The Washington Note Over-Loves The Hillary

(see below or click link for referenced posting)

Steve's gushing comments on Clinton read like a favor to someone more than informed commentary. Or (I hope) an intentionally ironic, over-saccharine homage designed as a dog whistle warning that this opine is forced.

I guess it's a harsh reality that to stay relevant and informative he has to avoid being frozen out of contact with heavyweight Beltway players who have huge egos and a sense of status and entitlement to match. They viciously prosecute their malicious tendencies towards anyone not playing their favorites and demand regular, periodic pronouncements of filialty to monitor who's toeing the line and, more importantly, pre-empt the possibility of critical articles.

Steve can't exactly slam Hillary later on after such an ode without looking foolish. This insistence on pronouncements is a lethally effective trapping strategy perfected by AIPAC...

For Hillary - she can control her mouth but not her enormously inflated head and it will burn her on the intricate, fickle, international stage when she starts spouting off with her "views". As "wife" she got a free pass while globetrotting. There's no advantage in attacking a person with no position.

But now every diplomat and foreign office on Earth will be watching to see her slip to exploit it for leverage. I foresee a long trail of global Hillary gaffes over a period of months ending in her being dragged from her post screaming, spitting and kicking, screaming "Internal Conspiracy".



Madame Secretary

Monday, Dec 01 2008, 8:51AM

Hillary Clinton is going to add yet another chapter to her incredibly fascinating life -- lawyer, feminist, first lady, healthcare diva, U.S. senator, and now secretary of state at a time when America's foreign policy and national security positions are dramatically eroded.

I think the Clinton we saw during the campaign will give herself, her views and approach to complex national security challenges a "makeover." She's going to push women's rights, democracy, human rights, poverty reduction and the like -- but I think she is going to be party to a realist-tilting, crafty Obama-led, Bob Gates-designed, Clinton-out-front process to get a strategic shift in U.S. foreign policy. We applaud that.

James Glassman, her undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, has some ideas on how to move her agenda forward -- and she should consider using a lot of the tools that Glassman and his team are developing.

-- Steve Clemons

Uh.... (shudder)

Australia's Surveillance Fetish Grows...

Having lived in Australia for a more than a few years, it took me some time to pin down what it is about them that annoys me and many other expats in Tokyo.

It it this: they Luuurv the moral superiority high-ground. They exist in conversations like Zombies only for the moment when their eyes can blaze with manic zealotry as they leap in and lecture you on what particularly inhumane remark you're responsible for.

But in practice Australia has been turning over the last 20 years into a Fascist Nanny State where the slightest deviation from "norm" puts you on the government books.

Web spies monitor activists online for police, attorney-general - report

November 26, 2008 08:45am

A PRIVATE intelligence company has been engaged by police to secretly monitor internet and email use by activist and protest groups, a report says.

The company was hired to monitor and report on the internet activities of anti-war campaigners, animal rights activists, environmental campaigners, and other protest groups, Fairfax Media reported.

It was hired by Victorian Police, the Australian Federal Police and the federal Attorney-General's department.

The Melbourne-based firm has for the past five years monitored websites, online chat rooms, social networking sites, email lists and bulletin boards, the report said.

It has gathered intelligence on planned protests and other activities, and many of those on the watch list have broken no laws, the report said.

Big Bailouts, Bigger Bucks

Reprinted from here

Whenever I discussed the current bailout situation with people, I find they have a hard time comprehending the actual numbers involved. That became a problem while doing the research for the Bailout Nation book. I needed some way to put this into proper historical perspective.

If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars. People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let’s give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history.

Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

______________________________________________________________________

data courtesy of Bianco Research

>

That is $686 billion less than the cost of the credit crisis thus far.

The only single American event in history that even comes close to matching the cost of the credit crisis is World War II: Original Cost: $288 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $3.6 trillion

The $4.6165 trillion dollars committed so far is about a trillion dollars ($979 billion dollars) greater than the entire cost of World War II borne by the United States: $3.6 trillion, adjusted for inflation (original cost was $288 billion).

Go figure: WWII was a relative bargain.

