Adventures in Dell Hell

Yesterday I received new "Service Tags" in the mail for a Dell computer. Problem? Well, I did buy a computer last month. However, I bought it as a birthday gift (from my siblings and me) for Coach Mom. So the computer, while charged to my credit card, was shipped to her house in New York. It's her computer. The service tags should have gone to her.

So I called Dell. As usual, I got a person speaking English with a heavy accent -- India would be my guess. He read to me from the customer service script. I explained the situation and asked for the service tags to be reissued in my mother's name. He tells me he understands the problem. Simple, you would think.

Oh no. There is no way for Dell to do this, my helpful friend tells me. They cannot send my mother a new set of service tags in her name. Why not, I ask? It's your fault, after all. I placed this order over the phone, and the salesman knew it was a gift, and she was the owner. You shipped it to her. But there is no way for Dell to do this, he responds. It cannot be done.

The only way he could issue new service tags would be to ship her an entire new computer.

I burst out laughing, and then, I must admit, I berated him for a few minutes. That's the stupidest thing anyone has ever said to me on the phone! You'd rather send an expensive piece of hardware than a .39 cent letter! Are you an idiot? Do you want me to write about this on my blog? I have to write about this on my blog! Dell, descending to new depths of stupidity in customer service.

Finally, he agreed to change the Dell records to record Coach Mom as the computer owner, so all future correspondence will go to her. As for those customer service tags? I have to mail them to her. There's NO WAY Dell can reissue them.

Morons. No wonder their stock is tanking.


This blog will remain fairly quiet for the next few days as I am heading to New York today to pick up Coach Mom to go to Hartford to see the NCAA women's first and second round games there.

Happy 115th Birthday, Liverpool FC

One night in Istanbul
Yes, you heard that right. The world's greatest football club celebrated its 115th birthday yesterday. (OK, I'm a little late here. Bygones!) Here's the history of the club's founding, from the club website.

So, to celebrate, here's a roundup of club news.

The Reds got the best possible draw in the Champions League final 8, where they will face PSV Eindhoven. None of the English teams remaining (Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United) face each other.

PSV Eindhoven star Alex suffered a hamstring injury last week, which was initially thought to end his season; now he's going back to Brazil for an MRI and hoping to play in the second leg at Anfield on April 11th.

Liverpool's new American owners suspended work on the new stadium; Bloomberg reports that they may add capacity to increase the seating in the new stadium from 60,000 to 75,000 seats so as to rival Manchester United (Old Trafford capacity 76,212).

The club signed 17 year old midfielder Gary Mackay Steven from the Scottish First Division Club Ross County.

Crouchie had surgery on his broken nose last week; there are rumors that he will be transferred for either Tottenham's Berbatov or Juventus's Trezeguet. P.S., Berbatov is a dead ringer for Andy Garcia.

Pepe Reina may be Spanish, but he's bleeding Liverpool Red now (from Who Ate All the Pies)

'My wife and I have just had our first child and she's a Scouser.' Pepe Reina is now fully integrated into the Liverpool way of life.

And, finally, a song.
The Stevie G. Song: (To the tune of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You")

Lyrics:

You're just too good to be true,
Can't take the ball off of you,
You've got a heavenly touch,
You pass like Souness to Rush,
And when we're all drunk in the bars,
We can't believe that you're ours,
You're just to good to be true,
Can't get the ball off of you...

Oh Steee-ven Gerr-aaard, da da da da da da (etc)

I prefer the Que Sera, Que Sera song (scroll down to see the Manc fans lyrics).

Walter Reed Has a VIP Ward

No mouse droppings for the President or Congress:

USAToady:
VIP ward at Walter Reed gets scrutiny
House investigators ask if it hurts care for GIs

The large, comfortable suites on the hospital's top floor are reserved for the president, the vice president, federal judges, members of Congress and the Cabinet, high-ranking military officials and even foreign dignitaries and their spouses. The only enlisted members of the military who are eligible to stay there are recipients of the Medal of Honor.

The suites have carpeted floors, antique furniture and fine china in the dining rooms. That's a stark contrast to mold- and mice-ridden housing that some wounded troops had been found to be living in.

Valerie Plame on C-Span Right Now

Tune in.

C-SPAN live feed.

Blogtopia* Roundup, Friday March 16, 2007

My dream
Having a hard time keeping up the US Attorney Purge? Talking Points Memo has created a complete timeline.

Firedoglake speculates: Will the off-the-books email accounts used by the Rove minions attacking the US Attorneys be the Alexander Butterfield/White House taping that brings down Bush?

Swing State Project says, Farewell, Marty Meehan (D-MA, leaving Congress to head UMass Lowell) and don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out with $5,000,000 in your campaign accounts. Gee, I can't think of any candidates who could have used that money in the last election cycle, can you? The Boston Globe is encouraging Marty to donate the money to the school.

The New York Times profiles Richard F. Scruggs (or as lawyers who know him call him, Dickie Scruggs. If you've read any of those John Grisham books about oily Mississippi mass trial lawyers and Gulfstreams, I've always thought they were about Dickie.)

Kevin Drum links to an article about women "choosing" to opt out of the work force. Choice being an illusion; the modern workforce talks a good game about family friendly policies, but they're only friendly to men.

Steve Gilliard of the News Blog is still sick, still hospitalized, still needs our thoughts and prayers.

*y,sctp!

Email Florida Governor Charlie Crist: Free Richard Paey

Another outrage in our ridiculous war on drugs and the absurd minimum mandatory sentences that have filled our privatized prisons with nonviolent offenders. Send an email to Florida governor Charlie Crist and ask him to grant a pardon to this poor man. The Florida Supreme Court which upheld this long, cruel sentence said he should petition the governor for clemency. Let's help him.

Pain Relief Network: About Richard Paey

Richard V. Paey was sentenced on April 16, 2004 to a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years and fined $500,000. Paey, in his wheelchair with a morphine pump sewn into his ruined back, will live out-what for him is a death sentence-in a Florida prison for possessing the medicine that he requires to survive.

Judge David D. Diskey heard Linda Paey’s pleas for mercy, but could not exercise judicial discretion because of a mandatory minimum sentencing. “This is the problem for the Florida state legislature and the governor,” Judge Diskey said.

Alternet (from HuffPo): Multiple Sclerosis Sufferer Serving 25-Year Sentence for Taking Pain Killers

Florida's Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Richard Paey, a wheelchair-using father of three who is currently serving a 25-year mandatory prison sentence for taking his own pain medication. In doing so, the court let stand a decision which essentially claims that the courts have no role in checking the powers of the executive and legislative branches of government when an individual outcome is patently unjust.

Richard Paey -- who suffers both multiple sclerosis and from the aftermath of a disastrous and barbaric back surgery that resulted in multiple major malpractice judgments -- now receives virtually twice as much morphine in prison than the equivalent in opioid medications for which he was convicted of forging prescriptions.

