding ways to make oil irrelevant.

I only hope that we indeed, this time, actually go after al Qaeda.

And get independence from oil.

Will Bush conservative religious folks "down the river?" Or is it wink, wink?

Link

In a series of conference calls on Tuesday and over the last several days, Republican Senate aides encouraged conservative groups to avoid emphasizing the searing cultural issues that social conservatives see at the heart of the court fight, subjects like abortion, public support for religion and same-sex marriage, participants said.

Instead, these participants, who insisted on anonymity to avoid exclusion from future calls, said the aides - including Barbara Ledeen of the Senate Republican Conference and Eric Ueland, chief of staff to Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader - emphasized themes that had been tested in polls, including a need for a fair and dignified confirmation process.

Mr. Ueland acknowledged that he and others had been working almost since the vacancy occurred last Friday with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's resignation to persuade conservative activists to steer clear of divisive language.

"Every contact we have with these folks is 'stay on message, stay on purpose,' " Mr. Ueland said. "The extremism of language, if there is to be any, should be demonstrably on the other side. The hysteria and the foaming at the mouth ought to come from the left."

Of course the dirty little secret about the GOP is that they can't win without religous conservative religious agitators, theocrats, and right-wing extremists, and non-reality based secular libertarians and "neocons."

This Supremem court nominee may expose the fissures in the GOP.

Will conservative religious folk who supported Bush finally wake up and smell the coffee if Bush appoints a pro-torture candidate for the Supreme Court?

Well, 5 bucks says if it's Gonzales, James Dobson will have no problem with him.

Let's hope Rove does hard time

Really, Karl Rove's "I didn't know" defense in outing covert agent Valarie Plame sounds as candid and forthright as the old Steve Martin "I forgot"

You.. can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You say.. "Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?" First.. get a million dollars. Now.. you say, "Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, 'You.. have never paid taxes'?" Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: "I forgot!" How many times do we let ourselves get into terrible situations because we don't say "I forgot"? Let's say you're on trial for armed robbery. You say to the judge, "I forgot armed robbery was illegal." Let's suppose he says back to you, "You have committed a foul crime. you have stolen hundreds and thousands of dollars from people at random, and you say, 'I forgot'?" Two simple words: Excuuuuuse me!!"

One Final Bit of 4th of July Freedom:

Reichstag Fire:

(Download it royalty free, for free!)

Reichstag Fire
David Rovics

The planes hit New York City
And thousands now are dead
"It was Arab terrorists"
This is what you said
Well if that is the truth
Then what have you got to hide
And what were you doing
On the day all those people died
Where the fuck were the fighter jets
Ordered by the FAA
And what is your explanation
For what you were heard to say
When you told the Air Force to stand down
Not to intercept
Did you plan to let it happen
Or are you just inept

(Chorus)
I am left to wonder
As the flames are reaching higher
Was this our latest Lusitannia
Or another Reichstag Fire

There's some distressing information, sir
Which I think should be explained
Just which things have been lost
And just what has been gained
Like the thousands of put options
Bought days before the crash
If the money were collected
It would make quite a pretty stash
And the only stocks they bought
Were American and United
Deutsche Bank knows the answer
But the names have not been sighted
And is it just coincidence
That this firm in the private sector
Was once run by "Buzzy" Krongard
Ex-CIA Director

(Chorus)

There's something fishy in Virginia
And I want an explanation
Why did they get the contract
What is Britannia Aviation
A one-man operation
Corporation with no history
He said he worked in Florida
But there he was a mystery
So is there a connection
I think it bears investigation
When the FAA found boxcutters
Does this cause you consternation
Hidden behind the seats
In these Delta planes
That had been fixed in Lynchburg
With Brittania at the reigns

(Chorus)

You said Bin Laden was your friend
But he isn't anymore
Now that he's not fighting Russia
In your proxy war
Who called the FBI
Off the Bin Laden family trail
When so many times you had the chance
To re-write this sordid tale
Sudan in '96
The Taleban in 2001
Offered to turn him over
And right then you coulda won
But perhaps it is the case
That you're avoiding victory
That to justify your exploits
You must have an enemy

(Chorus)

If you were not hiding from the truth
Then you'd have a truth commission
And not some masquerade
Kangaroo investigation
Hiring Henry Kissinger
The ancient master of deceit
To make sure all stones are left unturned
And the ruse is kept complete
And now you carry out your plans
Which you have had for decades
Conquering the world
With your troops and bombing raids
I see an evil regime
Led by an evil man
On Pennsylvania Avenue
Where this evil war began

(Chorus)

Now all of the above may or may not implicate Bush, of course, and as I've said elsewhere, "It's about control of the oil."

