With Gerald Ford's passing yesterday...

...we're currently being treated to dozens of stories that feature some riff on the angle of "Ford stepped in after Nixon and healed America." Not surprisingly, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States posits a different view.

Zinn points out that, for starters, Nixon's resignation was designed to avoid an inevitable impeachment, which would have dragged sordid details into the public eye - including Nixon's ultra-cozy relationship with the corporate world, and his secret, year-long bombing of Cambodia. Ford then took over, and as Zinn puts it, "Nixon's foreign policy remained. The government's connections to corporate interests remained. Ford's closest friends in Washington were corporate lobbyists." And, of course, "One of Ford's first acts was to pardon Nixon, thus saving him from possible criminal proceedings and allowing him to retire with a huge pension."

How would Ford compare today? Based on one of Zinn's anecdotes, at least, Ford seems like he suffered from the same type of militaristic myopia that plagues the neo-cons currently running our show. Even with American troops finally home from Vietnam, he continued to cheerlead for victory, and to ask for money to support the South Vietnamese:

On April 16, 1975, Ford said: "I am absolutely convinced if Congress made available $722 million in military assistance by the time I asked - or sometime shortly thereafter - the South Vietnamese could stabilize the military situation in Vietnam today." Two weeks later, April 29, 1975, the North Vietnamese moved into Saigon, and the war was over.

My biggest beef with Bush...

...is his seeming indifference to the sanctity of human life. From the 130 executions he oversaw as governor of Texas to nearly 3,000 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis, the guy has played a lead role in extinguishing so many existences that sometimes I wonder how anyone can be in the same room with him, let alone shake his hand, laugh at his jokes, or allow him to continue leading our country.

Of course, if you think about the ripples of pain that emanate from each of Bush's deaths, his indifference grows exponentially more callous. For each executed criminal, each lost soldier, and each Iraqi casualty, there are friends and family members who have to suffer the unnecessary loss.

Personally, I'm lucky enough to not have experienced this type of pain, so I can only imagine its true depth. But I think it's important to try to imagine, to try to understand how the actions of our leader and our nation have affected others. With that in mind, I'm grateful for poems like the one below, recently published in The Sun. It's a different context - a mother facing the possible loss of her infant daughter - but to me, it helps drive home how much we've all got riding on each and every human life on this planet.

from Infant Pneumonia, by Cheryl Gatling:

When they handed her back,
I wouldn't lay her down again.
I slept that night in a chair,
holding her up so the mucus would drain.
In sudden, sharp focus, I cherished it all:
the sweaty spikes of her damp hair,
the rattling vibrations of every breath.
I hold no moments more precious than these,
the nearly unbearable,
a pain so pure, it was almost like happiness.

So here's some great news from DC...

...Kirsten Gillibrand, a new congresswoman from New York (she pulled off an upset victory on November 7, with a campaign my uncles Bill and Brian worked for), will publish the details of her daily calendar online - every day of her term. This is a great idea, and an encouraging opening gambit from Gillibrand, who could be one to watch. From an opinion page column in The New York Times:

At first, the innovation sounds simple enough: Representative-elect Kirsten Gillibrand has decided to post details of her work calendar on the Internet at the end of each day so constituents can tell what she is actually doing for their money.

In fact, it is a quiet touch of revolution. The level of transparency pledged by Ms. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York — down to naming lobbyists and fund-raisers among those she might meet with — is simply unheard of in Congress. The secrecy that cloaks the dealings of lawmakers and deep-pocket special interests underpinned the corruption issue that Ms. Gillibrand invoked as voters turned Republicans from majority rule last month.

For all the worthy proposals for ethics reform being hashed out by the incoming Congress, a heavy dose of Internet transparency should not be overlooked in the effort to repair lawmakers’ tattered credibility. The technology is already there, along with the public’s appetite for more disclosure about the byways of power in Congress.

I don't know what it is about Brits and graffiti...

...but between Banksy and this other guy, Moose (aka Paul Curtis), the streets of Britain are sure home to some interesting portfolios. From a 2004 article on NPR.org:

July 15, 2004 · A British street artist known as Moose creates graffiti by cleaning dirt from sidewalks and tunnels -- sometimes for money when the images are used as advertising. But some authorities call it vandalism.

Moose, whose real name is Paul Curtis, tells NPR's Steve Inskeep that he got the idea when he saw that people had written their names with their fingers on dirty tunnel walls in his hometown of Leeds. Moose does some freehand drawing, but also uses the grid from wall tiles to create perfect shapes and letters.

The tools are simple: A shoe brush, water and elbow grease, he says.

British authorities aren't sure what to make of the artist who is creating graffiti by cleaning the grime of urban life. The Leeds City Council has been considering what to do with Moose. "I'm waiting for the kind of Monty Python court case where exhibit A is a pot of cleaning fluid and exhibit B is a pair of my old socks," he jokes.

One place where paperless isn't cool...

...is the voting booth, and thankfully, it looks like we'll be headed back to casting ballots that can be recounted if necessary. As the New York Times reports, purely electronic voting machines will be out by November 2008:

New federal guidelines, along with legislation given a strong chance to pass in Congress next year, will probably combine to make the paperless voting machines obsolete, the officials say. States and counties that bought the machines will have to modify them to hook up printers, at federal expense, while others are planning to scrap the machines and buy new ones.

Motivated in part by voting problems during the midterm elections last month, the changes are a result of a growing skepticism among local and state election officials, federal legislators and the scientific community about the reliability and security of the paperless touch-screen machines used by about 30 percent of American voters...

Many of the paperless machines were bought in a rush to overhaul the voting system after the disputed presidential election in 2000, which was marred by hanging chads. But concerns have been growing that in a close election those machines give election workers no legitimate way to conduct a recount or to check for malfunctions or fraud.

Money, money, money...

...is the elephant in the room in this New York Times excerpt on a Barak Obama elbow rub in NYC. Money still means access, that's for sure. Isn't it this kind of cozy money-grubbing that voters spoke out against last month?

One of the donors who met with Mr. Obama, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to offend Mrs. Clinton, said that he and several others had supported Mrs. Clinton’s Senate campaigns but were not committed to her as a presidential candidate.

“I like Hillary a lot, but I’m also impressed with Obama — his message, the way he connects to people,” said the donor, a prominent businessman. “It’s a little too early for Democrats to be certain that Hillary is the strongest bet for 2008. There are a lot of good people interested in running.”

Mr. Obama’s reconnaissance mission came as Mrs. Clinton was starting to talk about 2008 not only with New York elected officials, but also with some prominent donors whom she would like to lock in for a possible White House bid.

Now it's the City of San Diego vs. Wal-Mart...

...from an article on the San Diego Union-Tribune site:

In a move that pits the city squarely against the nation's largest retailer, San Diego yesterday joined a growing list of cities nationwide to place restrictions on large retail developments. The City Council voted 5-3 to ban stores with more than 90,000 square feet that use 10 percent of their space to sell groceries and other merchandise not subject to sales tax. The ban excludes membership stores, such as Costco and Sam's Club, which sell grocery items in bulk...

