Ah, the Glories of an Overly Large Gut

From Ezra Klein who basically reflects a major topic of discussion around Blogto - er, wait, I don't have a dime to pay Skippy - er.. - Blogosphere today:

Watching David Brooks and John Tierney both race to write the same column extolling the virtues of obesity and mocking liberals for denying themselves cheeseburgers was pretty funny. Did no one warn David that Tierney got there first? Does David not even read his conservative competitor? Seems that the Times token righties need to coordinate a bit better.

The FDA, as usual, did Americans no favor in the last 10 days with their multiple personality disorder-branded 12 - count them - 12 new food pyramids and their schizophrenic response to whether obesity is a good thing or a bad thing.

And Brooks and Tierney simply prove (yet again that they are not just asses but fat asses at that.

This is a topic that hits a little close to home because, for the past few weeks, for probably the first time in my life ongoing, I'm just not hungry. Never hungry. So I simply don't eat. Eventually, my not eating is going to catch up with me and bite me somewhere tender, but for right now, I'm just aghast at food commercials (if one pizza is good then 7 pizzas are heaven and burgers large enough to choke Rush Limbaugh).

We really are a country of gluttony. I think it's beyond the reasoning of most Americans what hunger really means. For many (although certainly not all Americans), hunger means the 7,000 calories they had that day - most empty calories - just didn't do it. Hunger is a concept here (except for the very poor).

Last night, I happened to catch a "fashion show" done by some surgeon who performs gastric stapling. Heh. And the women who were in the show were about as vapid as you can imagine. A twenty-two-year-old who was just "tired" of dieting so she had this procedure done (wow, I can understand - I mean, she's twenty-two. One woman cried because she woke up and realized that McDonald's was introducing some new sandwich and she wouldn't be able to eat it (wiping tear from my eye).

We're a country that eats our own weight in food in a week and then decides that a pill or some surgery will make it all go away. I read recently that people were asking their doctors for Lipitor (a statin drug used to lower cholesterol) "so they can eat cheeseburgers, chili dogs, and ice cream with inpunity".

Bill Maher used to joke that it was America's gluttony that helped explain "why they hate us." I'm starting to think maybe it's not so much of a funny.

For Your More Base Amusement: Anna Nicole Smith

DC Media Girl brings us Anna Nicole's heartwarming prose.

The Carnival of the unCapitalists

Red Harvest brings us this festival, with lots of interesting links and resources.

If you haven't visited, tell them the tall woman in Vermont sent you.

[Ed. note: You are not tall.]

[Author's note: Tsk. Tsk. That's all perspective. Compared to many pygmies and munchkins, I'm downright statuesque. AND... the thinner I get, the taller I look. And, oh yes, btw, fuck you.]

[Ed. note: You're more thin-skinned than tall.]

[Author's note: [yawn]]

Silly Question: Why Does Halliburton Need Another Tax Break

Posted by Cookie Jill at the Chateau d'roo (Skippy International):

in a research note published this morning, the analyst mentions that the company's near term earnings are expected to be positively impacted by a reduced corporate tax rate of 32% during 2005. according to the analyst, halliburton is receiving higher-than-expected award fees for the military support contract in iraq. the eps estimates for 2005 and 2006 have been raised from $2.15 to $2.30 and from $2.60 to $2.70, respectively. - newratings.com

The President and Tom DeLay

Wasn't it just heartwarming to see how darned close George W. Bush and Tom DeLay were today, the president eager to pump Tom's hand and pat him on the back and call him a good American who deserves all our support?

Yes, between holding hands with the Saudi yesterday (really, they need to set that to music, considering how they walked through the blooming wildflowers together) and Tom today, I feel like there's some hope for conservatives soon embracing the idea of two men having a deep and abiding love for each other.

