U.S. Seeks Silence on CIA Prisons

The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk.

The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release -- even to the detainees' own attorneys -- "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage." Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26.

Wow. In fact, I think they are going to outlaw the very existence of people who have been tortured (or not or who will ever know?) Their existence is a threat to national security. They can't be trusted. Hell, we had to torture them to get them to talk!

HRC

The Clinton Referendum

Comedy picket lines

Stewart and Colbert to Return Without Writers

This kind of disappoints me, but it will enable us to answer the question of how good these guys are without the writers...

Karama is a behatch

Circuit City Loss Widens; Shares Plunge on Forecast

Circuit City, which cut 10 percent of its U.S. workforce this year and hired people willing to work for less, is losing market share to larger rival Best Buy Co. Sales in stores open at least 12 months fell 5.6 percent in the third quarter.

Apparently they didn't realize that when people are going in to buy big ticket items (tvs, etc.) that they like to talk to someone knowledgeable rather than a high school kid.

'08 Roundup

Filibluster

Republicns break filibuster record only halfway through the term.

Why this isn't a major news story shows how lame the Dems have been.

FISA (telecom immunity) bill pulled

Dodd wins... for now.

Home of the free

Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry

Two other AT&T employees who worked on the proposal discounted his claims, saying in interviews that the project had simply sought to improve the N.S.A.’s internal communications systems and was never designed to allow the agency access to outside communications. Michael Coe, a company spokesman, said: “AT&T is fully committed to protecting our customers’ privacy. We do not comment on matters of national security.”

But lawyers for the plaintiffs say that if the suit were allowed to proceed, internal AT&T documents would verify the engineer’s account.

“What he saw,” said Bruce Afran, a New Jersey lawyer representing the plaintiffs along with Carl Mayer, “was decisive evidence that within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.”

FISA and all tha crap has never been about 9/11.

Breaking Ranks

Lieberman endorses McCain

I can't wait until Lieberman no longer caucuses with the Democrats.

Snow

Millions of Canadians digging out from major storm

Nearly 35 centimetres of snow had fallen on Ottawa by 10 p.m. Sunday, Environment Canada said, with 29 centimetres across the Ottawa River in Gatineau, Que. Rural areas southeast of Ottawa saw closer to 50 centimetres as the system headed north and east from the United States into Ontario and Quebec.

Thats almost 14 inches.

I need to buy this, or at least this.

Good thing I shoveled after the first 6 inches...

Tree me

World Bank Fund Will Pay to Leave Forests Standing

The World Bank will establish a fund to compensate developing nations to protect forests, with the hope that preserving forests will slow climate change. 'The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility signals that the world cares about the global value of forests and is ready to pay for it,” said Robert Zoellick, World Bank president. Deforestation is responsible for about one fifth of total carbon emissions, yet was overlooked by the Kyoto Protocol, reports an article from the Environment News Service. Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Australia, Japan, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland along with the Nature Conservancy have committed to contributing to the fund. A report from the Center for International Forestry Research suggests that deforestation has complex causes that can vary from nation to nation, and offers recommendations for protecting neighboring communities that depend on forests for their livelihoods. Property rights to forests are often murky, analysts suggests, and care must be taken to monitor forests and related economic activity, while preventing funds from going to corrupt government officials who look the other way as logging or burning continues.

I like the idea in theory, but how it will operate is the big question. But who the heck do they pay?

Dodd to filibuster

The FISA bill

What I want to know is, why are the Republicans essentially filibustering everything - without actually doing the filibustering, and when now Dodd has to actually do it?

One of the reasons:

Drama Prairie Dog

Mental reserves

keep brain agile

“Something must account for the disjunction between the degree of brain damage and its outcome,” the Columbia scientists deduced. And that something, they and others suggest, is “cognitive reserve.”

Cognitive reserve, in this theory, refers to the brain’s ability to develop and maintain extra neurons and connections between them via axons and dendrites. Later in life, these connections may help compensate for the rise in dementia-related brain pathology that accompanies normal aging.

...

Cognitive reserve is greater in people who complete higher levels of education. The more intellectual challenges to the brain early in life, the more neurons and connections the brain is likely to develop and perhaps maintain into later years. Several studies of normal aging have found that higher levels of educational attainment were associated with slower cognitive and functional decline.

Dr. Scarmeas and Dr. Stern suggest that cognitive reserve probably reflects an interconnection between genetic intelligence and education, since more intelligent people are likely to complete higher levels of education.

But brain stimulation does not have to stop with the diploma. Better-educated people may go on to choose more intellectually demanding occupations and pursue brain-stimulating hobbies, resulting in a form of lifelong learning. In researching her book, Ms. Ramin said she found that novelty was crucial to providing stimulation for the aging brain.

...

Long-term studies in other countries, including Sweden and China, have also found that continued social interactions helped protect against dementia. The more extensive an older person’s social network, the better the brain is likely to work, the research suggests. Especially helpful are productive or mentally stimulating activities pursued with other people, like community gardening, taking classes, volunteering or participating in a play-reading group.

...

Exercise may help by improving blood flow (and hence oxygen and nutrients) to the brain, reducing the risk of ministrokes and clogged blood vessels, and stimulating growth factors that promote the formation of new neurons and neuronal connections.

