2008 Elections: Inspiration

Just watch:



These are not Likudnik hawks or AIPAC bots. These are real genuine living breathing Israelis and Jews from different parts of the world who see that Obama represents a genuine hope for peace in the Middle-East. Something all sane people desire. They know that a vote for McCain is a vote for more war, horror, dissension, turmoil, death. They know that Barack (Baruch, in Hebrew, which means Blessed) has the calm demeanor, the rational, cool, collected temperament, the ability to see the goal and work towards it in logical, reasoned, incremental steps.

Remember that when you go into the booth to cast your vote. The fate of your nation, and many other nations, rests in your hands.

Stumble It!

DHS: The Fascist State

Just when you thought it was safe to travel to America comes the story of a hapless Italian tourist jailed without recourse for ten days while his "well-educated, well-connected" (we believe that means rich and powerful, in the common parlance) girlfriend and her family tried to get him out. Caveat: You need to register and login before you can view the story at the link.

Domenico Salerno, the youngest son of a prosperous contractor in Calabria and a recently graduated lawyer who works in his brother’s law firm in Rome, has an American girlfriend whom he visits several times a year.

Apparently, DHS decided that Mr. Salerno, whose command of English is limited, posed some sort of swarthy threat to the nation. They accused him of seeking asylum and dumped his tush in the hoosegow.

You might form some sort of idea about the social background of Mr. Salerno's American girlfriend when you read this comment from her father about the indignities visited upon Signor Salerno:

“We have a lot of government people here and lobbyists and lawyers and very educated, very savvy Washingtonians,” said Jim Cooper, Ms. Cooper’s father, a businessman, describing the reaction in his neighborhood, the Wessynton subdivision of Alexandria. “They were pretty shocked that the government could do this sort of thing, because it doesn’t happen that often, except to people you never hear about, like Haitians and Guatemalans.”

Although swarthiness is not an absolute prerequisite for having your ass dragged off to the caboose. Witness the treatment of Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl of Iceland, who was held by these valiant representatives of our nation. All uncaring about our fragile economy and its dependence on the tourist trade, they had the gall to seize a blond, pink female person and handle her most inappropriately. And now this.

We can't wait for them to arrest an entire planeload of Israelis, or better yet, Lubavitchers, and fling their tuchuses into confinement for "looking like terrorists," or summat. The combined howls of outrage should surely lead to a "reorg," as we call it in the SillyValley, of the DHS, hopefully rousting out the most maleficent and reducing its powers to appropriate, Constitution-respecting levels.

It won't happen unless you do something about it, though. Reps Jane Harman (D-CA) and Bennie Thompson (D-Miss) have just announced that the DHS is planning to spy on Americans within the country and share any information with local law enforcement. Presumably, the DHS, like our Pretzeldunce, believe that the Constitution may be substituted for toilet paper if there is a shortage of the latter.

Write Harman and Thompson and tell them what you think. Hell, write your Rep too.

Stumble It!

Feel Safer Now?

Raw Story tells us that a man carrying a loaded shotgun was arrested in January near the U.S. Capitol, and explosives left in his truck nearby went undetected for three weeks.

The schmuck in question, one Michael Gorbey, 38, of Rapidan, Va., was allegedly trying to manufacture a

"weapon of mass destruction, that is, an explosive device capable of causing multiple deaths or serious bodily injuries to multiple persons, or massive destruction of property," according to the indictment.

[...]

Now U.S. Capitol Police are investigating how their bomb squad missed the bomb.

[...]

Court records show Gorbey is a convicted felon and has been in and out of prison since 1991 for convictions on larceny, domestic violence and illegal gun and drug charges.

So we have to take our shoes off at the airport and stand in line for hours and dump breast milk and carry shampoo in little tiny bottles, and the FBI and DHS are monitoring every fucking email, phone call, and Web click we make, we can't even fart in peace in our houses without the DHS analyzing our poots, but convicted felons and loonies can bring bombs into the capital and DHS doesn't find them for three weeks? HELLO? Why does Michael Chertoff still have a job?

Stumble It!

Constitution: NSA Craps On It

Looks like every organization in every arm of this current Misadministration takes its cue from Chimpy McDunce. If he's going to wipe his butt on the Constitution, they feel obliged to rush to do the same, in an attempt, we suppose, to prove their bona fides.