Although the council is nonpartisan, the vote was along party lines. Those supporting the ban are Democrats; those opposed are Republicans...A group of labor leaders and grocers proposed the ban three years ago, while pro-business organizations, including the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, fought it.

Kevin McCall, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said each Supercenter would potentially create 350 jobs and sell groceries at prices up to 20 percent below what traditional supermarkets offer. “Why would this council turn away a company that is seeking to bring full-service grocery stores to communities with limited shopping options?” he asked...

Former City Councilwoman Valerie Stallings said she reluctantly supported the construction of a Wal-Mart in Serra Mesa while in office because she was convinced it would not hurt local businesses. After watching a number of businesses fold in Wal-Mart's wake, she said that she made the wrong decision. “It's true that the big boxes may be less expensive and they do offer affordable prices to many families, but they do not provide the kind of friendly and individual service that a smaller business can,” she said.

Some excerpts from The Crisis of Islam...

...by Princeton's Bernard Lewis, who The Wall Street Journal called "the world's foremost Islamic scholar." In one passage that enlightened me, Lewis gives some historical backdrop to the ongoing alliance of sorts between the United States and Israel. Apparently, this alliance first gelled in the mid-1950s, after the Soviet Union and Egypt announced an agreement to supply Cairo with Russian arms:

The spread of Soviet influence in the Middle East and the enthusiastic response to it encouraged the United States to look more favorably on Israel, now seen as a reliable and potentially useful ally in a largely hostile region. Today, it is often forgotten that the strategic relationship between the United States and Israel was a consequence, not a cause, of Soviet penetration.

In another excerpt, Lewis summarizes our current leadership's overall approach to the Middle East, in a manner that - at least judging by the WSJ accolade - appears to be acceptable to that leadership:

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new American policy has emerged in the Middle East, concerned with different objectives. Its main aim is to prevent the emergence of a regional hegemony – of a single regional power that could dominate the area and thus establish monopolistic control of Middle Eastern oil. This has been the basic concern underlying successive American policies toward Iran, Iraq, or to any other perceived future threat within the region.

Importantly, Lewis is careful to note that both suicide bombers and any perpetrators of attacks on civilians are in blatant defiance of Islam principles:

Two features mark the attacks of September 11 and other similar actions: the willingness of the perpetrators to commit suicide and the ruthlessness of those who send them, concerning both their own emissaries and their numerous victims. Can these in any sense be justified in terms of Islam? The answer must be a clear no. [Both suicide and the killing of non-combatants are strictly prohibited in Islamic teachings like the Qur'an.]

Here's a link to Amazon's page on The Crisis of Islam, a superb - and easy to read - briefing on the history of Islam and on Islam's role in today's world.

I'm at Houston Bush Airport at 5:30am...

...and at Terminal E's Fox News store, the top story - projecting from 9 different HD displays - is Rupert Murdoch's decision to drop the O.J. Simpson's If I Did It. Weird.

Amid the celebration...

...we wave a well-deserved farewell to the W.A....
...but also shudder at a new estimate of Iraq's civilian death toll, from an AP article:

Health Minister Ali al-Shemari gave his new estimate of 150,000 to reporters during a visit to Vienna, Austria. He later told The Associated Press that he based the figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day brought to morgues and hospitals - though such a calculation would come out closer to 130,000 in total.

"It is an estimate," al-Shemari said. He blamed Sunni insurgents, Wahhabis - Sunni religious extremists - and criminal gangs for the deaths...

"Since three and a half years, since the change of the Saddam regime, some people say we have 600,000 are killed. This is an exaggerated number. I think 150 is OK," he said.

Accurate figures on the number of people who have died in the Iraq conflict have long been the subject of debate. Police and hospitals often give widely conflicting figures of those killed in major bombings. In addition, death figures are reported through multiple channels by government agencies that function with varying efficiency.

As al-Shemari issued the startling new estimate, the head of the Baghdad central morgue said Thursday he was receiving as many as 60 violent death victims each day at his facility alone. Dr. Abdul-Razzaq al-Obaidi said those deaths did not include victims of violence whose bodies were taken to the city's many hospital morgues or those who were removed from attack scenes by relatives and quickly buried according to Muslim custom.

Al-Obaidi said the morgue had received 1,600 violent death victims in October, one of the bloodiest months of the conflict. U.S. forces suffered 105 deaths last month, the fourth highest monthly toll.

Is it me or is it big karma...

...haunting the GOP like a wailing ghost lately? Today's gaffe is a national security stumble: turns out detailed, atomic bomb-related documents were posted to the public on a government website - a site created by Republicans who attempted to apply a free market approach to the search for Saddam's WMDs. The problem with free markets, of course, is that they sometime go in nasty directions...from a head-slapper in tonight's New York Times:

The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who said that the nation’s spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees argued that wide analysis and translation of the documents — most of them in Arabic — would reinvigorate the search for clues that Mr. Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. American search teams never found such evidence.

The director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, had resisted setting up the Web site, which some intelligence officials felt implicitly raised questions about the competence and judgment of government analysts. But President Bush approved the site’s creation after Congressional Republicans proposed legislation to force the documents’ release...

The Web site, “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal,” was a constantly expanding portrait of prewar Iraq. Its many thousands of documents included everything from a collection of religious and nationalistic poetry to instructions for the repair of parachutes to handwritten notes from Mr. Hussein’s intelligence service. It became a popular quarry for a legion of bloggers, translators and amateur historians...

On Sept. 20, the site posted a much larger document, “Summary of technical achievements of Iraq’s former nuclear program.” It runs to 51 pages, 18 focusing on the development of Iraq’s bomb design. Topics included physical theory, the atomic core and high-explosive experiments. By early October, diplomats and officials said, United Nations arms inspectors in New York and their counterparts in Vienna were alarmed and discussing what to do.

Last week in Vienna, Olli J. Heinonen, head of safeguards at the international atomic agency, expressed concern about the documents to the American ambassador, Gregory L. Schulte, diplomats said.

Calls to Mr. Schulte’s spokesman yesterday were not returned.

While watching some NFL action today...

...I noted a particularly patriotic Chevy Truck commercial, in which John Mellencamp croons "This is our country" while a montage of iconic subjects like the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and 9/11 culminates in a Chevy product shot. It felt a bit manipulative and egregiously cheesy, but in the heat of the football excitement I didn't give it another thought.

Then when I got home I read this sassy send-up of the ad in The New York Times. A choice excerpt:

And now we have Mr. Mellencamp, who’s done some rebranding of his own, having dropped the “Cougar” from his name back when his image needed a folksy turn. His political values seem equally elastic. He and his spouse once wrote a jeremiad against the Bush administration that said, in part: “It is time to take back our country. Take it back from political agendas, corporate greed and overall manipulation."

That was in 2003. Now he’s sitting on the fender of a Chevy truck, strumming a guitar and singing, “Well, I can stand beside ideals I think are right, and I can stand beside the idea to stand and fight.” He can also stand beside a nice shiny truck, if the fee is right.

A few days ago, Gawker, the Manhattan media site, ran a picture of a bar advertising, “The happiest happy hour south of ground zero.” Whether or not the statement is clinically true — a bit tough to measure, that — the message was beyond crass and deserved our contempt.