Gene ID cards

In China

call me a fuddy-duddy, but i don't want one of those. what the hell is the purpose except for facilitating potential abuses of power?

Mind and matter

All maximum performances are actually pseudo-maximum performances

Snap, tell us how you really feel

Fox propoganda

How Fox News covers the NIE — or in this case, doesn’t

Praise Cats - Shined On Me

Subprime

We love the world in so many ways

Besides not respecting the borders and laws of other countries (see post below), we also manage to spread the joy in so many ways: U.S. Credit Crisis Adds to Gloom in Arctic Norway

And these are our allies!!

I guess we rule the world

US says it has right to kidnap British citizens

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.
...
He said that if a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US court could rule that the abduction was illegal and free him: “If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse — it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.”

Mr Justice Ouseley, a second judge, challenged Jones to be “honest about [his] position”.

Jones replied: “That is United States law.”

He cited the case of Humberto Alvarez Machain, a suspect who was abducted by the US government at his medical office in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1990. He was flown by Drug Enforcement Administration agents to Texas for criminal prosecution.

Although there was an extradition treaty in place between America and Mexico at the time — as there currently is between the United States and Britain — the Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that the Mexican had no legal remedy because of his abduction.

Somebody made a nice comment:

Cool, an infinite loop of kidnappings: The US kidnaps someone in England, breaking English law. So the UK should go to the US and kidnap the parties responsible, for prosecution in England. So the US goes to England and kidnaps the English kidnappers for prosecution in the US. So the English go to America and kidnap... ad infinitum.

I suspect that's why extradition treaties were established in the first place.

Jonathan Hendry, Cambridge, Massachusetts

CNN/YouTube GOP Debate

Which one is the cartoon?

Foes Use Obama's Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him

In his speeches and often on the Internet, the part of Sen. Barack Obama's biography that gets the most attention is not his race but his connections to the Muslim world.

Since declaring his candidacy for president in February, Obama, a member of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, has had to address assertions that he is a Muslim or that he had received training in Islam in Indonesia, where he lived from ages 6 to 10. While his father was an atheist and his mother did not practice religion, Obama's stepfather did occasionally attend services at a mosque there.

Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a "Muslim plant" in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.

In campaign appearances, Obama regularly mentions his time living and attending school in Indonesia, and the fact that his paternal grandfather, a Kenyan farmer, was a Muslim. Obama invokes these facts as part of his case that he is prepared to handle foreign policy, despite having been in the Senate for only three years, and that he would literally bring a new face to parts of the world where the United States is not popular.

The republican base

How they reacted to the republican debate

I attended Frank Luntz's dial group of 30 undecided--or sort of undecided--Republicans in St. Petersburg, Florida, last night...and it was a fairly astonishing evening.
...

In the next segment--the debate between Romney and Mike Huckabee over Huckabee's college scholarships for the deserving children of illegal immigrants--I noticed something really distressing: When Huckabee said, "After all, these are children of God," the dials plummeted. And that happened time and again through the evening: Any time any candidate proposed doing anything nice for anyone poor, the dials plummeted (30s). These Republicans were hard.

But there was worse to come: When John McCain started talking about torture--specifically, about waterboarding--the dials plummeted again. Lower even than for the illegal Children of God. Down to the low 20s, which, given the natural averaging of a focus group, is about as low as you can go. Afterwards, Luntz asked the group why they seemed to be in favor of torture. "I don't have any problem pouring water on the face of a man who killed 3000 Americans on 9/11," said John Shevlin, a retired federal law enforcement officer. The group applauded, appallingly.

I just can't relate to these people. Helping people bad, torture good. Oh what a wonderful world.

So who won? Romney walked in with 8 members of the group leaning his way and left with 14. The group thought he looked and sounded like a leader. Fred Thompson went from 3 supporters to 7--and I noticed a clever trick he used: he started almost every answer with a joke and the dials would go up and stay up as he meandered through his nondescript answers.

Giuliani lost. He came in with 12 supporters and left with 6. People thought he came off as too much of a ...New Yorker. McCain had one lonely supporter going in and coming out--but the group was just crazy livid about his stands on immigration and torture.

Mirth Day

The idea of a consumer-led environmental movement has pollution-belching multi-nationals rolling in the aisles — and the joke is on you.

Psychology: Trust Your Gut

According to a new book, most people think too much before they make important decisions

Trouble still ahead

Rising Rates to Worsen Subprime Mess

Kindle

I have been waiting for something like this, the Kindle from Amazon. They say it reads quite easily, as if it were ink on a page. I think after a few iterations it will be a must for me - apparently it isn't that easy to put your own stuff on it. But it does come with free internet access through the mobile phone network. This could potentially be a great technology for 'developing' countries (even better than the 100$ laptops, if you ask me) if they made it more adaptable to different content styles, made notation possible (or easier), and brought the cost down a bit, or course. But something like this - I can't imagine that it stays $399 for long. We'll see good e-readers for $50 soon, I'm hoping.

More details here

Give This Man a Pulitzer

A GQ feature on Josh Marshall from TPM

Interesting to see how they have used technology to take advantage of distributed cognition and knowledge to improve reporting.

Democracy

Georgia Police Turns Sonic Blaster on Demonstrators

Highfalutin journalism

Karl Rove Hired As Newsweek Contributor To ‘Balance’ Markos

Is Musharraf history?