What was more interesting is that in the last few days, CNN's 10-watt anchor, Kyra Phillips (her behavior during the early phase of the Iraq War that is far from over was shameful) has twice made comments indicating perhaps this president is just TOO comfortable with the Sauds and a few other little remarks that seemed completely off her regular script. When Kyra Phillips managed to get anything intelligent through her multi-toned hair dye layer, one thinks there might be hope for others.

SistersTalk

SistersTalk is a relatively new blog in the BlogHersphere as well as downtown Blogtopia (yes, Skippy coined that phrase and I'm sending him over the required dime for its use) and while I've only been there twice so far, I like what I see.

Go visit. Topics currently include Microsoft, Wally Mart, and Ariana Huffington's new venture (all celebrity blogging).

On a side note, SistersTalk's resident blogger has one of the better pictures out there, not going for the muddy looking pics most of us shoot absently with our web cams. And an intelligent and warm face that invites conversation, it is, too.

At Least Half of Americans Now Feel Bush Deliberately Misled Them on Iraq

Koolaid consumption down? I'm not going to offer much comment beyond that because I was one of the minority back in the months leading up to Iraq saying this war was "cooked". I don't feel any particular glee in the fact that the Bushies kept proving me and others right or any particular joy that it's taken so long for others to "get" it.

From Editor and Publisher:

Half of all Americans, exactly 50%, now say the Bush administration deliberately misled Americans about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the Gallup Organization reported this morning.

"This is the highest percentage that Gallup has found on this measure since the question was first asked in late May 2003," the pollsters observed. "At that time, 31% said the administration deliberately misled Americans. This sentiment has gradually increased over time, to 39% in July 2003, 43% in January/February 2004, and 47% in October 2004."

Also, according to the latest poll, more than half of Americans, 54%, disapprove of the way President Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, while 43% approve. In early February, Americans were more evenly divided on the way Bush was handling the situation in Iraq, with 50% approving and 48% disapproving.

Last week Gallup reported that 53% now believe that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was "not worth it." But Frank Newport, editor in chief at Gallup, recalled today that although a majority of the public began to think the Vietnam war was a mistake in the summer of 1968, the United States did not pull out of Vietnam for more than five years, after thousands of more American lives were lost.

Microsoft, Gays, and the Brouhaha

John at AmericaBlog has pretty much led the way in reporting on this topic, which relates to how Microsoft reportedly backed away from supporting legislation that would have made it harder to act with bias against homosexuals. I'm much more disturbed by reports that Microsoft is paying Ralph Reed's group $20K a month for no discernable reason. Absent such a reason, one assumes it's political blackmail demanded by Reed to the tune of nearly a quarter million per year. Read this piece on the front page of the business section of the Washington Post for more details.

As I've said here, I've been associated with Microsoft both directly (as a contractor) and indirectly (in a variety of ways) since the late 1980s. My association with them now is fairly limited (I am no longer a contractor, for example, but I have a book that was published by them last year).

During the time I actively worked for their benefit, probably about 15% of my team (all non-employees) happened to be gay. The limited discrimination I witnessed within the group was never from Microsoft but from a few members of the team who didn't happen to like some of the gays and used their sexual orientation as an excuse to demean them in comments to other team members. Whenever I happened to hear this subject raised when we were around our MS reps, the MS reps either stopped it cold or simply got the topic back to actual work and not gossip.

Elsewhere in my dealings with MS, I've never seen the issue of sexual orientation come up. I knew occasionally from personal statements made by some of the people at MS that they were gay and that according to them, this presented no problem with their employment at Microsoft, but otherwise, it was a non-issue. I've always been rather pleased about that because I haven't always worked with companies who were so accepting.

So I'm a bit stymied by this whole mess. Stymied enough that I don't feel like I have much to add beyond what I've said here.

When this whole thing first burst onto the scene last week, I assumed that both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were out of the loop on what others within the company were doing. Bill might be a Republican, but he's a lover of science, engineering and profitability first and foremost, in my experience. I don't see Bill coddling somebody like Reed. In fact, Microsoft used to have a completely hands-off policy in politics and lobbying. That changed, I believe, during one of the anti-trust cases, and I was sorry it did. I used to enjoy that Microsoft refused to play the games many corporations did in this regard. But I won't pretend to say I know the ins and outs of all of this because it's separate from my work with them which has been technical and/or online community or publishing in nature.

