Only In Wisco

Cripes, Green Bay can't even, oh, well.

A passerby who described himself as a former pig farmer tried to wrestle the animal, but the animal pulled away from him as well, LePine said.

Giving Honesty The Finger

Integrity?

What integrity? Good job, Bu$hCo, I know it's hard work.

The Interior Department’s chief official responsible for investigating abuses and overseeing operations accused the top officials at the agency on Wednesday of tolerating widespread ethical failures, from cronyism to cover-ups of incompetence.

“Simply stated, short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior,” charged Earl E. Devaney, the Interior Department’s inspector general, at a hearing of the House Government Reform subcommittee on energy.

“I have observed one instance after another when the good work of my office has been disregarded by the department,” he continued. “Ethics failures on the part of senior department officials — taking the form of appearances of impropriety, favoritism and bias — have been routinely dismissed with a promise ‘not to do it again.’ ”

Reservist Felt She Lacked Training

& now she's dead.

Ann Richards, R.I.P.

I remember her speech about Bu$hCo I & his silver spoon. I also remember her sitting in the front row of a Leonard Cohen appearance on Austin City Limits. He changed anal sex to casual sex, I suppose, for her.

Former Gov. Ann Richards, the witty and flamboyant Democrat who went from homemaker to national political celebrity, died Wednesday night after a battle with cancer, a family spokeswoman said. She was 73.

Good On Her

The Bonehead from Ohio gets his nuts handed to him by Nancy Pelosi. We need to keep this up on a local, state, & national level. I hope she & other Democratic leaders keep it up.

"I wonder if they are more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "They certainly do not want to take the terrorists on and defeat them."

Trading barbs, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, who had criticized the president's speech as inappropriately political, called Boehner's criticism "cynical tactics."

"Rather than try to defend their own failed record, Republicans have resorted to the desperation politics of fear," said Pelosi, D-Calif. "It is long past time for Republicans to be honest with American people and stop questioning the patriotism of those who recognize that the president's Iraq policy has not worked, is making us less safe and must be changed."

Emphasis mine.

Digital Decline

This is no surprise, particularly to those of us who live in the woods. It took Mrs. coldH2O & I until earlier this year to get DSL. It's better than nothing, although it's the slowest speed possible. But that's what happens when growing profits trumps growing the culture, the society, the educational system, etc., etc., etc., etc. I am very appreciative of how technology has & is helping my life. From the MRI scans on the computer screen in the doc's office (very cool & I was able to see what the problem was, & it, in fact, helped both the doc & I come to an agreement on treatment.) to the cell phone on my dashboard to the computer in my lap right now. But why the lag time? Why the crazy prices? Why the lousy service? Growing profits. That's all these people are interested in. They aren't concerned about growing customer service or customer loyalty or customer satisfaction. How 20th century. As my four loyal readers know, I'm old enough to remember ATT's monopoly on phone service. You know what? I was happy with it. When I picked up my phone it worked, yes, yes, occasionally thunderstorms would cause some problems. But it worked. & I didn't have to waste time deciding which phone package or company to chose. Life is too full of choices & the fewer the better, at least in my case. Anyway, another DUH! moment for Bu$hCo & America.

The U.S continues to lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to affordable and accessible broadband service according to a new report [Download pdf] by the media activist group Free Press, the Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union. The report also finds that contrary to the picture painted by the government, there is no sign that the digital divide in this country is closing.

The author of the report, S. Derek Turner said yesterday that, "President Bush set a goal of bringing universal, affordable high-speed Internet access to every household by 2007, We're nowhere close to reaching that goal. Yet the Federal Communications Commission seems content to ignore the problem, manipulate the data, and pretend we're moving forward."

Wish

I wish Jon Stewart was President & I want to have his babies, which is, of course, biologically impossible, but it is the thought that counts & it's like the only thought I've had in awhile. Hey, I can hear the snickers. Watch out or I will report y'all to, to, to...somebody.

Where There Is Heat

There is global warming & hellacious storms.

Scientists say they have found what could be the key to ending a yearlong debate about what is making hurricanes more violent and common -- evidence that human-caused global warming is heating the ocean and providing more fuel for the world's deadliest storms.

For the past 13 months, researchers have debated whether humanity is to blame for a surge in hurricanes since the mid-1990s or whether the increased activity is merely a natural cycle that occurs every several decades.

Employing 80 computer simulations, scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and other institutions concluded that there is only one answer: that the burning of fossil fuels, which warms the climate, is also heating the oceans.

Another Chance

To do the right thing. I just received the following from a friend. Those of you from WISCO need to get this message out. We can show the rest of the country what it means to be an American, a free American. This sort of disgusting bullshit cannot be allowed to stand. Thanks in advance.

2006 is going to be different.

Click here to ContributeProgressive voices everywhere are speaking up and telling the extreme right we've had enough of their divisive politics. As I travel all over the country campaigning for progressive candidates I see that people are energized and standing up strong against the failure of Republican leadership.

This year, in my home state of Wisconsin, the right-wing has placed a proposed constitutional amendment banning civil unions and gay marriage on our ballot in November. Make no mistake, they placed this measure on the ballot in a brazen attempt to divide voters and push turnout for conservative candidates.

In just 60 days, we will make history and show them tactics like these won't work anymore.

Defeating this discriminatory amendment matters not just for Wisconsin but for our entire country. Conservative Republicans put similar measures like this one on the ballot in 20 states in 2004. Twenty states have now amended their constitutions in such a way that discriminates against thousands of gay families all across America.