U.S. Is Looking Past Musharraf in Case He Falls

I love fox

Pro-gressives

Its a good idea to start positive branding - and I like the choice of issues. It helps make clear what the loony libruls stand for.

Unravelling the sceptics

What do "climate sceptics" believe?

Climate scepticism: The top 10

Sub-Saharan African

growth rates catching up with rest of world

"Over the past decade, Africa has recorded an average growth rate of 5.4 percent which is at par with the rest of the world," said Obiageli Ezekwesili, World Bank vice-president for Africa.

"The ability to support, sustain and in fact diversify the sources of these growth indicators would be critical not to Africa's capacity to meet (UN poverty targets) but also to becoming an exciting investment destination for global capital."

The continent's overall economic performance was helped in large part by the rise in revenue from oil exporters such as Equatorial Guinea which saw Gross Domestic Product grow by 30.8 percent between 1996 and 2005, while Angola saw a rise of 8.5 percent during the same period.
...
While resource-rich countries were benefitting from a rise in global prices, countries that were not blessed with big reserves were also peforming well.

"Leading the way are the oil and mineral exporters, thanks to high prices," said Page. "But 18 non-mineral economies, with 36 percent of sub-Saharan people, have also been doing well."

Despotism

Happiness and social policy

All They Are Saying Is Give Happiness a Chance

Someday, this will catch on.

Whats the worst that can happen?

ICTs in Africa

Africa, Mostly Offline, Struggles to Get on the Internet

Four years ago, the firm Terracom signed a contract with the Rwandan government to provide 300 schools with internet access. Rwandan officials had planned on equipping schools with the internet as a way to modernize the rural economy. But as of mid-July, only one third of the schools had been connected. That rate is better than that for Africa as a whole, with only 4 percent of the continent connected, most in the very northern and southern regions. A major problem is lack of infrastructure, a result of ongoing conflict destroying communication networks and requiring that lines be routed through England or the US. Officials criticize Terracom for being more interested in tapping into the lucrative cell-phone market. According to Ron Nixon, the dispute is “emblematic of what can happen when good intentions run into the technical, political and business realities of Africa.”

Stiglitz

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush

The Next Steps For Burma

The international community, including ASEAN, must press for a contact group and a truth commission

Western nations have tightened economic sanctions and ASEAN has expressed "revulsion" at Myanmar's repression of non-violent protests. Concrete actions must now follow the outrage. UN efforts to encourage talks on the country's constitution and renew humanitarian poverty relief, while positive, do not go far enough, argues Amitav Acharya, professor of global governance. Such steps alone would fail to achieve the fundamental goal of fostering political openness, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners. He suggests new institutions that could reduce violence as well as overcome the reluctance of Burma's neighbors to pressure the junta: First, a contact group of pertinent and prominent countries should engage in continuous dialogue with the regime, pushing greater freedom for the Burmese people. Second, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission should be organized, offering incentives for military officers in Myanmar to break with the junta and refrain from attacking their own people. The international community holds mechanisms for moving beyond the rhetoric to create a more peaceful and democratic Burma.

Bummer for us

Fulfillment Elusive for Young Altruists In the Crowded Field of Public Interest

Mirror neurons, Altruism, Neuroscience

New proof of 'mirror neurons': explains why we experience the grief and joy of others, and maybe why humans are altruistic.

Ramachandran goes further, explaining that mirror neurons help us understand the evolution of the self, the mysterious narrator that provides continuity in each of our life stories. The self, which Ramachandran calls the Holy Grail of neuroscience, may be an evolutionary innovation adopted not first to give each person a conscious foreman, but as a way to model others. In this theory, the self started as a kind of little program -- fed with data from the mirror system -- for understanding other people, a kind of algorithm for generating a mini-you in me. Once it evolved, this program swung around and began to apply its algorithmic investigations also to its host, the brain in which it resided. Self-consciousness was born.

"It was almost certainly a two-way street," Ramachandran adds, "with self-awareness and other-awareness enriching each other in an auto-catalytic cascade that culminated in the fully human sense of self. You say you are being 'self-conscious' when you really mean being conscious of someone else being conscious of you."

...

Dennett agrees that it is rash to draw profound conclusions about the role of mirror neurons so soon. "Some mirror neuron enthusiasts are saying that these are some kind of magic bullet, a giant leap by evolution that made language and empathy possible. I think that is much too strong."

Ramachandran and Dennett, who are friends, disagree on this point. Ramachandran thinks that mirror neurons will indeed bring about a revolution in the way we see the brain and the way we see ourselves and our relationship to one another. "Mirror neurons will do for psychology what the discovery of DNA did for biology," he wrote several years ago.

The other last resort of scoundrals

Kentucky GOP Pushing Anti-Gay Message In Final Days Of Gov Race

Going into the home stretch in in the Kentucky gubernatorial election, the Republicans appear to have brought out one last card: Paranoia against gays.

The state GOP is now sending a robo-call throughout the state featuring none other than Pat Boone, warning that as a Christian he is concerned that Democratic nominee Steve Beshear, who has been way ahead in the polls, will work for "every homosexual cause."

"Now do you want a governor who'd like Kentucky to be another San Francisco?" Boone asks. "Please re-elect Ernie Fletcher."