He had previously been given legitimate prescriptions for the same doses of pain medicine -- but made the mistake of moving to Florida from New Jersey, where he could not find a physician to treat his pain adequately. Each of his medical conditions alone can produce agony. Paey has described his pain as constantly feeling like his legs had been "dipped into a furnace."

The Ivy-league educated attorney has no prior criminal convictions, and weeks of surveillance by narcotics agents did not find him selling the medications.

The Florida Court of Appeals had upheld his conviction -- despite the lack of evidence of trafficking and despite the fact that most of weight of the substances he was convicted of possessing (higher weights lead to longer sentences) was made up of Tylenol, not narcotics. The majority suggested that Paey seek clemency from the governor, claiming that his plea for mercy "does not fall on deaf ears, but it falls on the wrong ears."

In a jeremiad of a dissent, Judge James Seals called the sentence "illogical, absurd, unjust and unconstitutional," noting that Paey "could conceivably go to prison for a longer stretch for peacefully but unlawfully purchasing 100 oxycodone pills from a pharmacist than had he robbed the pharmacist at knife point, stolen 50 oxycodone pills, which he intended to sell to children waiting outside, and then stabbed the pharmacist."

Pain Relief Network: Cruel and Disgusting: Pain Patient Appeal Denied

November Coalition: Help Free Richard Paey!

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Is The Easter Bunny

I have this Easter Bunny scoop EXCLUSIVELY here at Main St. USA based on superduper topsecret authority. Bushco is suppressing that particular confession for obvious reasons, as it does not fit into their "get Gonzo off the front pages" plan.

Apparently, while we've been torturing Mohammed for the past five years, he's confessed to EVERYTHING they've ever asked him about. 31 terrorist acts in total. Who'd a thunk it? Torture works. We get everything we want. He has also confessed to being the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and Borat.

WaPo (front page): Alleged Architect Of 9/11 Confesses To Many Attacks

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, confessed at a Guantanamo Bay military hearing that he planned and funded that al-Qaeda operation and said he was involved in more than two dozen other terrorist acts around the world, according to documents released by the Pentagon yesterday.

In a rambling statement delivered Saturday to a closed-door military tribunal, Mohammed declared himself an enemy of the United States and claimed some responsibility for many of the major terrorist attacks on U.S. and allied targets over more than a decade. He said that he is at war with the United States and that the deaths of innocent people are an unfortunate consequence of that conflict.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z," Mohammed told a panel of military officers through a personal representative, who read off a list of 31 terrorist acts that were either carried out or planned but not executed. According to transcripts released by Defense Department officials last night, Mohammed later spoke in broken English and Arabic, saying, "For sure, I'm American enemies."

This last sentence proves that he is the real Borat.

I mean, really. The "hearing" at which Mohammed "testified" (in a language other than his own) took place on March 10th. The purpose is to determine whether he is an enemy combatant. The Washington Post has a pdf link to the entire transcript. On page 10, Mohammed asks to present witnesses. His request is denied on the grounds that his witnesses are not relevant. The 31 terrorist acts to which he confesses are presented in the form of a written list which is read into the record by his "Personal Representative" (question, was this a lawyer? Embarrassing if so.) This list was clearly written by someone other than Mohammed as his broken English is miraculously repaired. He says things like "I was the Media Operations Director", "I was the Operational Director", as though al Quada was really a modern US corporation. Jeez.

The whole thing is a kangaroo court and the corporate media is jumping up and down as though this farce had some basis for respect. It is a farce. The guy may be guilty as hell, but the US makes him look like a victim by torturing and railroading him. Couldn't we just have subjected him to the greatest legal system in the world? Just another way in which the Bush Administration has used 9/11 to attack our Constitution and degrade us in the eyes of the world. The shame.

Fox Hates Black People

You knew that already, but watch this anyway for the evidence.


I saw this at ThinkProgress.

Tim Johnson's Improving Condition

WaPo: Ailing Senator Issues Photos, Statement

WASHINGTON -- The first public photos of Sen. Tim Johnson since his December brain hemorrhage show him looking pounds lighter and sitting in a wheelchair. According to a spokeswoman, he now has limited use of his right arm and leg.

See all the photos on his website:

Senator Tim Johnson website

This must be a great relief to his family.

Blogtopia* Roundup, Wednesday, March 14, 2007

U.S. President George W. Bush, left, greets workers during his visit the Labradores Mayas Packing Station in the village of Chirijuyu Tecpan, Guatemala, Monday, March 12, 2007. Labradores Mayas is an agriculture cooperative for indigenous farmers from this region of the Guatemala highlands. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Jurassic Pork at Welcome to Pottersville has a second in his series of FauxNewsChannel screencaps. (I have blog identity and blog title envy. Pottersville! Bedford Falls!)

Rhonda Bourne at Blue Mass. Group with a thoughtful post about Governor Patrick's wife Diane's depression diagnosis.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo says this whole US Attorney purge was designed to get rid of Carol Lam of California who was prosecuting Duke Cunningham, Jerry Lewis, and getting close to Dusty Foggo and Porter Goss and the corruption in the CIA.

Atrios sez the Republican knives are out for Abu Gonzales; he's a dead man walking.

Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast points out another Bush privatization initiative gone horribly, horribly wrong: The levee repair in New Orleans:

Another "heckuva job" company gets a nice fat government contract in exchange for its contributions to Republicans, and this one is owned by a buddy of would-be Republican savior Jeb Bush.

Republicans love to say that government doesn't work, and of course the wags say that when Republicans are in power, they go about proving it. It's funny, though -- when Democrats are in office, government programs help people through the Great Depression, we win World War II, the Civil Rights Act is enacted, there's the longest economic expansion in American history. Democratic presidents leave little to no deficit, and Americans who are not among the wealthiest are almost always better off under Democrats than they are under Republicans.

So isn't it time we stopped trusting the government to these people?

*yes, skippy coined that phrase!

You Can Run

But you can't hide, Torture Guy. How long til he's gone? I give him 10 days.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales departs after holding a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington March 13, 2007. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (UNITED STATES)

No News (Updated, below)

Nothing significant has been reported on the Pokey Chatman story today. Many visits to this blog from people trying to find out who the player she was involved with was. I didn't find one speck of rumor on the 'nets about the player's identity. They must have been very discreet.

Or maybe Pokey is just a really nice person who made a mistake. Her star center, Sylvia Fowles, was fulsome in her praise of her now former coach yesterday. The ESPN selection show had Stacy Dales going on and on about how great a person Chatman is, even going to far as to predict Pokey will be back in coaching soon. They've toned down Stacey Dales on ESPN, but I still don't think she's the sharpest knife in the drawer. Or maybe she just doesn't know the history of women's coaches.