But here's the thing. I see folks say, "fuck this, I'll buy a Mac!" Really? Because probably one of the few reasons Apple is still around is because Microsoft gave them a financial bail-out several years ago. The best-selling Mac software includes many Microsoft products.

There's also the "fuck this, I'll go Linux and open source" but great purity isn't found in this avenue either, in my humble experience. Wherever you have humans, you have politicking and agendas and sadly, some corruption of pure ideals.

So what's the answer? Well, I daresay Microsoft isn't going to be easily touched by simple acts of rebellion (they're slightly large, if you hadn't noticed). But I also think most of us thinking folks are much more likely to buy their products than the people who think science and computers are a crime against God. So if thinking people (say, even just a few million of them) who do not like Mr. Reed's antics contacted Microsoft by letter, I suspect they might at least analyze the situation.

In my experience, Microsoft simply isn't the evil empire it's often portrayed to be. I don't like everything they do, but they're an intelligent company that is usually pretty damned smart about their key markets and their consumers. They aren't a Diebold or an Enron who have an overriding agenda beyond simple business. So I think they have to be approached as an intelligent company by intelligent consumers who are not happy with this development.

A Hoot Indeed - Caution: Humor Zone

I've got a ton of more serious stuff to post - ranging from Microsoft's apparent paying of Ralph Reed (to the tune of $20K a month) for undisclosed "services" to serious questions about the so-called big deal drug lord Norzai whom the Justice Dept. brought forward yesterday, to how bad this "energy policy" (drafted by Enron and other major power players) of Bush's is.

But... I have to get back to work so here's a small laugh for your consumption:

Crawford, Texas -- 24 April 2005

A tragic fire this morning destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. The fire began in the presidential bathroom where both of the books were kept. Both books have been lost.

A presidential spokesman said the president was devastated, as he had almost finished coloring the second one.

Blog Regulation: Good or Evil

Shadowthief takes the position blogs should be regulated over in his DailyKos diary.

I really don't want the feds all over blogs for like a ton of reasons, not the least of which is that Mr. Bush kills everything good he touches.

However, with that said, anyone taking money from a political campaign who also blogs about a political campaign must disclose that relationship. And the punishments must be meted our fairly (not just gut the Dems and smile at the Reps).

And you know what? I don't think that even has to be a law. It should be common sense, fairness, and decent ethics that makes one do so. But I sure didn't hear the Thune blogs say it and I question a bit of what happened on the Dem side (I believe I read acknowledgements on the Dem blogs involved in last year's frakus but I'm not 100% sure of that).

Sirota: Bush's Top Cop Leaves to Defend Corporate Criminals

From David Sirota:

In my travels Monday, I noticed this little tidbit buried at in the back pages of the Wall Street Journal:

"Christopher A. Wray, chief of the Justice Department's criminal division and a central figure in the government's crackdown on corporate crime, will step down to lead a corporate white-collar crime defense unit at the Atlanta law firm of King & Spaulding."

As a King & Spalding press release brags, corporate clients "will benefit greatly from the experience [Wray] has gathered while at the Justice Department."

How nice. Our nation's top corporate cop will now using his insider knowledge of DoJ to help corporations get off the hook when they commit crimes. In some sense, we shouldn't be surprised, as this is, after all, the Bush administration - a group of people who run the business/government revolving door so fast it is starting to resemble an industrial-strength fan.

Typical.

Remember the Congressman who pushed through that disastrous "Medicare Reform" thing went to work as a lobbyist for PhrMA. There are a slew of these. I hated it when it happened with Bush I's and Clinton's people and I hate it FAR MORE now because it's much more egregious and consistent now.