But these guys and there friends have a history of consorting and supporting with folks like Saddam Hussein.

We should support them?

Let's remember what liberty really means, this 4th.

It doesn't mean flag-waving.

"Deep Impact" has "deep impact."

Link

WASHINGTON, July 4 -- NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft lived up to its name early Monday when it slammed into a comet with such force that the resulting blast of icy debris stunned scientists with its size and brightness.

With the flyby stage of the two-part spacecraft watching from a safe distance, an 820-pound, copper-core "impactor" craft smashed into the nucleus of comet Tempel 1 at 23,000 miles per hour, sending a huge, bright spray of debris into space...

The purpose of the $333 million mission was to make the most detailed study of a comet to date, striking the mountain-sized hunk of ice and rock, and creating a crater from which would spew some of the primal material that makes up its core. Depending upon the composition of the comet, scientists speculated that the impact could excavate a crater as large as a sports stadium or as small as a house.

Not that the technology couldn't be used for anti-ballistic missle applications, right?

I wonder if it would really cost $1/3 billion to do that to missiles.

Stephen Roach turns "bullish" ...sort of...

Link

My newfound optimism on the bond market is a case a point. My call on US interest rates has long been framed in the context of a classic current account adjustment -- a shift from deficit back toward balance that, for most nations, is invariably accompanied by the combination of a weaker currency and higher real interest rates. I still believe such an endgame eventually awaits the United States -- leaving me an unrepentant bond bear. But I now expect something else to happen first -- namely, a China slowdown brought about by a marked deceleration of growth in its fixed investment and export sectors. With these two sectors collectively accounting for 80% of Chinese GDP and currently growing at a 30% y-o-y rate, a China slowdown arises from the confluence of internal policies aimed at the excesses of China’s property bubble and external protectionist pressures taking dead aim on Chinese exports. If I’m right, this will lead to a deceleration of pan-Asian GDP growth and a sharp fall-off in commodity prices -- both bond-bullish developments.

At the same time, I would stress the transitory nature of this constructive conclusion on the bond market. To the extent the China slowdown is but a temporary detour for a high-growth Chinese economy, reductions in interest rates are likely to be relatively short-lived -- perhaps lasting only a year or so. Moreover, during the hiatus of lower interest rates, the asset-dependent American consumer could well take advantage of yet another blow-off in an already bubbly housing market -- leading to another spending binge, ever greater extensions of debt, reduced national saving, and a further widening of the current-account deficit. As China comes out of this cyclical downshift, the US current-account deficit could well re-emerge as the dominant force shaping world financial markets -- possibly with an even sharper adjustment than might have otherwise been the case. That might be reason enough to shift back to a more bearish assessment of the bond market -- albeit from lower levels of longer-term rates than previously thought.

Unlike my rethinking of the interest rate outlook, there are no strings attached to my newfound optimism on Europe. I continue to feel that the angst over Europe’s political disappointments is obscuring the meaningful progress being made on structural reforms. The failure of the EU constitutional referenda in France and Holland, in conjunction with the acrimonious ending to the recent European summit, does not undermine the case for structural change, in my view. Labor market rigidities are improving at the margin -- underscored by progress in Germany, where shortened workweeks are being abolished, labor unions are losing their industry-wide bargaining power, and the rapid growth of part-time and temporary workers is creating a more flexible workforce. Equally encouraging, in my view, is Corporate Europe’s recent push into IT-enabled capital spending -- a belated but nevertheless encouraging catch-up to the trend first established by the US in the late 1990s. Finally, it is important to note the flurry of corporate restructuring activity now evident in Old Europe, especially in Germany. What emerges out of all this is an encouraging case for European productivity improvement after a decade of anemic performance. Ironically, the recent political setbacks may serve the unintended, but positive, role of clearing the decks for more heavy lifting on the structural reform front.