Today, for example, Raw Story tells us that the NSA is "quietly" expanding their surveillance of U.S. citizens.

"According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records,"

states an article by Siobhan Gorman in the Wall Street Journal. Note: You need to register to read the article.

The article goes on to say:

"The NSA receives this so-called 'transactional' data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA's own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge's approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected."

Note: Our emphasis, Ed. Since no one is monitoring the NSA's scrutiny of your information, we have no idea how they determine that a "link to al Qaeda" should be "suspected." Is it like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? If your roommate in college had a penpal who married a cousin of a German of Turkish origin whose grandfather came from the same village as a woman who is married to a man whose cousin-in-law is a member, are you automatically a suspect?

Bearing in mind that the U.S. Government currently has imprisoned some one per cent of its own citizens, and the privatization of prisons has proceeded apace, making the imprisoning of people a lucrative industry, do you really trust that your government is able and willing to search for terrorists without infringing on your Constitutional rights? After all, they're scrutinizing every damn thing you do, including your credit card transactions.

Is there anyone so virtuous among us that they can cast the first stone at transgressors and offenders and say to the spies, examine everything I've ever done, you won't find a trace of something even slightly illegal? And even if you are, you paragon of virtue, do you want your government going through all your private stuff? Your health records? Your email to you girlfriend or mistress? Your private slutty chats with guyfriends or girlfriends about the hot sex you had with that borderline perv you once knew? Are you sure that among the people you dated, or your friends or colleagues or neighbours there is absolutely no one who might have a criminal record? Whose conversations with you could be misconstrued?

"The NSA's enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light," she continues. "They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world's main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements."

[...]

If a person suspected of terrorist connections is believed to be in a U.S. city -- for instance, Detroit, a community with a high concentration of Muslim Americans -- the government's spy systems may be directed to collect and analyze all electronic communications into and out of the city.

[...]

Two current officials also said the NSA's current combination of programs now largely mirrors the former TIA project. But the NSA offers less privacy protection. TIA developers researched ways to limit the use of the system for broad searches of individuals' data, such as requiring intelligence officers to get leads from other sources first. The NSA effort lacks those controls, as well as controls that it developed in the 1990s for an earlier data-sweeping attempt.

[...]

NSA gets access to the flow of data from telecommunications switches through the FBI, according to current and former officials. It also has a partnership with FBI's Digital Collection system, providing access to Internet providers and other companies. The existence of a shadow hub to copy information about AT&T Corp. telecommunications in San Francisco is alleged in a lawsuit against AT&T filed by the civil-liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, based on documents provided by a former AT&T official. In that lawsuit, a former technology adviser to the Federal Communications Commission says in a sworn declaration that there could be 15 to 20 such operations around the country.

The budget for the NSA's data-sifting effort is classified, but one official estimated it surpasses $1 billion. The FBI is requesting to nearly double the budget for the Digital Collection System in 2009, compared with last year, requesting $42 million. "Not only do demands for information continue to increase, but also the requirement to facilitate information sharing does," says a budget justification document, noting an "expansion of electronic surveillance activity in frequency, sophistication, and linguistic needs."

So we're paying over one billion dollars to scrutinize every Web site visit, telephone conversation, and email of Americans within the United States, and the FBI wants that budget doubled.

Wouldn't it be cheaper and more effective &mdash and less intrusive &mdash to monitor email, conversations, and Web sites to and from countries with known terrorist presences? And leave internal monitoring to that supervised by courts tasked with protecting the civil liberties of Americans? And we're not referring to the FISA courts, which have rubberstamped every request by the government for permission to spy on anybody. We're referring to some real goddamned respect for the Constitution.

Either it is our founding document and we obey it faithfully, or it's just a "goddamned piece of paper," per Chimpy McDunce, and we throw it away and start all over again. Which will it be, peoples?

Stumble It!

Politics: Your Tax Dollars At Work

Do you suffer from chronically low blood pressure? Feel dizzy when you stand up or get out of bed too quickly?

Now, there's a cure that doesn't require trips to the (unaffordable) doctor, expensive (unaffordable) medication, or even a (unaffordable) health care plan! Yes, even as the economy, national and personal, swirls around the toilet bowl of the Bush years, you can safely raise your blood pressure while planning &mdash and possibly even ensuring &mdash that tropical vacation you've always longed for! A paradise of fully taxpayer-funded health care and regular meals with plenty of privacy awaits you at Guantanamo Bay!