When it comes to selling bars, trucks or even politicians, you can wave the flag or you can drape one over a coffin. You can’t do both.

U.K. tagger god Banksy's imagery...

...is always entertaining to the eyes and usually pretty thought- provoking, too. The piece below (click it to enlarge) is new on Banksy's incredible gallery-site, banksy.co.uk.

Of many powerful images, the one I think is Banksy's most stirring - it depicts a trio of characters brought together in a scathing send-up of imperalism, militarisim, capitalism, and globalization all at once - is actually so stirring I'm hesistant to display it straight out on this page. Instead, I'll wimp out and provide a link to it here.

Here's a blazer from Kevin Tillman...

...a former soldier in the U.S. Army and brother of former NFL player Pat Tillman, who left football to join the Army and was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004. Kevin seems eager for some domestic regime change on November 7. His full essay, After Pat's Birthday, was published on an outside-the-mainstream news site I hadn't heard of, truthdig.com. Kevin's background combines with the incredulous tone of his writing to give his piece significant punch:

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world...

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

Full essay here, on truthdig.com.

A temblor of globalization is rumbling...

...in China, where the central government - worried about a widening income gap and the related potential for civil unrest - is working to establish more comprehensive rights for workers in the nation's rapidly growing economy. Economists like Pietra Rivoli, author of the suberb Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, argue that China's push for labor protections is a natural evolution in the process of globalization.

Rivoli believes that labor forces in developing economies like China's, originally tapped by foreign employers because of their willingness to work for next to nothing, become more skilled and more wealthy over time. As their economic status improves, these workers will begin to clamor for more raises and workplace reforms, in effect seeking to close the gap between themselves and the workers of more developed nations. Employers must accomodate these demands or move on to a less-developed economy, where the process will start anew.

A shorter-term option for employers, of course, is to rally against raises and reforms for as long as possible. China's current push for labor rights, for example, is staunchly opposed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents companies like Dell, Ford, GE, and Nike. While foes of globalization might interpret this as evidence of the developed world's exploitative aims, I think Rivoli would disagree. She would probably argue that, while both sides of the issue should be expected to fight for their interests, history suggests the Chinese worker will end up better off - and in the long run, the rest of us will, too.

For more on China's push for labor rights, check this NY Times article.

Hush, and enjoy the elocution...

"You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror." --George W. Bush, interview with CBS News' Katie Couric, Sept. 6, 2006

"The United States of America is engaged in a war against an extremist group of folks." --George W. Bush, McLean, Va., Aug. 15, 2006

"One thing is clear, is relations between America and Russia are good, and they're important that they be good." --George W. Bush, Strelna, Russia, July 15, 2006

"You never know what your history is going to be like until long after you're gone." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 5, 2006

While the NLRB slips it past us at home...

...North Korea has gone completely il (not the good ill often cited by the Beastie Boys) with this nuclear test ridiculousness. It's like I've seen this before, in a horrible dream - no wait, it was Team America World Police.

Is it a coincidence that a new prime minister with tough guy foreign policy beliefs just stepped in for Japan? It's hard to figure out what the hell is going on, but in any case, and particularly in Bush's case, ugh. Clinton's style was to engage in diplomacy, and it seemed to keep this sticky stuff down. You know what happens when il gets lonely...

Paul Krugman on a recent NLRB decision...

...which represents a big blow to workers' rights. Full article here, on a site that gets around the NY Times "Select" barrier that now guards Krugman's awesome columns.

Since 1935, U.S. workers considering whether to join a union have been protected by the National Labor Relations Act... For a long time the law was effective: workers were reasonably well protected against employer intimidation, and the union movement flourished.

In the 1970’s, however, employers began a successful campaign to roll back unions. ... thanks to America’s political shift to the right. And now that the shift to the right has gone even further, political appointees are seeking to remove whatever protection for workers’ rights that the labor relations law still provides.

The Republican majority on the National Labor Relations Board ... has just declared that millions of workers who thought they had the right to join unions don’t. You see, the act grants that right only to workers who aren’t supervisors. And the board, ruling on a case involving nurses, has declared that millions of workers who occasionally give other workers instructions can now be considered supervisors.

As the dissent from the Democrats on the board makes clear, the majority bent over backward, violating the spirit of the law, to reduce workers’ bargaining power.

When corrupt lobbyists call the White House...

...we'd all hope that the White House would hang up the phone. But what do we hope for when the White House is the one calling in the first place? From the article Abramoff and Rove Had 82 Contacts, in today's NY Times:

The House Government Reform Committee report, based on e-mail messages and other records subpoenaed from Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying firm, found 485 contacts between Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying team and White House officials from 2001 to 2004, including 82 with Mr. Rove’s office. The lobbyists spent almost $25,000 in meals and drinks for the White House officials and provided them with tickets to numerous sporting events and concerts, according to the report, scheduled for release Friday...

Mr. Rove has described Mr. Abramoff as a “casual acquaintance,” but the records obtained by the House committee show that Mr. Rove and his aides sought Mr. Abramoff’s help in obtaining seats at sporting events, and that Mr. Rove sat with Mr. Abramoff in the lobbyist’s box seats for an N.C.A.A. basketball playoff game in 2002.

After that game, Mr. Abramoff described Mr. Rove in an e-mail message to a colleague: “He’s a great guy. Told me anytime we need something just let him know through Susan.” The message was referring to Susan Ralson, Mr. Abramoff’s former secretary, who joined the White House in February 2001 as Mr. Rove’s executive assistant.

Here's an interesting Bill Maher thought...

...on the topic of impeachment, from an interview with The Onion's A.V. Club:

The A.V. Club: On last season's Real Time finale, you joked about George W. Bush being impeached for lying about a fish he caught, and today at The Huffington Post, you called more seriously for impeachment over the wiretapping scandal. Do you think there's any chance of Bush actually being impeached?

Bill Maher: Well, it really depends on what happens with the elections in November, and what happens to the makeup of Congress, doesn't it? I mean, the Republicans are certainly never going to impeach Bush. Which is sort of hilarious, if you look at how little it took by comparison to get Bill Clinton impeached. If America wants it done, they're going to have to elect people who'll do it. Not that I think that should be that much of a priority in this election, given what a lame duck Bush is.

I'd agree with everything but that last part.

For once, Bush speaks of peace...

...as well as of respecting Islam, and even of the terror in Darfur. His tone lacks the march-to-war edge of his other recent comments, which is refreshing, even if trivial in terms of actual policy - perhaps an indication of how starved for peace talk I am. From a speech today:

"My country desires peace," Bush told world leaders in the U.N.'s cavernous main hall. "Extremists in your midst spread propaganda claiming that the West is engaged in a war against Islam. This propaganda is false and its purpose is to confuse you and justify acts of terror. We respect Islam."

On the crisis in Sudan's violence-wracked region of Darfur, Bush delivered strong warnings to both the United Nations and the Sudanese government, saying both must act now to avert a further humanitarian crisis. If the Sudanese government does not withdraw its rejection of a U.N. peacekeeping force for Darfur, he said, the world body should act over the government's objections..."If the Sudanese government does not approve this peacekeeping force quickly, the United Nations must act."