Ah, those French. "Old Europe" as Rumsfeld called it, is certainly in better shape than many Americans thought.

(HT: New Economist)

Point/Counterpoint: Paul Krugman , Allen Ginsberg, and Wendy's on obesity

Krugman:

I've been looking into the issues surrounding obesity because it plays an important role in health care costs. According to a study recently published in the journal Health Affairs, the extra costs associated with caring for the obese rose from 2 percent of total private insurance spending in 1987 to 11.6 percent in 2002. The study didn't cover Medicare and Medicaid, but it's a good bet that obesity-related expenses are an important factor in the rising costs of taxpayer-financed programs, too. Fat is a fiscal issue.

But it's also, alas, a partisan issue.

First, let's talk about what isn't in dispute: around 1980, Americans started getting rapidly fatter.

Some pundits still dismiss American pudge as a benign "affliction of affluence," a sign that people can afford to eat tasty foods, drive cars and avoid hard physical labor. But all of that was already true by 1980, which is roughly when Americans really started losing the battle of the bulge.

The great majority of us (yes, me too) are now overweight, and the percentage of adults considered obese has doubled, to more than 30 percent. Most alarmingly, obesity, once rare among the young, has become common among adolescents, and even among children.

Ginsberg:

C'mon Pigs of Western Civilization Eat More Grease
- Allen Ginsberg (1926 - 1997), City Lights Review #6 (1994)

Eat Eat more marbled Sirloin more Pork 'n gravy!
Lard up the dressing, fry chicken in boiling oil
Carry it dribbling to gray climes, snowed with salt,
Little lambs covered with mint roasts in racks surrounded by roast potatoes wet with buttersauce
Buttered veal medallions in creamy saliva, buttered beef, by glistening mountains of french fries
Stroganoffs in white hot sour cream, chops soaked in olive oil, surrounded by olives, salty feta cheese, followed
by Roquefort & Bleu & Stilton thirsty
for wine, beer Coca-Cola Fanta Champagne Pepsi retsina arrak whiskey vodka
Agh! Watch out heart attack, pop some angina pills
order a plate of Bratwurst, fried frankfurters,
couple billion Wimpys', McDonald burgers to the moon & burp!
Salt on those fries! Boil onions & breaded mushrooms even zucchini in deep hot Crisco pans
Turkeys die only once, look nice next to tall white glasses sugarmilk & icecream vanilla balls
Strawberry for sweeter color milkshakes with hot dogs
Forget greenbeans, everyday a few carrots, a mini big spoonful of salty rice'll do, make the plate pretty;
throw in some vinegar pickles, briny sauerkraut check yr cholesterol, swallow a pill
and order a sugar Cream donut, pack 2 under the size 44 belt
Pass out in the vomitorium come back cough up strands of sandwich still chewing pastrami at Katz's delicatessen
Back to Central Europe & gobble Kielbasa in Lodz
swallow salami in Munich with beer, Liverwurst on pumpernickel in Berlin, greasy cheese in a 3-star Hotel near
Syntagma, on white bread thick-buttered
Set an example for developing nations, salt, sugar, fat, coffee tobacco Schnapps
Drop dead faster! make room for Chinese guestworkers with alien soybean curds green cabbage & rice!
Africans Latins with rice beans & calabash can stay thin & crowd in apartments for working class foodfreaks -

Not like Western cuisine rich in protein cancer heart attack hypertension sweat bloated liver & spleen megaly
Diabetes & stroke - monuments to carnivorous civilizations
try murdering Belfast Bosnia Cypress Ngorno Karabach Georgia
or mailing love letter bombs in Vienna or setting houses afire in East Germany - have another coffee, here's a cigar.
And this is a plate of Black forest chocolate cake, you deserve it.

Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's, if memory serves me right, died of heart failure. And also, if memory serves me, Allen Ginsberg was never a nutritionist, but then again nobody'd ever seriously demand literal facticity from Ginsberg.

4TH OF JULY Party Music

Ever hear of David Rovics? Probably not, if you've not kept up with music. Anyway, you can dowload him for free, without all that nasty spyware. From his site!

For example, Who Would Jesus Bomb is a great song:

I've seen you in the markets
I've seen you in the streets
And at your political convention
Talking of your crusade
Talking of your nation
And other things too terrible to mention
And you proclaim your Christianity
You proclaim your love of God
You talk of apple pie and mom
Well I've just got one question
And I want an answer
Tell me, who would Jesus bomb?

Maybe Jesus would bomb the Syrians
'Cause they're not Jews like him
Maybe Jesus would bomb the Afghans
On some kind of vengeful whim
Maybe Jesus would drive an M1 tank
And he would shoot Saddam
Tell me, who would Jesus bomb?

I've seen you on the TV
And on the battleships
I've seen you in the house upon the hill
And I've heard you talking
About making the world safer
And about all the men you have to kill
And you speak so glibly
About your civilization
And how you have the moral higher ground
While halfway around the world
Your explosives smash the buildings
Ah, if you could only hear the sound

But maybe Jesus would sell land mines
And turn on his electric chair
Maybe Jesus would show no compassion
For his enemies in the lands way over there
Maybe Jesus would have flown the planes
That killed the kids in Viet Nam
Tell me, who would Jesus bomb

Yes I hear you shout with confidence
As you praise the lord
And you talk about this God you know so well
And you talk of Armageddon
And your final victory
When all the evil forces go to hell
Well you'd best hope you've chosen wisely
On the right side of the lord
And when you die your conscience it is clear
You'd best hope that your atom bombs
Are better than the sword
At the time when your reckoning is here

'Cause I don't think Jesus would send gunships into Bethlehem
Or jets to raze the towns of Timorese
I don't think Jesus would lend money to dictators
Or drive those SUV's
And I don't think Jesus would ever have dropped
A single ounce of napalm
So tell me, who would Jesus bomb?

And supporters of the status quo and Bush, please remember, it is, after all, a holiday about a revolution. It's my revolution, too you know.

Especially since we've got better music.

Wing Wa BBQ King

2788 SE 82nd Ave. Suite 103
Portland OR 97266

+1 (503) 771-1848

Simply the best roast pork and duck in Portland, at reasonable prices

But be warned: the restaurant isn't the Saucebox.

Is the media ever going to "get" the internets?

The NY Times reviews the podcasting phenomenon, via iTunes podcast upgrade.

And leaves out the fundamental reason why this mode is winning: radio sucks, and with the internet, the information gleaned can be almost as timely as radio. No, NY Times, it's not you who's the big target; it's Clear Channel.

E Pluribus Unum

The Times Magazine's article on a "Church State Soltuion" is a good example of why progressives and moderates and liberals are frustrated by that organ: the superficiality of that article is breathtaking.

(Click here to read the entire post ...)

In our own era, two camps dominate the church-state debate in American life, corresponding to what are now the two most prominent approaches to the proper relation of religion and government. One school of thought contends that the right answers to questions of government policy must come from the wisdom of religious tradition. You might call those who insist on the direct relevance of religious values to political life ''values evangelicals.'' Not every values evangelical is, technically speaking, an evangelical or a born-again Christian, although many are. Values evangelicals include Jews, Catholics, Muslims and even people who do not focus on a particular religious tradition but care primarily about identifying traditional moral values that can in theory be shared by everyone.

What all values evangelicals have in common is the goal of evangelizing for values: promoting a strong set of ideas about the best way to live your life and urging the government to adopt those values and encourage them wherever possible. To them, the best way to hold the United States together as a nation, not just a country, is for us to know what values we really hold and to stand up for them. As Ralph Reed recently told an audience at Harvard, ''While we are sometimes divided on issues, there remains a broad national consensus on core values and principles.''