What, you ask, does this selling of snake oil on our part entail? Simple. Your taxpayer dollars are making it possible for the spy agencies of America to spend lots and lots of time on &mdash MySpace, YouTube, and the blogosphere.
Nice job, huh? Spend the whole day surfing the net, get health care, benes, a pension &mdash all at the expense of the very same people you're (probably) spying on. Let's face it, al Qaeda or some other loony terrorists might smuggle an occasional video clip on to YouTube, or put up a blog or set up a MySpace page, but quite honestly? We think they're way too busy schlepping explosives about, drawing up plans for the next site or person to bomb, putting their recruits through their paces, et cetera ad infinitum ad nauseam.

Mind you, the spy agencies are the same schmucks who want to set up a vast biometrics database that will cost $1 billion in taxpayer dollars (which if each of us got some of that sweet cash, we could afford, oh, maybe a half-caf decaf soy latte)?

"Bigger. Faster. Better. That's the bottom line," said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.

We just hope this putz is not in any way related to the vast horde of other bushes who have been stealing the American public blind lo these forty years or so.

In the world's first large-scale, scientific study on how well face recognition works in a crowd, the German government this year found that the technology, while promising, was not yet effective enough to allow its use by police. The study was conducted from October 2006 through January at a train station in Mainz, Germany, which draws 23,000 passengers daily. The study found that the technology was able to match travelers' faces against a database of volunteers more than 60 percent of the time during the day, when the lighting was best. But the rate fell to 10 to 20 percent at night.

Nice to know, eh?

Mind you, these are the same dumb schmucks whose failure to cooperate with each other jeopardizes the very taxpayer whose pockets they're vacuuming.

Finally, here's a look at the FBI's IT system. It is to larf.

Stumble It!

Politics: Sibel Edmonds

A.Q. Khan, renegade Pakistani nuclear scientist considered a hero in Pakistan

Seen anything about Sibel Edmonds' testimony in the paper lately? I recall reading something about a week ago, but it's been pushed off the front page by the much more thrilling business of an intoxicated Britney Spears losing her mind or her kids or her underwear.

The Times of London has an interesting article today on Edmonds' testimony. Sibels worked for the FBI as a Turkish language translator, and, as part of her job, listened in to hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office. An excerpt from her testimony as described in the article states, in part:

... foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.

However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

If true, this is simply scandalous. Pakistan is known to be a hub of nuclear weapons information. Its top nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, has been proved to have sold nuclear weapons technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea. Although he is supposedly under house arrest, no attempt has been made by Pakistani authorities to punish the man.

Despite the expenditure of billions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers, American officials have never been permitted to question Dr. Khan. They are not even permitted to ask him questions directly. All questions must be submitted to the Pakistani intelligence authorities, the notorious ISI. The ISI presumably submits the written questions to Dr. Khan and delivers his replies to the U.S. intelligence officials.

Seems like a poor return on our investment. How do we even know that Dr. Khan is responsible for the answers?

Edmonds told the Times that Turki officials acted as a conduit for ISI to deflect suspicion from the Pakistanis.

Intercepted communications showed Ahmad (General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief) and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attachés in the Turkish embassy.

Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.

The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist.

Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While running Pakistan’s nuclear programme, he became a millionaire by selling atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a network of companies in America and Britain to obtain components for a nuclear programme.

Edmonds also informed the Times that one of her fellow translators at the FBI was the daughter of a Pakistani embassy official who worked for Ahmad. The translator was given top secret clearance despite protests from FBI investigators.

Feel safer now, America? While Bush's boys in Afghanistan and Iraq were rounding up innocent civilians and incarcerating them for years in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, where they were tortured, his people in the State department were employing ISI moles at the behest of their Pakistani bribers. State was smuggling known terrorists out of the country as a favour to the Pakistani government, lest they "spill the beans."

While we were using napalm and white phosphorus against civilians in Fallujah, the real terrorists were eating our lunch right here at home. Jeezus, this is repulsive.

Is there a single reason left to keep impeachment of Dick and boy george "off the table"?