With more than 200,000 people killed in three years of fighting in Darfur and the violence threatening to increase again, Bush said the "credibility of the United Nations is at stake." (Full AP coverage here)

A quality bit by Jon Stewart...

...on the unscrupulous use of the question mark ("?") by the sensation vendors in the major media, at outlets like CNN and Fox News. Stewart is both hilarious and on-target in his commentary...as he points out, a TV byline that reads "Democrats: Soft on Terror?" is about as fair and balanced as "Your Mother: A Whore?"

See the video via Mediabistro here. To see Stewart's recent interview with Bill Clinton, check The Daily Show's website.

On this 9/11, check Tom Tomorrow ...

...as usual, his commentary is right on:

To read the rest of this week's installment, start here.

Japan's got a new prime minister on the way...

...he's a foreign policy hawk who wants to change Japan's constitution, which renounces war and prohibits the country from developing a substantial military. And does this sound familiar? Both his dad and his granddad were big shot Japanese politicians, and he's known as a "strong leader" because he takes some hard-line stances. Boo.

Politician Says Japan Should Revise Pacifist Constitution
By Norimitsu Onishi, The New York Times

TOKYO, Sept. 1 — Shinzo Abe, the nationalist politician who is favored to become Japan’s next prime minister, said today that Japan should revise its pacifist constitution, as he formally declared his candidacy in an internal party election scheduled for later this month.

In his declaration to run for the presidency of the governing Liberal Democratic Party, Mr. Abe, the chief cabinet secretary, also said that Japan should seek a larger role in the world and further strengthen its alliance with the United States...

Mr. Abe is almost certain to succeed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who will retire later this month in accordance with party rules. Succeeding Mr. Koizumi in the party’s top post would automatically make Mr. Abe the nation’s leader as well, because the Liberal Democrats control of the lower house of parliament, which chooses the prime minister...

His image as Mr. Koizumi’s heir apparent was further solidified after North Korea tested long-range missiles in early July. The incident played to Mr. Abe’s strength as a hawk, and he wasted no time in suggesting that Japan should debate whether to acquire the military capacity for a pre-emptive strike.

At 51, Mr. Abe would become postwar Japan’s youngest prime minister, and the first born after World War II ended. He is considered less experienced than his two rivals, having held no cabinet position before his current one.

In case we've missed who the new "them" is...

...slurrin' them Middle Easterners is on the go. First it was President Bush, and then it was in my fantasy football league's chat room. Now it's politicians everywhere, and they ain't too shy to get in the occasional immigrant-oriented jibe, neither. From a great NYTimes article on political foot-in-mouths of recent months:

Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, said Wednesday that the United States confronts a “faceless enemy” of terrorists who “drive cabs in the daytime and kill at night.” Despite a hail of criticism on Thursday, Mr. Burns has not apologized for this remark as he did after complaining in July that a group of firefighters did not do a “goddamn thing” to stop a wildfire east of Billings.

Senator George Allen, Republican of Virginia, has been serially apologizing across Virginia since demeaning a man of Indian descent as “Macaca, or whatever his name is” at a campaign rally last month...

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, asked forgiveness after a C-Span microphone caught him saying “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent,”...

...Mr. Burns, the Montana senator, is both an accomplished apologizer and non-apologizer. He demonstrated as much in June when he joked that “the nice little Guatemalan man” working on his house might be an illegal immigrant. He has not apologized for the quip, as he once did after calling Arabs “ragheads.” “I can self-destruct in one sentence,” Mr. Burns, a former livestock auctioneer, recently told supporters. “Sometimes in one word.”

Another cool piece of street art...

...I saw earlier this month, on a footbridge at UW-Madison:

Here's George F. Will on the London plot...

...from a recent column in the Washington Post. I like his interpretation a lot. And I looked up farrago: it means a jumble, conglomeration, or medley.

The London plot against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating new book, Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented Sept. 11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16s are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places such as Hamburg (where Mohamed Atta lived before dying in the North Tower of the World Trade Center) and High Wycombe, England.

Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry's belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that "many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror." In a candidates' debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

Immediately after the London plot was disrupted, a "senior administration official," insisting on anonymity for his or her splenetic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told The Weekly Standard:

"The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren't for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It's like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn't work."

This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike "the law enforcement approach," does "work."

Encouraging data on low Bush approval...

...indicate that Americans are increasingly fed up. From the NY Times:

Poll Shows a Shift in Opinion on Iraq War
By CARL HULSE and MARJORIE CONNELLY

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 — Americans increasingly see the war in Iraq as distinct from the fight against terrorism, and nearly half believe President Bush has focused too much on Iraq to the exclusion of other threats, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll...

Public sentiment about the war remains negative, threatening to erode a Republican advantage on national security. Fifty-three percent said going to war was a mistake, up from 48 percent in July; 62 percent said events were going “somewhat or very badly” in the effort to bring order and stability to Iraq...

Mr. Bush recorded a gain of four percentage points in how the public views his handling of terrorism, rising to 55 percent approval from 51 percent a week earlier. This was his highest approval rating on the issue since last summer and followed the arrests in Britain in a suspected terror plot to blow up airliners...

Mr. Bush’s overall standing was nevertheless unchanged from the previous week, with 57 percent disapproving and 36 percent approving, far below the level Republicans in Congress would like to see as they prepare for elections in November. (full article here)

Cindy Sheehan's going strong again...

...apparently she led a group of protesters at a Karl Rove fundraising appearance over the weekend. Cindy's a big hero in my book - a vivid example of dedication and earnestness in the quest for peace.

Sheehan, Others Protest at Rove Event
By ANGELA K. BROWN, The Associated Press, Sunday, August 20, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas -- Chanting "Try Rove for treason," Cindy Sheehan and more than 50 other war protesters disrupted a reception before President Bush's top adviser Karl Rove spoke at a fundraiser Saturday.

One woman was arrested during a scuffle with police after Sheehan and the anti-war demonstrators rushed toward the closed doors and kept chanting loudly after the guests went into the dinner.

Rove was speaking to the Associated Republicans of Texas, and ticket prices started at $200. He was not in the Renaissance Hotel lobby during the reception.

"I want him arrested. He planned the war that killed my son," Sheehan told officers guarding the door. Sheehan's oldest son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004. (full article here)

"Support Our Troops"...

...typically strikes me as an empty statement, or even a thinly veiled means of stifling criticism of military action. But my friend Michelle recently put me on to a website that offers visitors an opportunity to support the men and women of our armed forces quickly but meaningfully: by sending them a thank-you note.

When you have a spare moment, visit Let's Say Thanks, a Xerox-sponsored page where you can select a free thank-you postcard - printed with your own personal note or a standard message you select - that will be delivered to U.S. servicemen and women deployed overseas. As the site explains, "the postcards, depicting patriotic scenes and hometown images, were selected from a pool of entries from children across the country." After you pick a card and a message, "the postcards are then printed on the Xerox iGen3 Digital Production Press and mailed in care packages by military support organization Give2TheTroops."

