licentious radio

Thursday, August 29, 2002
[9:21:49 PM]

Poppy buys the yellow pages [tompaine.com].

[9:14:21 PM]

Fact is, of course, Bin Laden has a fair amount of incentive to strike big in October. If Democrats take the House they could start putting the brakes on Bush's stupidest foreign policy moves. That would make the United States seem less the enemy to the Arab/Islamic world. That would be bad for Bin Laden, who is just as much a hate-monger as Bush.

So even if the Bush-Bin Laden partnership were really broken up over September 11, their political interests are still in alignment.

With Bush's popularity ratings at the lowest levels since September 11, and no carry-over from Bush to Republican House races, things must be getting pretty desparate around the White House. Desparate enough, for example, to try the stupid "wag the gassed puppy" trick.

Let's just hope the Bushies aren't desparate enough to block the Bin Laden investigations again, like before September 11.

Note to FBI agents: no more backing off investigations because of political pressure. We need you to go public and make the bosses follow through. Same with immigration. Stop wasting time harrassing non-terrorists, and focus on protecting citizens, not political reputations.

[5:35:13 PM]
To me, the saddest thing is that we apparently can't trust in the integrity of law enforcement personnel. We've seen examples of dedicated FBI agents tracking down truly dangerous people, and then we've seen the FBI and Justice Department attack their own agents -- to cover-up for mistakes and political decisions. Even local police seem to have no respect for freedom of speech and democracy -- dressing up as storm troopers and using pepper spray on infants, children, and grandmothers.

This is not acceptable.

Starting with Ashcroft, but extending to all levels of government, the individuals orchestrating and participating in these attacks on our freedom should be swept from authority. Investigate them carefully: people who are so willing to abuse official powers in one area are likely to be engaged in other criminal endeavors.

We owe it to our honest cops, soldiers, and bureaucrats to clean these institutions out.

[1:19:24 PM]
"Exit Strategy"? Ha, ha, ha.

I got your exit strategy: Regime change in DC!

[12:27:22 PM]
Baseball, the all-American sport. "Baseball been bery good to me", said Bubya.

Quite a hustle, huh? [robertscheer.com]: "That's what George W. did with the Texas Rangers when he parlayed $606,000--nearly all borrowed from a Midland, Texas, bank where he had been a director--into a $15-million profit when he sold his stake in the team a decade later. The Rangers, despite erratic results on the field, grew astronomically in financial value because Arlington, Texas, taxpayers faced with the threat of losing the Rangers were coerced into coming up with $135 million in sales taxes to build Bush's team a palatial new field of dreams. Bush and his buddies also used their political influence to grab valuable commercial land surrounding the stadium under the government power of eminent domain.

"Thanks to those acquisitions, paid for with more than $200 million in public funds, Bush and his partners were able to turn around and sell for $240 million a team they had purchased for $86 million. Bush never did risk any of his own money, instead selling shares at an inflated insider's rate--courtesy of his now-famous relationship with Harken Energy--to cover the original bank loan."

[12:23:16 PM]
It's condition Orange for terrifying terrorist alerts. After a few weeks' respite to let the stock market recover some ground, the Bush junta is gearing up for a big round of media terrorism in a desparate effort to keep control of the House of Representatives, as well as justify their "pre-emptive" -- i.e. unprovoked -- war on Iraq.

The beat goes on.

[11:21:58 AM]
Have you patched Windows today?

Yet another digital certificate flaw [theregister.co.uk]. There's a patch for this one, but MS still hasn't fixed an even more easily exploited hole.

How bad is it? Say you use a Windows computer to do online banking. Digital certificates are the key to safety -- your browser knows it's really talking to the bank because of the certificate. But these Windows flaws let any enterprising bad-guy fake your browser into believing it's talking to your bank. The smart bad-guy will pass the transaction through to the bank, but then follow up with another transaction -- wiring all your money to the same off-shore bank Ken Lay uses.

What if you use Quicken, not a web browser? Same problem, because the operating system manages the certificates.