On the other side of the debate are those who see religion as a matter of personal belief and choice largely irrelevant to government and who are concerned that values derived from religion will divide us, not unite us. You might call those who hold this view ''legal secularists,'' not because they are necessarily strongly secular in their personal worldviews -- though many are -- but because they argue that government should be secular and that the laws should make it so. To the legal secularists, full citizenship means fully sharing in the legal and political commitments of the nation. If the nation defines itself in terms of values drawn from religion, they worry, then it will inevitably tend to adopt the religious values of the majority, excluding religious minorities and nonreligious people from full citizenship.

Despite the differences, each approach, values evangelicalism and legal secularism, is trying to come to terms with the same fundamental tension in American life. The United States has always been home to striking religious diversity -- diversity that has by fits and starts expanded over the last 230 years. At the same time, we strive to be a nation with a common identity and a common project. Religious division threatens that unity, as we can see today more clearly than at any time in a century in the disputes over stem-cell research, same-sex marriage and end-of-life issues. Yet almost all Americans want to make sure that we do not let our religious diversity pull us apart. Values evangelicals say that the solution lies in finding and embracing traditional values we can all share and without which we will never hold together. Legal secularists counter that we can maintain our national unity only if we treat religion as a personal, private matter, separate from concerns of citizenship...

Despite the gravity of the problem, I believe there is an answer. Put simply, it is this: offer greater latitude for religious speech and symbols in public debate, but also impose a stricter ban on state financing of religious institutions and activities. This approach, the mirror image of O'Connor's compromise, is drawn from the framers' vision and the historical experience of separating church and state in America. The framers might well have been mystified by courthouse statues depicting the Ten Commandments, but they would not have objected unless the monuments were built with public money. Having made a revolution over unfair taxation, they thought of government support in terms of dollars spent, not abstract symbols.

Frankly, I'm kind of shocked that Balloon Juice has more insight into the real problem here than Noah Feldman, "professor at the New York University School of Law and a fellow at the New America Foundation."

Look, those guys want funding and religous imagery.

Feldman's article gets worse as you read it; for example he has no problems with local school boards teaching "Intelligent" "Design" creationism.

He doesn't get the original motto of the US was the title in the above post, not "In God We Trust."

The framers broke their own rules- not just in the religious sphere, of course, but in slavery, and in other ways.

What we need is not a return to "the original intent," of a vision of slavery and land theft and limited democracy, but a true democratic revolution in America.

And any moves towards democracy, and inviolability of civil liberties is what really scares "religious conservatives."

A 3rd of July Post

Ever read the Articles of the Confederation?

Fascinating document.

It doesn't exactly found the USA as a democracy, representative or otherwise.

Truth or Hyperbole?

"Confirmation Battle in Senate Could Define Specter's Career"

A former prosecutor, Mr. Specter entered public life four decades ago as an ambitious young lawyer on the Warren Commission, which conducted the inquiry into the killing of President John F. Kennedy. He takes credit for producing the so-called single-bullet theory to explain how Kennedy was killed.

Oh, yeah, that might've defined his career, too.

Some people who have been accused of doing bad things

From top to bottom: Michael Jackson, Donald Rumsfeld, Ted Schelenski VP of for Finance and Operations at the Heritage Foundation, charged with assault, and Dr. Bert Thompson, formerly of Apologetics Press, who has been accused sexual misconduct involving hanky-panky with teenaged males, although no indictment has been brought forth.
(HT: Atrios, on the Heritage scandal.)

Balloon Juice and I agree...

I have never, until now, seen a post at Balloon Juice for which I can muster any sympathy, let alone agree.

But this post is spot on I think.

If anyone really thinks Dobson and Tony Perkins care about the Constitution, they need to reassess their faculties. They care about the Constitution in the context that they think liberal activist judges are robbing them from what is rightfully theirs (and in fairness, sometimes they are right). What they really care about is displaying the Ten Commandments wherever and whenever because we are a "Christian Nation."