I estimate that by the time we get through 2010, the final bill may scale up to as much as $10 trillion dollars…

Israel hijack role 'was queried'

Israel hijack role 'was queried'

By Dan Parkinson BBC News

Idi Amin was thought to have colluded with the hijackers

It has been seen as a daring raid by crack Israeli troops to rescue dozens of their countrymen held at the mercy of hijackers.

But newly released documents contain a claim that the 1976 rescue of hostages, kidnapped on an Air France flight and held in Entebbe in Uganda, was not all it seemed.

A UK government file on the crisis, released from the National Archives, contains a claim that Israel itself was behind the hijacking.

An unnamed contact from the Euro-Arab Parliamentary Association told a British diplomat in Paris that the Israeli Secret Service, the Shin Bet, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) collaborated to seize the plane.

The flight was seized shortly after it took off from Athens and was flown to Entebbe, where 98 people were held hostage, many of them Israeli citizens.

The Real Situation...

A great article on Alternet about the life of poverty for many in the US.

This quote sticks out...

So while our nation crumbles, physically and morally, while our empire implodes, while our economy tanks, the bankrupt elites who got us here play the merry-go-round game of power in Washington. They will continue to oversee our demise, including the obscene drain of our military and security budget, which now accounts for half of all discretionary spending. Pentagon officials have reportedly asked the Obama transition team for $581 billion, an increase of $67 billion. This increase does not, of course, include the $3 trillion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We will pay these loans later.

oh.. NOW it's news..

UPDATE - Just to prove my point... took these photos of my TV. CNN starts blurping "Al Qaeda" and then lists all these attacks intentionally conflating probable anti-elite attacks with Mooslims (as still-Preznit Bush calls them). They never say outright these attacks have any connection whatsoever, but the exploding fireball backgrounding a shot of the current crisis bracketing these unrelated incidents is ah... pretty freekin' suggestive, no?


The lesson I learned from 9-II is to listen carefully to what's said between the time of initial reporting and the time the word "AI Q@eda" is mentioned - roughly 4-5 minutes on average (and yes, their name has already been raised a few times on CNN and BBC) . But before the meme is established and the information lockdown is in place sometimes some news actually slips through the filter.

So what's infinitely telling is the BBC drags in some Indian woman with dishevelled hair and half asleep who "stays in those exclusive hotels all the time" and she starts up by sayng.. "Well, these attacks have been an ongoing pattern all this year throughout India... blah blah blah"

REALLY? I never heard one single report of this! And like as not, I never will again. The screen comes down, the filters go on, and the blare of the commercials return... "Incredible India!"

When there's a coup d'etat the first thing is to grab the radio and TV stations. I'm not surprised. How much popular dissent is going on with the kapitalist structure that is just supressed? And now folks; back to our top show "Running Man" sponsored by Cadre Cola!

Jail for man who left bag in airport

The Telegraph (UK)

A plumber who left an unattended bag containing a teddy bear, some fruit and clothes in an airport lounge was jailed yesterday for causing a full-scale security alert. Magistrates sentenced Jose da Silva, 25, to 10 days under public nuisance laws.

Da Silva was waiting for a flight home to Portugal last Sunday when he left the hold-all in a departure lounge while he went for a cigarette at Birmingham nternational airport.

The airport was closed for three hours and 1,000 passengers and staff had to leave as an Army bomb disposal team investigated. Three incoming flights were diverted and 15 planes grounded.

Speaking through an interpreter and in tears, da Silva, who pleaded not guilty to creating a public nuisance, told the court in Solihull that he had no intention of causing such a huge security operation.

But Howard Turner, the chairman of the bench, said while da Silva had not intended to cause the alert the offence was serious enough to warrant a prison sentence.

It is thought to be the first time a jail term has been passed for what was an unwitting, albeit costly, act. A Birmingham airport spokesman said: "This was an example of the sort of thing that can happen and how it escalates very quickly.

"We take these things very seriously and this was a serious security issue. The sentence reflects that and we would reiterate the dangers of leaving luggage unattended."

Disney Censorship

Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush


WASHINGTON, May 4 - The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday.

The film, "Fahrenheit 911," links Mr. Bush and prominent Saudis ? including the family of Osama bin Laden ? and criticizes Mr. Bush's actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
more...

Ted Rall's banned cartoon...