So the opening quip was really a joke -- you could apply all existing patches to Windows and IE, and a bad-guy could still empty your bank account. The good news is that they can't do this to too many people at once, or the FBI will chase them down. The bad news is that if you "get lucky", life will be very unpleasant, with no money.

MS, noted monopolist power-abuser hasn't fixed this yet. KDE, noted open source project, fixed the problem in a day. I guess that's the difference between putting people with values in charge (KDE) and putting MBAs in charge.

[10:56:14 AM]
Kriss Worthington in the SF Chronicle letter to editor:

"Editor -- It's better to yack, than to take a whack. Follow the pack, don't blow your stack. If you attack, you can't take it back. There is no lack, of those who would smack. Show you've got the knack, avoid the flack, bring sanity back, don't attack Iraq."

Licentious Radio would add: "Sack the Stupid hack!"

[2:07:16 AM]
This weeks Democracy award goes to the judges! FISA's tired of Ashcroft's lies. (Funny how the media play up the FBI under CLINTON, as if Freeh's Hoover-like witch-hunts were at Clinton's bidding, rather than aimed *at* Clinton.) Moussaoui's judge thinks it's stupid the FBI can't find Moussaoui's email. (How much do we spend on the FBI?)

And long live the quote: "democracy dies behind closed doors". And long may Cheney and Bush rot in hell for closing the doors on every bit of information -- from energy policy onward.

[1:57:43 AM]
Bushlette called Simon "a proven businessman". Even though the court verdict was only for $78 million, we're supposed to believe that Simon is smart enough to have pulled off a $7 billion fraud, like some other Bush supporters. We don't think so. No one would go as far as to say Simon is as dumb as Bush, but on a scale of one to ten, we're still talking about a one-point-five or two.

[1:50:08 AM]
Even though Rumsfeld's meds are clearly out of balance, we agree with him that all the White House flaks leaking Iraq invasion plans should be thrown in jail immediately.

[1:45:32 AM]
"This is like putting Tom Ridge in charge of our civil liberties, or it's like putting Richard Breeden in charge of the WorldCom investigation."

[1:34:09 AM]
As for making war on Iraq, there may or may not be urgency for regime change there, but George W. Bush and his team have no credibility on the issue. In fact, they should resign, to allow an untainted group to make this grave decision. There is no conceivable appearance of propriety here. Any assertion by Cheney is implausible, simply because he makes it. The vested personal and peer interests are too strong.

The example of the day for Cheney is the "California energy crisis"... Kenny Boy called him up, and the next day Cheney was lobbying the nation against price caps in California. As soon as FERC implemented price caps, the "crisis" went away. Cheney's boys had to make do with a $30 billion haul. If Cheney had had his way, we would still have blackouts in California. As it is, California's citizen's will be paying for Cheney's cronies' crimes for years.

And this week Cheney is arguing we should attack Iraq, lest the Democrats take control of the House in November. Well, Dick... you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. The corporate media can play your speeches as often as you please, but the people of this country and the planet won't necessarily go along with it.

If you (Dick) actually think regime change in Iraq is important, you should resign immediately, and let someone with an ounce of credibility make the case.

[12:57:29 AM]
"When our country does make the right judgements, the right decisions, then other countries do cooperate and participate," the U.S. defense secretary said in California on Tuesday.

Duh. And when crooks take over with lame pretenses for eternal war to cover their fraud, theft, and treason -- for some reason the civilized nations of the planet don't go along. Duh.

[12:52:33 AM]
My darlings! What kind of country do you want? Shall we live in a community where more black men are in prison than in college? Shall we live in a community where the streets are safe -- or unsafe? Shall we live in a country where the Vice President covers for a $30 billion rip-off for his cronies? Shall we all be poor, or all be rich? Shall we lead the planet toward sustainable prosperity, or repress 99% of the planet's population and destroy the environment before our grandchildren are ready to take over? Do you believe in freedom of speech for citizens, or for billion-dollar corporations?