They care about inserting themselves into family matters of life and death. They care about keeping drugs out of your hands, even if they ease pain caused by illness. They care about treating homosexuals like second-class citizens. They care about prayer in school and keeping "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. They care about ending abortion. They care about making divorces really difficult to obtain. They care about inserting religion into schools and ending the teaching of evolution. They care about a whole host of things, but Constitutional deference is not one of them.

And if the Constitution strictly ruled against everyone of their wishes, and the citizens had a vote and laws were passed making gay marriage legal, abortion legal, etc., do you think they would just give up? Of course they wouldn't- they would try to change the Constitution through amendments. Can anyone else figure out why James Dobson supports a flag desecration amendment? The reason is simple- it is just another step in reshaping the country to their choosing.

It just is who they are- there can be no changing that. Debate doesn't work, as they only recognize brute political force. Have you ever tried to debate abortion with someone from the far religious right? There is no debate. If you agree to end partial-birth abortion, they won't be happy. If you enact strict and universal parental notification, it won't be enough. If you change it to one trimester only, that isn't enough. If you make abortion extremely difficult to obtain, if it is still elective, that won't be far enough. If every state but California outlaws all abortion, do you think all of a sudden they would embrace the Constitution and the rhetoric of 'states rights?' This isn't about compromise or the Constitution- this is about remaking the country in what they view as God's image.

Balloon Juice is right for one other reason: though it probably sits uncomfortably with the more pacifist part of the moderate and progressive population, the way in which the religious right wants to enact their agenda is nothing short of the smashiest of smash mouth politics.

That is why a 2 pronged approach is needed to counter this threat to the American way of life:

1. A concerted effort to defeat these people in the legislative arena, using whatever legal means necessary.

2. A concerted effort to render the religious right irrelevant by way of actually responding to the very real moral ills of ourselves and our society that deconstruct their narrative about it (that is, that overtly and visibly contradict the stories they tell about "non-believers"), that engage them directly, although not with hostility, and that encourage "them" to see "us" as "us" as well as "them."

It must take a coordinated campaign to achieve this, with every bit of fervor as that used by the folks who practice "Evangelism Explosion."






(via Crooks and Liars, which also has a very good interview (albeit with nothing new) with Chris Hedges).

The Supreme Court post

It is naturally quite troubling that in the present climate, with reason and tolerance in retreat, that the current occupant of the White House is going to get to nominate a replacement for the swing vote on the court.

Still, the efforts by the theocratic right at domination in society cannot but be fruitless in the long term, even though it will engender a great deal of strife and suffering.

While I hope reason and ttolerance prevail, we must also understand that every instance like this is a call for us to bring up our game as it were, to deepen practice, to be more skilllful.

Who knows? We might be surprised.

And related to the link below...and the Karl Rove

rumor about Karl Rove's alleged treason in the Plame affair, this bit about documented collusion in the Japanese press club may remind you of Washington...