Rall's 'Tillman' Cartoon Pulled by MSNBC.com

A cartoon questioning late footballer-turned-soldier Pat Tillman's credentials as a "hero" was pulled from MSNBC.com this afternoon. The drawing also brought Ted Rall 110 e-mails in less than 15 minutes.

The volume of mail had much to do with the cartoon being mentioned on the Drudge Report site, seen by many conservatives. Drudge linked to MSNBC.com until the cartoon was yanked.

Japan to polish its tarnished Middle East image
By J Sean Curtin

As part of a determined effort to reform its tarnished image in the Arab world, the Japanese government has announced a bold set of Middle East initiatives on Iraq and the Israel-Palestine conflict. The latest move is part of an ongoing strategy designed to distinguish Japanese Middle East policy clearly from that of the United States, a move likely to irritate Washington.

Tokyo has officially stated that at the June summit of the Group of Eight (G8) countries in Sea Islands, Georgia, it will urge a resumption of dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian Authority as well as a return to the internationally backed "roadmap" peace plan, which envisages the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. Japan also will try to give Iraq's reconstruction efforts a major boost by using its clout to improve international cooperation. Tokyo is hoping that these actions, combined with its robust condemnation of Israel's recent assassinations of two Hamas leaders, Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantissi, will help it restore its once-glittering image in the Middle East.

For decades Japan has invested heavily in crafting a positive image for itself in the Middle East, an area that is crucial to the supply of its energy needs. However, since actively supporting US President George W Bush's war in Iraq, Japan's reputation in the Arab world has suffered. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's staunch support for the war was also unpopular domestically, as well as deeply divisive. In an attempt to counteract some of the negative impact of his Iraq policy, Koizumi has decided to demonstrate that his country's Middle East policy is radically different from Washington's approach...
more

Make sure you read the last 2 lines...

Thai zoo worker mauled to death by tigers

BANGKOK : A teenage worker at a Thai zoo died on Saturday after being mauled by six tigers in front of more than 100 shocked tourists, an official said.

"She passed away in hospital," a spokeswoman from the Sriracha Tiger Zoo southeast of Bangkok said, declining to elaborate on the attack which took place on Thursday.

Media reports said 18-year-old Uraiwan Sansern received deep wounds and a cracked spine when she was set upon by six Bengal tigers she was handling for the benefit of tourists.

"Some tourists outside the enclosure tried to scare away the tigers by knocking on the glass panes, but the glass was too thick," a zoo tour guide told the Nation newspaper, saying the visitors were from China and Korea.

It said fellow workers used sticks to chase the tigers away, but that Uraiwan was already severely mauled by the time help arrived.

The young worker was reportedly untrained to handle the dangerous animals, and was trying to make a tiger sit for tourists by hitting it with a stick when the attack occurred.

The zoo hit Thai headlines last year after its sale of 100 tigers to China raised suspicions the animals were butchered and used to make traditional medicine. China's government denied the claims. - AFP

.mov video

Robot soldier of the future?

About 80 uncensored photos from Iraq
4 pages here
Warning - some are graphic...

Note: The following material is from a reporter with access to the White House and Presidential press briefings. Some of this material has surfaced before but only in small segments. If any of this is true and not the product of an unhappy person, we are all in serious trouble.

"Vice President Cheney is the de facto President of the United States. When he arrives at the White House for one of his "briefings" of the President, all employees are cleared from the West Wing and especially from the Presidential office suites.

Cheney arrives in an escorted armored limousine surrounded by his own personal, heavily armed bodyguard and is always shown directly into the President's office. It is reliably reported by [redacted] that Bush has a thick pad of lined, yellow note paper on his desk, placed there by [redacted] just before the Vice President arrives."

"After Cheney's departure, the notes taken by the President are transcribed by [redacted] and prepared as talking points for the President..."

"At some time in the past, according to both [redacted] and [redacted] the President suffered what one of his aides called "a very minor seizure" and as a result of this, the President has a very difficult time following any unscripted conversations. For this reason, his staff carefully and aggressively protect the President from "unexpected" questions that he is not capable of answering."

"The President takes oral medication at least twice a day according to [redacted] because of an unspecified "indisposition' and this subject is strictly off limits for any casual staff conversation."

