Linkfest - Illusion of Safety

Supreme Court OKs Strip Searches for Any Reason
In yet another example that the definition of Conservative "small government", the Supreme Court ruled that strip searches are ok for any reason. When it comes to making people think that Conservatives are keeping them safe, it seems government can't get big enough or stomp on enough rights. In the latest ruling, the five Conservative judges once again voted as a block ruling that police can perform strip searches for any reason, including minor traffic offenses. In short, if the police are willing to arrest you and haul you into a jail cell, they can do whatever they want. This doesn't mean you are guilty or they even have evidence. They can simply arrest you, strip search you, decide it was a mistake and release you. Your dignity may not remain intact but hey at least your will feel "safe" from whatever new thing they want you to fear. The justification for the decision was based on Tim McVey (Oklahoma City bombing) being arrested for a minor traffic offense and not getting stripped search. Without explaining how, the Conservative ruling failed to explain how a strip search would have led to the discovering of his car bomb. I guess they figured he kept the car jammed up his rear? This is ironic considering the Five will overturn the Health Care act in June on claims it stomps rights to purchase what you want (never mind states requiring car insurance, home insurance, etc.). To sum it up, to the Conservative Court your body has no rights but you do have the right to not buy stuff you don't want but need. Once again Conservative hypocrisy in action.

Wiretapping for Profit
While they claim to the contrary, the telecoms probably make a pretty decent profit listening in on our calls at the government's request. T-Mobile charges law enforcement (aka tax papers) $500 per month per target. Sprint charges $400 per "market area" and "technology" with a $10 per day fee. No idea what those "per" mean. For AT&T its $325 activation fee, $5 per day for data and $10 for audio. Verizon charges $50 fee and $700 per month per target. The fees pile on after that depending on what others things law enforcement want for targets of wiretaps. Listening in is good for business.

Linkfest - GOP At It Again

Lego Serenity
Hit the link to view the Lego creation of the ship Serenity from the movie and the Firefly series. Stuff like this makes you wish Lego would get more into the sci-fi business as this would be awesome to be able to build. (via BrothersBrick)

2004 Election May Have Been Hacked
Court investigations in Ohio's 2004 presidential election (a key swing state then) indicates that the Republican Party may have hacked the election. The story is a key reason why the GOP was so gung ho on moving to paperless voting as most of the companies granted the contracts to provide electronic voting are Republican supported companies. In this case the company is Tennessee based SmarTech that was owned by Michael Connell (who died in an unexplained plane crash) who was a major GOP supporter. The evidence indicates that a redundancy switch to SmarTech kicked in during election day and after the change suddenly Bush experienced a surge in voting support. I suspect like most voting stories, the press will mostly ignore this one and focus on the fake ones the GOP creates to support their laws to prevent people from voting legally.

Links of the Week

PSP 2 Officially Announced (gallery)
Sony has officially announced its next generation hardware and software. The codename of the device is NPG (Next Generation PSP) but PSP2 seems to fit better until the official name is released. The device sports 4 core processor, near PS3 level graphics, two touch screens, two cameras, microphone, speakers, six-axis motion sensing system, GPS, Wi-Fi, and more. It appears to be a touch bigger than the current PSP system but has a lot more power and more potential with Sony envisioning people switching back and forth between saved games on the PSP2 and the PS3. The game will support downloading games from the Playstation Network like the PSP Go does and interestingly it will have a flash drive cartridge support like the Nintendo DS does so retail will be happy. There is no release date or price but I imagine you are looking at around $299 and higher. In additional, Sony announced the Playstation Suite which is an Android application that will allow playing certain Playstation Network titles on Android devices. This is probably what explains the leaked Playstation Phones over the last few months as devices have probably been tested to take full advantage of the PS Suite. Below are various videos from the keynote in Japan.
PSP2 Revealed | Gameplay | Little Deviants

2011 Oscar Nominations
Hit the link for the list of nominated films in the various categories. Few surprises involved with the pack leaders being The King's Speech (12 noms) and The Social Network (8 noms). About the only surprise is Christopher Nolan did not get a Best Director nod for Inception which doesn't really surprise me consider most of the Academy is made up of older (like 55+) members that probably didn't understand most of Inception. That skewed age range is important to keep in mind as it often explains the nomination and winners. The age gap should favor the superior The King's Speech to win Best Film over The Social Network which for reasons I can't fathom is a critical darling. My picks for likely winners for Best Actor are Colin Firth, Best Actress to Natalie Portman, and Toy Story 3 for Best Animated Film. Any other choices would just be random guessing on my part.

Links of the Week

GOP Finally Introduce a Plan
The Party of No has spent the last two years doing whatever they can to prevent Democrats from accomplishing as little as possible. Their game plan was simple - regardless of what it does for the country, block anything and everything. No matter how big or how small, try to create as many obstacles as possible to any success as they know the electorate is too stupid to blame them for being unwilling to work together for a solution on anything of significant. As a result of this rather simple plan, the GOP has spent those two years saying all attempts the fix the economy are bad ideas and refusing to provide their own beyond "tax cuts FTW!"