It might not be as significant as a power hug, a pay raise, or a return trip home, but in my opinion, thank-you notes usually count for something - and can sometimes make a person's day. Visit Let's Say Thanks today.

Took a trip back in time yesterday...

...when I leafed through the July 4, 1994 issue of Newsweek, which I found on a shelf in an unused room at my grandmother's old house in Wisconsin. The cover story - "Living in Terror" - referred not to you and me and everybody else, but to battered women like Nicole Brown Simpson, whose ex-husband OJ's infamous trial had just started in Los Angeles. The mag also featured an interview with American-teen-caned-in-Singapore Michael Fay, highlights from the meetings of the House subcommittee investigating the tobacco industry, and a story describing how Bill Clinton used diplomacy to get North Korea to freeze its nuclear weapons program.

The most interesting article, however, was one called "The Bush Family Franchise," which detailed the gubernatorial aspirations of former President Bush's sons Jeb and George W. , the latter pictured in a spread eagle position in a seat at a baseball game, with large Texas Rangers logos brightly embroidered on each of his cowboy boots. There's a great baseball-themed quote on W from Ann Richards, who he would go on to defeat in that November's election: "He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple."

The article notes that both Jeb and W were heavily influenced by Lee Atwater, who ran their dad's '88 campaign and "preached a 'message focus' on cultural 'wedge issues' that separate white Democrats from their party." And despite the ultra-connected status of their family, both Jeb and W planned to run as "outsiders." As W's adviser Karl Rove noted, "There is an entrenched power structure in Austin, and that's what we're going after."

Ah, the good old days.

Kind words from a customer in the UK...

...who picked up a pair of shirts to sport on the other side of the Atlantic:

"My husband and I received our "Impeach Bush and Cheney" shirts yesterday and are extremely pleased! We couldn't believe how quickly they arrived to the UK. The shirts are excellent quality. I'm an American and my husband is English. We both strongly oppose Bush and Blair's war policies and would like to see the back of both of them. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to show the world how we feel! I highly recommend your service and products to everyone who is opposed to these war-mongers."

Interesting point from George Lakoff...

...professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley, who has written extensively on "framing," a communication technique that the GOP expertly uses to influence voters. Lakoff thinks that, by belittling Bush, many Democrats are missing the bigger picture:

Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush's plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's "failures" and label him and his administration as incompetent...The idea that Bush is incompetent is a curious one. Consider the following (incomplete) list of major initiatives the Bush administration, with a loyal conservative Congress, has accomplished:

*Centralizing power within the executive branch to an unprecedented degree
*Starting two major wars, one started with questionable intelligence and in a manner with which the military disagreed
*Placing on the Supreme Court two far-right justices, and stacking the lower federal courts with many more
*Cutting taxes during wartime, an unprecedented event
*Passing a number of controversial bills such as the PATRIOT Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare Drug bill, the Bankruptcy bill and a number of massive tax cuts
*Rolling back and refusing to enforce a host of basic regulatory protections
*Appointing industry officials to oversee regulatory agencies...

These aren't signs of incompetence. As should be painfully clear, the Bush administration has been overwhelmingly competent in advancing its conservative vision. It has been all too effective in achieving its goals by determinedly pursuing a conservative philosophy.

It's not Bush the man who has been so harmful, it's the conservative agenda. (full article here)

Some great bits from MLK...

…from his “autobiography,” which was put together and edited superbly by Clayborne Carlson.

Early on in the bio, King shares a candid introspection from his college years. “I revolted…against the emotionalism of much Negro religion, the shouting and stamping. I didn’t understand it, and it embarrassed me. I often say that if we, as a people, had as much religion in our hearts and souls as we have in our legs and feet, we could change the world.”

He also reveals an inclination toward pantheism, a nature-themed interpretation of divinity. “Every day I would sit on the edge of the campus by the side of the river and watch the beauties of nature. My friend, in this experience, I saw God. I saw him in birds of the air, the leaves of the tree, the movement of the rippling waves…”

As a college student, MLK contrasted capitalism with communism, and was generally a champion of the former, though he was not afraid to address its shortcomings. “Capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity.”

Today is W's birthday...

...but if I was the one who was blowing out the candles, here's the present I'd be hoping for:

Been reading a great book...

...that examines the relationship between 3 big personal interests - politics, economics, and t-shirts. The book is a 2004 number by business professor Pietra Rivoli called The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, and it's been quite an eye-opener for the free market fan in me. Rivoli chronicles the evolution of the global textile industry from the 1700s to today, arguing that the market for t-shirts and other clothing is remarkable because it is astonishingly unfree.

"The textile and apparel trade," she writes, "is the most managed and protected manufacturing trade in U.S. history, or as one writer noted, 'the most spectacular and comprehensive protectionist regime in existence'... Trade flows in T-shirts are the result of economic forces but also the result of thousands of deals cut in Washington, Geneva, and Beijing, and politics are at least as important as markets in understanding the T-shirt's journey."

Rivoli backs this thesis with convincing facts and anecdotes, and her book helps its readers begin to appreciate the complexity of the answer to the question a few Wavelength Clothing customers have asked: "Why aren't all of your t-shirts made in the USA?" I heartily recommend The Travels of a T-shirt to anyone interested in the realities of global trade, and I'll be sharing some choice excerpts in the weeks ahead.

Some WMD hunters haven't given up...

...says this funny-if-it-wasn't-sad story from The New York Times.

For Diehards, Search for Iraq's W.M.D. Isn't Over

By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, June 22 — The United States government abandoned the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq long ago. But Dave Gaubatz has never given up. Mr. Gaubatz, an earnest, Arabic-speaking investigator who spent the first months of the war as an Air Force civilian in southern Iraq, has said he has identified four sites where residents said chemical weapons were buried in concrete bunkers.

The sites were never searched, he said, and he is not going to let anyone forget it. "I just don't want the weapons to fall into the wrong hands," Mr. Gaubatz, of Denton, Tex., said…

Some politicians are outspoken allies in Mr. Gaubatz's cause…More than a year after the White House, at considerable political cost, accepted the intelligence agencies' verdict that Mr. Hussein destroyed his stockpiles in the 1990's, these Americans have an unshakable faith that the weapons continue to exist…

The weapons hunters hold fast to the administration's original justification for the war, as expressed by the president three days before the bombing began in 2003. There was "no doubt," Mr. Bush said in an address to the nation, "that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

More on Iran's president...

...who is shaping up to be quite an interesting politician.
From The Wall Street Journal:

Behind Rise of Iran's President: A Populist Economic Agenda
By Bill Spindle, WSJ.com (full article here)

TEHRAN -- Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has grabbed the world's attention with his bombast over Tehran's nuclear program and saber rattling against Israel. At home, however, the president's popularity is soaring thanks to another reason: his enthusiastic embrace of economic populism.

In recent weeks, he has proposed a $4 billion national school-renovation program and has raiaised not only salaries for workers in Iran's vast, government-controlled industrial sector but also the minimum wage for everyone else. He doubled government grants for newlyweds and forced banks to lower interest rates by several percentage points.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is emerging as an Iranian version of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez: a pugnacious politician, buoyed by oil money, whose anti-elite message and defiance of the West is causing his popularity to soar. Mr. Ahmadinejad isn't nearly as powerful as Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But his policies, which interrupt Iran's tentative stabs at economic liberalization, have helped him wield more influence than many thought possible for an Iranian president...

