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Thursday, January 26, 2006
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 2005 was the warmest year since the late 1800s. Image credit: NASA Click to enlarge | Thu, 26 Jan 2006 - Did 2005 feel like a scorcher? Well, you're right. According to NASA researchers, 2005 was the warmest year for planet Earth in more than a century. Scientists have used weather stations on land, ships on the ocean, and satellite measurements from space to keep track of average global temperatures. Over the last 100 years, temperatures have risen on average by 0.8° C or about 1.4° F. And the five warmest years were 2005, then 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004. |
(Via Universe Today.)
10:34:22 PM 
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Gore Vidal:
While contemplating the ill-starred presidency of G.W. Bush, I looked about for some sort of divine analogy. As usual, when in need of enlightenment, I fell upon the Holy Bible, authorized King James version of 1611; turning by chance to the Book of Jonah, I read that Jonah, who, like Bush, chats with God, had suffered a falling out with the Almighty and thus became a jinx dogged by luck so bad that a cruise liner, thanks to his presence aboard, was about to sink in a storm at sea. Once the crew had determined that Jonah, a passenger, was the jinx, they threw him overboard and%u2014Lo!%u2014the storm abated. The three days and nights he subsequently spent in the belly of a nauseous whale must have seemed like a serious jinx to the digestion-challenged whale who extruded him much as the decent opinion of mankind has done to Bush.
Originally, God wanted Jonah to give hell to Nineveh, whose people, God noted disdainfully, %u201Ccannot discern between their right hand and their left hand,%u201D so like the people of Baghdad who cannot fathom what democracy has to do with their destruction by the Cheney-Bush cabal. But the analogy becomes eerily precise when it comes to the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico at a time when a president is not only incompetent but plainly jinxed by whatever faith he cringes before. Witness the ongoing screw-up of prescription drugs. Who knows what other disasters are in store for us thanks to the curse he is under? As the sailors fed the original Jonah to a whale, thus lifting the storm that was about to drown them, perhaps we the people can persuade President Jonah to retire to his other Eden in Crawford, Texas, taking his jinx with him. We deserve a rest. Plainly, so does he. Look at Nixon%u2019s radiant features after his resignation! One can see former President Jonah in his sumptuous library happily catering to faith-based fans with animated scriptures rooted in %u201CThe Simpsons.%u201D
(Via Randy Alfred.)
9:46:15 PM
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Nice post here about Myrna Loy, who I've had a crush on for about as long as I can remember.
8:21:14 PM
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Katie Couric on today’s Today Show:
COURIC: Hey, wait a second. Democrats took—Democrats took money from Abramoff too, Mr. Dean.
DEAN: That is absolutely false. That did not happen. Not one dime of money from Jack Abramoff went to any Democrat at any time.
COURIC: Let me just tell you—According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Abramoff and his associates gave $3 million to Republicans and $1.5 million to Democrats, including Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid.
DEAN: Not one dime of Jack Abramoff money ever went to any Democrat. We can show you the FEC reports, we’d be very happy to do it. There’s a lot of stuff in the press that the Republican National Committee’s been spinning that this is a bipartisan scandal. It is a Republican-financed scandal. Not one dime of money from Jack Abramoff ever went to any Democrat, not one dime.
COURIC: Well, we’ll obviously have to look into that and clarify that for our viewers at a later date. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Mr. Dean, Governor Dean, thanks so much for talking with us.
DEAN: Thanks very much.
Here, perky Katie! Type in “Abramoff” and see who gave what to whom! And then maybe you can pay us for doing your job!
(Via Suburban Guerrilla.)
8:14:16 PM
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One little excerpt, then you can go read it.
Bottom line is these guys in the Bush Administration are obsessed voyeurs, poking their noses into everyone's business, whether the excuse is squelching pornography or preventing terrorism. They simply do not believe civil liberties and privacy are important. It is an executive branch power trip, and completely anti-democratic.
Many of us here have felt a sick dirtiness at the heart of the Bush Administration obsession with snooping. There's no coincidence that their cronies like Abramoff go around posing in overcoats, I suppose.
(Via All Spin Zone.)
8:11:12 PM
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Hat tip to Obsidian Wings for analysis on a NY Times article about an audit performed by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Is There Nothing This Administration Does Competently? Short answer: No.