Say Hello to AbstinenceOnly.Com

From TCF (and what a hoot!):

Scarlet P. at Freewaybloggers.com is up to no good (again), giving TCF a heads up to the Evangelical Theocracy approved AbstinenceOnly.com! As Scarlet points out with a verbal smirk, ‘this is what happens when you spend $400 million on abstinence only education and neglect to secure the domain name’.

Dr. Bill Frist provides expert medical advice, preferring videotape submissions of your symptoms, now standard procedure to avoid HIV infection through sweat and tear contamination.

All I can say is, welcome to the "celebration of non-penetration" and bless your dark little heart!

"It's Vital to God That We Stop This Barbarian Practice Now Before Any More Are Lost"

Legislation will be introduced by Dominionist Christian Congresswomen this week to end a practice that everyone agrees is a crime against God: circumcision.

"Christians have known for a long time that the immoral practice of defiling the male body, often performed when the child is just a few days old, is a sin against God. This collection of cells, while obviously of no concern to those Godless Democrats (some of whom are Jewish and hence, without a real God and forever to be kept from heaven), is living when it is summarily executed by pediatricians and moyls," said Congresswoman Mary Magdalena Piety-Dogma (R-TX).

"Parents clearly are being influenced by unholy powers when they make this choice for their sons and it's vital that Congress intervenes to save the lives of these foreskins. All this talk about circumcision being appropriate for hygiene and social acceptance is simply an invention of the lefty liberal faction, likely driven by rich and powerful Hebrews who have a vested interest in seeing the moral decline of this county."

"Congress, which sits at the right hand of Jesus Christ, the one and only lord and savior, has the moral imperative to bring America closer to God, and we think this legislation helps us accomplish just that."

"Now, some may try to argue that Congress has no right to make a decision that is entirely the purview of the parents and those males who actually make it to adulthood with their glans hood still intact. But we know better. It's quite obvious that these people simply aren't bright enough to understand what they're doing or they simply would not engage in this practice. Or they are being deceived by Democrats (who, as I already indicated, include Jews). As lawmakers and women, we have the moral and mental clarity to act in these men's best interests in helping them come to Jesus with their God-given bodies intact. We trust that soon, we will be thanked rather than ridiculed."

"To deny us the right to put forth this law is a war against people of faith who believe passionately that God would want us to preserve a foreskin."

Sound far-fetched? It shouldn't. Congress has been treating a smaller collection of cells - a first trimester embryo - and the woman's body who carries it as something they have the moral right to control. Just as fat old white men feel it's their right to both remove access to birth control (other than abstinence which these same fat old white men seem to have a great deal of trouble practicing themselves) as well as a woman's right to choose whether a pregnancy, when it occurs, goes to term, why can't the theocrat women (who are too holy to commit an act of fellatio themselves) pull their own?

If God's name can be attached to something as unholy as the Senate and a filibuster, why not to a foreskin?

And heck, I might even join this bandwagon because I feel that something like a circumcision should NOT be performed on a tiny child. If a male child reaches adulthood and actually wants a circumcision, fine, but it's not a decision a parent should make in the first days of that child's life. There is NO real medical reason to perform circumcision (under most circumstances, of course), all those urban myths to the contrary.

Ah, but there's the rub. Congress is never going to make a ruling that affects the white male population like that. They know how they would be treated (stoned, shot, burned at the stake) if they pulled the same crap on a prostate or a penis that they do with a woman's uterus. No amount of God talk would quiet the masses. Hell, the entire state of Texas might descend on Washington and force Congress, at gunpoint, into early retirement.

Be Creative, People!

From TCF at ThatColoredFellas Weblog:

You’re the A&R Rep (Artist and Repertoire) for That Colored Fella’s Records or the hot shot, young Music Producer I just laid six figures on, to deliver the eagerly anticipated debut album from the Christian Rock outfit, Dr. Frist and the Justice Sunday Theocrats! And, I want a list of suggested song titles, like yesterday.