Mr. Ahmadinejad positioned himself as the candidate of the people against a rich and corrupt elite. One campaign ad featured a tour of the opulent mansion belonging to the previous mayor of Tehran, followed by a view of Mr. Ahmadinejad's modest home in a middle-class suburb. Asked whether they have a pool, Mr. Ahmadinejad's son simply points to a backyard too small for one. "See for yourself," he says. "Where's the sauna?" the interviewer asks. The son just shrugs.

Few things appealed more to Iranian voters, especially the working poor, than Mr. Ahmadinejad's promise to "put the oil revenue on the dinner table of every Iranian." Since being elected, he's made frequent trips to Iranian provinces -- political barnstorming previously unheard of in Iran's aloof theocracy. He encourages supporters to write with their requests and has promised funds for thousands of local projects…

His message is giving the Iranian government a boost of desperately needed popularity during a critical period of international tensions, in particular over the country's commitment to developing its nuclear capabilities. In a recent speech to the nation, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, compared Mr. Ahmadinejad's popularity to President Bush's low poll numbers.

I experimented with an ad...

...on a popular, left-leaning blog a few weeks back. For $80, my ad - which consisted of a rotating depiction of a few Wavelength shirts, and some accompanying text - ran for 1 week.

According to the ad provider, Blogads.com, about 98,000 people viewed the page the ad was on over the course of the week, and of these, 174 clicked through to the Wavelength site. This represents a click-through rate of 0.177%, which sounds tiny but is actually respectable in the world of online advertising (a click-through rate of a full 1% would be considered superb).

Did the ad boost sales? Well, with another Wavelength ad running concurrently on AfterDowningStreet.org, it's hard to precisely quantify the number of shirts this new ad helped move. But my rough estimate is that the $80 I spent on the ad ended up pushing about 5 extra shirts out the door. Not quite profitable, but an interesting experiment nonetheless.

On the eve of Busby v. Bilbray...

...news of progressive, impeachment-hungry rumblings within the Democratic Party. Seems a candidate's positions on Iraq and on impeachment are increasingly important to many Democrats. Hey, maybe that's why so many people want "Impeach Bush" and "Impeach Bush & Cheney" t-shirts!

More Democrats Want Their Leaders to Stand up Against Bush, War
By Steven Thomma, Knight Ridder Newspapers

Manchester, NH - Anti-war and anti-Bush fervor is growing among rank and file Democrats, threatening to pull the party to the left and creating a rift between increasingly belligerent activists and the party's leaders in Washington.

Many outside-the-Beltway Democrats want the party to turn forcefully against the war in Iraq and to investigate, censure or even impeach President Bush should the party win control of Congress this fall.

Yet party leaders such as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York have maintained support for the war while criticizing the way Bush handled it, and have shied away from talk of using power to go to after him...

In New Hampshire, the state that will kick off the party's 2008 presidential primary voting, activists gave thunderous ovations this weekend to Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., when he pressed his anti-war agenda, boasted that he alone among potential 2008 presidential candidates opposed the war from the start, and pushed for a censure of Bush. (full article here)

And here's a lesson in activism from Chile...

...a lesson taught by the students, as it were.

Chilean Promised a New Deal; Now Striking Youth Demand It
By Larry Rohter, The New York Times

Santiago, Chile - Less than three months after she took office promising to lead a government that welcomed greater citizen participation, President Michelle Bachelet is facing her first domestic crisis. To the surprise of many here, the challenge comes not from the right but from a group expected to be sympathetic to her center-left coalition: high school students.

In protests that began in mid-May, more than 700,000 teenagers have walked out of classes at public high schools, demanding the overhaul of an education system they say is inferior and discriminatory. They have occupied several hundred schools, sleeping there overnight with sympathetic parents bringing them meals, and last week thousands marched in the streets of the capital here and in other cities in this nation of 16 million...

In a speech to the nation on Thursday night, Ms. Bachelet, who is scheduled to visit the United States later this week, announced a $135-million-a-year package that includes a free lunch program for the poorest students, the repair or renovation of up to 1,200 public schools and the elimination of the $40 college exam fee. "The state will be the guarantor of a quality education for all Chileans," she promised, adding that the nation's youth deserved "to be able to study in dignified conditions."

But on Friday, the main student leaders rejected the proposal, saying it was not generous enough. They said they would renew their protests on Monday, and teachers and university students and professors have pledged to join them. (full article here)

Awesome street art...

...recently spotted within a couple blocks of my apartment in Ocean Beach. Though I don't condone graffiti. There's enough room for tagging on legitimate surfaces - like on t-shirts, for instance! (click on photo to enlarge)

And here's another piece...

...this one appeared right as news of Bush's phonetapping programs hit the news - and on what looks like a phone company box, no less! (click on photo to enlarge)

on Memorial Day...

words from Abraham Lincoln:

"With malice toward none; with charity for all;
with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,
let us strive on to finish the work we are in;
to bind up the nation's wounds;
to care for him who shall have borne the battle,
and for his widow, and his orphan --
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace,
among ourselves, and with all nations."

Had a great time protesting Cheney...

...who was in San Diego yesterday, speaking at a fundraiser for Brian Bilbray, the Republican who is running against Democrat Francine Busby for Duke Cunningham's vacant seat in Congress.


The fundraiser was right off Harbor Drive, a scenic stretch of road near San Diego's airport, and the picturesque locale - along with some beautiful sunny weather and a friendly crowd - made a lovely setting for some demonstrating. About 100 people showed up, and after waving our signs at honking drivers for a couple of hours, we got our big payoff when Cheney's motorcade shuffled by, just a couple lanes away from us discontents and our signs - including the dead-on black and green one above.

Heartfelt reporting from Iraq...

...in this touching article from The New York Times:

As Death Stalks Iraq, Middle Class Exodus Begins
by Sabrina Tavernise

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 18 — Deaths run like water through the life of the Bahjat family. Four neighbors. A barber. Three grocers. Two men who ran a currency exchange shop.

But when six armed men stormed into their sons' primary school this month, shot a guard dead, and left fliers ordering it to close, Assad Bahjat knew it was time to leave.

"The main thing now is to just get out of Iraq," said Mr. Bahjat, standing in a room heaped with suitcases and bedroom furniture in eastern Baghdad...

"Shadows," said Eileen Bahjat, Mr. Bahjat's wife, standing with her two sons and describing what is left in the neighborhood. "Shadows and killing." (full article here)

Here comes the 'gration pork...

So at first glance, Bush's plan to militarize the border struck me as a desperate attempt to appeal to red voters' Neanderthal instincts, a la the condemnation of gay marriage. My second thought was "What stake might Halliburton have in this?" Sure enough, today's news tells of another W-enabled defense industry windfall.
This is how they fleece us:

Bush Turns to Big Military Contractors for Border Control
by Eric Lipton, The New York Times

WASHINGTON, May 17 — The quick fix may involve sending in the National Guard. But to really patch up the broken border, President Bush is preparing to turn to a familiar administration partner: the nation's giant military contractors.

Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar federal contract to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along the nation's land borders.

Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these companies have already put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan — like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment — the military contractors are zeroing in on the rivers, deserts, mountains and settled areas that separate Mexico and Canada from the United States...The equipment Border Patrol agents use, how and when they are dispatched to spots along the border, where the agents assemble the captured immigrants, how they process them and transport them — all these steps will now be scripted by the winning contractor, who could earn an estimated $2 billion over the next three to six years on the Secure Border job...

full article

Tom Tomorrow's come up with an equation...

...that makes a lot of sense to me. You can see more in Tom's store, and you can read his superb political cartoon - This Modern World - in dozens of papers and on sites like WorkingForChange.com.

I've long loved the writings of Paul Krugman...

...a Princeton economist and long-time Bush critic who has a knack for explaining tricky issues in simple, understandable terms. While many other pundits are devoting their air time to the immigration debate (which still seems like a suspicious debate to me - how it kind of materialized out of thin air), Krugman recently co-wrote a great summary piece on health care reform. Here's the moral:

A history of failed attempts to introduce universal health insurance has left us with a system in which the government pays directly or indirectly for more than half of the nation's health care, but the actual delivery both of insurance and of care is undertaken by a crazy quilt of private insurers, for-profit hospitals, and other players who add cost without adding value. A Canadian-style single-payer system, in which the government directly provides insurance, would almost surely be both cheaper and more effective than what we now have. And we could do even better if we learned from "integrated" systems, like the Veterans Administration, that directly provide some health care as well as medical insurance...

If you're interested in an enjoyably insightful breakdown of our nation's health care challenges, check Krugman's full briefing here.

The BBC on Cheney and the Russian response...

The Kremlin has described US Vice President Dick Cheney's tough condemnation of Russia on Thursday as "completely incomprehensible". Mr Cheney made his comments in a speech in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. He accused the Russian government was using oil and gas as tools of intimidation or blackmail...

Mr Cheney was on Friday in Kazakhstan promoting a new gas pipeline route that will by-pass Russia. The scramble for energy resources, so-called "pipeline diplomacy", has been likened to "the Great Game" during the 19th Century - the struggle for influence in Central Asia...

Full article here.

Here's a piece from David Swanson...

...at AfterDowningStreet.org. Some insightful analysis on the building GOP smear campaign against John Conyers, who has sounded but the faintest rumblings of impeachment.

Congressman Conyers has not done what the vast majority of Democratic voters and many Republicans want; he has not introduced articles of impeachment. Rather, he's stepped back a step and proposed creating an investigation that would make recommendations on impeachment. Talk about going slow! This is a proposal to make recommendations on beginning a process to charge people with a crime we all already know they're guilty of. That's all before a trial can even begin..

Swanson points to a poll that suggests - based on a survey of voters in battleground state Pennsylvania - that about 85% of Democrats would be likely to vote for a congressional candidate who supported impeachment. Interestingly, however, about 90% of Republicans said they would not support such a candidate. Anyhow, check Swanson's full article here.

Here's a piece by a friend's 8-year-old nephew...

...his name is Sabri, and President Bush ain't get nothing past him:

Fascinating immigration-related facts...

from 2 agencies withhold key data on workers - Records could help find illegal immigrants
by Liz Chandler, Knight Ridder News Service

The IRS and the Social Security Administration routinely collect strong evidence of potential workplace crimes, including names and addresses of millions of people who are using bogus Social Security numbers, their wage records and the identities of the bosses who knowingly hire them.

But they keep those facts secret... The two agencies don't analyze their data to root out likely immigration fraud – and they won't share their millions of records so that law enforcement agencies can do that, either. Privacy laws, they say, prohibit them from sharing their files with anyone, except in rare criminal investigations.

But the agencies don't even use the power they have. The IRS doesn't fine even the most egregious employers who repeatedly submit inaccurate data about their workers. The Social Security Administration does virtually nothing to alert citizens whose Social Security numbers are being used by others...

To work lawfully in the United States, individuals must have valid Social Security numbers or authorization from the Department of Homeland Security. But the law doesn't require companies to verify that workers give them names and numbers that match Social Security records. So most companies don't check. That loophole, created by Congress in 1986, makes it hard to prove whether employers know they're hiring illegal workers.

There's another War we need to end...

...it's the War on Drugs, and in a way it's even more twisted than Iraq, as it's largely a war our country fights against its own citizens. But don't forget that - by fostering a massive black market whose tentacles slime through dozens of other countries - our War on Drugs is in many ways as much an affront to the rest of the world as is our seige of Iraq.

Take this news item from the city of Acapulco, one of Mexico's major resort destinations. To me, it seems that the cloak of fear that shrouds this city is akin to one of terror - and is woven by policy here in the States.

Two Mexican Police Officials Decapitated
By NATALIA PARRA Associated Press Writer
April 20,2006 | ACAPULCO, Mexico -- The decapitated heads of two police officials were found early Thursday dumped in front of a government building in this Pacific coast resort, authorities said.
The heads of police commander Mario Nunez Magana and officer Jesus Alberto Ibarra were found at the same site where four drug traffickers died during a shootout with law enforcement. The heads of the two -- who were involved in the Jan. 27 shootout -- were accompanied by sign that warned, "So that you learn to respect."
...Federal investigators link the violence to a turf war between drug gangs in northern Mexico for lucrative smuggling routes into the United States.

Here's a timeline of Iranian history...

...from The Sun magazine, the latest issue of which includes an insightful collection of blog entries by Iranian citizens. Note how Western intervention disrupted the country's development 50 years ago - and how Iran's current president, Mr. Angry Nuclear Guy, was elected just last year...a reaction to more-recent Western meddling in the Middle East, perhaps?

1953: To protect Western oil interests, U.S. and British intelligence agencies orchestrate a coup, overthrowing the Iranian prime minister and reinstating the traditional monarch, the shah, a pro-American dictator.

1979: The shah is deposed during the Iranian Revolution, and Iran becomes an Islamic republic. A president and parliament are elected, but true power is held by a council of clerics headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

1980: Iraq invades Iran, starting the Iran-Iraq War.

1988: A cease-fire is declared, and the war ends in a stalemate.

1997: Iranian voters reject the state-approved presidential candidate and elect reformist Mohammad Khatami by a wide margin.

2001: Khatami is reelected, but meaningufl reforms are blocked by the conservative clerics who control the government.

2005: Hard-line conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is elected president.

In a partnership with AfterDowningStreet.org...

...and with San Diego-area peace activist Barbara Cummings, we began offering "Impeach Bush!" shirts in February of this year. Thanks to an ad at the top of the awesome After Downing Street blog - and to the growing realization that Bush's Iraq-related activities have included impeachable offenses - we've shipped well over 200 shirts to concerned citizens across the United States.

Proceeds from sales of "Impeach Bush!" shirts help support Barbara's tireless activism. This week, she's back in Crawford, TX, where Bush was supposed to take a spring vacation. Last month, Barbara helped a group of UCSD students put together a big anti-war rally, which featured speakers like Cindy Sheehan and After Downing Street's David Swanson.