Hit the link above for more. View the graphs, compiled from non-partisan groups. You don't even need the words to re-enforce that how the GOP want to do business is bad for America.

The End of The Bush Era Is Near

In less then 24 hours, the Bush Administration will cease to exist with large celebrations nationwide. Like many, January 20th at noon can not come soon enough as George W. Bush Jr. failed in every way a President can fail.

His simpleton black and white approach to the world, his infantile view of what a leader is and his constant desire to prove he should be the favorite son of his father nearly destroyed this country.

His decisions seemed to be based on few criteria. Step 1 was to show up his father (Iraq, taxes). If the decision had nothing to do with that then step two was compare it to his simple word view criteria which comes down to rich is good, big business is good, and government is bad. If the decision hit against those criteria he was against it, if it matched them he was all for it. Its why there was NEVER a decision he made that didn't benefit his rich friends or large corporations in some form or fashion. It’s also why Katrina was such a disaster because no decision he could make would match those criteria.

What was worse though was his view of what a leader is. He thinks it’s sticking to your guns and making quick decisive decisions without showing any doubt and taking credit for successes and placing blame elsewhere for the failures. In essence is the middle manager approach to leading of maintaining illusions while depending on others to get the work done. However, most middle managers at least have enough sense to make sure those that get the real work done are competent enough to do it. Bush was so focused on getting yes-men he failed to look deeper, after all doubt isn't a sign of leadership. In the end, his Nixonian belief that anything the President does is right compounded mistake after mistake preventing a reversal of course even after we saw the crash coming.

While Bush's friends try to spin his administration as one history will vindicate, it’s pretty clear that is delusion at best. Economically he was part of two recessions, one that teeters to a depression. Foreign policy he started two wars, on two fronts, without an exit plan or an end. He created the "Axis of Evil" that has lead to North Korea to seek nuclear weapons as a defense when he basically threatened an invasion. In the end he had few friends on the worldwide stage, having made all of them look like fools. Domestically there is 9/11, Katrina, and crumbling infrastructure and a massive debt (despite claim republicans are fiscally responsible). What ever standard you want to use to measure a President, things are worse now then they are when he started.

The man is an epic failure who sadly will walk away with his head held high because he doesn't have the brain power to recognize his own failure and too much pride to admit it even if he did. Introspection just isn't a characteristic of the Bush clan. Here is hoping the Obama years are much better as he tries to repair the damage Bush wrought.

Links of the Day

2008 in Film Video Retrospective - From Dark Horizons is a great collage of many of the films that came out in 2008 including the good, the bad and the ugly. Click the link to get options to download high quality versions of just enjoy the YouTube video below.


2009 Golden Globe Winners - While the process is a farce considering that the "journalists" comprising the voters are a bunch of nobodies with credentials extending to only have written a few articles a year, which by that standard means any blogger under the sun qualifies. However, the Globes are often used by the Oscar voters as a cheat sheet on who to vote for so they don't have to watch the movies themselves to make a decision. As a result the list of winners becomes more important then it should.

Democrats Cave on Burris - To the surprise of probably no one, Harry Reid once again caved to the pressure of potential bad press and made the decision to allow Roland Burris to have his Senate seat despite being the choice of corrupt Rod Blagojevich. One day Reid will grow a pair, but until then we all will pay the price as the Republicans run roughshod all over him.

Top 10 Bush Moments - From the David Letterman, a video of top 10 Bush being stupid moments.


Weekend Box Office - A 14% increase over last year meant a busy weekend in movies considering its January when normally people don't bother going to the movies. Clint Eastwood hit a career high with a $29 million take for Gran Torino (excellent movie). Bride Wars took second with $21.5 million despite horrible reviews from critics. Horror flick The Unborn got third with $21.1 surprising result considering it doesn't have big names fueling it. Marley and Me took a nose dive to fourth and #221.4 million and Benjamin Button (it was alright, nothing special to me) rounds out the top five with $9.5.

Bush on $4 Gas and McCain the Foreigner

Bush: What $4 Gas? - Apparently Bush was surprised that gas could go as high as $4 by summer. I don't know why, gas always goes up for the spring/summer vacation season and since $3 is the new regular price of gas, it can only go higher. His response was the belief that making his tax cuts permanent would fix it. What gas prices have to do with it is beyond me but then Bush isn't particularly bright. Then again he is a gas man and gas companies continue to experience record profits so that might have something to do with it.

McCain A Foreigner? - Apparently John McCain was born in Panama Canal back in 1936 raising doubts that he can run for President. According to the Constitution he has to be natural-born and Panama isn't the US. However, back then the Panama Canal was US owned landed, protected by US troops, paid for by US funds. Generally, much like army bases and embassies, this usually marks the land as a pocket of the US right in the middle of another country. As a result, yes, McCain is a natural born US citizen.

Special Commentary: NIE and Bush

Keith Olbermann did another Countdown Special Comment yesterday, this time about the NIE report and how it contradicts the doomsday statements from Bush about Iraq. For the last few months Bush has been building up to creating a third front on his so-called War on Terror (really War For Haliburton) by invading Iran. He was been following the Iraq playbook from 2002 point for point, all of them various tactics involving fear by using such terms as "World War III" and "nuclear weapons." The tactics are predictable, they are dangerous, and as Olbermann notes, they show either an incompetent President or a "unhinged, irrational chicken little of a President." I vote for both. A full transcript can be found here. Video is below.