Nancy? Harry? Are you slimy gutless worms out there?

Go read the whole article for yourself. Try not to vomit.

All this time, we've been chasing illusory monsters in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Meanwhile, a total of $10 billion dollars of taxpayer money has been paid to the Pakistani government, which is sending money to terrorists and permitting Saudi Arabia to run madrassahs in Pakistan that espouse an anti-U.S. position. What are we doing to combat this? We're giving $22 million to - get this - Pervez Musharraf to "promote democracy."

Pervez Musharraf. A military man who led a coup against the civilian government and refuses to resign either his military or his civilian position. Who routinely jails opponents and suppresses dissent by the simple expedient of having dissenters killed. Who is undoubtedly largely responsible for the murder of Benazir Bhutto and several hundred of her followers.

We wonder what the size of his Swiss bank account is.

Meanwhile Preznitwit Stupie McMidas has announced plans to involve the U.S. military in the border areas of Pakistan. To which the Pakistani army and foreign ministry have replied unequivocally that Stupie and his minions are decidedly unwelcome in Pakistan. And it cost us only $10 billion to buy that endearing response. For $10 billion, we deserve better, George. How about a rebuilt bridge in Minnesota, or a repaired levee in Truckee, or a lawsuit against your brother's flawed pumps in New Orleans, for which the beleaguered city is still paying? How about fixing one single fucking thing at home?

And Hillary Clinton, who ought to know better, rushed in to stick her foot in her mouth with some yammer about a joint U.S.-UK team to oversee the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. The Pakistani military spokesman put paid to that idea in no uncertain terms:

"We do not require anybody's assistance. We are fully capable of doing it on our own," said [Major General Waheed Arshad].

Good work, Hill.

In essence, Pakistan is a failing, if not failed, state. If we had paid attention to the true perpetrators of the incidents of September 11th, we would not be in this position now. But no. We had to elect the biggest idiot on the planet, a fool who will go down in history as a total failure in foreign policy.

He really does have the reverse Midas touch, doesn't he? Everything he touches turns to shit.

Stumble It!

Human Rights: Jailing Foreign Tourists

Gee, you think maybe the people in the Department of Homeland Security are just confused between terrorists and tourists, thanks to the Chimp with the Bad Texas Accent?

MSNBC reports that the Government of Iceland has asked the U.S. Ambassador to explain why one of its citizens who flew to New York for a shopping spree was arrested, held incommunicado for two days in a New Jersey jail cell in shackles, denied food, drink, or access to her telephone, and finally deported, still in shackles.

The woman, Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl, had apparently overstayed a visa by some weeks over a decade ago.

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir told U.S. Ambassador Carol van Voorst that the treatment of Lillendahl was unacceptable.

"In a case such as this, there can be no reason to use shackles" Gisladottir said. "If a government makes a mistake, I think it is reasonable for it to apologize, like anyone else."

This is simply ludicrous. Ms. Lillendahl comes from one of the most ethnically homogenous nations in the world, a wealthy nation that has often allied itself with U.S. policy. Iceland is hardly likely to host terrorists, and was a member of the so-called "coalition of the willing" until fairly recently. Holding a citizen of a friendly nation in shackles in jail for two days, with no access to their embassy is simply unconscionable. If they had reason to deny her entrance, they could have escorted her to the transit lounge and notified her embassy to schedule the next immediate flight back. There was absolutely no need to treat her with such disrespect.

In view of our falling currency making this country a shopping stop for all and sundry, which might help prop up the tottering economy, this might be a good time to call Chertoff on the carpet and find out just why his employees are engaging in such reprehensible behaviour. Before firing him, of course.

Stumble It!

Civil Rights: Big Brother Is Watching You

Jack Cafferty sometimes annoys me no end. And then, at other times, he just wham! hits the issue of the day right on the button.

Today is an "on-the-button" day, don't you think? Check it out: Jack Cafferty wants to know if you trust government to guard the people's privacy. Well, don't you?

What's this all about, you ask? Well, see, about a month ago, one Donald Kerr, Principal Deputy Directory of National Intelligence, told us that the Fourth Amendment was deader than a pirate's wooden leg, and we, the people, need "a new definition of privacy."

