The Judgment on Vaccines Is In???

!!! WWW.QUACKWATCH.ORG !!!
About Autism
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Love it, or Leave it.

Better yet, just leave!

Is that Fried Rice I'm smelling?

Say it ain't so, Condi...

Hooray for Shep Smith

I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but it's good to see Fox News has at least one reasonably sane individual on their team.

A glimmer of sanity from the right

From the Weekly Standard, of all places...

There’s only one way to drain this poison, and it isn’t further breast-beating, from the administration or its foes. Bring on the trials, and the punishment.

Saddam's Sons vs. Sheikh's brother

The warmongering right-wingnut chest-pounders could barely keep from beating in their own chests over Uday and Qusay Hussein. We had to kill them because they were evil monsters who tortured their own people.

Funny how silent they are in the face of videotape evidence a brother of one of our oil rich benefactors torturing his own people.

A video tape smuggled out of the United Arab Emirates shows a member of the country's royal family mercilessly torturing a man with whips, electric cattle prods and wooden planks with protruding nails.

A man in a UAE police uniform is seen on the tape tying the victim's arms and legs, and later holding him down as the Sheikh pours salt on the man's wounds and then drives over him with his Mercedes SUV.

In a statement to ABC News, the UAE Ministry of the Interior said it had reviewed the tape and acknowledged the involvement of Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, brother of the country's crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed.

Gav for Guv

It's official.

Clever?

There's all kinds of "clever" accounting tricks being used by banks to declare profitability in the first quarter of '09. There are also all kinds of "clever" accounting tricks going on with Treasury and the Fed to make the system appear more stable.

While all this might be well and good for pacifying the general public, and those not well versed in economics, it can't possibly be fooling those who really matter in this at the end of the day: our Asian creditors.

Does anyone seriously believe we can financially outsmart our Chinese and Japanese benefactors with "clever" accounting tricks?

Reflection, not retribution

Whatever the hell that means.

Hope is ...

... A glass of cool water on a hot day.

Hope is NOT your "president of hope" protecting torturors by word or
deed by issuing morally bankrupt proclamations implying that
circumstances made torture excusable.

The difference is that a drink of cold water on a hot day gives one
hope that it won't be hot forever. But proclaiming you will not go
after torturors gives hope to those who may torture, and deprives hope
of those who seek justice and human dignity.

Obama, whatever his long-term motives, has just flushed his message of
hope down the toilet.

Remember this day: 4/20/09. The day Obama's message of hope died, and
marked the downward turn of the Obama presidency.

Karma for Harman?

For the pro-wiretapping Jane Harman (D-CA), karma comes calling!

Apple goes to war

Who'da thunk it?

Unfunny

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Obama Denies Habeas Corpus
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

HopeOver

Naomi Klein gets it.

For me, the reason for Obama seriously blowing it comes down to this:

Warrant-less wiretapping
States Secrets privilege
Bagram

Add to that his juvenile posturing on the question of legalizing marijuana, and trying to preserve the status quo with the Wall Street.

Raisin of Reason: A fictitious Barlow stirs controversy across the pond

From the BBC:

Angry Coronation Street viewers have complained to Ofcom and ITV after a character made "anti-Christian" remarks during an episode on Easter Sunday.

The broadcast watchdog said it received 23 complaints over Ken Barlow referring to the faith as "superstition" and God as a "supernatural being".

ITV said it received about 100 complaints over the remarks.

It added the soap was set in modern society and "represents views from all sides of the religious spectrum".

In the soap, while the Barlow family were preparing to go to church, Ken - played by William Roache - questioned his son Peter on why he was allowing his grandson, Simon, to be "indoctrinated" by the church.

He then went on to criticise Simon's school for teaching creationism.

Heh.

I SAID NO!

Posted without comment.

Matt Taibbi on the right-wingnuts

Poignant, as always!

But actual rich people can’t ever be the target. It’s a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master’s carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea or the Jews in the Pale or whoever after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields. You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. Whatever the master does, you’re on board. When you get frisky, he sticks a big cross in the middle of your village, and you spend the rest of your life praying to it with big googly eyes. Or he puts out newspapers full of innuendo about this or that faraway group and you immediately salute and rush off to join the hate squad. A good peasant is loyal, simpleminded, and full of misdirected anger. And that’s what we’ve got now, a lot of misdirected anger searching around for a non-target to mis-punish… can’t be mad at AIG, can’t be mad at Citi or Goldman Sachs. The real villains have to be the anti-AIG protesters! After all, those people earned those bonuses! If ever there was a textbook case of peasant thinking, it’s struggling middle-class Americans burned up in defense of taxpayer-funded bonuses to millionaires. It’s really weird stuff. And bound to get weirder, I imagine, as this crisis gets worse and more complicated.