After Downing Street is a coalition of over 100 veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist groups that pressure both Congress and the media to investigate whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war. The coalition takes its name from the emergence in 2005 of several documents that quickly came to be known as the Downing Street Memos.

OMG, is this Iran stuff for real?

If you're like me, you're dumbfounded by the Bush administration's Iran saber-rattling, and you're wondering what to make of the whole thing. Well, here's some good news: a recent Bloomberg/LA Times poll shows that 54% of Americans "don't trust" Bush to make the right decision about going to war with Iran. Dude, there's my country.

So what the hell is Bush's rationale this time - and how separated is it from reality? Here are some key takeaways from an excellent article by Bill Scher of LiberalOasis.com:

Bush frames the case against Iran like this:
1. Iran is close to getting nukes.
2. Iran's President is crazy and irrational and committed to wiping Israel off the map. He can't be reasoned with.
3. Bush is trying real super hard to get the UN to do something about it, but if they won't...

Here's a less war-happy way to look at the situation:
1. Iran has legitimate, rational, self-defense-related incentives to want nukes.
2. To resolve the current stalemate, we need to address those incentives.
3. Because Iran is at least 5 years from getting nukes, time is on our side.

Check out Scher's full article - a short but reassuring read - for more details. And then start spreading the word!

Cheney Surreality continues...

...with this picture and accompanying caption from MSNBC.com. Maybe I am becoming unhealthily fascinated with the guy, or hating on him as kind of a physical representation of war and greed and all that...but sometimes the situations I see him in strike me as ironic or just bizarre. Check out all the symbolism going on in this photo...

Vice President Dick Cheney waits outside the dugout to be introduced before throwing out the ceremonial first pitch of the home opener baseball game between the New York Mets and Washington Nationals at RFK Stadium, Tuesday, April 11, 2006, in Washington. Behind Cheney, from left, are Purple Heart recipients Army Staff Sgt. Derek L. Drew of Goldsboro, N.C.; Marine Cpl. Jamel Daniels of New York; who were injured in Iraq and Army Spc. Javier Torres of New York, who was injured in Afghanistan.

Got a nice note from a Wavelength shopper...

...named Michelle, who recently ran into someone with similar sensibilities:

"I was on vacation and I saw your Impeach Bush shirt...the man said his wife gave it to him...I saw his wife and she told me about your web site. I cracked up...I showed her my daughter's Wanker shirt and she laughed. I don't drink, but she offered me one, just want to tell you that....nice to see that really one person makes a difference..."

Indeed, it is nice to see that one person makes a difference, and that Wavelength shirts are helping foster some positive communication. Thanks for the note, Michelle - and if you receive any more complimentary drink offers in the future, feel free to pass them our way!

Fiscal 2005 was kinda tough for Wavelength...

...at least from a profit/loss perspective. The business lost a significant amount of money, most of which came in the form of an "inventory write-down." Let me explain.

Wavelength Clothing hit the web in June 2005, unveiling nine t-shirt designs and marketing them with Google's AdWords program (which I've described in a much-earlier post to this blog). As sales receipts came in, it quickly became clear that only 4 of the 9 designs were decent sellers. With impressive regularity, shoppers ignored the other 5 designs nearly completely...to this day, I've only sold one or two shirts with the So Money design, and the same is true for each of the designs in the WackWear collection, with the exception of W is for Wack.

Whether I should have seen this coming is the topic of another discussion. My point here is that - because no one wanted to buy them, even at severely discounted prices - the shirts with the unpopular designs were worth nothing. They had no cash value. And as a result, the money spent on them could be written off as a loss.

This loss combined with 2005's other expenses to total significantly more than the sales revenues brought in by the business during the year. The difference between total expenses and total sales is the amount I, as sole proprietor of Wavelength, was able to declare as a "business income or (loss)" on my tax return. In the end, the IRS had to cut me a substantial refund check.

Now, I don't mind paying taxes - in fact, I try to look at paying taxes as a duty and an honor, and I also think I get a pretty good return on the money I send to Uncle Sam. But this year I'm going to indulge myself and enjoy knowing that I took a little loot back out of W's war chest.

I had no idea how close the FBI came...

...to potentially preventing the 9/11 attacks. Here's an excerpt from The New York Times that captures some incredible details from the Zacarias Moussaoui trial. It's like the chance to avert 9/11 evaporated in a situation straight out of Office Space hell:

A Minnesota F.B.I. agent, Harry M. Samit, warned in a memorandum that Mr. Moussaoui was a dangerous Islamic extremist whose study of how to fly a Boeing 747-400 seemed to be part of a sinister plot...

Gripping testimony came from Mr. Samit, who arrested Mr. Moussaoui on Aug. 16 [2001] and quickly became convinced that he was a terrorist who knew about an imminent hijacking plot. Mr. Samit said that he sent about 70 warning messages about Mr. Moussaoui, but that they produced no results.

The agent said he was puzzled at the reluctance of Michael Maltbie, a supervisor with the Radical Fundamentalist Unit at bureau headquarters, to seek a search warrant for Mr. Moussaoui's belongings from a special intelligence court.

Mr. Samit seemed unable to satisfy Mr. Maltbie's demand that he provide a tangible link between Mr. Moussaoui and a foreign power, a requirement for a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. He thought he had sufficient evidence from two French intelligence reports showing Mr. Moussaoui had recruited someone to fight in Chechnya for an Islamist group allied with Mr. bin Laden.

But on Aug. 24, 2001, a frustrated Mr. Samit sent an e-mail message to Charles Frahm, a friend and, at the time, an F.B.I. liaison to the C.I.A., asking for information to help make his case. "We're trying to close the wiggle room for F.B.I. headquarters to claim there is no connection to a foreign power," he wrote.

Mr. Moussaoui's lawyers asserted that Mr. Maltbie undermined the effort to obtain a search warrant by deleting some details from Mr. Samit's requests. Mr. Samit said Mr. Maltbie told him he was reluctant to press for a warrant because it would be risky for his career and "he was not about to let that happen to him."

Growth in the Corporate Suite...

...is the title The Wall Street Journal gave a recent news item that spoke to an important trend in income distribution across the United States. Here's an excerpt, along with a related chart with 1997 data from The Economist:

The economy is certainly doing well - for the corporate sector...Since the last business cycle peak - the first quarter of 2001 - "the share of GDI going to corporate profits has risen by 3.9 percentage points, while the share going to labor compensation has fallen by 1.4 percentage points."

Overall, the economy grew at a 1.7% pace in the fourth quarter [2005], but analysts estimate it picked up sharply in the first quarter to around a 5% growth rate. Whether this will translate to stronger growth in wages and benefits as the economic cycle continues is another story... "This strong productivity growth provides the potential to generate broad-based increases in American living standards, but, so far corporate profits have been the only clear winner."

This means that - unless your income is tied closely to corporate profits - the economic expansion is leaving you behind. It's precisely what should happen in a Republican era...tax burdens on big-money earners are lightened, services for low-earners are scaled back, and the scales do some tippin'.