With all of the Republican officials being arrested for soliciting gay sex, I wonder if this attack really still works. It must poll well in Kentucky, or I guess they wouldn't do it.

Krugman

Fearing Fear Itself

Sometimes I think that Krugman reads some liberal blogs, takes the logical and good ideas, then turns them into his column. Anyway, its mostly a good thing.

Keepon

If this thing doesn't cheer you up, then nothing can.

A different Department of Education...

this one is hell-bent on making sure that poor kids don't get an education

a computer glitch prevents renewal of a 40-yr old program that gets poor kids into college.

Stephen Colbert campaigns in South Carolina

Relativity

I wonder what focus group this plays well with...

best comment:
"One man's shocking of the genitals is another man's electrolysis?"

and apparently she's Canadian and a bit out of her mind.

How the heck does this girl get on CNN?

ghoulish!!

i just learned how to do this. 19 structural mri scans of myself are averaged, and then the outer surface is rendered. my cheeks look squished because of the padding in the machine.

A good idea

Gun cameras

This is the perfect example of using technology to make the public sector more transparent - and given the one-to-one nature of the public sector performance in this area to the civil servant - direct accountability measures are possible. Me likey this one.

even scarier...

Hell House

Iran the new Hitler

Podhoretz v. Zakaria



This dude is whacked. That is his argument? This should be easy to rebut. Anyone for the war against Iran is the new Bush/Cheney and anyone against it is everyone who was right about the Iraq war.

Too soon?

Or you can just go with the ... the US spends 57 x's more than the nations of Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria combines. Threat? Puuhleease.

Climbing Kilimanjaro

Tom Bissell’s account of his painful and exhausting climb to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro

Select a candidate 2008

select a candidate

Last call

UN issues 'final wake-up call' on population and environment

Time to ditch Kyoto

Climate policy after 2012, when the Kyoto treaty expires, needs a radical rethink. More of the same won't do, argue Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner.

The Kyoto Protocol is a symbolically important expression of governments' concern about climate change. But as an instrument for achieving emissions reductions, it has failed¹. It has produced no demonstrable reductions in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth. And it pays no more than token attention to the needs of societies to adapt to existing climate change. The impending United Nations Climate Change Conference being held in Bali in December — to decide international policy after 2012 — needs to radically rethink climate policy.

Kyoto's supporters often blame non-signatory governments, especially the United States and Australia, for its woes. But the Kyoto Protocol was always the wrong tool for the nature of the job. Kyoto was constructed by quickly borrowing from past treaty regimes dealing with stratospheric ozone depletion, acid rain from sulphur emissions and nuclear weapons. Drawing on these plausible but partial analogies, Kyoto's architects assumed that climate change would be best attacked directly through global emissions controls, treating tonnes of carbon dioxide like stockpiles of nuclear weapons to be reduced via mutually verifiable targets and timetables. Unfortunately, this borrowing simply failed to accommodate the complexity of the climate-change issue.

Kyoto has failed in several ways, not just in its lack of success in slowing global warming, but also because it has stifled discussion of alternative policy approaches that could both combat climate change and adapt to its unavoidable consequences. As Kyoto became a litmus test of political correctness, those who were concerned about climate change, but sceptical of the top-down approach adopted by the protocol were sternly admonished that "Kyoto is the only game in town". We are anxious that the same mistake is not repeated in the current round of negotiations.

...

Climate change is not amenable to an elegant solution because it is not a discrete problem. It is better understood as a symptom of a particular development path and its globally interlaced supply-system of fossil energy. Together they form a complex nexus of mutually reinforcing, intertwined patterns of human behaviour, physical materials and the resulting technology. It is impossible to change such complex systems in desired ways by focusing on just one thing.

Social scientists understand how path-dependent systems arise; but no one has yet determined how to deliberately unlock them. When change does occur it is usually initiated by quite unexpected factors. When single-shot solutions such as Kyoto are attempted, they often produce quite unintended, often negative consequences. The many loopholes that have enabled profiteers to make money from the Clean Development Mechanism, without materially affecting emissions, are examples. Therefore, there can be no silver bullet — in this case the top-down creation of a global carbon market — to bring about the desired end.

They then go on to propose 5 central elements of any future climate change policy.

FRONTLINE

Showdown with iran

Colbert for prez

Comedian Colbert Reaches Double Digits As Third-Party Candidate

Hillary Clinton (D) vs. Rudy Giuliani (R) vs. Stephen Colbert (I)
Hillary Clinton (D)	45%
Rudy Giuliani (R)	35%
Stephen Colbert (I)	13%

Hillary Clinton (D) vs. Fred Thompson (R) vs. Stephen Colbert (I)
Hillary Clinton (D)	46%
Fred Thompson (R)	34%
Stephen Colbert (I)	12%

Just for the heck of it

Burma

More on the Netherlands new drug policies

Holland Clamps Down on Drugs

Fear and facts

Zakaria debunks the current conservative madness... Stalin, Mao And … Ahmadinejad?

At a meeting with reporters last week, President Bush said that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." These were not the barbs of some neoconservative crank or sidelined politician looking for publicity. This was the president of the United States, invoking the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon.

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

Random stuff

Five Easy Ways to Go Organic - Especially important if you are raising a child.