"At one point during a staff conference, the President stood up and began to speak in an unknown language. Mr. Rove was able to stop the President and get him to resume his seat. It was reported by [redacted] that for a period of time (about fifteen minutes) after this incident, the President appeared to be 'somewhat confused and very inarticulate.'"

"White House staff members report that they rarely see the President during work hours and that when they do, he is generally accompanied by Mr. Rove and almost never either looks at or speaks to members of the staff. He does not appear to recognize many of the staff members and almost all contact with these individuals are carried out by his close aides, especially by Mr. Rove."

"Bush holds as few meetings with the public, including the press, as possible. We get reams of official papers informing us of this or that new directive. Those of us who have an inside track with the staff are taken to dinner and given the questions to ask Bush. These are questions he has been thoroughly briefed on and has memorized the answers for. Anyone who persists in pushing the envelope gets a rocket from the Rove people and does not get invited back."

"Most of the staff are young, dedicated, almost fanatical, and very, very Christian. The Ten Commandments are in each and every office with nice pictures of Jesus accompanying them. I have chatted up a few of these bright-faced kids and find out that they Love Jesus, Hate Gays, Abortionists, Moslems, Blacks, Catholics, some Jews, all Democrats, Liberals, Hindus, Chinese, Frenchmen, Germans, and now, Spaniards.

"There are daily parades of born-agains into the White House, all chanting the praises of the Lord and Bush, in that order of course. Most of them want all abortionists hung along with gays (the Beltway and the Pentagon would be empty) and godless Muslims and Buddhists. Orwell would have loved this place! Yesterday [redacted] told me in strict confidence of course, that if Diebold didn't reelect George, the Lord would. They all wear miniature US flags on their clothes but under the lapels they have "hidden tokens of the True Faith" and they flip their lapels with knowing smiles when they meet another True Believer.

More America-style freedom and democracy
Abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners by the US Army, detailed here. At least those responsible are being removed and court-martialed, but the mere fact that this was allowed to happen, and the SNAFU described by one of the accused is disgraceful.

Hope Dubya realizes the Texas-style "freedom" he's bringing to Iraq. Maybe we should arrange some of it for him to experience at first hand?

seems the US snipers are sharpening their craft by practising on smaller targets - like 11-year-old children...

Saving Ali

Where US snipers fire at ambulances

Lee Gordon in Falluja
Thursday April 29, 2004
The Guardian

It was when I saw little Ali's ruined body that I stopped being just a reporter and became a true embed. The scene was a makeshift field hospital in Falluja. A missile fired at the hospital has left the walls of the room Ali lies in pockmarked with shrapnel.
Glass crunches underfoot. Four-year-old Ali is lying in a cot, the mattress matted with dried blood. He is bleeding from a horrific groin wound and his left leg has been amputated above the knee. His left arm is bandaged and bleeding, his face badly cut. His father brushes away the flies buzzing around Ali's wounds. It is a scene of almost utter hopelessness.

Ali is one of the only survivors of an extended family, bombed the day before by a jet, probably an F-16. He might live, but only if he is evacuated to a Baghdad hospital within hours. Ambulances have tried to evacuate him and other seriously wounded casualties. They were turned back at US checkpoints by troops carrying out orders: no one in and no one out. There is one last hope: I got past the checkpoints with my press ID and my passport, and I could go back with Ali.

It was a white-knuckle ride back to Baghdad with my guide, but 90 minutes later Ali was being treated by doctors at an Italian coalition hospital, who were shocked to see their first Falluja evacuee. The surgery saved Ali's life, but not his arm.

Over the next few days I got to know the back roads from Falluja to Baghdad almost as well as the field hospital's filthy corridors as I evacuated the injured. I am left with vivid memories: the stench of a burned man's flesh; the dead eyes of two children, a boy and girl under 11 who were shot in the head by snipers.

I volunteered to ride in ambulances evacuating the wounded. Surely they don't shoot ambulances? In fact, US snipers were targeting ambulances. I learned to pick out the beams of sniper rifles.

I remember the medics' anger when the hospital's last working ambulance carrying British and American volunteers returned shot to pieces, how stunned they were when American, British and Australian volunteers came under fire after declaring their nationalities to US troops.

