Greg Palast on the State of the Union

From gregpalast.com:

One Bush Left Behind

Here’s your question, class:

In his State of the Union, the President asked Congress for $300 million for poor kids in the inner city. As there are, officially, 15 million children in America living in poverty, how much is that per child? Correct! $20.

Here’s your second question. The President also demanded that Congress extend his tax cuts. The cost: $4.3 trillion over ten years. The big recipients are millionaires. And the number of millionaires happens, not coincidentally, to equal the number of poor kids, roughly 15 million of them. OK class: what is the cost of the tax cut per millionaire? That’s right, Richie, $287,000 apiece.

Mr. Bush said, “In neighborhoods across our country, there are boys and girls with dreams. And a decent education is their only hope of achieving them.”

So how much educational dreaming will $20 buy?

-George Bush’s alma mater, Phillips Andover Academy, tells us their annual tuition is $37,200. The $20 “Pell Grant for Kids,” as the White House calls it, will buy a poor kid about 35 minutes of this educational dream. So they’ll have to wake up quickly.

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Wow.

Some great plan for America, right? Does Bush not expect anyone to do the math? Maybe he wasn't thinking of all 15 million impoverished children, I'm sure that's just a "whiny liberal guestimate or something."

One more year of Bush is too long.

Untraceable: don't let it fool you (some spoilage)

I saw that movie Untraceable last week.

It was pretty good, it was entertaining and everything, and it' s a pretty awesome idea for a movie. I'd go as far to say that it's one of the most inventive original movies to come out in a while. But I've just got to say that anyone who thinks that anything in that movie could actually happen really needs to come to terms with reality.

There's this quick, totally incidental scene about a politician who supports net neutrality. The first victim in the movie gets placed in this politician's car as a sick joke from the webmaster/murderer. The main character explains the irony to her co-worker who, despite being an FBI agent, has to ask, "Net neutrality, what's that?" And, within about three seconds, the main character spits out this over-simplified, sarcastic, and false remark about net neutrality....unfortunately I can't remember what the remark was, it was so much in passing that I couldn't retain the actual quote, just the meaning.

Long story short:the movie's probably intended to scare people into opposing net neutrality.

The whole reason why there's such great hype around the movie is because "It could really happen!" But there's no way in Hell that it could. See if I'm right, here's what happens:

The FBI hits a major roadblock right off the bat: "The NSA won't let us use their technology to track the website, DANG!" For some strange reason I don't think the National Security Agency would just simply tell the FBI, "Sorry, we can't help you track this guy who's killing people with his website, we're not aloud to violate privacy, blame the craaaaazy liberal Democrats in Congress."

(This has to happen in the movie, obviously, otherwise it'd be a hell of a lot shorter and less interesting and wouldn't make piles of money for people that already have many piles of money.)

The reason why the site is so hard to track is because somehow it uses several different IP addresses from all over the world, eventually settling on Russian IP addresses that are totally out of their jurisdiction. Not once do they contact Russia and ask if they can help. "He's using Russian IP's, it's out of our jurisdiction, let's wait for the next victims to show up and look for clues in the live stream as they die! MAN this is hard!"

Now that I've spoiled much of the basic plot line for you, I think you can see why the events in Untraceable are unrealistic at best. I could go on, but I gotta ask, who reads this blog?

Exactly.

The NOSAVAGE campaign is excersizing free speech, not stifling it

From Huffington Post courtesy of Alternet.org:

Michael Savage's Hate Speech Catches up with Him

At least four major firms have pulled advertising from Michael Savage's nationally syndicated radio show following a campaign highlighting his inflammatory rhetoric.
One other company, Geico insurance, is expected to follow suit. The campaign, launched recently by Brave New Films, generated thousands of calls urging advertisers on the Savage Nation show to sever financial ties to the widely popular (and frequently offensive) talk host.

In less than a week, four agreed to pull their ads from the show, including Union Bank of California (whose representative says they were advertisers on the Savage show by mistake and were glad to be taken off), Intuit, Chattem, ITT Technical Institute.