The Japanese Press Club Conspiracy

Although technically, Japan has a free press, many critics say that journalists are muzzled by the press club system, in which access to politicians and important people is a privelage rather than a right. In order to get interviews and gain access to information, journalists are required to join press clubs (kisha kurabu) which are found in almost every government ministry, industry association, political party, and sports and entertainment organisation. It is estimated that there are about a thousand press clubs in Japan. This means that almost all of them pursue the same stories and do not question the official stories that are presented to them by the high-ranking politicians and bureaucrats whose good side they always try to stay on for fear of being cut off from access to information.
Press clubs are beneficial in that they provide the reporters with easy access to their sources, and help the reporters find leads and exchange information, but the trade off is that journalists are forced to conform to the official line, and that inviestigative journalism is discouraged.
At most press conferences and informal meetings with politicians, there are usually just a few reporters who are allowed to attend, who then go back to the press club and explain what went on to the other members. Because of this, all the major media outlets generally end up reporting the same angles of the same stories. Reporters who break the rules of the press club, or print unfavourable stories about high-ranking politicians are said to be ostracized both by their colleagues and sources. Those who are in favour, are invited to the politicians houses for friendly chats (asamawari and yomawari). Political Science professor Laurie Freeman writes that: "According to one report, a journalist's influence is based on a 1-4 ranking depending on what happens once they are inside a politician's house. At the first and lowest level, they are allowed to stay in a 4.5-mat tatami room at the entrance and greeted by the politician with a 'good morning.' Coffee is served. At the second level, they are allowed to enter the living room. Japanese sake is served. The third level can be reached only if one has graduated from the same university as the politician or is related to someone powerful. Here, one is allowed to enter the politician's study and, even if the politician is not there, can help oneself to Remy Martin. It is said that the highest class of journalists can nap in the politician's bedroom."
Another problem with press clubs is that because reporters want to protect the people they are reporting on, sources are rarely identified by name, but instead as a "high ranking bureaucrat" or "important politician's advisor". Before press conferences, the reporters pool their questions and inform the interviewees of their questions in advance.
Scooping other newspapers is also very much frowned upon. In Laurie Freeman's Essay, "Japan's Press Clubs as Information Cartels" she describes how the Asahi Shinbun was forced to apologize to other members of the press club and to a Japanese politician for scooping the other papers.
To get news that has not been filtered by the press club system, many Japanese turn to the weekly or monthly magazines such as "Shukan Taishu", "Spa!", or "Bungei Shunju". Although they are sometimes sensationalistic and have elements of tabloid journalism in them, they also broke important stories like the Lockheed scandal that brought down a Prime Minister Tanaka, various sumo scandals, and others. If you would like to see an example in English, visit: http://www.weeklypost.com/

To read more about Press Clubs, read these excellent essays:
http://www.nira.go.jp/publ/review/96spring/feldman.html
http://www.debito.org/JPRIpressclubcartel.html

Yakuza Japanese

Link

Totally off-topic, completely irrelevant to everything else on this blog, but if I ever get around to studying what's there I'll either deeply impress or insult my Japanese friends.

Like Media Matters for Market Pundits

CXO Advisory group reviews the market pundits.

Warren Buffet comes off good. Jim Cramer's as good as coin flipping.

HT: The internet stock blog.

If the Unocal deal to CNOOC doesn't go through....

Mr. Bennett points us here...

without any sense of irony.

"But you must understand, foreigners have much more information than we do. There's no real freedom to discuss these kinds of things here."

I mean, foreigners do - Chinese especially- have more information about the US than Americans do.

But, speaking of China, I really wanted to discuss this.

Right now, the world financial situation is poised on a knife edge.

Luckily, our Congress is at work:

... Yesterday, Representative Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, a Democrat of Michigan, won House passage of her amendment to the annual appropriations bill prohibiting the Treasury Department from recommending the sale of Unocal to Cnooc.

And last night, the House approved, by a vote of 398 to 15, a resolution stating that Chinese ownership of Unocal would "threaten to impair the national security of the United States" and that approval by Unocal's board of the bid should result in a "thorough review" by President Bush.

Now, I guess it's OK to buy Maytag, but if China doesn't get to buy something other than T-bills with its US dollars, it's not going to want to buy them forever.

It's going to want assets denominated in dollars. The cheerleaders of free trade put this mess in motion, and here we are: if you don't like Chinese control of a major oil company (as though you had any choice, ultimately, about what other nations do), you're a bit late to the game, because they're already there, and unlike you, they're much less likely to be using the stuff for an SUV to drive around the burb.

If you don't like it, and if you succeed in preventing this and enough other sales- a kind of economic Chinese exclusion act- then you'll no doubt reap a whirlwind when the dollar collapses, when the Chinese find a way to minimize their losses in dollars while getting out of dollars and maintaining at least some economic development.

There's this presumption that "They need us!"

What if that's wrong?

Then again, the Atlantic often gets a bit too DLC for my taste

Why James Fallows has a job doing what he's doing is often beyond me.

Anyway, this article makes the case for a Democratic president presiding over an economic collapse set up by a Repub in office.

Now, the problem is, yeah, the Repubs are setting us up for an economic collapse.

But the Dems are not so beholden to "special interests" that they're not going to do the right thing when the time comes.

And they'll never, never, elect somebody nicknamed "the Preacher" as president.