Male coaches can come back from anything. They go to strip clubs (Mike Price, fired by University of Alabama, hired by UTEP), kill people with their cars (Craig McTavish, killed a woman while driving drunk in 1984, now coach, Edmonton Oilers,), lie on their resumes (George O'Leary, fired by Notre Dame for lying on his resume, now head coach of the University of Central Florida), you name it, if they're a good coach they've got another head coaching job in a few weeks.

Female coaches? Transgress and work no more. The case in point is Marianne Stanley. Now, you may not like Marianne Stanley, as she seems to be fairly abrasive, but she is one of the winningest womens's college basketball coaches of all time. She's still the youngest coach ever to win the NCAA Championship (Old Dominion, 1985, age 31). First, she got shitcanned by USC because she dared -- she dared to ask to be paid equally as the men's basketball coach, George Raveling, since they did the same job. Oh, you know they fired her for that. And she lost her federal lawsuit, don't get me started on how the federal courts have eviscerated the Equal Pay Act (but for you law junkies out there, here's a law review article reviewing the court's mishandling of Stanley's federal court claim). That's a whole other post.

It took her two and a half years to get another job, at Cal Berkeley. Stanley then got forced out of Cal because she stupidly told one of her assistants who got pregnant that she should get an abortion or quit. (That laser beam focus on winning -- how can you get out there & recruit if you're pregnant -- definitely overrid Stanley's common sense.) But that didn't come out at the time. She just got fired for having a losing record as far as the world knew. And again, it took her two years to get hired as a head coach again, by the WNBA Washington Mystics. When the Washington Post dug up that she'd been fired by Cal for the pregnancy discrimination claim, out she went again. And she has been nothing but an assistant ever since, currently beside Vivian Stringer at Rutgers. I have a sneaking suspicion that is she were male, she'd be a head coach again.

Pokey can only hope that Stacey Dales is prophetic. I doubt it, and doubt that she'll have an easy time getting back into coaching. Maybe the WNBA; but they only hire men these days.

UPDATE: My sister calls to remind me of the most recent case of a male coach who transgressed and was immediately rehired: Larry Eustachy, head basketball coach at Iowa State until 2003. In 2003 he was photographed at a student party after a basketball game, drinking and posing for pictures kissing students. He was the highest paid employee of the state of Iowa at the time. What happened to Larry Eustachy for this public drinking and cavorting with impressionable young people? Well, he did resign from Iowa State and admitted he was an alcoholic. But it wasn't so hard for him. He got a $960,000 settlement on his way out the door (male coaches always have long-term contracts; women's coaches rarely do) and didn't miss a step in coaching, as he was hired by Southern Mississippi where he continues to coach today. Just another example of my point. If a man messes up, he can always get a job again. Always. Here are the photos that ended Eustachy's career with Iowa State (but not his coaching career). Party on, dude.

A Bit of Shameless Self-Promotion

Worcester Craft Center
25 Sagamore Road
Worcester, MA 01605
508-753-8183

The Worcester Craft Center, where I take ceramics classes, is having a Studio Sale (pdf link) on March 24th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. All the studios in the center will be represented (clay, glass, photography, metals/jewelry, textiles, and wood) though I think there will be more pottery than anything else, as we are the largest and most active studio.

Brave (or crazy) soul that I am, I have signed up to sell my pots. No, those pictures up there aren't of my work, although they are available in the Center's gift shop. I do mostly handbuilding, and those pieces are all thrown on a wheel. I took a couple of wheel throwing classes, but wheel throwing is a much more physical process than handbuilding, as you lean and use your whole body as your hands push the clay into place, always fighting the spinning of the wheel. It tired me out. I wish I'd started at a younger age. I do love handbuilding though. There's nothing like playing with clay to clear your mind.

I am currently unpacking the many boxes of work in my spare room deciding what is good enough to sell, and then deciding how to price things. I'm bringing tiles, Christmas ornaments, vases, platters, and several raku pieces that aren't functional. (Raku is a Japanese firing technique where you take the pieces out of an outdoor kiln while they're red hot and quickly cool them. You get great colors, but the work isn't sealed and isn't food safe. Just fun to look at.) I have to get over my inner critic voice which sees the flaw in every pot rather than the beauty. So, stop by and check us out. There's a bake sale, too.

I wish I was as talented as my wheel throwing teacher, Kristen Kieffer. Check out her website:

Kristen Kieffer Ceramics

Shorter Abu Gonzales Statement

I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows.

Branding

Quote from pbs.org interview with Edmund Mierzwinski, consumer program director of U.S. PIRG.
Why do Democrats continue to talk about the Bankruptcy Bill? Sure, it effects how people are treated in bankruptcy. But, in its essence, this was a bill bought and paid for by the credit card industry to feather its own nest and screw consumers.

Why aren't we calling it the Credit Card Welfare bill?

Heckuva Job Kiley Resigns

Good riddance.

ThinkProgress: BREAKING: Kiley Resigns

Some highlights of his tenure over the past few weeks:

– He allowed a wounded soldier to sleep in his own urine even though he was begged to do something about it by a congressman’s wife.

– He blamed the Walter Reed conditions on “a failure of leadership at the junior level in that building.”

– He ripped the Washington Post’s revelation of the squalor at Walter Reed as “yellow journalism.”

Blogtopia* Roundup, Monday, March 12, 2007

Must view post of the day: Welcome to Pottersville with a series of screencaps of the FoxNewsMachine's fairly unbalanced news coverage. They are serial liars and should never be trusted. (It also reminded me of these pictures which someone photoshopped a few years ago.)

Digby on Russert and the craven corporate media as revealed by the Libby trial. I had forgotten that James Carville and Tim Russert's son have a sports radio program together. No wonder Mary Matalin could tell Scooter Libby that Russert hated Chris Matthews. Pillow talk!

salon.com exposes the Army for sending injured soldiers back to Iraq. (Send the twins, I say.) See, also, Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast, who says the only way to support these troops is to demand impeachment.

And while you're at salon.com, head over and read Glenn Greenwald's piece Our right-wing arbiters of masculinity with a couple of hilarious pictures of manly wingnuts as an added bonus.

ThinkProgress reports that Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) has called on VA Secretary Jim Nicholson to resign. You go girl.

MCCASKILL: [] And with all due respect to the head of the Veterans Administration, this is a man that was chairman of the Republican National Committee. The appearance isn’t right. You know, this looks like a Brownie situation. Let’s put somebody…

SCHIEFFER: Brownie as in FEMA.

MCCASKILL: As in FEMA. You know, this is a political appointment. This is somebody who has spent a whole lot of the last few years defending everything about the White House. Really, that’s not the right person to be leading the agency that’s supposed to protect our veterans.

And I really think it’s time we put somebody in charge of the Veterans Administration whose first priority are the veterans and not the politics surrounding the agency.