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I emphasize "pulled advertising" and "highlighting" because I think they're the backbone of the NOSAVAGE campaign, whether they know it or not. NOSAVAGE is calling up the sponsors of Michael Savages show and telling them what he actually says on his show and asks them if they really want to support this guy's program. A handful have already said, "You know what, we don't want to be associated with such a racist motherfucker," and pulled their ads.

THAT'S NOT STIFLING FREE SPEECH, that's expressing it. Savage can be a racist, Brave New Films and their NOSAVAGE campaign can be liberal ask his sponsors if they really want to support him. They're not trying to make it illegal to spout racist and uninformed garbage, they're trying to make it unprofitable. There's nothing hypocritical about it, and I say this because I'm sure there are plenty of people saying just the opposite (or will as soon as they hear about it).

It's not like they're trying to get the government to ban fascist rhetoric from the media. THAT would be stifling free speech. If sponsors don't want to fund a show, no matter what the content, they don't have to. That's business, quite literally. If there's a "major firm" that doesn't mind being associated with Savage, they can sponsor him and he can stay on the air. All the NOSAVAGE campaign is doing is just making sure that the sponsors know it's contents.

So Savage fans, or "supporters of free speech," don't bash Brave New Films for calling attention to what Savage actually says on his show, take it up with the sponsors, they're the ones who pulled the ads. (and it ain't like he's off the air yet)

White separatists protest in Jena, La.

From the AP courtesy of mercurynews.com:

JENA, La.—About 50 white separatists protested the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday Monday in this tiny town, which was thrust into the spotlight months ago by 20,000 demonstrators who claimed prosecutors discriminated against blacks.

Police separated participants in the "pro-majority" rally organized by the Learned, Miss.-based Nationalist Movement from a racially mixed group of about 100 counter-demonstrators outside the LaSalle Parish Courthouse. There was no violence and one arrest, a counter-demonstrator.

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50 racist protesters, twice as many counter-protesters. As horrible as it was to piss on Dr. King's grave like those supremacists did today, it's good to know that for every American racist there's two people who are willing to go out and meet them in the streets to protest their ignorance.

Last month I made a couple of videos about American whites who claim to be the new victims of racism. It's bullshit and we've got to call them on it at every instance possible. We're never going to tackle corporate crimes against humanity if blacks and whites still can't get along after all of this time.

Two From the Baytown Sun

In celebration of my upcoming holiday return to my home town (Highlands), here are two impecibly combined quotes from the Baytown Sun website's front page today:

Civic leader honored for service to Baytown

The distinguished guests – state and local elected officials and leaders of the Baytown community – rose to their feet Tuesday night to salute the 2007 Exxon Mobil Refiner of the Year, and everyone agreed no one was more deserving than Doug Huddle.

[...]

Huddle [...] said Exxon Mobil taught him what it meant to be a volunteer.

and

Nooses get noticed

[...] two nooses were found hanging from scaffolding at the Exxon Mobil refinery.

(My emphasis), with all due respect to Doug Huddle, this was just too funny of a coincidence not to point out, given Baytown's reputation as a generally bigoted city.

It's become a joke in itself to have "sensitivity training" meetings at the workplace. I've overheard sarcastic remarks about such meetings at the power plant I used to work at (and will probably work at again) in Pasadena, TX. A common phrase used is "I'm okay-you're okay PC bullshit." Political correctness has become kind of an offensive term in itself, yet it's clear that some men in the professional realm do need schooling in racial sensitivity, or maybe just an ass-kicking for being racist assholes.

I know for sure that there are plenty of white people in Baytown who just do not care about racism.

"Jena justice is Louisiana justice, which is United States justice"

From the Texas Observer:

Twenty minutes later, the officer calls James and me to her. He and I trade one last look, eyebrows up, and smile at each other. The officer hands me a ticket and tells me I am free to go. Then she grabs James and handcuffs him. “You have a parking ticket you haven’t paid, and there is a warrant for you because of it,” she tells him, and begins to recite his rights.

“No!” I tell her before I can think. “Ma’am, no, you can’t do that. He didn’t do anything. He has a 3-week-old baby in the car.”