This year it must and will be different.

I am proud to say that Fair Wisconsin has built a strong statewide grassroots campaign to educate Wisconsin voters and to once and for all defeat this divisive political tactic. I need you to stand with me today in support of their efforts by making a contribution of $250, $100 or $50 by going to Fair Wisconsin's website to donate. Your gift will instantly be used to mobilize and educate hundreds of thousands of voters on the real impacts of the proposed ban.

I am proud to stand with Fair Wisconsin and fight the proposed amendment in my home state. I believe we can win here in Wisconsin and make history by being the first state to defeat one of these hurtful amendments. I hope you will stand with us today. Not just because it's my home state but because it will demonstrate that the only way to beat the right wing isn't to compromise on our core values but to stand up and fight back.

Fight discrimination today by going to Fair Wisconsin's website to donate and help Wisconsin make history this November.

Sincerely,

Russ Feingold

Russ Feingold
U.S. Senator
Honorary Chair, Progressive Patriots Fund

This solicitation is asking for a donation of up to $2,100 per election from an individual's own funds and is not asking for contributions from corporations or labor organizations

Happy As A Clam

Takes an ominous turn. Hat tip, or cute little baby stocking cap tip to The Kid.

The antidepressant drug Prozac (fluoxetine) can disrupt the reproductive cycle of freshwater mussels and increase their risk of extinction, says a U.S. study presented Monday at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society, in San Francisco.

As with other drugs, remnants of Prozac are flushed from the body and travel in wastewater that reaches streams and rivers.

This study found that the drug causes female mussels to release their larvae before they're able to survive on their own.

"The results from this study were quite alarming. When larvae are released too early, they are not viable, which only contributes to the problems faced by struggling populations of native freshwater mussels," co-investigator Rebecca Heltsley of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, N.C., said in a prepared statement.

About 70 percent of the nearly 300 species of native North American freshwater mussels are extinct, endangered or in decline due to pollution, loss or alteration of habitat, increased sediment in rivers, and competition from invasive foreign species.

"The presence of Prozac and similar drugs in U.S. rivers and streams has likely compounded the problem. It's a big concern because freshwater mussels are such an imperiled group," Heltsley said.

Tuesday Morning Blog Mini-Roundup

Steve Gilliard at The News Blog.

I'm tired of being bullshitted.

Dr. Atta J. Turk via Atrios.

But the cancer will remain -- keeping you shitting your pants will be the Republican method of politics, keeping you angst ridden and afraid you'll shit your pants will be the Democratic mode.

Sadly,No!

Why do I loathe George W. Bush?

Tristero over at Digby's place.

The right knows exactly who are behaving like fascists - who are, in fact, fascists: themselves.

Dan Froomkin.

The White House would like you to believe President Bush is putting politics aside as he leads the nation in remembrance of the September 11 terrorist attacks of five years ago.

But it's not true.

Wow

Crooks & Liars has the video. Keith Olberman:

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.
I belabor this to emphasize that, for me… this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.
And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft", or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here — is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante — and at worst, an idiot — whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.
However. Of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast — of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds… none of us could have predicted… this.
Five years later this space… is still empty.
Five years later there is no Memorial to the dead.
Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.
Five years later this country’s wound is still open.
Five years… later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.
Five years later… this is still… just a background for a photo-op.
It is beyond shameful.
—
At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial — barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field, Mr. Lincoln said "we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.
Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We can nto dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground." So we won’t.
Instead they bicker and buck-pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they’re doing — instead of doing any job at all.
Five years later, Mr. Bush… we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir — on these 16 empty acres, the terrorists… are clearly, still winning.
And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.
—
And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation.
There is, its symbolism — of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.
The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it… was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.
Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that.
Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that.
Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that.
History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government, by its critics.
It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage.
Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.
The President — and those around him — did that.
They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused; as appeasers; as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."
They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken… a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated Al-Qaeda as much as we did.
The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ’something to do’ with 9/11, is "lying by implication."
The impolite phrase, is "impeachable offense."
Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space… and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.
Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.
Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible — for anything — in his own administration.
Yet what is happening this very night?
A mini-series, created, influenced — possibly financed by — the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.
The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.
How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death… after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections… how dare you or those around you… ever "spin" 9/11.
—
Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding — as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero…
So too have they succeeded, and are still succeeding — as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.
This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney’s continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.
And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm.
Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on.
As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced.
An "alien" is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help.
The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials areseen, manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves."
And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight.
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men.
"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn."
—
When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…
When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:
Who has left this hole in the ground?
We have not forgotten, Mr. President.
You have.
May this country forgive you.

Deflection Deception

Our taxes being spent on something worthwhile. Will the rest of the federal government do something about the problem? Naw, look, another #2 Al Qaeda leader caught. Wait, wait, don't tell me, there's a pre-9/11 Saddam/Al Qaeda connection. Well, not so much. &, of course, eh, not so not so much. I hate these bastards.

America, Missing

At least it's on a chain link fence, not a milk carton. From Hoffmania.

Good For Brad

I began reading A River Runs Through It to Lucy this morning while I was feeding her. Marigny may have heard some of it, although The Kid kept cooing & stuff to her. Then I ran across this article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. You go Brad.

Brad Pitt, ever the social activist, says he won't be marrying Angelina Jolie until the restrictions on who can marry whom are dropped. "Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able," the 42-year-old actor reveals in Esquire magazine's October issue, on newsstands Sept. 19.