• "Amazing Greed"
• "Gramma Got Run Over By a Dem'crat (ridin' home from Christ's house Christmas Eve)"
• "Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Dem'crats in Life"
• "Since I Have The Hammer (I'd DeLay Justice in the Eve'nin, I'd DeLay Justice in the Mornin, All Over This Land)"
• "Total Eclipse of the Soul"
• "Dick Cheney Lies" (to the tune of "Bette Davis Eyes")
• "I'll Be Watching You"

Are these rock titles? No. But since when were Mr. Frist and the Theocrats in touch with reality?

Condi Rice: Never One to Let Facts Get Ahead of Her Ego or Her President

From the Guardian:

A state department report which showed an increase in terrorism incidents around the world in 2004 was altered to strip it of its pessimistic statistics, it emerged yesterday.

The country-by-country report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, has come out every year since 1986, accompanied by statistical tables.

This year's edition showed a big increase, from 172 significant terrorist attacks in 2003 to 655 in 2004.

Much of the increase took place in Iraq, contradicting recent Pentagon claims that the insurgency there is waning.

Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, ordered the report to be withdrawn and a new one issued minus the statistics.

A Democratic congressman, Henry Waxman, has written an angry letter about the change to Cameron Hume, the state department's inspector general, arguing that Ms Rice's decision "denies the public access to important information about the incidence of terrorism".

Mr Waxman said: "There appears to be a pattern in the administration's approach to terrorism data: favourable facts are revealed while unfavourable facts are suppressed."

This isn't news, per se, but Condi's role in suppressing the evidence (while implied before) is rather certain now.

Comments on the WaPo Poll

First, polls only mean so much. Anytime you grab one to three thousand people out of a population of nearly 300 million, it can only be somewhat representational.

Second, believe it or not, even as much as I do not like Mr. Bush or his administration, I take NO joy in seeing a president just re-elected (by a squeak and not a mandate) to four more years scraping the pavement in poll numbers. If Mr. Bush as a person fails, I might smile. But this failure hurts our country badly and that I don't enjoy. If we frog marched Mr. Bush out of the White House in handcuffs tomorrow, taking Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and company with him, we'd still be in this mess.

Third, even given that polls mean just so much, we're starting to see a shift AWAY from the 50-50 division but in ways that are not supportive or positive about this president or his sense of direction (which seems to be poorer even than my own ::grin::). So much for him being a uniter and not a divider - division is basically all he's done except for a few rah-rah-US boombah days around 9/11.

Fourth, I am heartened to see that many Republicans join Democrats in not buying this "filibuster is against people of faith" hogwash being flown by disreputable men like Bill Frist and Tom DeLay. The filibuster has helped both Dems and Reps in the past, and it has been used both well and badly in the past by both parties. It's one of our checks and balances and should remain. When I asked myself if I would be so opposed to the end of the filibuster if the Dems were pushing it, my best guess is that I would be just as opposed if it were the Dems trying to end it.

Are we sorry yet? Or, more importantly, are the people who voted for him sorry yet (the rest of us have been sorry since December 2000)? In my own discussion with people (many of whom close to me geographically are Republicans), many questioned their vote within days of the 2004 election. Many more are questioning it now. This is supported by talks with others who are doing informal polls around the country.

But how that helps, I don't know. We're stuck.

Bush Paint by the (Poll) Numbers

Here's the Washington Post/ABC poll which closed yesterday (and historically, WaPo polls aren't creatures of extremes, usually a bit more conservative than NY Times polls but relatively balanced). Now let's look at what it tells us, if anything. Thankfully, however, the president will pay no attention to it.

Here we go!

Do you support a change of Senate rules (killing of the filibuster? 66 Oppose; 26 Support

48% think the Dems are right to block Bush's judicial appointees vs. 36% opposed

Does Bush understand problems of people like you? 40% yes; 58% no

Only 39% support a constitutional amendment to prevent gays from marrying.