“The judge wants to see you,” the cop tells James. “That’s all I know. So you are going to go to jail.”

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I've been thinking and talking about racism lately. I've posted some videos of myself doing so on YouTube. The titles are "White People: you're not victims of racism!" parts 1 and 2. They got immediate responses in their comment sections, and they're still snowballing.

Many white Americans truely believe minorities receive preferential treatment in this country. I can't put into words how backwards that is, it's just not true. Some call affirmative action "reverse racism," they think it only works for non-whites. They seem to think that anything done on behalf of another ethnic group is some kind of blow to their own. They don't see our government for what it is and what's it's been since our country's birth: mostly white. They can't see that white people are still in enormous positions of power.

I don't know how else to convince them, other than to talk about it, that racism is still a problem today and it still affects blacks the most.

Many naysayers remind me that white immigrants were treated poorly when they came to America, but they "worked hard," and "didn't bitch about it," and "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps," and so on. They ignore the fact that white immigrants were accepted nearly instantly compared to how long it took for blacks to gain ANYTHING in America.

Further, there are still Italian and Irish stereotypes, to be sure, but racism against whites just doesn't happen, and if it does, it doesn't come from the government or people with authority. THAT'S the difference, and it's important. It usually comes from uneducated minorities who's only experiences with whites have involved getting screwed over. Can you blame them? And how horrible is it to be called a "cracker" or a "honkey" or "white boy"? It's sure never gotten me into an "I'm a victim!" tizzy, and it never will.

Rudy spells out the hypocrasy, unknowingly

From Eschaton:

Jim Cramer is interviewing Rudy. I don't have the sound on, but the captions are funny. First one.

Giuliani: The US Should Increase Its Coal Supply Through Government Subsidies

About 4 minutes later:

Giuliani: Business And Government Are Separate - And That's Non-Negotiable

atrios.blogspot.com

Rudy inadvertently spelled out the "free trade" fallacy with these two statements.

Where would Wal-Mart or any big corporation be without subsidies? Fewer places. They'll take all the government money they can get, but anything else the government (or the People) try to give them (like regulations and taxes) is "socialist," "unAmerican," the like. I can't think of any better way to describe what is so fucked up with free trade cheerleaders than this contradiction.

All you have to do is listen to them speak for 4 minutes and they'll prove their stupidity on their own.

Want change? Restore democracy

From Alternet:

Consumer-Driven Culture Is Killing Our Democracy
Terrence McNally interviews Robert Reich

TM: I've been saying since the 2004 election that we need a Restore Democracy Trifecta: media reform for a more informed democracy -- stop (and reverse if possible) media consolidation, offer less false balance (i.e., global warming skeptics are equal to global warming scientists) and more statements of fact. Campaign reform -- public financing, free TV time. Election reform -- transparent, accurate, inclusive and verifiable.

If all progressives got together, campaigned for those three things and succeeded to a meaningful extent, only then would they have a realistic chance to get environmental, healthcare, education, civil liberties or whatever legislation passed. Is that basically in sync with what you're saying?

RR: Absolutely. I keep telling progressives who have particular issues they want to advance [that] nothing is going to happen on your issue or any other progressive issue unless you get together with everybody else who wants change and rescue democracy first.

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Every time I ponder the social changes that must be made in my lifetime, I end up at the same conclusion: we need campaign finance reform. Bottom line, no buts about it, it's the only way to get government back on the people's side. Most people would agree, yet they don't seem fired up to do anything about it. I for one will never stop talking about the need for this reform and I'll never stop endorsing independent and good Green Party candidates who take anonymous campaign donations.

A wise man once said you need social change before policy change, and that's how we have to go about it. Everyone who realizes that their representatives are putting corporate interests first needs to stop voting for corporate candidates. More people need to talk about candidates who are going to do good for the people. As Jello Biafra says, don't hate the media BECOME the media, and that's what blogs, vlogs, whatever, have made much easier. But it doesn't stop at the internet. Call your representatives and tell them what you want. Make sure they know that you know they're not really working for you. And tell them why you didn't vote for them, or why you won't vote for them and their party again. Tell them. Email, letter, phone, picket line, anything.