Death and Taxes: A visualization

Excellent visualization by Jess of how tax dollars are spent. (Click to embiggen pic only, or here for nifty widget.)

Texas sucks! Reason #1159

Texas governor claims sovereignty from “oppressive” U.S. government
Posted by Jed Lewison • Apr 14, 2009 at 1:16 PM Pacific

Incumbent Texas Governor Rick Perry, locked in a GOP primary battle with Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, wades into Glenn Beck’s loony bin, saying that the time had come to “draw the line in the sand” against the federal government. “No longer are we going to accept their oppressive hand in the state of Texas,” Perry said.

Here’s video:

I recall a certain Texan accusing me - just a lowly citizen - of being whacko for thinking California (the world's 7th largest economy) should secede from the Union. I wonder what he has to say about his governor.

Kos: Where we get our news

Great roundup of research by Markos on where we get our news. Money quote:

On the other hand, I will be gleeful when the AP goes out of business. I'm actually shocked at how little we depend on those jerks. - Kos

Required dress for Tea Baggers

Profiles in douchebaggery: Crazy about business cards

Someone should clue this clown in to the fact that business cards that don't fit in the Rolodex, usually find their way to fitting in the round file quite quickly and easily.

Renewable Energy Is Here. Now!

Instead of handing out billions to bankers, we could be creating jobs for thousands by creating renewable energy from existing technologies NOW!

If only I were in high school now

I may not be better at math, but I'd probably get better grades!

MS Live Search does algebra!

Raisin of Reason: Storm

Tim Minchin's excellent 9 minute takedown of irrationality (and alternative medicine!):

Animal Farm Friday - Feeding Frenzy Armageddon

If this doesn't look like what Wall Streeters and predatory mortgage lenders have done to the world, I don't know what does:

More stupidity from Texas

Why are so many Texans so f-ing dumb? And racist...

On Tuesday, State Rep. Betty Brown (R) caused a firestorm during House testimony on voter identification legislation when she said that Asian-Americans should change their names

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

because they’re too hard to pronounce:

Obviously, this functionally retarded twat hasn't had to pronounce many Scandinavian names. I wonder how well she does with French names.

Bill-O, the mouse with an erection

Roger Ebert is hilarious!

Bill, I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician?

That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!

The Disillusionist

To say I am disillusioned right now would be an understatement, though a bit accurate. My disillusion spans many levels, but in this post it's focused specifically on one individual.



A certain song comes to mind, as I think the lyrics are somewhat fitting. Here's an abridged set:

The Disillusionist
[...]

Hang around the backstage door
But he knows what you're waiting for
You rub yourself against his fame
Already ready to bear the blame
He asks you Did you like my show?
As if he really wants to know
Then doesn't wait for your reply
He just pulls you back inside
You've started feeling dizzy
It isn't you or is he
Persuade you mentally
Undress you incidentally
Down the swaying corridor
People you feel sorry for
But when he puts the gaze on you
You're amazed at what you'll let him do
He can turn wine into water
Mother against daughter
Juggles busy deadlines
Gets himself in headlines
Surrounded by his minions
Who never have opinions
Performing little tricks for you
Puts it in a fix for you
Smashes your watch with a hammer
Caresses you with camera
And says the magic words
That nobody's ever heard
Now the slur is fading
Reality all-pervading
It only makes you want him more
It only makes you fawn him more
And he does the Indian rope trick
The one that makes you seasick
And he keeps on filling up your cup
But you keep on filling up
And some of it's done with mirrors
And some of it's done with scissors
And some of it's done with cables
And his hands under the table
It doesn't matter you want to believe
It doesn't matter if you have to leave
You won't escape his orbit
And the things that you must forfeit
And the audience seems familiar
Some of them in particular
Bet you they are his plants
When he plays the game of chance
He reads the minds of jilted girls
And the story really unfurls
Cast a fortune for the man in the suit
Who's suffering is very acute
There's a rabbit in his hat
But I thought I smelled a rat

ICRC Report

The International Committee of the Red Cross condemns the leaking of their reporting on detention facilities known as Black Sites. It's fair that they condemn the leak because it could very well undermine their ability to gain unfettered access to prison sites in the future. Because these reports were only made for the purpose of issuance to those running the prisons, and were not for public consumption, this leak could undermine that.