Talking Points Memo is following the fired US Attorney story most closely. NYTimes called for Abu Gonzales to resign in an editorial yesterday.

*yes, skippy! coined that phrase.

Rats, Sinking Ship, Etc.

WaPo: Halliburton to move headquarters, CEO to Dubai

And why are they moving? According to this diary at dailykos, to skirt the laws of the United States by locating in the UAE where they can sell arms and nuclear technology to countries like Iran and Libya.

All of which is illegal in the US. Halliburton, subverting democracy in the pursuit of profit. Your federal dollars from the Iraq war at work.

Dick Cheney (Halliburton CEO 1995-2000; Halliburton unindicted conspirator, 2000-continuing) is only public enemy number two because Chimpy McMembersOnlyJacketWithThePresidentialSeal is public enemy number one.

No Excuses

The Pokey Chatman saga at LSU continues to play out slowly and gets more and more ugly. ESPN is reporting two significant facts: (1) the player with whom Chatman had a sexual affair was a player on the team at the time; and (2) assistant women's basketball coach Carla Berry is the person who reported Chatman to LSU officials.

If Chatman had a sexual affair with one of her players while she was their coach, she had to go. If this is the allegation, I am amazed that LSU accepted her resignation and is paying her until April 30th. You would think that with allegations of this nature and this enormity, that the school would have taken immediate and decisive action. Instead, they initially allowed Chatman to resign and to issue a statement that she was leaving to pursue other career opportunities. (Hmmm. Maybe that's why the LSU board tabled a vote on giving AD Skip Bertman a new deal.) She should be pursuing something outside the realm of coaching young, vulnerable athletes. Maybe she can get a job with Granny Basketball in Iowa. Those women wouldn't take any crap from her.

I feel a lot of resentment towards Chatman. Her actions sully all of women's basketball. They reinforce the absolutely false stereotype that lesbians (or gay men, for that matter) are sexual predators who shouldn't be allowed to work with kids because they'll be cruising them. If there were statistics on this kind of thing I'm sure they'd show that heterosexual coaches are just as likely to violate social norms and get involved with players.

On the other hand, I feel sorry for Chatman and all the other people who live their lives in the closet. I only know of one women's basketball coach, Tara VanDerveer (Stanford, former US Olympic coach), who is out as a lesbian. (And I'm not even sure if she's really "out", see this Washington Post article on negative recruiting.) There are certainly many other coaches in Pokey Chatman's situation: lesbians who are cowering in the closet, afraid to live their lives out loud.

Imagine what her life was like. She is gay, but pretending to be straight. Think of all the things she does to keep in the closet. She doesn't hang out with gay friends in public. Maybe she is even afraid to have friends who are out of the closet. She doesn't go to gay clubs or gay events. She doesn't acknowledge her partner (if she has one) in public in any way. This is no basis for a relationship, so her partner leaves her. Or maybe she has never had the courage to have a partner at all. Eventually, her life becomes constricted to one thing: basketball; and one group of people: her team. This becomes her social life. These are the people she spends time with. When she leaves the team, she goes back into her protective shell, but on the basketball court she can be, for the most part, herself.

And sports are intense, intimate, expressive, and emotional. (If you doubt that, go watch the Celtic fans singing in the post below.) Just the dangerous mix where a repressed gay person can make the biggest mistake of her life, on the public stage, and lose everything as a result.

I am writing all of this based on what has been reported. You hope it isn't true. But if it is, even though I feel sorry for Chatman, there are no excuses. She had choices and made all the wrong ones. Now she can do what she should have done from the beginning. Live out loud, be who she is, and walk on with her life.

You'll Never Walk Alone

Yesterday was the third anniversary of the Madrid train bombings. 191 people died and 2,050 were wounded. The Champions League games scheduled for that day went on (controversially) although UEFA arranged for a moment of silence before each game, and the players wore black armbands. This weekend while I was Liverpool surfing I found this stunning version of "You'll Never Walk Alone" which was sung by the Celtic fans prior to their match against Barcelona on March 11, 2004, in tribute to the victims of the bombing. ("You'll Never Walk Alone", the Gerry and the Pacemakers version, is the club theme song for Liverpool and Celtic as well as for all these other clubs:

* England: Ipswich Town,
* Austria: SK Rapid Wien.
* Netherlands: FC Twente, Feyenoord Rotterdam and Ajax Amsterdam.
* Germany: FC St. Pauli (also Borussia Dortmund and Alemannia Aachen).
* Greece: AEK Athens FC (AEK fans adopted a Greek version of the song).
* Japan: F.C. Tokyo.
* Italy: Hellas Verona F.C..
* Portugal: SL Benfica

Obesity Caused by Plethora of Plastic?

WaPo: Chemicals May Play Role in Rise in Obesity

[S]everal recent animal studies suggest that environmental exposure to widely used chemicals may also help make people fat.

The evidence is preliminary, but a number of researchers are pursuing indications that the chemicals, which have been shown to cause abnormal changes in animals' sexual development, can also trigger fat-cell activity -- a process scientists call adipogenesis.

The chemicals under scrutiny are used in products from marine paints and pesticides to food and beverage containers. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found one chemical, bisphenol A, in 95 percent of the people tested, at levels at or above those that affected development in animals.

[]

"Exposure to bisphenol A is continuous," said Frederick vom Saal, professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Bisphenol A is an ingredient in polycarbonate plastics used in many products, including refillable water containers and baby bottles, and in epoxy resins that line the inside of food cans and are used as dental sealants. In 2003, U.S. industry consumed about 2 billion pounds of bisphenol A.

Poodle Screwing British Veterans, Too

Independent (uk): Blair is called to account over abandoned troops

British soldiers returning from war are suffering unprecedented levels of mental health problems amid claims that the long-standing "military covenant" guaranteeing them proper care is in tatters.

More than 21,000 full-time servicemen and women who have served in Iraq, as well as army reservists, have developed anxiety and depression, an Independent on Sunday investigation can reveal today.

Official figures suggest two dozen military personnel have killed themselves since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 ­ a figure which includes 17 confirmed suicides and six where inquests are pending. Combat Stress, the charity for war veterans suffering from mental problems, has warned that it is seeing an annual rise of 26 per cent in its caseload; more than 1,000 former soldiers are homeless.

Independent (uk): The betrayal of British fighting men & women
The son of a military family Pte Johnathon Dany Wysoczan

Sunday Observer (uk): Scandal of treatment for wounded Iraq veterans
· Soldiers 'denied proper hospital care'
· Letters reveal anguish of families

For All My Fans From IAP Worldwide

For the dozen or so visitors today to this humble blog from IAP Worldwide in Merritt Island, Florida; this post's for you:



Slate.com: It's Not Just Walter Reed
Still more ways Bush is screwing returning vets.