The time for change was yesterday.

Greening the Corporation

From Nader.org:

When business sees environmental management as saving it money, increasing productivity, becoming more competitive and attracting young talent, the prospect of sustainable policies taking root becomes more likely.

Obviously, it was not always viewed this way by corporate bosses who, not long ago, saw our air, water and soil as their toxic sewers.

[...]

No corporation illustrates this broad continuum better than the Atlanta-based Interface Corporation—the country’s largest commercial carpet tile manufacturer. In 1994, founder Ray Anderson started his company on its goal as a “restorative enterprise,” which he described as zero net pollution and 100% recycling by 2020. The company is 45 percent there, he estimates. (http://www.interfaceinc.com/)

[...]

“Sustainability,” Anderson told the New York Times, “pays in customer loyalty, employee spent-hard cash,” plus 336 million dollars in savings since 1995.

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If I'm not mistaken, this Anderson guy speaks in The Corporation, a Mark Achbar documentary about....corporations. Anderson (if I'm right) is a capitalist gone conservationist who is one of the few legitimate corporate voices for sustainability.

I was recently disgusted to see corporately owned NBC parading "Green Week" earlier this month, complete with an all-green peacock logo and public service announcements about conserving energy, "brought to you by WAL-MART." Something is going either incredibly right or incredibly wrong when Wal-Mart is preaching green ideals, and in this case I'm pretty sure something is going incredibly wrong. Greens have been gaining ground for a while, and the boys at the top have seen the progress. They're using the bandwagon for their own wasteful gain, and that just burns my grits.

If Wal-Mart is going to be the new spokesman for energy conservation and green living, they're gonna have to make some changes. Stop building new stores RIGHT NOW, start selling more American made products, and get rid of the Wal-Mart gas stations if you want any kind of credibility in the eyes of true greens. It's not enough to encourage us to buy "this funny looking lightbulb" from Wal-Mart. Sure, I'll buy those kinds of bulbs but I will buy them from whoever I fucking choose.

I'm glad that the whole idea of "going green" is catching on, but I think it might be getting watered down and tainted by corporate interests, we have to be really careful about who might profiteer off of whole-hearted green efforts. If we leave it to Wal-Mart to help save the planet, I get the feeling we might get the opposite of what we want.

The Texas prison system sucks, and it's going to get worse

From the Texas Observer:

Break the Chain

Voters just approved $233 million in bonding authority to build three more prisons without considering how much it will cost to operate them. Building prisons and increasing sentences is like crack cocaine for ambitious politicians. There are nearly 2,000 felonies in the Texas penal code. Between 1997 and 2002, the average amount of time served by prisoners increased 83 percent in part because of harsher sentencing laws.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Increasing parole rates for nonviolent, first-time offenders by only 4 percent would eliminate the need for any new prison beds in the short term, according to the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. The group’s Web site (www.criminaljusticecoalition.org) has a number of commonsense solutions to prison overcrowding, including increased drug treatment and probation reform. For what we spend on each addict in a Texas prison, five could be given drug treatment at nearly the same cost.

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The editorial also notes the poor conditions of the prisons themselves and gives more statistics. It just goes to show that militant, close-minded people who vote for corporate candidates (mostly Republican in this case) are really the ones who squander tax payer money. Anything to lock up minorities for as long as possible, that's what they care about, justice and logic be damned. Some Republican (and Democrat) voters probably don't realize the consequences of building more prisons and increasing sentence terms. They think they're cleaning up the streets but they're really cleaning out the state's pockets, and making the streets and communities worse in the long run.

Why we should pull out now: Peace lies in the Iraqis' hands

Courtesy of Alternet:

The Real Story Behind the Falling Casualty Rate in Iraq
By Brandon Friedman
DailyKos

When someone tells you that the "surge" is working, you must walk them through this chain of events:

On August 7, 2007, near the end of America's bloodiest summer in Iraq, the New York Times reported the following:

Attacks on American-led forces using a lethal type of roadside bomb said to be supplied by Iran reached a new high in July, according to the American military.