Medical myths: Strange, but true...

and it looks like we might be entering into the global warming positive feedback loops before we thought... 'Carbon sinks' lose ability to soak up emissions. That is bad news.

and finally, 4 out of 5 certified military people think Cheney is whacked. And not in a good way.

Justice

SR.com: Gonzales could be prosecuted, McKay says

The U.S. Inspector General may recommend criminal prosecution of departed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the conclusion of an investigation, possibly as early as next month, the fired former U.S. attorney for Western Washington told a Spokane audience Friday.

Drawing the line on FISA

Meeting Resistance

A movie about the Iraqi resistance - Trailer here

Moving towards a more participatory democracy

10 Questions

I need to write a paper that coins a new term, "collaborative democracy" or "wiki-ocracy" or something.

Stephen Colbert to Run for President

Only in South Carolina and will run as a Republican and a Democrat

Rudy rudy rudy!

Just doing their part to maintain the status quo

Revealed: the man behind court attack on Gore film is a fuel and mining magnate

Bangkok

Frontline

Cheney's law on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 on PBS

The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us

Frank Rich catches on

The Right Brain vs Left Brain test

Go here
I originally saw the dancer spinning clockwise, but I figured out a way to get it to switch directions. Its a bit freaky, because seeing it spin one way it is impossible to imagine it can be seen as spinning the other way... and yet...

Netherlands declares...

Netherlands declares it will outlaw the sale of psychedelic mushrooms

Sanchez

Getting dirty

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 — In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top commander of American forces there called the Bush administration’s handling of the war “incompetent” and said the result was “a nightmare with no end in sight.”

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who retired in 2006 after being replaced in Iraq after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, blamed the Bush administration for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current addition of American forces as a “desperate” move that would not achieve long-term stability.

“After more than four years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,” General Sanchez said at a gathering of military reporters and editors in Arlington, Va.
...
General Sanchez, who is said to be considering writing a book, promised further public statements criticizing officials by name.

Today's entertainment

Krugman

No longer behind the select wall: Sliming Graeme Frost

Gore wins Nobel peace prize

Jointly with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Lynne Cheney went on the Daily Show

and they had a revealing discussion.

I was glad Jon mentioned the anthrax attacks - that has disappeared down the memory hole.

Gonzales Lawyers Up

I love it when lawyers hire lawyers

My favorite take on this is that the Dept. of Justice should just apply 'enhanced interrogation' techniques on him and get right to the bottom of this.

Apparently we are against feeding people

Who knew? There are city ordinances limiting peoples' ability to feed the homeless.

Fortunately, someone indicted on that charge in Orlando was found not guilty

So cute...

Settlers of catan board game online

Settlers of catan board game in flash

JSettlers

Sea3D - this one looks like the best...

On Democracy

Why?

How Bush Thinks (Yes, Thinks)

Well, ok... I meant to write Baboons

Burma

Smuggled out video

the Ascent to a Ph.D.

at least one person i know has finished the climb

That Chris Matthews interview

Here it is...Funny how Chris Matthews calls it the worst interview ever - Jon isn't kissing his *ss so therefore it isn't a good one. But really, Jon is telling it like it is, and playing hardball can hurt.

The party of fiscal responsibility

GOP Is Losing Grip On Core Business Vote

This trend has been going on for a while. It seems an especially advantageous time for the democrats to beat the we are fiscally responsible drum for a while - kick the GOP when they are down.

Self-silencing and other detrimental argumentation techniques

Marital Spats, Taken to Heart

In men, keeping quiet during a fight didn’t have any measurable effect on health. But women who didn’t speak their minds in those fights were four times as likely to die during the 10-year study period as women who always told their husbands how they felt, according to the July report in Psychosomatic Medicine. Whether the woman reported being in a happy marriage or an unhappy marriage didn’t change her risk. The tendency to bottle up feelings during a fight is known as self-silencing. For men, it may simply be a calculated but harmless decision to keep the peace. But when women stay quiet, it takes a surprising physical toll.
...
For women, whether a husband’s arguing style was warm or hostile had the biggest effect on her heart health. Dr. Smith notes that in a fight about money, for instance, one man said, “Did you pass elementary school math?” But another said, “Bless you, you are not so good with the checkbook, but you’re good at other things.” In both exchanges, the husband was criticizing his wife’s money management skills, but the second comment was infused with a level of warmth. In the study, a warm style of arguing by either spouse lowered the wife’s risk of heart disease.

But arguing style affected men and women differently. The level of warmth or hostility had no effect on a man’s heart health. For a man, heart risk increased if disagreements with his wife involved a battle for control. And it didn’t matter whether he or his wife was the one making the controlling comments. An example of a controlling argument style showed up in one video of a man arguing with his wife about money. “You really should just listen to me on this,” he told her.

Chris Matthews on the daily show

Go and watch the interview. Hilarious.

Buy a bracelet

And never fly again

How the hell does this happen?

Woman Dies After Airport Arrest

Officers handcuffed her and took her to the holding room, where she kept screaming, authorities said. Hill said officers checked on her when she stopped screaming and found her unresponsive.

Hill said it appears Gotbaum may have tried to get out of her handcuffs, became tangled in the process and the cuffs ended up around her neck.

Does that sound even remotely physically possible?