"We need to move beyond the construct that equates anonymity with privacy and focus more on how we can protect essential privacy in this interconnected environment.... I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that up doesn't empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere."

According to Kerr, privacy should mean only that government and business are safeguarding people's sensitive information, rather than relying on anonymity.

You trust government and business to protect your privacy, don't you? After all, what you're really looking for - what you need - is privacy from other ordinary citizens like yourself. You don't need privacy from the government, or from big business. You can trust them.

Why does this remind me of those infamous words, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you"? The same government and big business buttwads who routinely lose our records in various ways now want us to trust them to maintain our privacy and ensure that we are not subject to the kind of identity theft that would empty our bank accounts and steal our house and home from right under us.

I don't think so.

Stumble It!

Iraq: We're Winning, Right?

Right? Hello? Anybody out there?

Hmmm. About two months ago, in early September, General David "God" Petraeus testified before Congress that we were winning most winningly in Iraq. Everything, according to the general, was going just peachy-keen in The Land Of The Brown People. A week later, the WaPoo reports, the U.S. military commanders in Iraq put out "Help Wanted" ads, seeking private contractors to take the place of soldiers in combat-supply warehouses on U.S. bases throughout Iraq, the soldiers in question being required to do other, more urgent, soldierly tasks, like patrols and combat and stuff.

"With the increased insurgent activity, unit supply personnel must continue to pull force protection along with convoy escort and patrol duties," according to a statement of work that accompanied the Sept. 7 request for bidders from Multi-National Force-Iraq.

[...]

Some locations may end up being "completely manned by contract personnel," the statement says.

The contract workers will be given room and board, but medical care will only be provided for emergency medical and dental needs, danger to life, limb, and eyesight, broken bones or teeth, and life-saving drugs like insulin. Everything else is just not going to be provided.

Sounds like pretty rough conditions for a "winning" team.

Meanwhile, Bootsie Ferragamo, our doughty Secretary of Shoe-Shopping, plans to order up to 50 diplomats to Iraq next year. Apparently, they're a tad short of diplomatic personnel there. One can't help but wonder what happened to the others, you know, the ones who, er, used to be there? Incidentally, the WaPoo assures us that this is the first such large-scale forced assignment since the Vietnam War.

For some reason hitherto incomprehensible to me, Bootsie actually expects people to volunteer. And if they don't, or not enough of them do, she's bloody well ordering them to schlep their diplomatic asses over to the Baghdad embassy next summer.

In case you weren't up to speed on the issue, this is the same Embassy building that Reuters has claimed is "indefinitely delayed" while its Kuwaiti contractor fixes a punch list of problems, the State Department said on Tuesday. So far the cost overrun is around $150 million, and U.S. lawmakers say the building is marked by shoddy work by the contractor and poor oversight by the State Department. McClatchy's Washington Bureau has reported that the fire-safety systems don't work, the electrical system has melted down, due to the counterfeit wiring used by the contractor, and there are a slew of other problems with appliances and water mains.

Victims of the forced draft of diplomats will include "people who have not had a recent hardship tour," according to Bootsie's second in command.

Bootsie has ordered that positions in Iraq be filled before any other openings at the State Department headquarters in Washington or abroad are available. Victims have 10 days to file a written notice of objection. The review panel will consider the objections, but absent a serious, documented medical condition, the department will either send you there or fire your ass, boys and girls.

The union representing U.S. diplomats has officially objected to the Iraq call-up, referring to it as "a death trap." Well, the soldiers don't get to complain, so why the hell should you. Why not kill our few remaining foreign service officers who have any understanding of Islamic culture or speak the language? Then we can revel in our splendid isolation!

Steve Kashkett, vice president of the American Foreign Service Association, says: "Directed assignments, we fear, can be detrimental to the individual, to the post, and to the Foreign Service as a whole."

Kashkett said the association had contended in meetings with Rice and Thomas that a diplomatic draft is unnecessary and that "thousands" of diplomats have volunteered for Iraq over the past five years. "We're not weenies, we're not cowards, we're not cookie pushers in Europe," he said. "This has never been necessary in a generation."

[...]

At congressional hearings last summer, Kashkett testified that medical and psychiatric symptoms have become a growing problem for personnel serving in high-danger zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yeah, nothing like having mentally and psychiatrically damaged individuals serving in the diplomatic corps to enhance your standing. Wheeee!