It can be surmised that the individual who leaked the report may well have done so weighing the cost benefit analysis of which was potentially more damaging in the future: ICRC access, or the fact that the ICRC's access is meaningless when torturers can escape accountability.

Take for example that the Obama administration has not merely ignored attempts by citizen groups to hold the Bush administration accountable for torture, the Obama administration has also been very pro-active at defending Bush, Cheney, and their cronies. Never mind that Obama ran on the promise of accountability.

If someone with access to evidence that the US did actively and willingly engage in human rights abuses and torture sees "the leader of the free world" actively and willingly engage in efforts to block investigations of alleged war crimes, that person can hardly be blamed for coming forward with their evidence of crimes.

At this point, a line in the sand has been drawn. Obama has only two options: Choose to accept this evidence and begin DOJ investigations into these allegations of war crimes, or b) Obama can choose to suppress this evidence and refuse to pursue any charges against KNOWN war criminals.

To date, Obama has displayed a propensity in this regard to do the exact opposite of the right thing. But the evidence available in the public domain, indeed via this site, is damning. If Obama chooses "a", he will be at the very list keeping his word.

But I've pretty much lost hope in Obama.

Makes me sad

It seems that there are very few Obama supporters out there who care that Obama is behaving worse than Bush on matters that he and his administration were most despised for. Apart from myself, there are a few at Daily Kos, EFF, Andrew Sullivan, and the inimitable Glenn Greenwald that I count so far. Not many. I'm not sure how many would even bother to read the full story about what Obama is doing and just how wrong all of it really is.

When I wrote a letter to Bill Burton of the Obama campaign last year, explaining how Obama lost my support because of his reversed stance on the warrantless wiretapping issue, it got picked up by Glenn Greenwald, and by the New York Daily News. I got a big spike in traffic but I would rather that Obama would have just kept his word.

Obama pissed off a lot of his supporters other than the likes of me, because he knew that reversing his stance on immunity for telecoms made him look either weak and malleable (perhaps in the pocket of the likes of AT&T, who forked over the cash for the DNC convention), or just a fork-tongued liar. In a weak effort to try to appease some of the angry supporters, Obama issued a statement - perhaps knowingly dishonest even then - that immunity for telecoms didn't shield guilty government officials.

Well, Obama has not only changed his tune on that one, he actually goes one further than Bush. His DOJ is now trying to convince the courts that the government can't even be sued for information relevant to the warrantless wiretapping cases at all.

I guess in this case "change" means being worse than Bush?

I know other Obama supporters don't really care about this, because in their eyes he can do no wrong. He is, as has been said, the Benevolent Tyrant, it seems.

As for me, I'm very, very saddened by this. Saddened because of my own naiveté. Sad for thinking that is was remotely possible for a politician to not be a liar. I put so much effort into Obama's primary campaign because I believed he could be the one politician that could be trusted to do the right thing. Obama promised to bring a new degree of transparency to the White House, but the only transparency we've seen are the drapes pulled back on the front room. But we need light shining on the darkest corners of the White House to expose the evil of the Bush/Cheney regime. Yet, at every opportunity, Obama has done the opposite. Instead of working to hold them accountable, he helps them get away with their misdeeds.

The two most egregious examples of Bush's legacy are the warrantless wiretapping and illegals spying on Americans, and the torture of detainees. Obama is bending over backwards to shield Bush and Cheney and their cronies from accountability.

Obama has totally crossed the line.

Perhaps when the courts of other nations have their own trials, and convict Bush and Cheney of war crimes, then they can turn their attention to Obama for aiding and abetting known war criminals.

As Rachel Maddow says, "the arc of the Universe bends towards justice." Lets hope she's even just a little bit right.

Obama WTF? Embracing warrantless wiretapping

This does it for me.

The Obama administration formally adopted the Bush administration's position that the courts cannot judge the legality of the National Security Agency's (NSA's) warrantless wiretapping program, filing a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA late Friday.

Raisin of Reason: Rational Response Squad

It's a BONANZA today!

These guys (and gal) of the Rational Response Squad are great, and not hard on the eyes either!

Money slogan: "Believe in God? We can fix that."

Raisin of Reason: Stop Lying to Your Children...

Stop lying about Santa, and other ridiculous fairy tales.