[...]

Such bombs [...] are used almost exclusively by Shiite militants.

The "Shiite militants" described by the New York Times were, in fact, members of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

[...]

Then, barely three weeks after the New York Times article ran, 50 Muslim pilgrims were slaughtered in sectarian fighting in Karbala. In response, Muqtada al-Sadr announced that he had

ordered his militia to suspend offensive operations for six months.

[...]

But rather than recognize this for what it was, notable Republicans and other right-wingers immediately began to spin the story as if this was the result of the "surge"[.]

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It's clear the US military presence HAS NO CONTROL over Iraq. They've got no credibility in the region either, never had it. Every government they try to set up fails, I wonder why. The best thing we can do is pull out all combat forces, give our "Green Zone" back to Iraqis, and switch the mission to "lets fix all the shit we blew up and put the Bush mob on trial." What ever government comes to power in Iraq after that, it shouldn't be too hostile towards us (at least in the long run) if we do what I just described.

Of course, the real issue at hand (that the corporate media will not touch with a ten foot pole) is that our government, our bureaucracy, Blackwater, Halliburton, the oil industry, and every leading presidential candidate, has NO PLAN TO LEAVE Iraq in this life time. There's too much money to be made, too many brown people to subjugate and kill It's gonna take a lot more opposition than the trendy, polite, "Bush sucks!" shit we've got right now, it's gonna take mass protests, EVERY DAY, for months or years, to get us out of the new Vietnam.

I think we can do it.

WELCOME to 1984

From Yahoo! News:

RFID Chips in School Uniforms Track Students

How would feel about this: Tracking chips in kids' school clothing so that school officials can know their whereabouts during the school day?

Oh, it's happening. Ten students in a secondary school in the United Kingdom are being tracked through RFID implants in their school uniforms in a pilot program.

[...]

One possible side effect: Uniform sales may pick up as kids try to procure extra non-RFID-tagged clothing. As security expert Bruce Schneier writes on his blog: "So now it's easy to cut class; just ask someone to carry your shirt around the building while you're elsewhere."

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That last statement there from Bruce Schneier says it all. It's not enough to implant the chips in the clothes, it's too easy to trick the computer if you just have your friend carry around your shirt. Eventually, to make the system really work, the chips would have to be implanted into the body. Can you say SCARY? This idea needs to be shot down before it reaches more people, like the general public. In America. Or Oceana, as it might be called by then.

Bush Is Right to Worry If Waterboarding Is Defined as Torture

By Jane Smiley, HuffingtonPost.com via Alternet:

"Jack L. Goldsmith, who served in the Justice Department in 2003 and 2004, wrote in his recent memoir, The Terror Presidency, that the possibility of future prosecution for aggressive actions against terrorism was a constant worry inside the Bush administration." Another expert points out that future prosecutors "... would ask not just who carried it out, but who specifically approved it. Theoretically, it could go all the way up to the president of the United States; that's why he'll never say it's torture."

[...]

One of the enraging things about the Bush administration is the way that they have consistently written their own rules [...] (and in fact, George W. Bush, according to Gail Sheehy, was well known among his friends for changing the rules of a game until he could engineer a win -- and isn't that how they won in 2000?).

[...]

Someone whose car hits another person in a crosswalk might have been too frightened to stick around or might not have even realized he had hit someone, but the law still prosecutes these crimes, because a responsible citizen is expected to conform to the laws no matter what his emotional state. Same with Cheney and Bush.

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This article pretty much says a lot of stuff we already know, but it's good for reiteration. The article has some pictures of a waterboard from Cambodia and a painting by an ex prisoner there showing what waterboarding looks like.