Some days before I met Ali, my guide and I had been seized at gunpoint after we'd run into a mojahedin ambush of US scouts. Over tea, we had agreed to continue our work as reporters embedded with them. The mojahedin threw open their doors and their lives to us, escorting us past firezones to safety.

Embedding has come at a price: eating, sleeping and being bombed with the mojahedin means sharing more than chicken and rice. It means listening out for helicopters and feeling helpless about injured families trapped behind "enemy" lines. It means sharing the same revulsion as maimed bodies are tipped into hospital beds. But what's the point of trying to report a war from an embedded position in the fortified Hotel Palestine, miles from the frontline?

The Executive Perk Is Still Thriving




NEW YORK (AP) -- The executive perk, much criticized during the corporate scandals of the past few years, is still thriving at many big companies, where top managers take personal trips on company jets, have their taxes paid or get free home security systems.

The perquisites listed in the most recent proxy statements of Fortune 100 companies don't reach the excesses reported at Tyco International Ltd. or Adelphia Communications Corp., companies whose former CEOs have been tried for larceny or fraud. But the proxies show that the highest paid executives collectively enjoyed $30.9 million in additional compensation beyond salaries, bonuses and stock awards.

The most popular perks included free personal rides on corporate jets -- companies spent a total of $6.4 million flying their CEOs. Companies also picked up $6.6 million of personal tax bills and paid $575,989 for executives' personal financial planning.

They also paid millions for temporary housing, forgiven loans, relocation expenses, personal cars and above-market interest on deferred compensation.

David W. Dorman, AT&T Corp.'s chairman and CEO, gets a $12,000 a month housing allowance from the company for his New York apartment, which has views of Central Park. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. spent $1.5 million to relocate Andrew R. Bonfield, its chief financial officer.

The perks are legal, but critics say they're in bad taste, and are also bad for shareholders.

"Because these are less visible to the general public, they can be slipped in without a lot of furor," said Samuel Hayes, a professor of finance at Harvard Business School.

Nell Minow, editor of The Corporate Library, a corporate governance advocacy group, said, "It's absurd to see these goodies handed out to people who are in the upper fraction of a fraction of the wealthiest people in the United States."

But defenders of perks say some make sense.

Alan Johnson, a New York compensation consultant, said some companies pay for the CEO's health club membership, "as a nudge, just so he takes care of himself."

And, noting that 16 Fortune 100 companies require their executives to fly company jets for all trips, both personal and professional, Johnson said, "some of it is really security-related."

"Within the Fortune 100, I don't think you're stretching the imagination that you're a target."

One company that mandates the flights is General Electric Co., whose top five executives took $1.4 million worth of personal flights on company jets last year.

"We made the decision in view of the circumstances around the world," spokesman David Frail said.

Because the IRS views personal flights on corporate jets as compensation, many companies such as Hewlett-Packard Co. also pay executives' taxes on the flights.

Companies claim that flights required for security reasons are not part of an executive's compensation, but Keith Jones, director of field specialists for the IRS, said the agency challenges blanket claims that executives must fly corporate jets for security reasons.

"You have to show a threat," Jones said. "It has to be reasonable: If you're flying someplace where there are security concerns or flying during an orange (national security) alert."

Other perks cost much less.

ConocoPhillips Co. and Bank of America Corp. paid for some executives' home alarms. ConocoPhillips paid its president and CEO, James J. Mulva, a total of $6.8 million, including $229 to service his home security system.

But even such small sums rankle critics.

"To effectively nickel and dime the company for perks when you're making millions of dollars is unseemly," said Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. "They're paid enough, they can afford to pay their own expenses."

Only a handful of companies handed out few perks. Cisco Systems Inc. had none, while Supervalu Inc., Intel Corp. and HCA Inc. listed only their additional retirement contributions for executives.

Intel said in its proxy it "seeks to maintain an egalitarian culture in its facilities and operations." That means no reserved executive parking spaces, no separate dining room and no "personal-benefit perquisites to officers."

Gail Dundas, a company spokeswoman, said, "It's really to put the focus on ideas. Ideas are valued, not your title. It's a meritocracy."