Raisin of Reason: The truth about Open-mindedness

Raisin of Reason: Behold the Wheel of Power

What I mean by Republiscum

Calling members of the Republican party "Republiscums" is hardly civil, and is certainly demeaning. But I have a damn good reason for it, and this is why:

Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the Bush era. A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to “go nuclear” over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public.

Republiscums are the bottom-feeders that helmed the ship of State for more than a decade, controlling all three branches of government for at least eight straight years. These scumbags sullied America's reputation around the world, and made a mockery of us to our allies. These repugnant lowlifes advocated and championed the use of torture, that ultimately proved to be useless for anything other than destroying America's collective morality. Now, no longer in power, they continue to strive to avoid any accountability for their crimes, which continues to damage America's image, and her reputation as a nation of laws.

This is what I mean by the term Republiscum. The Republiscums shouldn't just be voted out of office, they should be tried and imprisoned. They are all enemies of the State. For their assault on our Constitution, they should be branded as traitors, and tried for treason, and/or sedition.

When that doesn't work, then it's time for pitchforks and torches, and maybe a little rope.

Don't worry, be happy! Wait, WTF...

Ending the week on [the exact opposite of] a high note, we get the March unemployment numbers. It's official...

...wait for it...

It's a DEPRESSION!

(Told ya so!)

Corn-fed Bumpkins Out-Progressive California

Just joshin'! No slight toward Iowa, but indeed a hat tip of admiration and appreciation!

Long live the Iowa State Supreme Court for having the courage and compassion to change state law to no longer limit marriage between one man, one woman.

I'm almost in tears.

Now if only California could pull its collective head out of its ass and do the same.

The Internationals

Animal Farm Friday: Wall St Pigs at the Trough

Not real animals, obviously, but rather than show video of pigs feeding at a trough, I'd go straight to the actual damning story.

Don't read this!

This article will make you want to pull your hair out!

AIG was a Ponzi scheme plain and simple, yet the Obama Administration still thinks of AIG as a real company that simply took excessive risks. No, to us what the fraud Bernard Madoff is to individual investors, AIG is to the global financial community.

Meanwhile, our tax dollars are going into a giant sink hole that will only make the rich richer, and sink the rest of us into lasting poverty.

Are the CDS Contracts of AIG Really Valid?

As I was saying just last night...

The key point is that neither the public, the Fed nor the Treasury seem to understand is that the CDS contracts written by AIG with these various non-insurers around the world were shams - with no correlation between “fees” paid and the risk assumed.

Read the full article.

Raisin of Reason: Them doing our work for us

This is spectacular! I wish all religious people would make videos like this!!!

Sullivan is confused over who are the Makers and who are the Takers

From a commenter taking Andrew Sullivan to task for saying something stupid which he attempts to "clarify", though not satisfactorily:

"It will be between the makers and the takers, the producers of wealth and the recipients of redistribution."

It's the phrase "producers of wealth" that traps many modern conservatives.  It's the Larry Kudlow view of the world, in which the debt-fueled paper profits of Wall Street were repeatedly lionized as "the greatest story never told."  Bernie Madoff, AIG, and the Saudi royal family are (or were) incredible producers of wealth.  The financial services industry got away with its destructive behavior for so long because it was driving GDP growth.  Clearly there is a difference between producing "wealth" and producing, as you write in your clarification "something of value."  To the extent that wealth production is decoupled from value production, capitalism is failing.  The scam artists that drove Wall Street into the ground are walking away insanely wealthy and largely unscathed, and future scam artists are surely taking note.

With that in mind, I'm curious as to how you propose we restore the association between wealth production and value creation.

Sullivan sees the Makers as the capitalists who make wealth, and the Takers as everyone else. This warped perspective is what has got us where we are today, and is what's fundamentally wrong with Capitalism. The Capitalists would be nowhere without Labor, plain and simple, though they live in the illusion that Labor could not exist without them. Depending on how you look at it, there's a measure of truth to this, but only to the extent of the system set in place in Medieval times. The truth is that the Capitalists, indeed Conservatives, are the real Takers, while it is Labor that are the Makers.

Capitalists might put up capital to allow for Makers to produce goods, but they ultimately take the spoils and benefits, and leave the Makers with pittance and scraps to fight over. This has gone on for centuries, and sadly will continue on as long as Labor, the Makers, allow it.