The Pentagon's Defense Health Program—which includes the Tricare health-insurance plan, used by 9.1 million veterans and involving 65 inpatient clinics, 414 medical and dental clinics, and 257 veterans centers—has actually had its budget cut the past two years. In fiscal year 2006, the program's budget for medical care went up from $15.9 billion to $21.2 billion. But since then, it's gone down slightly—to $20.8 billion in FY 2007 and a proposed $20.7 billion in FY 2008.

These numbers understate the magnitude of the cuts. To keep up with inflation in the cost of goods and payroll, the Defense Department actually had to cut medical-care programs by $1.6 and $1.4 billion in FY07 and FY08, respectively.

Money is similarly tight at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA's budget for medical care has risen in the past few years—from $28.8 billion in FY 2006 to $29.3 billion in FY 2007 to a request for $34.2 billion in FY 2008—but this hasn't been enough. In each of the past four years, according to a March 1 report by the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, the VA has systematically underestimated the number of veterans applying for benefits in the coming fiscal year. The result is a shortfall of $2.8 billion in the FY08 budget, just to cover the current level of medical services.

The administration is trying to make up for some of this by raising deductibles on prescription drugs (from $8 to $15) and by imposing an annual enrollment fee (ranging from $250 to $750)—in short, by shifting costs to the veterans themselves. (Even so, these charges would make up only $450 million, or about one-sixth of the shortfall.)

Another instance of ignoring the wars: Despite a vast increase in the number of returning soldiers coming to the VA's veterans centers, the budget for these centers has remained flat. Similarly, despite a vast increase in the number of soldiers filing disability claims, the VA budget includes no money for additional claims processors. To justify the lack of money for trained processors, the VA's budgeteers assume that the number of new claims—and the backload of past claims—will drop in 2008. This is patently ridiculous: Elsewhere in the budget (see page 1-2), they state, "[W]e project that VA's patient caseload will peak in 2010" (emphasis added). In other words, they predict a rising caseload for another three years—but cut the money for the caseload this coming year.

An even grander sleight of hand comes in the section of the budget dealing with the "out-years"—FY 2009-12. The VA's budgeteers are projecting no increases in spending for medical care during that entire four-year period. They can't possibly believe this. (Again, they note elsewhere that the caseload won't peak until the middle of this period.) They are engaging in the political game of making the future appear less grim—and the president's budget more balanced, the need for tax hikes or cuts elsewhere less compelling—than is really the case.

unbossed.com: What doesn't IAP do?

It is amazing that a company that did not exist until recently has won so many contracts and in such diverse areas. A constant seems to be getting ice to hurricane Katrina damaged areas. One wonders what IAP will do for income when the damage is fixed. I did not include all of those contracts. You can find them on its newsroom archive page.

Here are a few more of its diverse contracts from recent years, all from IAP's press release page.

First, up the U.S. Geological Survey! From ice to WRAMC to the IRS to national wetlands research!

Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), The Hill Blog: Walter Reed Hearing Raises Serious Questions

The questions I have about the Walter Reed issue is they contracted out a lot of the work that was being done by employees of Walter Reed even though the employees had a lower bid, knew what they were doing and the Army wanted them to continue what they were doing.

It appears as if someone in the defense department wanted to make sure that this outside contractor had the job which ended up reducing the workforce from around 350 to less than 100 earlier this year.

We’re trying to get more information, but certainly the witnesses we’ve had at our hearing acted like they knew nothing about anything. They didn’t know about the contract particularly, they didn’t know what the impact was and they didn’t know there were problems in Building 18. They assumed there weren’t any problems because nobody brought it to their attention. I just find that quite an unacceptable response.

I Wish It Was This Easy for US

Could we hire these guys to come here in January 2009?

Boston Globe: Priests to purify site after Bush visit

GUATEMALA CITY --Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites -- which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles -- would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

This Makes Me Sad

Bill Feig/Associated Press

Pokey Chatman resigned over suspected inappropriate conduct with a former player.
Pokey Chatman has resigned as coach of the LSU women's basketball team, reportedly because she had what has been termed an "inappropriate relationship" with a former player.

What all does that mean? Obviously, it means she's gay. In Louisiana, just having a gay relationship is enough to get fired and land in jail. But if the relationship began while the player was still in college, it's just wrong. There are power dynamics involved when a coach begins a relationship with a player. The coach has power, and the player doesn't; therefore, the coach must say no.

Interestingly, most often these player/coach relationships involve women players. Male players are almost never found to have been involved in a relationship with a coach. Why is this? Because jobs coaching men aren't available to women. Once Title IX forced colleges and universities to pay men's and women's coaches on a more equivalent basis, those women's jobs became desirable. But women have never been hired to coach men on more than a token basis. So at this point 75% of all coaching jobs are available to men (100% of jobs coaching men's teams, 50% of jobs coaching women) and 25% are available to women. So it's rare to find a female coach charged with an inappropriate relationship; when the coach is female, it usually involves a lesbian relationship.

We see many women involved with or married to former male coaches. Prominent examples: Jackie Joyner Kersee, married her coach Al Joyner, who she met while he was her track coach at UCLA; Julie Foudy is married to Ian Sawyers, who was a coach in her development league when she was 18; Brandi Chastain is married to her former coach at Santa Clara. Foudy and Chastain's marriages were discussed in the excellent Sports Illustrated article on this issue, "Passion Plays", by Grant Wahl. There's no official copy of the article on the web, but if you go to this link and scroll down to Feb 11th, 2003, 06:49 PM, it's reproduced there.

As an attorney, I look at this from an employment discrimination perspective. A coach should never be in a relationship with a player while they are coaching them, because that is an abuse of the coach's power over the player, and makes all the decisions the coach makes about that player suspect. Why did she get so much playing time, etc.? On the other hand, coaches and players do fall in love, and if they happen to pursue that relationship after graduation, there's no problem. The problem is those years while attraction exists in the midst of the coach/player relationship. The coach, the older, more experienced person, is expected by society to be the bigger person and hold off until the coach/player relationship is no more. If Pokey Chatman was involved with a player while she was on the team, Chatman had to go. But we don't know that yet. If she began a relationship with a player after that player left the team, then she's being discriminated against for being gay.

As a sideline, the LSU AD, Skip Bertman, is a real moron. Here's his quote in the initial round of stories about Chatman's resignation:

"The girl did what she did and LSU had no control over that," Bertman said, referring to Chatman.

The girl? Chatman is 37 years old and has coached for LSU for 15 years. Give me a break.

ESPN: Sources: Chatman quit amid sexual misconduct claims

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Chatman to leave LSU immediately
INAPPROPRIATE ACTIONS MAY HAVE LED TO RESIGNATION

NYTIMES: L.S.U.’s Chatman Won’t Coach in N.C.A.A.