Friedman repents

And admits 9/11 made him stupid:

9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.

Although I wish he wouldn't use "us".

New Immigration Test

How would you do?

1. How many amendments does the Constitution have?
2. What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?
3. The House of Representatives has how many voting members?
4. There are four amendments to the Constitution about who can vote. Describe one of them.
5. What are two rights only for United States citizens?
6. The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.
7. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803?
8. Who was President during World War I?
9. Name one U.S. territory.
10. Why does the flag have 13 stripes?

I would have had to study...

Burma

Rangoon: army mutiny reported

this could be huge

Reports from Rangoon suggest soldiers are mutinying. It is unclear the numbers involved. Reports cite heavy shooting in the former Burmese capital.

The organisation Helfen ohne Grenzen (Help without Frontiers) is reporting that "Soldiers from the 66th LID (Light Infantry Divison) have turned their weapons against other government troops and possibly police in North Okkalappa township in Rangoon and are defending the protesters. At present unsure how many soldiers involved."

Soldiers in Mandalay, where unrest has spread to as we reported this morning, are also reported to have refused orders to act against protesters.

Some reports claim that many soldiers remained in their barracks. More recent reports now maintain that soldiers from the 99th LID now being sent there to confront them.

Growing numbers of protestors are gathering in Rangoon, with 10,000 reported at the Traders Hotel and 50,000 at the Thein Gyi market. The police are reported to have turned water cannons against crowds at Sule Pagoda.

Many phone lines into the Burmese state have now been cut, mobile networks have been disabled and the national internet service provider has been taken off-line.

Myanmar

9 Killed in 2nd day of Burma crackdown

How quaint

Judge Rules Key Portion of Patriot Act Unconstitutional

Lieberman's Bomb Iran Bill, Part II

Webb is right on this one. It was a bad play by Clinton and Obama on policy merits, but the safe bet politically.

Myanmar Protests Turn Bloody

Violent Crackdown Launched in Myanmar

Video stuff here.

Police wiki lets you write the law

It's said the powerful write their own laws, but now everyone can.

Due to a new wiki launched by New Zealand police, members of the public can now contribute to the drafting of the new policing act.

The wiki is here.

It will be interesting to see how this goes. I imagine the first round will be a bit chaotic. However, after some experimentation I'm sure the appropriate ground rules can be laid to have effective citizen participation...

War with Iran for Fun and Profit

Burma junta faces monks' challenge

Monks have been protesting in Burma, adding to the rare public defiance seen in recent weeks. The BBC's Andrew Harding has just returned from the country and explains why the monks' involvement will make the military government nervous.

...

What no-one knows yet is how much of a threat the monks now pose to a military government which has held power in Burma since 1962.

Could this be the start of what a United Nations official here, speaking on condition of anonymity, described as "a perfect storm" or will it simply fizzle out in the months ahead?

Burma's military rulers want to avoid confrontation with the clergy

"The monks have the potential to add an exponential factor," said the UN official.

"We are looking at the emergence of trends that could make this impossible for [the generals] to handle. It's got the makings of a major disaster."

"It is an unstable time," agreed the veteran democracy activist U Win Naing.

"Unless the government is willing to compromise... then there could be chaos. So far the government has done nothing to ease the situation. All they do is try to oppress protests... rather than come up with solutions to solve problems for the poor."

Much now depends on how the military handles these protests - how much tact the generals can muster.

"Are we seeing just a blip," asked the UN official, "or will this force the authorities to define a hardline stance?"

Hillary: I will vote against funding this war

Unfrigginbelivable

Charge: Desperate To Curry Favor With Bush, CBS Execs Tried Not To Run Abu Ghraib Story

But yet, totally believable. So much for counting on having a big scoop and ratings. Its better to be in with the administration. Our democracy is really hurting.

Yeah! Lets celebrate our differences!

Calls for a Breakup Grow Ever Louder in Belgium

I feel bad for people like this. Praying on hate and difference is a really lonely activity.

Naomi Wolf: Fascist America

...in 10 easy steps

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

Times have changed

Watch the video: San Diego Mayor supports gay marriage

This guy had a serious epiphany:

In the end, I couldn't look them in the face and tell them that their relationship, their very lives, were any less meaningful than the marriage that I share with my wife, Veronica.

San Diego is a fairly conservative city, too.

I didn't know this

Now you need 60 votes in the Senate

Apparently the Democrats agreed to a new Senate rule that requires bills to gain a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority to move forward. WTF?

So the GOP is filibustering without having to do the filibustering. What is going on? Can anyone explain?

GOP Filibusters

This sh*t drives me crazy. The GOP is filibustering at 3xs the normal rate, and the press reports the bills being "blocked in the Senate". When the Dems were filibustering all you ever friggin heard was "we want an up or down vote" and that the Democrats were filibustering. Now? The word filibuster doesn't even show up. Classic IOKIYAR. So, the question is, why aren't the Democrats screaming for an up or down vote? Seems the obvious tactic.

My answer? The Dems don't really want it to come to that. They are too scared. They want to be seen as opposing the war, but they don't have the guts to really defund the war.

The whole thing is weak.

Dwell Time Amendment

It should be called, the Support the Troops Amendment.

Editorials and Opinion and TimesSelect

No free again. That didn't last too long.