Be Wary of Ads

Picked this up from Josh at TPM. It's an old ad from Enron, trying to make the case for regulation being bad, and weighing down progress. We've all seen and paid for Enron's warped sense of progress, the same way we're seeing and paying for Wall Street's warped sense of progress. This ad is a great example of why everyone must be suspicious and critical of all the ads the various financial services companies are spending millions of your tax dollars on in an effort to gloss over their bad - and sometimes criminally fraudulent - mistakes.

Obama Depressed, Distant Since 'Battlestar Galactica' Series Finale

I know how he feels

Nerd Candy!

Sorry Josh, but Kindle isn't the real story

Josh at TPM has been on a tear this week as he's gotten sucked into the Kindle via the Kindle iPhone app. His inner and outer dialog is interesting to me since I can relate, but I see this from a different perspective than he. For the record, two things make me willing to abandon my principle of not giving my money to AT&T. (Well, three things if you count that it's impossible to get an iPhone from Apple w/o opening an account with AT&T). The TED Talks app, and the Kindle app for the iPhone. But this post is not about TED. It's not directly about the Kindle, nor the iPhone either. It's about the aggregate of all of them, and so much more.

The first time I saw a Kindle, I was impressed by the ePaper (non-backlit screen, basically). As a designer whose eyes spend more time looking at a computer monitor than they do being closed, I can appreciate looking at an LCD screen that isn't trying to attach itself to my brain via optic nerves. Interestingly though, Kindle achieves the same result, albeit less intrusively. I like looking at that ePaper screen (at least the text), so the text makes it into my brain faster than the text I read on typical PC monitors. Funny thing, that. Sadly though, as Josh points out, ePaper sucks when it comes to cool illustrations and maps and stuff. To me, Kindle is the ultimate paperback. I am sure this is what Jeff Bezos had in mind all along. If a book requires rich illustrations, photography, maps, and what not, then it must be bought in print. If the book is all about the writing and needs no serious imagery for support, like most paperbacks, then it's perfect for the Kindle. From this perspective, the Kindle is refining the publishing industry, perhaps.

Kindle is not the Harbinger of Doom to books, no more than iTunes was the Harbinger of Doom to radio and CDs and records, and no more than DVDs are the Harbinger of Doom to the theater industry. All have been refinements, or extensions to the long tail. Without going into a diatribe of all things media, I'll just settle on saying that the Kindle is just another means for people to access content in a way they find suitable for themselves individually. There will be some suffering to some along the way; just like automobiles put some horses out of work, and robotic assembly lines took some people out of work, neither presaged the end of the world or humankind (at least not any more than any standard doomsayer of the day at any given period). But who is complaining about not having to follow the backend of a horse for an entire day every other week just to buy some bags of flour and other staples, when they can drive a car across an entire state in the same time? Who's complaing that they can't spend an entire evening scanning a VHS tape for that one particular scene in a movie, when they can now just jump within a few frames of it n DVD? Who's complaining that that can't carry all 5,000 EPs in the back of their U-Haul when they can fit all 10,000 songs in their back pocket... and also take calls, watch videos, play fames, and send emails from the same device?

I feel where Josh is coming from, I really do. As a hardcore Steampunk fan, I relish the tactile feel of hand-crafted objects, and machine crafted objects. But, as much as I appreciate handmade wrought iron nails, I'm sure that if I was a carpenter back in the day when those were the only nails available, I'd be highly appreciative of the machine punched variety we have today. I'd be even more appreciative of a pneumatic nail gun! All the while, I'd still drool over the artisan craft of hand-carved dowel pins used in place of nails.

Shit. I feel like I can go down this line of examples for years... I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that while "progress" often means the "end" of something, that "end" isn't always so bad. I like to think of progress as clearing out the least visually appealing apples, leaving something more standardized and generally more acceptable. Once the undesirable apples are cleared out, and we're producing the kind of apples that Joe Public scoops off the shelves, that leaves the "heirloom" apples to those of us who appreciate such things. Refinement. Why waste small, flavorful apples with slightly discolored skin on those who'd rather eat brightly painted cardboard with a waxy coating?

Seriously. Anything produced for mass consumption is arguably going to be SHIT at the end of the day. Once you average anything against the spectrum of humanity, you can only end up with shit. It is mathematically impossible to do otherwise. So let the average wallow in their shit. There will always be antiques and heirlooms for those of us who appreciate and crave such things. The information will not necessarily be lost, but the transmitters and receivers will change.

Just a slip there using apples as a metaphor, but funny how Apple is so adept at creating just as much shiny, pretty, juicy things as they are with creating utter shit.

Now, when's that iPhone Nano coming out?