Other companies reported that they had paid for perks they didn't disclose. Many, including The Walt Disney Co., said in proxy statements that they don't report, and aren't required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to report, perquisites below $50,000 a year or 10 percent of an executive's pay.

Among the perks that were detailed:

--Home Depot Inc. chairman and CEO Robert L. Nardelli had a package including $2.3 million in forgiven loans and interest and $1.6 million in taxes.

The proxy said Nardelli received a $10 million loan when he joined the company in December 2000. Twenty percent of the loan and interest are forgiven each year as an incentive for him to stay with the company. The company has also paid his taxes related to the forgiven loan. Such loans have been illegal since 2002, but Home Depot has said it made the loan before the law took effect.

--In addition to his housing allowance, AT&T paid $305,403 last year for Dorman to fly between the company's offices in New Jersey and his home in Atlanta. AT&T said Dorman's Atlanta home is for sale and the New York housing allowance expires in July. Dorman has been with the company since November 2002; his total compensation last year, including the housing allowance and personal flights, was about $11.7 million.

The company also spent $302,695 last year to fly John Polumbo, president and CEO of its consumer unit, to his home in the San Francisco Bay area. Polumbo's total compensation was $3 million last year.

AT&T said paying for Polumbo's flights was cost-effective.

"Relocating a senior executive across country to the New York/New Jersey executive real estate market can cost a couple million dollars," spokesman Jim Byrnes said. Comparing the costs of cross-country travel to a relocation, "it would take many years (of flights), at that level, to equal what a relocation would be."

Police settle excessive force suit with 71-year-old woman


PORTLAND, Ore. - The city of Portland has agreed to pay $145,000 to an elderly blind woman after police pepper-sprayed and shocked her with a stun gun.
The altercation began as an attempt to remove shrubs and appliances from 71-year-old Eunice Crowder's yard, and ended with police citing her for harassment and disobeying an order.

This week, the city agreed to settle her excessive force lawsuit out of federal court, a month after a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge dismissed the violations against her.

"This case goes to show that police misconduct and excessive force can happen to anybody outside the mainstream," said Ernest Warren Jr., Crowder's lawyer. "It does not have to be an African American; it can be someone who is elderly and white."

The Portland City Council approved the settlement, based on a review by the city's risk management division that indicated "there is risk the City may be found liable."

The June 9, 2003, incident began when Ed Marihart, a city employee, showed up at Crowder's home. He served her with an administrative search warrant to remove an accumulation of trash and debris.

According to Crowder and her lawyer, the woman told him she was blind and hard of hearing, and asked him to read the entire warrant to her, but he refused. She said he placed it in her hands, walked outside and ordered others to start removing items from her yard.

The city denies that the woman asked Marihart to read the warrant and maintains that Marihart explained to her why he was there.

The woman followed the city employee outside. She was concerned that he and his co-workers had removed a family heirloom, a 90-year-old red toy wagon with rhododendrons in it. She asked to enter a trailer, where items from her yard were being placed, to feel around for the wagon.

Marihart told her she couldn't enter the trailer and said the wagon was not inside. He then called police.

When Portland Officers Robert Miller and Eric Zajac arrived at the house, Crowder acknowledged she had one foot on the curb and one foot on the bumper of the trailer. She felt someone step on her foot and asked, "Who are you?"

Moments later, she felt someone strike her in the head, which dislodged her prosthetic right eye from its socket, and was knocked to the ground, she claimed in her lawsuit.

Officers said Crowder ignored their commands not to climb into the trailer and tried to bite Miller's hand.

They acknowledged she was "pushed onto the dirt next to the sidewalk," according to the city's legal brief filed in court.

While on the ground, Crowder asked the officer what he thought he was doing and kicked Miller. She said the officer kicked her back, then pepper-sprayed her in her eyes.

"While she's still on the ground, on her stomach, they tased her in the back and in the breast," her lawyer said.

Police said they pepper-sprayed Crowder after she refused to stop kicking them. They admit that Crowder's prosthetic eye fell out at some point, and that Zajac stunned Crowder with a Taser, an electric stun gun, twice in the lower back and once in the upper back after ordering her to stop fighting and resisting.