White House Illegally Deleted 10 Million Emails

A new report indicates that the White House deleted not 5 million, but 10 million emails beginning with March 2003 to October 2005. This covers such fiascos as the start of the Iraq War, Katrina, and the Plame-Gate. This is all illegal according to the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

Considering the almost of incompetence, deception, and possible illegal action that where taken in that time period I find it really hard to believe it was an accident. Its pretty clear the White House is hiding things.

Click here to read about it.

Olbermann: The Nexus of Politics and Terror

Keith Olbermann updated his timeline of the Bush Administrations use of terrorism and fear to counter bad publicity and bolster its number pre and post election. It may be coincidence but its a very disturbing trend of abuse if true and if false indicates poor investigation and decisions making on those involved on what information is made available to the press and what isn't. Either way it stinks to high hell.

Click here to view the video.

Bush Contradictions Continue

Earlier in the week, in attempt to prevent further investigation into the possible political firing of 8 US DAs Bush declared that that Congress should focus on finding the truth and forcing his people to swear an oath to speak the truth is not the way to do that. The contradiction is to get the truth...don't force people to speak the truth.

Now, the House has passed a bill that gives $124 Billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. Included in the bill is expansion of veterans' healthcare funding, force benchmarks to be met, force removal of troops from Iraq by August 2008 and refocus military efforts on terrorism. Bush declared the law "delays the delivery of vital resources for our troop" while also saying he will veto the bill...therefore delaying the delivery of vital resources to the troops.

I wonder if he even understands the words that come out of his mouth. The funny things is Bush held a press conference on this law, to declare he will veto it, even though the chances of the law passing through the Senate is unlikely. I guess he is hoping that if he does "Presidential" stuff like flub through a few press conferences and make contradictory statements, it will help his approval rating.

Bush: "loyal Bushies" Will Not Testify Under Oath

President Bush held a press conference today to announce that he is unwilling to allow his "loyal Bushies" Karl Rove and Harriet Miers testify under oath or in public due to executive privilege. What he failed to mention is why the politics of firing US Attorneys would fall under this category.

Really though this decision on the President indicates many things. One, it seems he still fails to recognize that Republicans no longer control Congress. That means number of "yes-men" under his control has taken a dramatic nosedive. The legislative branch simply no longer beats to his drum. This failure to recognize this now brings up an issue for the Congress: will they take his shit or fight back. This is an opportunity for the Democrats to show they are not quite the wimps everyone believes them to be.

The second thing this indicates is there are secrets to hide. There is no reason to testify before Congress and not swear under oath unless planning to tell lies and hide information and want to avoid the consequences. There is also no reason to hide this kind of decision making from the public...unless you don't feel the public deserves the truth.

A final reality of the situation is apparently the Bush Administration values loyalty over competence, even worse it values loyalty to Bush over loyalty to America. Its not supposed to be that way. While people "serve at the pleasure of the President", the President is supposed to make sure that service is for the benefit of the American people, not himself. These and many decisions over the last few years just highlights the fact that apparently Bush is all that is important, the American people can simply go to hell.

For all intents and purposes, Bush is not only putting up a middle finger to the Congress but the American electorate as well. Hopefully Congress will take up the challenge thrown down by Bush and fight back. Hopefully the Democrats will learn the lesson of the last 6 years, that non-interference, that simply doing and saying nothing is not the answer.

4th Year Anniversary of Iraqi War

Today Bush "celebrated" the 4th anniversary of the war that was only supposed to last 6 months at most, be paid for Iraqi oil, and have us greeted as liberators. He now asks for patience as a withdrawal would be devastating for the US. Considering quite literally NONE of his predictions have come true, at this point he sounds more like he is seeing his historical legacy going up in smoke and is doing everything he can to hang on to it. Sigh, lets just hope this is the last anniversary of this unnecessary, goal less, poorly planned, executed and violent war.

Walter Reed Scandal = Lots of Resignations

The Walter Reed Scandal continues to cut through the ranks as more generals are forced to resign. Lt. General Kevin Kiley is the most recent as he announced his retirement as Army Surgeon General. This is after Major General George W. Weightman was removed. He was replaced by General Eric Schoomaker who has made it clear he doesn't see what the problem is and was charge of the facility from 2000 to 2004. Oh and the person that had put the now retired Kiley in the position, Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey also has resigned. Major General Gale Pollock will take over the postion temporarily. I have no real idea, but it seems like the entire chain of command for the medical corp of the Army has no resigned at least once.

The President, of course, continues to try to dodge this whole fiasco, basically saying its the Pentagon's problem and doesn't have anything to do with him. The president, being the commander in chief of the army, the great decider, has decided he is responsible for nothing. He, who has used Walter Reed as photo-ops, knows nothing and did nothing. Ah the great leadership that is Bush. George "Support Our Troops" Bush, the great leader...at least until the shit hits the fan and then he is point fingers everywhere. Now if only there was a way to force his resignation...