I was listening to NPR this Thursday on my way to the Houston area for a visit and on a program called "Fresh Air" they interviewed one of the main overseers from the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison, who's name I forget. The NPR anchor was excrutiatingly polite (as I suppose they always are) to this asshole who never answered a single question asked him. When asked "Are torture tactics used at Guantanamo Bay?" he said that last year, the Army redefined their definition of torture to fit the definition commonly used in the international community (like Saudi Arabia and Turkey?). He never answered "yes" or "no," he simply went on to talk about all the nice things the prisoners have, like Subway sandwiches and 5 prayer times a day. To top it off, after listing all the "perks" the prisoners get at Guantanamo Bay, the man douchebaggedly concluded that "If that's what the UN sees as torture then..." yada yada yada, the guy was full of shit and though I'm an NPR fan, they should have called him on it.

Crappy Halloween: Haunted House Films Are Really About the Nightmares of Gentrification

From PopPolitics.com courtesy of Alertnet:

Artemio and I always end up having long discussions about horror films and politics, so he called me up after seeing the haunted house film Cold Creek Manor. "It's all about gentrification!" he said. "It's a piece of crap, but still ...

[...]

Rich city folks move out into the country and find themselves up against nasty poor locals and a ghost in another recent vengeful-spirit film, Wendigo. The more I thought about this recurrent motif, the more I realized: the modern haunted house film is fundamentally about gentrification. Again and again we see fictional families move into spaces from which others have been violently displaced, and the new arrivals suffer for that violence even if they themselves have done nothing wrong.

[...]

The spate of slow-moving zombie films that followed in the wake of "Night of the Living Dead" represent a capitalist nightmare of communist revolution: the brain-dead bloodthirsty working class, desiring nothing but our destruction, rises us up to besiege "us" in our comfortable homes, our malls, our military bases.

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This is a really good read, an insanely over-analysis of the underlying messages in monster movies. It's usually a display of classism from the perspective of the elite, where dirty poor peope or "monsters" have good reasons to hate "us" and try to kill "us" but "we're" still the "good guys." I'll never watch a zombie flick in the same light.

[Why Hillary should not be president] Weapons Industry Dumps Republicans, Backs Hillary

From Independent UK courtesty of Alternet:

The U.S. arms industry is backing Hillary Clinton for President and has all but abandoned its traditional allies in the Republican party. Mrs Clinton has also emerged as Wall Street's favourite. Investment bankers have opened their wallets in unprecedented numbers for the New York senator over the past three months

[...]

This week, she said that, if elected president, she would not rule out military strikes to destroy Tehran's nuclear weapons facilities.

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It's clear to me, and hopefully most liberals, that Hillary is not one of us. I still refuse to accept that she's got an automatic win if she's nominated for the candidacy, I think Democrats are way too scared of NOT nominating her. Kucinich may not look like a winner, but put him in the presidential debates with the Rebublican candidate and I guarantee you a landslide. It's not going to happen though. And at this point I wouldn't be satisfied with Obama either, at least not much moreso. I guess now that the defence industry has taken their eyes off him he might not be obligated to cater to them if he gets the presidency, but he probably will anyway.

Obama and Clinton are corporate Democrats who I do not want to be president. How can people like me possibly get Kucinich where he needs to be?

Voodoo Fest grocery list

Who I saw at Voodoo Fest:

FATTER THAN ALBERT!
Earl Greyhound
Vavavoom
GALACTIC (featuring Chali 2na [of Jurassic 5] and Lyrics Born)
Jose Conde y Ola Fresca
Lez Zeppelin
Donald Harrison plus the Congo Nation
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE!!!!

Bones
Rotary Downs
Circa Survive
ZYDEPUNKS!!
Fleur de Tease
BIG SAM'S FUNKY NATION
Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals
(the fake) Smashing Pumpkins

Plain White T's
(Red Jumpsuit Apparatus SUCKS)
Christian Scott
TROMBONE SHORTY & ORLEANS AVE.
The New Orleans Bingo! Show
Paolo Nutini
COMMON!
Wilco

Rumsfeld Flees France, Fearing Arrest

From IPS News courtesy of Alternet.org:

U.S. embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush's "war on terror" for six years.

Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil.

[...]

"Rumsfeld must be feeling how Saddam Hussein felt when U.S. forces were hunting him down," activist Tanguy Richard said. "He may never end up being hanged like his old friend, but he must learn that in the civilized world, war crime doesn't pay."