Homeland Security: Tearing Nursing Babies From Their Mothers' Arms

An employee cries outside the Michael Bianco Inc. textiles plant in New Bedford, Mass., Tuesday, March 6, 2007. About two thirds of the company's 500 employees were detained by immigration officials on suspicion of being in the U.S. illegally. The sweep caused chaos which saw some workers try to flee, only to be turned back by the bitter cold, said Bruce Foucart, Customs Enforcement Special Agent in Charge. (AP Photo/Peter Pereira-The New Bedford Standard Times)
Yesterday Homeland Security arrested allegedly illegal immigrant workers (mostly women) in New Bedford, Mass. and, presuming them guilty, shipped dozens of them to Texas, without any apparent thought to what would happen to their children. Two nursing babies were hospitalized for dehydration. Babies! What is wrong with these zealots?

[Massachusetts Governor] Patrick, at a press conference, and later in a private conference call with Homeland Security officials, protested the decision to fly 90 of the detained workers from Massachusetts to Harlingen, Texas, before state social workers had a chance to inquire about their child-care needs, potentially leaving many children with inadequate care. Two young children were hospitalized yesterday for dehydration after their nursing mothers were taken away, state officials said. Another 7-year-old girl called a state hot line seeking her detained mother. It was unclear last night where their mothers were.

Of course, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division of DHS, which carried out the raids, is led by the unqualified, crony appointee, Julie Myers, who is both daughter of former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, and wife of the chief of staff for Homeland Security's criminally incompetent Michael Chertoff. Nice work, Heckuva-Jobbers.

What do you think happened to the owners, who were breaking the law by employing illegal immigrants, creating fraudulent documents for those workers, making profits, and defrauding the federal government which had contracted with them to make vests for soldiers? You got it if you guessed they were charged, made bail, and released to spend the night at home in the comfy houses with their families.

"HAS ANYONE seen my wife? She left for work yesterday and never came home. Our newborn baby is hungry and crying. Can someone please help?" asks a young father in the basement of a crowded church, one clear voice above the din of the hundreds gathered. The fear is palpable in the young man's eyes. He implores the listener to offer solace, hope, and encouragement.

[]

On Tuesday, more than 500 armed homeland security officers descended upon Michael Blanco Inc. The owner of the factory, and a few of his senior staff, were arrested for hiring undocumented workers and creating false documents. They were out on bail and home with their families that night.

Approximately 350 employees, mostly mothers with young children, were swept up in the raid, shackled together in groups of three by their wrists and ankles and marched to buses bound for Fort Devens, 100 miles away. Without any legal representation or due process, these workers were asked for their immigration documentation and encouraged by immigration officers to choose voluntary deportation regardless of whether an immigration application was in process.

The Real Rudy?

YouTube, Rudy Giuliani ad, 1989, using his wife and family as props.

I still can't get over the fact that he didn't go to his son's high school graduation. What could have been more important? Answer: nothing.

I saw this at Ben Smith's Blog at Politico.

Verdict: Guilty

The ultimate verdict on Walter Reed Army Medical Center and this country's shameful treatment of wounded and maimed veterans:

There is something profoundly evil about a country encouraging young men and women to go off and fight its wars and then shortchanging them on medical care and other forms of assistance when they come back with wounds that will haunt them forever.

Bob Hebert, NYTimes: Lift the Curtain (TimesSelect wall; also here and here)

Tell Your Momma The Corporate Media Is Sliming Obama

The Times printed this picture of Obama squinting into the sun, as though he were being grilled about his blind trust. He wasn't.

Robert Sullivan/AFP-Getty Images
Times caption: Barack Obama answering questions last weekend outside a church in Selma, Ala.
Page One news in the New York Times yesterday: In ’05 Investing, Obama Took Same Path as Donors

In which we learn that a blind trust to which Obama had entrusted his money invested $50,000 of it in companies owned by friends of his. It was a blind trust, so Obama didn't know about it; when he found out, he sold the shares and terminated the blind trust. (P.S., he lost money.)

Oooh, what double dealing. Oooh, I smell a hint of scandal. Oooh, you know that this really means. The Clinton Rules (as Digby named them) are back. Democrats are scrutinized within an inch of their lives by the rich corporate media; Republicans are given a pass. I mean, really, Rudy Giuliani was giving speeches at $100,000 a pop (and skipping his son's high school graduation, family values party, my ass) and this is a story about $50,000 in a blind trust? Where is the story about how Rudy Giuliani has invested his money? Who was Rudy giving all those speeches too? You don't think those folks are expecting a little homina homina for their Benjamins? You won't find the Giuliani story out there, or the McCain story, or the Romney Bain Capital story either. The corporate media exists to perpetuate the government that gives it the best tax breaks, and that means all Democrats under the microscope, all the time.

And today the Boston Globe (owned by the Times ownership cabal) weighs in with a story about how Obama paid $375 in ancient parking tickets. I kid you not.

Trey Ellis, HuffPo: Obama, the Times and Central Casting

What a curious and misleading headline on the front page of The New York Times:
"Obama, in Brief Investing Foray In '05, Took Same Path as Donors."

The only reason to put on the front page of the paper of record a story about a politician's stock holdings is if there were even a hint of impropriety.
The coy headline slings mud in bold letters and then, only in the fine print of the article, explains that not only was nothing improper done, in fact as soon as there was even the hint of a possible conflict the junior Senator from Illinois divested himself of the holdings.

This is a far different story than that of Senator Bill Frist whose blind trust ended up not being blind at all.

Did the Times editors really feel that this story belonged on page one while, say, "At Least 109 Shiite Pilgrims Killed Across Iraq as Holiday Nears," was banished to page A10?

Boston Globe: Obama paid late parking tickets
Racked up penalties while at Harvard

Total $375; $140 in fines, $235 in late fees. George Bush spends that much on Members Only jackets with the Presidential seal every day.

Privatizing Walter Reed: Rich Get Richer, Veterans Get Screwed

I've never understood the premise of privatization. Why does adding a profit motive to a third party improve government services? Answer: It doesn't. It just allows private companies to pay workers less and give them poorer benefits to do the same job, then transfers the cost savings into the pockets of the owners of the private company. And some of those companies also cut the numbers of workers doing the work. Like IAP Worldwide, which has replaced 300 federal support services workers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center with 50 private employees. The result? Dan Quayle, John Snow and Al Neffgen get richer. Who got poorer? The workers who now work for IAP don't make the wages of federal workers, and don't have equivalent benefits. But most horrifying, the maimed and brain-damaged soldiers at Walter Reed are suffering because our government chose to put money into the pockets of their rich friends rather than put money into caring for the veterans injured in their immoral, illegal war. Sickening.