I.B.M. to Offer Office Software Free in Challenge to Microsoft’s Line

I.B.M. Lotus Symphony

Looks like they've teamed up with SUN and Google. This could be a good thing.

TPMtv: A Chat with Juan Cole

Lucid dreaming

Definitely the cats meow

Going the way of the dodo

Could 2008 be the year that Democrats finally admit an old sweetheart is never coming back, and stop pandering to the white male voter?

WOC

The money says the surge isn't working

George Carlin

Endless war

and so it goes...

Poser

Two weeks

until thesis submission date...

and in the meantime:

Small and cheap is beautiful

Low Technologies, High Aims

Lieberman is a nut

Really, he scares me.

IPhone hacked

Finally, you can unlock your iPhone from AT&T's network using easily available online tools, without having to do any work on the hardware, for free (free as in no money, nada, zip).

The iPhone Dev Team has done it -- the crew of far-flung, IRC-addled teens and oldsters who for 74 days have been hacking away at Apple's AT&T-locked phone are now offering a full suite of software and a guide with which to do the deed. This isn't Lincoln's proclamation, but in certain circles it's huge. It's the only software-only iPhone hack that won't cost you a red dime to use, and it changes everything.

Conspiracy theory time - I'm sure that Apple helped this process somehow. They love the fact that it is free - now more people can buy... Oh and look, it happened around the same time they cut the price. Nice.

Costs and benefits

LA Times editorial: Another $100 billion for Iraq?

Iraq is too important to lose, so we've got to keep on trying, no matter the cost, and though it's not clear when we will succeed.

This is the essence of the two-day report to Congress by Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. The general and the ambassador freely admitted that the situation in Iraq is frustrating, that U.S. military might cannot force Iraqis into the political reconciliation that is the only basis for real stability, and that it's impossible to predict when Iraqis will be able to run their country themselves. Nevertheless, they argued, the consequences of U.S. troops departing could be so horrific -- Iraq turning into an Al Qaeda haven plagued by ethnic cleansing and preyed upon by Iran -- that the only prudent course is to keep at least 130,000 soldiers in Iraq at least until July.

President Bush is expected to accept this recommendation in a speech Thursday. Despite Democratic protests, it's unlikely that this toothless Congress will stop him from continuing the de facto occupation of Iraq for the remainder of his term. We fear this is a grave mistake that will compound the colossal error of invading Iraq in the first place -- although we fervently hope that Petraeus, Crocker and the courageous people they lead will somehow manage to prove us wrong.

The president will ask the nation to pay for the next 11 months in Iraq with billions of dollars and hundreds of lives. We think this sacrifice will be in vain, because only Iraqis can heal their national wounds. And so we ask instead: What else could the United States do with a guesstimated $100 billion to reduce the strength and the appeal of Islamist terrorist groups worldwide?

That money may be needed to defend Afghanistan against the resurgent Taliban, or to track Al Qaeda elsewhere. But does our creative country have no better ideas for winning Muslim friends and thwarting terrorists? How about spending $20 billion on anti-poverty and education programs in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan, to give the population a reason to fight the Taliban? Or distributing $20 billion in emergency support to impoverished Iraqi families? Wouldn't $10 billion help repatriate the 2 million Iraqi refugees abroad and resettle the 2 million inside Iraq who have fled sectarian violence? Would $10 billion for child-health programs in Islamic nations help demonstrate that Americans are not, in fact, at war with Muslims? Certainly another $10 billion could pay for more than 55,000 bright students (from anywhere in the world) to spend four years studying Arabic, Islamic thought and counter-terrorism at the University of California. And heck, that would still leave $30 billion to beef up domestic and international law enforcement, intelligence and homeland security.

Is staying the failing course in Iraq truly the only prudent course of action?

SNAFU

For Iraqis, General’s Report Offers Bitter Truth

I've never heard of this guy

Petraeus Report: A Prebuttal

The neurobiology of politics

Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain - Los Angeles Times

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

The results show "there are two cognitive styles -- a liberal style and a conservative style," said UCLA neurologist Dr. Marco Iacoboni, who was not connected to the latest research.

So this gets even more interesting when you consider the plasticity of the brain. I bet there are ways to train someone into either of the two directions. My question is, how can we train the majority of people to be more open-minded and flexible?

Beaker

Krugman

Time to Take a Stand

Here’s what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq — as long as you don’t count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.

Here’s what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it.

There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.

First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the average number of daily attacks.

So how can the military be claiming otherwise? Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not important); according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that “if a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.” So the number of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.

Oh, and by the way: Baghdad is undergoing ethnic cleansing, with Shiite militias driving Sunnis out of much of the city. And guess what? When a Sunni enclave is eliminated and the death toll in that district falls because there’s nobody left to kill, that counts as progress by the Pentagon’s metric.

Second, Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters.

I’ve written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming “tangible progress” in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that “Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt,” that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward” and that “there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” A year later, he declared that “there has been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces.”

But now two more years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi military forces “will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months.”

Third, any plan that depends on the White House recognizing reality is an idle fantasy. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, on Tuesday Mr. Bush told Australia’s deputy prime minister that “we’re kicking ass” in Iraq. Enough said.

Fourth, the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do. Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002; their reward was an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Finally, the public hates this war and wants to see it ended. Voters are exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think Congressional leaders are too liberal, but because they don’t see Congress doing anything to stop the war.

