Dog From Hell: May 2007

The Earth Is Round... Really.

THE CREATION MUSEUM, a $27-million tourist attraction promoting earth science theories that were popular when Columbus set sail, opens near Cincinnati on Memorial Day. So before the first visitor risks succumbing to the museum's animatronic balderdash — dinosaurs and humans actually coexisted! the Grand Canyon was carved by the great flood described in Genesis! — we'd like to clear up a few things: "The Flintstones" is a cartoon, not a documentary. Fred and Wilma? Those woolly mammoth vacuum cleaners? All make-believe.

Science is under assault, and that calls for bold truths. Here's another: The Earth is round.

Impeach

Impeach

Impeach07

Good-Bye Cindy Sheehan

Good Riddance Attention Whore

By Cindy Sheehan

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

[...]
This is my resignation letter as the “face” of the American anti-war movement. This is not my “Checkers” moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or anymore people that I love and the rest of my resources.
Good-bye America…you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.
It’s up to you now.

Sammy Davis jr.

Mister Bojangles

Fabulous!!!!!!!

Nina Simone

Pure genius!

Ain't Got No...I've Got Life

IQ for Itunes

I certainly learned something...

Demystifying the iTunes EQ

For those of you who want a little more, or a little less of your music in iTunes , there is a handy built in equalizer lurking behind the screen.

See the Traitors

There are only fourteen Senators who had the guts to stand by their convictions. 80 Senators caved in to the White House taking US Armed Forces hostage... And some didn't dare vote.

These DemocRATS are pathetic.

U.S. Senate: Roll Call Vote

H.R. 2206 (U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007 )

Making emergency supplemental appropriations and additional supplemental appropriations for agricultural and other emergency assistance for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007, and for other purposes.

Vote Counts: YEAs 80

NAYs 14

Not Voting 6

Fool me Twice

The Goods on Goodling and the Keys to the Kingdom
by Greg Palast

Explaining the importance of former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez aide Monica Goodling's testimony to the House Judiciary Committee that Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson "perjured himself, lying to the committee in earlier testimony." Sampson had "denied Monica had told him about" the "caging" felony by which "Rove's right-hand man... was directing the illegal purge" of mostly African-Americans from the voter rolls in 2004. In 2006, "right-hand man" Tim "Griffin was named, on Rove's personal demand, U.S. attorney for Arkansas."

The committee was perplexed about Monica's panicked admission and accusations about the caging list because the U.S. press never covered it. That's because, as Griffin wrote to Goodling in yet another email,.. their caging operation only made the news on BBC London: busted open, Griffin [wrote], by that "British reporter," Greg Palast.... Our BBC team broke the story at the top of the nightly news everywhere on the planet—except the USA—only because America's news networks simply refused to cover this evidence of the electoral coup d'etat that chose our president in 2004. And now, not bothering to understand the astonishing revelation in Goodling's confessional, they are missing the real story behind the firing of the U.S. attorneys. It's not about removing prosecutors disloyal to Bush, it's about replacing those who refused to aid the theft of the vote in 2004 with those prepared to burgle it again in 2008.

Poop on Bush

Give that burd a medal!!! A natural editorial comments about the shit this man has been handing out... love it!!

Grief is Damage

Bill to permit wrongful death jurors to consider familly's grief

The General Assembly has sent a bill to Gov. Blagoevich for signature that would allow juries to consider the grief of surviving family members as part of the damages in a wrongful death case. Hopefully, the governor will sign the bill.

One thing that most people are unaware of is that the damages in a wrongful death case are controlled by a statute -- the Wrongful Death Act. By statute, the jury is allowed to only consider "pecuniary losses". This term has been construed by the courts to include two main items: (1) loss of economic support and (2) loss of society, or the loss of the family relationship. Jurors are actually instructed as part of the standard, pattern instructions that they should not consider the grief of the surviving relatives in assessng the damages. In wrongful death cases, defense attorneys routinely request orders be entered barring the surviving relatives from expressing their grief in court.

The Only Way... The Union Way

Workers of the World Unite Against Starbucks

When you pay $4 for a cup of coffee-flavored foamy milk at Starbucks, part of what you're buying is an illusion of corporate social responsibility. The store exudes a warm glow of righteousness, from the recycled paper napkins to the empathetic messages about sustainable trade and ecological practices (Our farmers are happy! Buy a better lightbulb! Have some more foamy milk!).

The workers behind the counter are hoping the public will look beyond all the greenwashing and support their campaign, which has succeeded in raising wages and improving conditions for some workers.

The baristas are asking for better wages (some make as little as $8.75 an hour even in costly Manhattan), guaranteed hours with the option to work full-time and more affordable health insurance. (Despite widely-believed corporate spin to the contrary, Starbucks insures a smaller percentage of its workforce than Wal-Mart.)

Top Ten Reasons...

... Why Paul Wolfowitz Was a Great World Bank President

1. He personally helped address the nagging problem of unequal pay for women by giving his "female companion" a $47,000 raise.