Metrowest Daily News (Framingham, MA): Editorial: Privatizing Walter Reed

As a letter from the House committee investigating Walter Reed stated, "it would be reprehensible if the deplorable conditions were caused or aggravated by an ideological commitment to privatize government services regardless of the costs to taxpayers and the consequences for wounded soldiers.

The thread of privatization and cronyism runs through this administration's disasters: from Abu Ghraib, where private contractors had a role in intelligence-gathering, to New Orleans, where a major city paid the price after political appointees replaced experienced emergency service professionals at FEMA.

Palm Beach (FL) Post editorial: Failures at Walter Reed expose VA system failure

Incredibly, despite the rising numbers of those who will need care, the White House is proposing a VA budget that is essentially flat from last year. The administration wants to cut money for prosthetic research and provide inadequate financing for the backlog of cases that only will grow. Yet on Tuesday, Mr. Bush called on Congress to "fund our war fighters." Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, whose "qualification" was running the Republican National Committee, has compounded the administration's indifference with insulting rhetoric. Asked about the 200,000-plus who have tried to get care, Mr. Nicholson says, "A lot of them come in for dental problems."

YahooNews: Deborah Burger, HuffPo: We're All at Walter Reed

It starts with brutally substandard care and abandonment of tens of thousands of veterans, not just at Walter Reed, but at VA hospitals and clinics around the country, as the Washington Post has revealed in ghastly detail.

Second, starving the VA. Since 2001, as Paul Krugman reported in the New York Times, federal allocations for veterans medical care lag behind overall healthcare spending, rather stunning when you consider we have sent 1.5 million of our young men and women to Iraq and Afghanistan and over 184,000 have sought VA care after serving.

There's more. Due to funding cuts, some 263,257 veterans were denied enrollment for Veterans Administration health coverage in 2005. To cut costs, enrollment has been suspended for those deemed not having service-related injuries or illnesses. So much for the guarantee of lifetime healthcare. And, if all the other indignities were not enough, some Walter Reed patients had to buy their own meals.

The final piece of this unholy troika is privatization. As the Army Times notes, Walter Reed handed a five-year $120 million contract to a private company run by an ex-Halliburton executive. The contracting out of support services was followed by a mass exodus of support personnel.

Christian Science Monitor: How decay overtook Walter Reed
The problems at the US Army hospital show how strained military resources have become.

View From ABroad

Tomorrow's cover of my favorite British newspaper, The Independent

Independent (uk): Liar in the White house: Cheney aide found guilty in CIA leak case
Saga of Washington's discredited WMD claims leads to the conviction for perjury of Dick Cheney's key aide

How Blair has stood by Niger claim

The golden couple targeted by White House machine

Scooter Libby's Very, Very, Very, Very Bad Day

Marcy Wheeler's book Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy (available from Amazon)
On the 10th day of deliberations, a verdict in the Scooter Libby case. Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.

Count 1 (Obstruction): GUILTY
Count 2 (Perjury): GUILTY
Count 3 (False Statement): NOT GUILTY
Count 4 (Perjury): GUILTY
Count 5 (Perjury): GUILTY

The Washington Post describes the verdict as "a blow to the Bush Administration"; I'm not so sure. I think it's like a heavyweight fight. Bush and Cheney are the champs. You don't beat the champ with punches or even a knockdown. You have to knock the champ out. Until they are impeached or forced to resign, they're still in charge, and we're still fighting their lying, immoral war for oil and hegemony in Iraq.

I hope all these lying, cheating traitorous bastards have a hard time sleeping tonight.

Tell Your Momma Bout Obama* (Updated Below)

Image via wikipedia
When I read about Barack Obama before his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, I called my family and told them to watch his speech because they would be watching the first black president. And his speech certainly lived up to my billing.

Then he went to the Senate and I was disappointed by all his Senate-speak and voting with LIEberman and the like. Maybe my expectations were just too high, because ever since he started his run for president my earlier admiration has returned. Every speech I have seen has been spot on. He speaks English, not Senate. And he is progressive. I put up with all that religion talk because, well, I put up with it from many people. Being overtly religious just isn't my cup of tea, but as long as you're not attacking me for not sharing your religiosity, I'm OK with it.

Good article in today's New York Times on Obama, actually focusing on substance, not on how he looks or sounds or what his supporters said about another candidate. Meat, not air.

Nicholas Kristof, NYTimes: Obama: Man of the World (TimesSelect wall; also here and here).

[] In some respects, Mr. Obama is far more experienced than other presidential candidates.

His experience as an antipoverty organizer in Chicago, for example, gives him a deep grasp of a crucial 21st-century challenge — poverty in America — that almost all politicians lack. He says that grass-roots experience helps explain why he favors not only government spending programs, like early childhood education, but also cultural initiatives, like efforts to promote responsible fatherhood.

In foreign policy as well, Mr. Obama would bring to the White House an important experience that most other candidates lack: he has actually lived abroad. He spent four years as a child in Indonesia and attended schools in the Indonesian language, which he still speaks.

“I was a little Jakarta street kid,” he said in a wide-ranging interview in his office (excerpts are on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground). He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics — and more likely to be aware of their nationalism — if he once studied the Koran with them.

*This was a sign at an Obama rally that I watched on Youtube a few weeks and can't locate today. Every time I hear or read something about Barack Obama, it goes through my head.

Update: Found a picture of the sign in the LA Times:

Blogtopia* Roundup, Tuesday, March 6, 2007

2.3 million Iraqis have left Iraq: Wampum: Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, New Mexico, Utah

It doesn't matter which one you pick. Every resident has to leave. That is the size of the Iraqi diaspora since the regime graduated from civil disenfranchisement to foreign wars. Its in Le Monde, and it doesn't matter that the press and the political class in the US won't touch the subject.

The Cherokee Nation has voted to eject the descendants of slaves: Professor Kim's News Notes: Cherokees eject descendants of their former slaves. More on the subject from Wampum: Nation and Race.

When Maureen Dowd mocks Democrats, is she so different from Ann Coultergeist? Daily Howler doesn't think so: WHEN YOU READ DOWD, YOU’RE RIDING WITH COULTER

Digby piles on (if you're not reading Hullabaloo every day, you're the poorer for it): Digby: Tarzan, Jane and Cheetah

The underlying premise of the modern conservative movement is that the entire Democratic party consists of a bunch of fags and dykes who are both too effeminate and too masculine to properly lead the nation.

Jill points out that Halliburton (can you believe it, upstanding corporate citizen Halliburton?) has been caught drilling for oil in Iran: Brilliant at Breakfast: Halliburton's tentacles are everywhere

And this is not from the blogs, but is truly unbelievable. Dana Milbank notes in today's Washington Post (scroll down to bottom) that a soldier with a prosthetic arm was barred entry from the Congressional hearing on the Walter Reed and our scandalous treatment of wounded veterans yesterday, because the seats were "preselected". The seats were also empty.