"A new audit of American financial practices in Iraq has uncovered irregularities including millions of reconstruction dollars stuffed casually into footlockers and filing cabinets, an American soldier in the Philippines who gambled away cash belonging to Iraq, and three Iraqis who plunged to their deaths in a rebuilt hospital elevator that had been improperly certified as safe.
The audit, released yesterday by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, expands on its previous findings of fraud, incompetence and confusion as the American occupation poured money into training and rebuilding programs in 2003 and 2004.
Agents from the inspector general's office found that the living and working quarters of American occupation officials were awash in shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills, colloquially known as bricks.
One official kept $2 million in a bathroom safe, another more than half a million dollars in an unlocked footlocker. One contractor received more than $100,000 to completely refurbish an Olympic pool but only polished the pumps; even so, local American officials certified the work as completed. More than 2,000 contracts ranging in value from a few thousand dollars to more than half a million, some $88 million in all, were examined by agents from the inspector general's office. The report says that in some cases the agents found clear indications of potential fraud and that investigations into those cases are continuing.
There's more
(Via Seeing the Forest.)
7:59:32 PM
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Gen. Hayden: "4th Amendment and wrong"  Keith Olbermann posted this video clip of Gen. Hayden botching the fourth amendment- which Keith says:
OLBERMANN:' To quote the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in its entirety, the one the general and the NSA folks are so familiar with and know is about reasonableness and not about probable cause, quote, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Well, maybe they have a different Constitution over there at the NSA. '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Video-WMP Video-QT (hat tip Arnie) This also helped to open the door for Glenn Greenwald to expose them on FISA. Glenn:'"In other words, DeWine's bill, had it become law, would have eliminated the "probable cause" barrier (at least for non-U.S. persons) which the Administration is now pointing to as the reason why it had to circumvent FISA...read on"
(Via Crooks and Liars.)
7:53:40 PM
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Great review in the Bay Guardian of the band my son is in in this week's Bay Guardian. It's a funny review, and doesn't seem to have a permalink, so I'll just quote the whole thing here. The print edition has a picture of Lyal, which is a riot. The review nicely captures the essence of the band's leader, Yassi:
Breezy Days Band
Hemlock Tavern, Jan. 13
By Gabriel Mindel
a&eletters@sfbg.com
LOCAL LIVE Performers often reflect their audience's desires in the form of larger-than-life fantasy. What's more interesting is when someone shows their talents on a more human scale. This would at least partially explain why the Breezy Days Band had the packed Hemlock back room in the palm of their hands.
They walk a strange line, somewhere between genius and utter amateurishness. It's obvious that their peculiar pop tunes are well crafted, yet in execution, their music is accident-prone and precarious.
This isn't entirely unintentional. Yasi Perera, BDB's drummer and occasional vocalist, writes the songs on guitar and then sends them as tablature by e-mail to bandmates over e-mail (for this show, guitarists Lyal Michael and Will Sherwin). The pieces are intended to be played in perfect synchronicity, but there is an element of inevitable disaster worked in. Rhythms are imperfectly inferred, and the fingering is at times nearly impossible for even the most practiced musicians. The result is a curiously familiar pop assemblage, filled with complex and articulated streams of notes and deceptively simple runs of garage riffing, country strum, and, of all things, boogie-woogie.
Truthfully, BDB's music is not completely foreign: Its obvious predecessor is Captain Beefheart's band; its peers, Et At It and the Curtains. Yet the BDB's live performances are uniquely mesmerizing, especially the enigmatic and energetic presence of Perera. Wild-eyed and smiling, he has a little-kid-meets-mad-scientist quality that can make his playing and gestures seem both naive and brilliant. At one point Perera leapt up from his drum kit, clutching for the microphone, and then paused to turn down the guitar amp next to him. When he repeated this gesture, it became a supreme act of antirock, and one so profound that it sent all presumptions about Perera into a whirlwind. Who does such a thing?
Positioned at stage right during BDB's performance was singer-songwriter Jessica LaFlamme. She recently ended her role as a guitarist for BDB, and she sang her own subtle and unconventional pop pieces in a song-for-song trade-off with BDB. Written with a nod to jazz and rural American styles of yore, LaFlamme played with a stylized flair that, while very much her own, blended almost seamlessly with BDB's sounds. At times it seemed as though they were one band.