Over at First Draft, Holden consoles the soon-to-be-drafted diplomats about Condi's care for their earthly remains, in the unlikely event of anything, uh, untoward, shall we say?

Are you a career State Department employee hesitant to volunteer for service in Iraq or Afghanistan? Well, if your worst fears are realized and you are killed at one of those posts Condi has already arranged for your death to be ignored.

If terrorists attack the U.S. embassy in Iraq and injure or kill American diplomats serving there, the State Department does not have to investigate the incident as it would if it occurred anywhere else in the world, thanks to a tweak to federal law.

Two years ago, the State Department quietly requested -- and received -- a legal provision exempting the secretary of state from a requirement she order rigorous after-action investigations into incidents against embassies or personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the congressman who sponsored the bill. The reason, the lawmaker told ABC News at the time, was that Rice was reluctant to send investigators into harm's way.

Go read it, fellas. Pretty educational.

Stumble It!

National Security: Airport Workers Use Fake ID

Raw story reports that over 100 people with fake ID received security clearance to work at Chicago's O'Hare airport. The workers appear to be employees of a contractor, highlighting once again why privatizing the nation's security is a BAD idea.

The Republican leadership and the Misadministration have sought, over the past seven years, to privatize any function that can be privatized, and even some that cannot, pouring billions of taxpayer dollars from the public treasury directly into the pockets of scammers, cheats, and thieves. Like Neil Bush, for example, whose Ignite "educational" software is designed to teach "hunter/warriors," especially those requiring special education, how to use rhymes instead of learning math.

In their push for privatization, the Powers That (Used To) Be have deliberately obfuscated the fact that private businesses operate for the profit of their investors and shareholders. Public servants have a duty to the people. This crucial fact leads to private services being inferior when it comes to providing for the health, security, and well-being of the people. Their duty is not to the people. Their duty is to a subset of the people known as stockholders and stakeholders. The article states, in part:

... 110 employees of one contractor on site used social security numbers which either did not exist or belonged to other people, some of whom were dead, according to a criminal complaint.

One undocumented worker looking for work at the airport, who was actually a government informer, was told to look through a box with about 20 airport security badges and "pick one with a picture that most closely resembled his own likeness" the complaint said.

Lovely. Doesn't that make you feel a lot better? Safer? More secure?

How in the name of all that's holy did the Republicans get elected on a platform of keeping the nation safe? All they've done for the past seven years is loot the treasury, give their incompetent friends jobs with big titles and lots of money, divert needed monies to scams which enrich a few select people while leaving most of us worse off, and engage in corruption that endangers the whole nation.

The only good news in the article is that Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, is in charge of prosecuting the case. He has a reputation for honesty, fairness, devotion to the truth and damn the consequences, and a legendary tenacity. These creeps will not get away with their acts.


Note: Twenty-three of the arrestees were undocumented persons in the country illegally.

Stumble It!

Health: MRSA and Multi-Drug-Resistant Acinetobacter

There might be some confusion, even among eminent worthies of a nonmedical stripe, about MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) and Multi-Drug-Resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (MDRAb). The charming bug shown above is MDRAb. This bug is MRSA.


Both bugs were, heretofore, common in the human environment, living quite happily among us. However, both, having recently encountered antibiotics, have developed strains which are resistant to one or more types of antibiotics. There, the similarity ends.

Acinetobacter baumannii started showing up shortly after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, primarily in hospitals. Walter Reed of recent ill-fame showed an explosion of cases after 2002, including a strain of the bacteria that became "flesh-eating," according to Science News.

Faux News reports that St. Joseph's Mercy Health Center in Hot Springs, Arkansas, has closed its ICU due to an outbreak of acinetobacter. ABC News, which reported the same incident, titled it "Drug-Resistant Staph Hits ... ," although they correctly identify the cause of the shutdown as Acinetobacter baumannii.

Says Science News:

Some strains of the bug resist nearly all antibacterial drugs, forcing physicians to rely on colistin, an antibiotic that fell out of favor in the 1970s after reports that it caused kidney damage. "We're resurrecting colistin from antiquity," says physician Michael Zapor of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. But he adds that "it's only a matter of time before we lose [it], too."

Well, that's an endearing choice. Would you prefer to die, or live without kidneys? Can't say the options are good either way.