2. This past week, he diverted Bush cabinet officials from fighting the Iraq War, spinning Alberto Gonzales, and figuring out a way to invade Iran by keeping them on the phone to foreign governments to defend his proud record.

3. He weakened the Bush administration's Iraq War brain trust by bringing other key neo-conservative bureaucrats from the Pentagon with him to run the Bank and badger its staff.

4. He buttressed the "Coalition of the Willing" (the brave countries that backed Bush's invasion of Iraq) by promoting unqualified people from those countries into numerous top positions at the Bank.

5. He managed to convince governments of the world's eight most powerful countries to give the Bank key global leadership role in the fight against climate change while the Bank continued to be the world's largest subsidizer of fossil fuels.

6. He made the difficult concept of corruption real to ordinary people.

7. He unified the World Bank staff against a common enemy.

8. He took up so much of The Washington Post the day after tendering his "resignation" that Paris Hilton's sentencing got pushed to page three of the "Style" section.

9. His scandal drew attention to three decades of terrific work by World Bank critics on everything from the environment to worker rights to family planning to the irony of someone who makes nearly $400,000 offering advice to those who make less than a dollar a day.

10. By resigning before he had to be forklifted out the door, he may have preserved the time-honored tradition of the U.S. government naming the World Bank president, possibly offering the Bush administration an exit strategy for Alberto Gonzales.

God is a Serious Business

The Christian Right's Fear of Pleasure is Our Greatest Threat to Choice

The war against abortion has nothing to do with the protection of life. It is a war against an open society -- a cover for assaults against sexual pleasure and personal choice.

There is Always a Stool...

... The task is to find him.

Palestinian Pinochet Making His Move?

The Fatah gunmen who are reported to have initiated the breakdown of the Palestinian unity government and provoked the latest fighting may profess fealty to President Abbas, but it’s not from him that they get their orders. The leader to whom they answer is Mohammed Dahlan, the Gaza warlord who has long been Washington’s anointed favorite to play the role of a Palestinian Pinochet. And while Dahlan is formally subordinate to Abbas, whom he supposedly serves as National Security Adviser, nobody believes that Dahlan answers to Abbas — in fact, it was suggested at the time that Abbas appointed Dahlan only under pressure from Washington, which was irked by the Palestinian Authority president’s decision to join a unity government with Hamas.

If Dahlan takes orders from anyone at all, it’s certainly not from Abbas. Abbas has long recognized the democratic legitimacy and popularity of Hamas, and embraced the reality that no peace process is possible unless the Islamists are given the place in the Palestinian power structure that their popular support necessitates.

Only the Good Die Young

Jerry Falwell

Fuck the FDA!

Time To Become A Vegetarian

By: Nicole Belle @ 6:02 PM - PDT

David Goldstein has been watching closely the tainted gluten/melamine story, and he has even more disturbing news:

During an ongoing media teleconference call, USDA/FDA officials have revealed that melamine-tainted "protein concentrate," imported from China, contaminated fish meal manufactured in Canada. The tainted fish meal was then distributed to an unknown number of fish farms in the US and Canada.

Other revelations:

* 50,000 swine have been quarantined in Illinois due to suspect feed.

* The tainted "wheat gluten" and "rice protein concentrate" at the center of the pet food recall, was actually misrepresented as such. Further tests have determined that it is wheat flour, adulterated with melamine.

UPDATE:
FDA refuses to reveal how many fish farms and in which states. But you can be pretty damn sure that NW farmed salmon is likely on the list.

Live to Mate!

What a life. Living underground for 17 years, working your way up, shedding your skin, mating and promptly dying! The male Cicada doesn't get much joy!

And the female's life is not any better.

Cicada 2007

The Life Cycle of a Cicada

While the Cicada life span may be as long as 17 years, they spend almost all of their lives underground. Cicada nymphs emerge from the ground in periodic cycles. They climb up trees and quickly shed their skins(molt). An adult, flying cicada emerges. The adult Cicadas' entire purpose in life is to mate and produce offspring. You can hear the males' mating "song" from early morning to nightfall. In heavily infested areas, the noise can be quite disturbing. About five to ten days after mating, the female lands on twigs of deciduous trees, cuts slits in them, and lays her eggs in the slit.

Adults do not eat. Rather, damage to trees is caused by the adult female as she cuts slices in twigs to lay her eggs. Shortly after mating, the male Cicada dies.

The eggs hatch, producing tiny nymphs that fall to the ground. These nymphs burrow into the soil and feast on underground roots. They remain there for years, slowly growing, until their periodic cycle calls them to emerge again as adults.

Only in Chicago

Tower twirls and debate starts to swirl

Tower twirls and debate starts to swirl

By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published May 6, 2007

It sounds, at first blush, like an oversize architectural joke — a skyscraper where each floor would revolve independently around a central core, not only making a 360-degree rotation but also creating a constantly shifting profile.