63% see the U.S. economy as not so good/poor while 37% rate it as excellent/good (actually, only 2% said excellent)

64% says gas prices are causing them noticeable financial hardship

Asked who's to blame for gas prices, Bush got the biggest vote at 31% compared with US oil companies (23%) and non-US oil producing nations (26%)

58% said those groups whose views are similar to their own are LOSING political influence in this country

47% said that Dems better represent the respondents' own personal values vs. 38% for Reps

52% said judges are neither too liberal nor too conservative (compared with 26% who see them as too liberal and 18% too conservative)

Now let's look at how the poll breaks down people's views of Bush's handling of specific issues:

Approve Disapprove
Social Security 31 64
Iraq 42 56
Economy 40 57
Energy policy 35 54

54% think Iraq was not worth fighting compared with 44% who think it was.
58% think we're bogged down in Iraq vs. 38% who think we're making some progress

Asked whether a year from now, Iraq will be more stable, 39% expressed confidence this would happen (although 37 of the 39% said only "somewhat" confident) while 60% said they didn't think so (31% of these said they had NO confidence whatsoever)

Overall, 50% disapprove of Mr. Bush's job performance while 47% approve (note: 38% strongly disapprove while only 22% strongly approve)

Finally, Dems were trusted on issues like SS more than Bush (50 vs. 32%)

Frank Rich Weighs in on "Justice Sunday"

And calls it a high-tech lynching in prime time. Read it here.

Americans Going Abroad for Health Care

Did anyone happen to catch "60 Minutes" last night, specifically the piece on how many Americans are going to India and Thailand and other countries to have babies, get operations, etc. for a fraction of the price as here?

My partner immediately looked at me and said, "Well, maybe that's something you should consider."

Then I looked at him and grimaced.

It's not that I oppose the idea outright, but how much has to be fucked up that you can have heart surgery in India for $1,500 when the same procedure would cost you $20-$30K here?

Also, the presentation by many... people who had money in the bank although not necessarily health insurance... who made foreign hospitals seem like the answer really hit me wrong. For example, if you've got $30-50K sitting in a bank, why don't you have health insurance?

If you have a heart attack, can you afford the time to apply for and receive a passport (I read recently that only 1 in about 25 Americans have one), fly for 10 hours, and be that far from your friends and family and other support system? It might seem like "the" answer for some, but it's not really a solution.

How does such an idea strike you?

When You Go to War with the Secretary of Defense You Have Rather Than the One You Want

In returning home, the leaders and Marine infantrymen have chosen to break an institutional code of silence and tell their story, one they say was punctuated not only by a lack of armor, but also by a shortage of men and planning that further hampered their efforts in battle, destroyed morale and ruined the careers of some of their fiercest warriors.

The saga of Company E, part of a lionized battalion nicknamed the Magnificent Bastards, is also one of fortitude and ingenuity. The marines, based at Camp Pendleton in southern California, had been asked to rid the provincial capital of one of the most persistent insurgencies, and in enduring 26 firefights, 90 mortar attacks and more than 90 homemade bombs, they shipped their dead home and powered on. Their tour has become legendary among other Marine units now serving in Iraq and facing some of the same problems.

"As marines, we are always taught that we do more with less," said Sgt. James S. King, a platoon sergeant who lost his left leg when he was blown out of the Humvee that Saturday afternoon last May. "And get the job done no matter what it takes."

The experiences of Company E's marines, pieced together through interviews at Camp Pendleton and by phone, company records and dozens of photographs taken by the marines, show they often did just that. The unit had less than half the troops who are now doing its job in Ramadi, and resorted to making dummy marines from cardboard cutouts and camouflage shirts to place in observation posts on the highway when it ran out of men. During one of its deadliest firefights, it came up short on both vehicles and troops. Marines who were stranded at their camp tried in vain to hot-wire a dump truck to help rescue their falling brothers. That day, 10 men in the unit died.

Read the whole story here.