Both MRSA and MDRAb are nothing to sneeze at. As we blogged recently, MRSA cases are exploding, and there is a hospital variant as well as a community variant.

Nevada state health official Dr. Steven Althoff had this to say about MRSA:

“I've seen probably at least a fivefold increase in cases over the last year,” Althoff said. “It is super important to stress that while there is a lot of hype about this, staph has been a plague for thousands of years. This is just a special flavor of it that has drug resistance.”

Dr. F. Kevin Murphy, a Reno infectious disease specialist, said MRSA has become a “greater and greater problem.” He said he had no cases six years ago.

“Now I probably get calls from physicians on how to diagnose or manage MRSA infections once a week,” he said. “I get called to the emergency room probably once a month.”

The Associated Press tells us:

About 1.7 million Americans each year develop infections from various germs while hospitalized and almost 100,000 of them die, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

MRSA accounts for only about 10 percent of these infections. Other worrisome bugs include C-difficile (an intestinal infection), vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (linked with intestinal, skin and blood infections), and drug-resistant Acinetobacter (which can cause pneumonia, skin and blood infections); none of them accounts for more than 10 percent of hospital infections.

I'm sure that's no consolation to people who catch any of these bugs. But my original point is, how is having an inept Homeland Security department and TSA goons who routinely manhandle us making us safer? We ought to be looking at the rising number of antibiotic-resistant germs plaguing us, and the rapid mutation of various types of bugs.

Over at Mike the Mad Biologist's, Mike and commentators discuss the possibilities. Especially in light of the fact that large numbers of pigs slaughtered in Holland appear to have MRSA up their noses. Ugh!

Stumble It!

Politics: Feeling Safer Yet?

Looks more like a vulture than an eagle

Hey, maybe it's just us over here in Casa de Los Gatos, but wouldn't you expect the Department of Homeland Security to hire people who, like, had enough in the old noggin to check that people's faces matched their passport pictures? You know, instead of needing some senior official from the TSA (the same TSA that is continually harrassing nursing mothers and damaging people's computers) to tell them what to look for? This story is just unbelievable.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, recently revealed an email sent by a senior official at the Transportation Security Administration giving screeners all over the country very specific details about what sorts of suspicious clues the undercover testers would expect them to notice -- such as ID's with photos that did not match the people using them and boarding passes with altered dates.

[...]

Security expert David Heyman told NBC that despite the tipoffs the screeners still did poorly, and "that's got to be very discouraging."

BushCo - making the world a safer place for someone, but it sure as hell ain't us.

Raw Story has the video.

Stumble It!

These people are without shame

but you knew that. What you might not know, however, is the extent of their shamelessness. For example, when the EPA, working with Tom Ridge at the DHS, crafted tough laws to implement post-9/11 chemical plant security measures, Dick Cheney's son-in-law (no, the one with a dick) stepped in to effectively emasculate such measures. The Washington Monthly has more.

These people are disgusting vampires who prey on everyone and thing that is not related to them by blood or marriage. Read it. It'll make you uncomfortable, but at least you'll know more about some of the issues that you need to take some action on.

Stumble It!

Embarrasment in Connecticut

If you haven't read about the miscarriage of justice in the case of Connecticut teacher Julie Amero, hie thee to MyLeftNutmeg for details. Forthwith.

Basically, Julie Amero, a substitute teacher, was given a boat anchor running Win 98 and IE, and malware on the machine caused an endless loop of pop-up porn.

Now, this happened to me nearly a decade ago, when I was taking a training class with my manager, and I work in hi-tech, and our IT department is excellent. Somehow one of the training room computers had become infected, and we could not kill the pop-ups until we cold-booted the wretched machine. Something Ms. Amero's IT department advised her never to do.

My manager was more embarrassed than I, I think, being as he was a gay man not used to viewing het porn. I was merely mildly amused at the porn but disgusted at the hijacking of the machine and interruption of the lesson.

Ms. Amero, however, is possibly looking at a 40-year jail term. For details on what to do to prevent this hideousness, click the above link. There are names, addresses, and phone numbers of folk to whom you may address a polite email or letter informing them that they are dumber than a termite-eaten post. Well, no, strike that. But call or write the goblocks, anyway.

Stumble It!