In light of all this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who according to The New York Times are considering a compromise that sets a “goal” for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking. All such a compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans who like to sound moderate — but who always vote with the Bush administration when it matters — political cover.

And six or seven months from now it will be the same thing all over again. Mr. Bush will stage another photo op at Camp Cupcake, the Marine nickname for the giant air base he never left on his recent visit to Iraq. The administration will move the goal posts again, and the military will come up with new ways to cook the books and claim success.

One thing is for sure: like 2004, 2008 will be a “khaki election” in which Republicans insist that a vote for the Democrats is a vote against the troops. The only question is whether they can also, once again, claim that the Democrats are flip-floppers who can’t make up their minds.

The problem with losing credibility

Just 39% Believe Iraq Report Will Honestly Present Petraeus Views; 35% Say It Will Not

It makes long-term policy difficult. Well, unless you have an opposition party with no spine.

APEC The Chaser Prank George W Bush Hotel

Ron Paul on the Web

Red State Update

Snap

Countdown Special Comment: You have no remaining credibility about Iraq, sir.

Olbermann is (rightly) pissed.

OOh the goodness.

Clowns KKKick KKK ass!

Read the whole story. It gave me happy chills.

See, that wasn't so hard

The environmental argument

Protesters turn attention from 4x4s to meat-eating

US activists are turning their fire from four-wheel drives and focusing on meat eating as the greater culprit in global warming.

To get the point across, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Peta, are preparing a Hummer car with a driver wearing a chicken suit and banner proclaiming meat as the main cause of global warming. They plan to park it near a White House-sponsored climate forum in Washington in September.

As proof, they cite a 2006 UN report, which concluded that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars, trucks, planes and ships in the world combined. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation report concluded that the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions – 18 per cent as measured in CO2 equivalent which is greater than that produced by all other forms of transportation.

Another reason not to mass process our animal friends.

Bananas!

Does make me wonder what the design of the pineapple was all about.

The intertubes

Will probably never cease to amaze me.

Top 10

Letterman top ten reasons why Gonzales stepped down.

Visual pollution

Your Ad Here, on My S.U.V.? And You’ll Pay?

Why not?

Overcompensation

GOP Senator Convicted of Lewd Conduct

Man, they just keep confirming my general belief that the more you bark about it, the more you are trying to cover it up. I just hate that these conservative social conservatives try to legislate for their own personal foibles. Join a support group or something, just leave the rest of us out of it.

more details here

Update: of course, this is nothing new:

Krugman

A Socialist Plot

I've been waiting for someone to say make this comparison. People don't think of universal education as a socialist plot - so why health care?

Suppose, for a moment, that the Heritage Foundation were to put out a press release attacking the liberal view that even children whose parents could afford to send them to private school should be entitled to free government-run education.

They’d have a point: many American families with middle-class incomes do send their kids to school at public expense, so taxpayers without school-age children subsidize families that do. And the effect is to displace the private sector: if public schools weren’t available, many families would pay for private schools instead.

So let’s end this un-American system and make education what it should be — a matter of individual responsibility and private enterprise. Oh, and we shouldn’t have any government mandates that force children to get educated, either. As a Republican presidential candidate might say, the future of America’s education system lies in free-market solutions, not socialist models.

O.K., in case you’re wondering, I haven’t lost my mind, I’m drawing an analogy. The real Heritage press release, titled “The Middle-Class Welfare Kid Next Door,” is an attack on proposals to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Such an expansion, says Heritage, will “displace private insurance with government-sponsored health care coverage.”

And Rudy Giuliani’s call for “free-market solutions, not socialist models” was about health care, not education.

But thinking about how we’d react if they said the same things about education helps dispel the fog of obfuscation right-wingers use to obscure the true nature of their position on children’s health.

The truth is that there’s no difference in principle between saying that every American child is entitled to an education and saying that every American child is entitled to adequate health care. It’s just a matter of historical accident that we think of access to free K-12 education as a basic right, but consider having the government pay children’s medical bills “welfare,“ with all the negative connotations that go with that term.

And conservative opposition to giving every child in this country access to health care is, in a fundamental sense, un-American.

Here’s what I mean: The great majority of Americans believe that everyone is entitled to a chance to make the most of his or her life. Even conservatives usually claim to believe that. For example, N. Gregory Mankiw, the former chairman of the Bush Council of Economic Advisers, contrasts the position of liberals, who he says believe in equality of outcomes, with that of conservatives, who he says believe that the goal of policy should be “to give everyone the same shot and not be surprised or concerned when outcomes differ wildly.”

But a child who doesn’t receive adequate health care, like a child who doesn’t receive an adequate education, doesn’t have the same shot — he or she doesn’t have the same chances in life as children who get both these things.

Gonzo is outta here

Gonzales Resigns as Attorney General

I've seen a rumor that Chertoff will be put up as his replacement.

36 Hours in Ottawa

Ottawa: A lovely place to visit

Slide show here.

They say that Ottawaonians are nice people too.

Whistleblowers on Fraud Facing Penalties

This isn't the country I thought I grew up in

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers - all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.

"It was a Wal-Mart for guns," he says. "It was all illegal and everyone knew it."

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn't know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.