Warren said the city's argument is bogus. He said, "To kick the crap out of old folks seems a little bit much to me in the name of law enforcement,"

Molecular basis for Mozart effect revealed


15:10 23 April 04

NewScientist.com news service

New research has revealed a molecular basis for the "Mozart effect" - the observation that a brief stint of Mozart, but not other music, may improve learning and memory.

Rats that heard a Mozart sonata expressed higher levels of several genes involved in stimulating and changing the connections between brain cells, the study showed. The team, including the researcher who first proposed the Mozart effect, hope the results will help them design music therapy treatments for people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.

The Mozart effect first came to light in a 1993 paper in Nature (vol 365, p 611), when Fran Rauscher, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, US, and colleagues showed that college students who listened to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major for 10 minutes performed better on a spatial reasoning test than students who listened to new age music or nothing at all.

from Poe News
After the US's McDonald's CEO dropped dead from a heart attack, we find...

Japanese Once Again Copy American Lead, McDonald's Japan founder dies



Japanese billionaire Den Fujita, the man who established the McDonald's fast-food chain in Japan, has died of heart failure, a company official has said.

Fujita was chairman of his family trading company Fujita & Co. and was one of Japan's wealthiest men.

Thought for the day:
How would Saddam Hussein have tackled an uprising in Fallujah? Adolph Hitler once said, "The measure of victory is not if we win or lose, but how much they have to become like us to win." Same goes for Israel.

Every president elected in a year ending in "0" has been asassinated, died in office, or was wounded in an attempt on his life.

more madness from Bush... (MSN Slate)

Our Hidden WMD Program
Why Bush is spending so much on nuclear weapons.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, April 23, 2004, at 3:41 PM PT


The budget is busted; American soldiers need more armor; they're running out of supplies. Yet the Department of Energy is spending an astonishing $6.5 billion on nuclear weapons this year, and President Bush is requesting $6.8 billion more for next year and a total of $30 billion over the following four years. This does not include his much-cherished missile-defense program, by the way. This is simply for the maintenance, modernization, development, and production of nuclear bombs and warheads.

Measured in "real dollars" (that is, adjusting for inflation), this year's spending on nuclear activities is equal to what Ronald Reagan spent at the height of the U.S.-Soviet standoff. It exceeds by over 50 percent the average annual sum ($4.2 billion) that the United States spent窶蚤gain, in real dollars窶杯hroughout the four and a half decades of the Cold War.

There is no nuclear arms race going on now. The world no longer offers many suitable nuclear targets. President Bush is trying to persuade other nations窶覇specially "rogue regimes"窶杯o forgo their nuclear ambitions. Yet he is shoveling money to U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories as if the Soviet Union still existed and the Cold War still raged...

Jackass meets Darwin awards



'Jackass' stunt leaves teenager dead
An 18-year-old actor who said he was inspired by the TV-series "Jackass" donned a mummy-like costume on Sunday and lay down on a highway through the Norwegian town of Askim. One motorist narrowly managed to avoid hitting him, but a second couldn't stop and ran over the teenager. He died instantly, and two colleagues filming the stunt face criminal charges.

An alleged photo of Princess Di in the car crash
warning! - graphic!

Sites for Statistics

Keep up on the body count in Iraq with breakdowns here

And Bush v. Kerry here. Bush 48% Kerry 45%

But it doesn't seem to matter. The rule of thumb to deciding a President can boil down to one question. "Which candidate would you rather drink a beer with at the bar after work?". Following this rule of quixotic logic I've come up with, it explains why Carter beat Ford, why Reagan beat Carter, why Bush beat Dukakis, and why Bush Redux beat Gore, no? So Kerry's doomed.

interesting...

"World Trade Center -- they're going to Crash the Plane into the World Trade Center"

In March of 2001 Fox TV aired Episode One of a new show spun-off from The X-Files. In the first episode of this new show, The Lone Gunmen, an inside faction of the government posing as terrorists hijacks a 727 by remote control. They do this because the cold war is over they need an excuse for war to increase arm sales. They target the World Trade Center, but their plot is foiled at the last minute.

The blog is alive. Yay... eager dozens strain at their mouse cords to find meaning, but will come up short if they bookmark this place!