*yes, skippy coined that phrase!

CNN Enables Rudy Giuliani's Deceitful Excuse

Rudy & Judi 4-eva
Why do I watch morning TV? To see outrages like this I suppose. Rudy Giuliani has treated his kids like shit. He was happy to trot them out for photo ops when he was mayor of New York. Then he took up with Judith Nathan, even to the point of bringing her into Gracie Mansion where he lived with his wife Donna Hanover and his two kids. Donna Hanover had to ask for a restraining order to keep Rudy from parading his mistress in front of his kids. (The family court judge agreed with her and issued the restraining order against Nathan.) Finally he got his divorce and married his paramour Nathan. Then he pretty much ignored his kids. Didn't go to his son Andrew's high school graduation (the kid is now on the golf team at Duke), didn't go to his daughter's plays, just wasn't around very much. Busy being America's Mayor and pimping out his reputation on the lecture circuit for $100,000 a pop. Just a regular dad, out there ignoring his first family. He doesn't even list his children on his official campaign website.

Not surprisingly, the kids don't really have a very good relationship with 'ol Rudy. Andrew Giuliani was quoted saying as much in the papers this week.

CNN did a piece just now with the brain-dead O'Brien twins, Miles and Soledad, questioning Candy Crowley. Of course, they painted Bill Clinton as a liability -- such a good speaker that it's hard to be on the same stage with him. Candy Crowley said it was like the old saying about children and dogs, you just don't want to share the stage with them. (She had to throw the word dog in there. Four letters short of horndog, what the wingnuts really want to say.)

And for Giuliani? She reported that he described his problems with his son Andrew as "problems blended families have." Then they showed a clip of Rudy saying the problem is just the kind that blended families have. Then Candy Crowley said, well, we all know that college kids are not easy to deal with. So it looks like this is just a blended family problem. End of story.

Blended families? No mention of how shittily Rudy treated his family and his kids. Bill Clinton is a liability because he's so popular, but Rudy's treatment isn't a liability, because it's just a blended family issue.

A Republican lie makes it onto cable TV while the truth is tying its shoes on the blogs. You heard it here first.

Ouch

I saw this awesome photoshop at Ramblings of a Soccer Junky.

Good Reads

Heading into the studio to make platters today; here are some good reads out there today.

Brilliant at Breakfast: It's time to take health insurance out of the for-profit model

Yesterday's New York Times editorial gives Democrats a blueprint for moving forward to restore our constitutional democracy: The Must-Do List

Alicia Shepard, HuffPo: All Men, All the Time in News Business Are you surprised?

Welcome to Pottersville: Assclowns of the Week #61: “He’s a Wifebeater But I Love Him!” Edition Yes, they are all Republicans.

For full coverage of the U.S. Attorney purge scandal, make sure to read Talking Points Memo; head to Firedoglake for Scooter Libby trial updates.

Walter Reed Is The Direct Result of Republican Policy Choices

It will be important to keep the media on track on this story. I heard Jim Miklaszewski on Imus this morning claiming this is just how things get done by the military bureaucracy. Not so. This is not a story about government incompetence. As Paul Krugman points out today, improvements in the Veterans Administration during the Clinton years made the VA one of the best health care systems in the country. Government did that. Good, responsible government dedicated to using the power of the purse wisely. Democrats in charge. People who believe that government works.

The problem with Walter Reed and military medical care is not government incompetence. It's the Bush Administration's Republican attack upon government, in their effort to fulfill Grover Norquist's desire to shrink the federal government until it can be drowned in a bathtub. These are deliberate policy choices, not just incompetence. They have attacked good government from within. The functioning system at Walter Reed and at Veterans Administration facilities around the country has been attacked with the weapon of privatization. Why? Partly, so rich corporations like Halliburton can continue to rake in billions in profits. But it is also part of their insidious attack upon government, to make government look as bad as they always claim it is. They are trying to destroy our government from within. This isn't just incompetence. It's their policy. Starve the federal government, then claim government itself doesn't work and privatize everything.

They must be stopped.

WaPo: 'It Is Just Not Walter Reed'
Soldiers Share Troubling Stories Of Military Health Care Across U.S.

Paul Krugman, NYTimes: Valor and Squalor (TimesSelect wall; also here and here).

AirForceTimes: Soldiers at Walter Reed Building 18 moved

Steve Young, OpEdNews: Johnny Gets His Gun Again: Walter Reed Reveals Right's Bloody Secret

WaPo: Walter Reed Hearing to Put Spotlight on Kiley's Leadership

Political Affairs Magazine: Privatization Behind Disaster at Walter Reed Hospital

Frogs and Bees are the Canaries in our Coal Mine

Endangered
They're dying, and no one knows why. Global warming? Pollution? The cumulative effects of the 500 new chemicals which are introduced into our environment every year? Whatever the answer, it's bad news for the planet.

Marin County Coastal Post Online: The Frogs Are Dying

ATLANTA - Ponds and swamps are becoming eerily silent. The familiar melody of ribbits, croaks and chirps is disappearing as a mysterious killer fungus wipes out frog populations around the globe, a phenomenon likened to the extinction of dinosaurs.

Scientists from around the world are meeting Thursday and Friday in Atlanta to organize a worldwide effort to stem the deaths by asking zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens to take in threatened frogs until the fungus can be stopped.

The aim of the group called Amphibian Ark is to prevent the world's more than 6,000 species of frogs, salamanders and wormlike Sicilians from disappearing. Scientists estimate up to 170 species of frogs have become extinct in the past decade from the fungus and other causes, and an additional 1,900 species are threatened.

NYTimes (Feb. 27): Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril

[B]ee losses are ranging from 30 to 60 percent on the West Coast, with some beekeepers on the East Coast and in Texas reporting losses of more than 70 percent; beekeepers consider a loss of up to 20 percent in the offseason to be normal.

NYTimes (Feb. 12): Mystery Disease Is Threat to Bee Colonies

A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination.

Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment, called colony collapse disorder.

Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some commercial beekeepers have reported losing more than 50 percent of their bees.

Bradenton (FL) Herald: Bees dropping from mystery illness

Little is known, he said, but this: Something seems to be breaking down the bees' immune systems.

Operation Photo Oops

Official caption from whitehouse.gov: President George W. Bush visits with residents in Americus, Ga., March 3, 2007. The President toured tornado-damaged areas in Alabama and Georgia. White House photo by Paul Morse

Potential, real captions:

How's this pose, Turdblossom?

I'm already bored

Bush grows bored with photo op, calls Condi, tells her she's been replaced with younger woman.

Bush calls Laura to tell her his latest fantasy

Calling all morons

You make the call

Can you hear me now?

Ya think this'll make 'em forget about Walter Reed?

I saw this picture on Huffpo: Reading The Pictures: The "Fly By" That Won't Die