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BAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Wiretapping at its Worst

By Brian Beutler of Media Consortium, posted on Alternet.org:

In an Oct. 12 letter to Democratic lawmakers, Randal S. Milch, senior vice president and general counsel to Verizon, admitted that, in tens of thousands of instances over the last two years, his company has provided government officials with subscriber information without court orders. According to the letter, that information has included subscriber names and addresses, local and long-distance telephone connection records, and methods and sources of payment.

[...]

He argued [in 1995] that, [...] "It is impractical to identify a particular phone. This is perfectly in line with constitutional protections. After all, the right to privacy guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment is an individual's right to privacy; it is not an inanimate object's right to privacy. Roving wiretaps targeted at particular suspects rather than specific phones should not cause alarm."

Barr's testimony was cited in the House Report on the Comprehensive Antiterrorism Act of 1995 as justification for an expansion of federal wiretapping authority.

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Randal S. Milch is a scumbag. He claimed in 1995 it was okay to wiretap a phone because the Fourth Amendment doesn't guarantee a phone's right to privacy, what kind of lunacy is that? The kind that Congress eats up 24/7, even today.

Jena Six Case Shows Black Teens Get Short End of Stick

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, via Alternet:

Four years before an indifferent, drowsy press and public finally fumed at the news that a prosecutor and judge tossed the book at six black teens in a small Louisiana town for beating up a white teen following a racially charged incident, a Louisiana legislative investigating team sternly warned that the state's juvenile justice system was horribly mangled.

Though alternative sentencing programs are far more cost effective than jailing, they are scarce and under-funded, and Louisiana officials have resisted calls to increase funding and resources to boost these programs.

[...]

Nationally, blacks make up 40 percent of youths tried in adult courts and nearly 60 percent of those sentenced to state prisons.

In Jena, the prosecutor, mostly because of the public furor over the case, reduced charges against two of the youth. But that's an exception. Prosecutors nearly always push for hard time for offenders. This is infuriatingly apparent in Jena. One of the defendants, a star football player, was convicted on a reduced battery charge. Yet, he still could get a 15-year prison sentence.

[...]

The legislators read and watch the same relentless stream of newspaper and television reports of drive-by shootings, drug shootouts, and gang wars, most of them involving young blacks.

[...]

They are convinced that teen violence has spawned a new class of youthful "super predators" and that the juvenile justice system is far too easy on them.

The notion that juveniles are running wild though is a myth.

According to recent FBI crime figures, the rates for murder and assault among teenagers have plummeted since 1993, even among black teens.

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This article effectively destroys any good reason to lock up any of the Jena Six for any extended amount of time. To say that the judge and/or prosecutor needs to "throw the book at them" because youths, especially black ones, are out of control "these days" is competely unfounded by real statistics. It seems like most people who are for throwing the book at them base it simply on their belief that, "If white kids had done the same to a black kid, they'd have been hung by the NAACP and ACLU by now!" which may be true, figuratively, but it doesn't matter because that's not what happened. The small town and random white asshole resentment of the Jena Six is pure racism.

Explosions strike Mexico gas pipelines

From the AP:

VERACRUZ, Mexico - Mexican gas and oil pipelines were attacked in six places before dawn Monday, causing explosions, fires and gas leaks that forced the evacuation of thousands of people.

[...]

Mexico is a major oil producer and exporter, with oil and related taxes accounting for over a third of the federal government's revenue. The United States imported 12.7 million cubic feet of natural gas from Mexico in 2006, about 0.3 percent of total imports that year.

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Why on earth would anyone want to blow up a pipeline in their own country? Well people in the middle east do it because all the oil is destined to leave the country and benefit someone else, with no gain to anyone but the people in government and big business. So basically what people think when their resources are being stolen is, "If we can't have it, no one can!" I think that's what's happened in Mexico, I'm suprised it doesn't happen more often.

As the article says, the US imported 12.7 million cubic feet of natural gas last year alone. Do Mexican workers see the bulk of the profit? I guarantee you they don't. So eventually people decide to screw over the people they think are screwing them over first.