LaFlamme shared more than just musical similarities with her stage companions. She too fluttered abruptly between canny songwriting and amateurish performance. Pausing on chords, stopping midsong, and swallowing the occasional lyric, LaFlamme wasn't exactly a highly polished performer. Yet her obvious talent and beautiful voice held her audience captive, and they seemed almost to yearn for her to succeed. At one point a woman described the vocalist as "precious," but this was hardly appropriate. Singing "If you want to have fun with me, you have to cut your arms" in an absurdly childlike melody, LaFlamme evoked titters but left the room with a mild hangover of discomfort when the seriousness of the lyric settled in.
With the end of each song by BDB and LaFlamme came a cheer that suggested a sort of heroic act had taken place, and though it might have seemed condescending, it was sincerely offered. The audience held its breath hoping to see these unassuming and eccentric songwriters pull off a feat they knew was difficult and frightening, and while Perera, LaFlamme, and company were not unaware of their vulnerabilities, they also didn't hide them, and they showed a determination and heart that is as unironic as it gets. It made you believe that if you have your own genius tucked away safe and sad in a closet, you too could lay it bare; sitting in a room full of people silently pulling for these musicians, you easily dreamed yourself up there.
7:26:37 PM
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Steven Milloy, science reporter for Foxnews.com, is coming under fire for articles he wrote for Fox's website denouncing the dangers of second-hand smoke while he was on the payroll of Altria, the parent company of Phillip Morris. Malloy, who has been affiliated with Foxnews.com since 2000, wrote two articles in the spring of 2001 including one entitled "Secondhand Smokescreen". According to Phillip Morris' 2001 budget report, Milloy was listed as a consultant with a budget of $92,000 in fees and expenses for both 2000 and 2001.
You can read the full article here.
(Via News Hounds.)
6:51:16 PM
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Stupidest thing I've read in a while:
It is cognitively and nationally dissonant to propose on one hand the advancement of the homosexualization of your most identified national folk icon and simultaneously bluster with the impending force of a war to defend that same civilization. The homosexualization of your most revered masculinity is the cheapest and stupidest shot you can take at the survival of your own culture and it is really inappropriately timed when you are facing, from threats abroad, the most substantial existential peril the nation has ever known. You can't fight Islamism with gay cowboys.
It gets better, too.
It is an article of pinnacle stupidity to discover that one of the greatest American Christian martyrs of a generation, Nate Saint, is being portrayed by a homosexual actor in a film intended to inspire Christendom to great acts of moral imitation. This represents a deep failure on the part of evangelists and tellers of the story; the purpose of art is to imitate nature. What precisely is inspirational about the story of Nate Saint if the very person who portrays him in the movie cannot be moved to imitate Mr. Saint? It reduces the entire thing to people pretending, not people being moved. It sends the message that you can look good and not be good. In short, it sends all the wrong advancements. The people who made this movie, the family, etc, should immediately remove it from circulation and sue the actor for fraud. This is Nate Saint, not Pink Nate Goes to Prom. Good night.
These are examples of serious malaise and important failures. They must be reversed, cleansed, and placed once again on good solid grounding. There is a war on people and it is an ideological war. Islamism is seeking to destroy Christendom and the West and we had better start acting like it matters when we assault our own institutions. It is repugnant that the national icons of Missionary zeal and righteous machismo are being mocked and raped on screen by the sneering evil people who have promised, over and over again, to do just that. We have to recognize that those people are the enemies of civilization, the enemies of Christendom, the enemies of the United States of America. Sodomize the Marlboro Man to great music and call this heroism? They want to destroy the world.
9:04:46 AM
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Max Plank in Atrios comments pointed me to this. In the wake of Ford cutting up to 30,000 jobs over the next few years, this is particularly outrageous:
It's almost enough to make you laugh—bitterly, of course. Here was Ford Motor Co. announcing yesterday that it had cut 10,000 jobs last year and that it will cut up to 30,000 more. But shedding jobs at muscle-car acceleration rates didn't stop Ford from pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars courtesy of the American Jobs Creation Act.
No, I'm not making this up. Right there, on page 2 of one of its news releases yesterday, Ford said that "repatriation of foreign earnings pursuant to the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 resulted in a permanent tax savings of about $250 million."
Hello? How can you simultaneously cut jobs and benefit from the American Jobs Creation Act? Welcome to the wonderful world of Washington nomenclature.
Two-hundred and fifty million would pay for a lot of job retraining.
Meanwhile, Matt Millen still has a job.
(Via Rising Hegemon.)
8:20:30 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Steve Michel.
Last update: 2/1/2006; 8:44:40 PM.
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