more reason to celebrate

A victory for same sex couples today as the United States Senate rejects President Bush's proposed constitutional marriage amendment. The vote was 49 to 48, but far from the amount needed to move.
--source

well, what would you think would come from known liars?

The Post explains that the nuclear deal endorsed by the White House "leaves open the possibility" that Tehran can enrich uranium in-country. The administration said it will take years, at least, before it would greenlight that. Still, the offer, as the WP puts it, "differs significantly from the Bush administration's stated determination to prevent Iran from mastering" nukes technology.

the 18th state, 32 left to go

Bigot-for-pay Tim Eyman's efforts to hold a referendum on the hard-won civil rights law passed this last March have failed. This evening, Eyman announced at a press conference that Referendum 65 had collected only 105,103 signatures, 7,337 short of the 112,440 valid signatures needed to keep the bill from taking effect tomorrow and putting it instead on the November ballot. Washington now becomes the 18th state in the US with state-wide protections for gay civil rights.

--source

RIP Billy Preston

PHOENIX - Billy Preston, the exuberant keyboardist who landed dream gigs with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and enjoyed his own series of hit singles, including "Outta Space" and "Nothing From Nothing," died Tuesday at 59.
--story

Quote of the Day

"Video didn't kill the radio star. They got together and threw a party."
--someone at audioblog.com

attribution

Letter Of The Day

Our governor is naive (“Vilsack Offers Political Views to Graduates,” May 23).

On his trip to Israel he stands only a few miles from one-quarter million malnourished children in Palestine and peddles the platitude that “hunger and illiteracy” breed “terrorists.”

He seems not to realize that the blockade of food and water resources to defenseless civilians by the Israeli government is a war crime and a severe violation of the Geneva Conventions. The theft of $50 million in Palestinian tax receipts is a crime. The colonization of land and the confiscation of private property is a violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions.

These crimes committed in our names and with our money are financed by the same group that paid the governor’s air fare. The governor owes Iowans a complete disclosure of all financial transactions related to this trip.
— John Hauptman, Ames.

attribution

saddam would be proud

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.
--source

2004 was stolen so says RFK, Jr.

Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.

BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

from the rolling stone

from the "yeaaaah right" files

In a surprise to no one, President Bush called for an amendment banning same-sex marriage in his weekly radio address. The president's advisers said Bush was picking up the issue now because of several recent judicial challenges to state bans and because the Senate is set to debate the issue this week. Electoral politics had nothing to do with it.

take a guess on when iran gets hit?

it's too late for 06/06/06, but i'll bet it'll be in june sometime.

first, haditha, then ishaqi

WASHINGTON, June 2 (Reuters) - A U.S. military probe has exonerated U.S. troops in the deaths of Iraqi civilians in the town of Ishaqi in March, finding American forces followed standard procedures and committed no misconduct, defense officials said on Friday.
...
Police in Ishaqi, 60 miles (100 km) north of Baghdad, have said six adults and five children were shot dead in a U.S. military raid on a home on March 15.

The U.S. military maintains there were four dead in the incident, including a guerrilla, two women and a child, and said they died after troops were fired upon from the house as they arrived to arrest an al Qaeda suspect.

The defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an investigation found no wrongdoing by U.S. forces.

--source

more on ishaqi here

anybody who disagrees that our troops are causing bad feelings

of the iraqis only needs to hear this:

The U.S.'s top commander in Iraq has ordered all troops to do "core warrior values" training, which USAT says will include handy "slides that depict professional military values and the importance of disciplined conduct in combat."

the above steps are being taken because of what happened in haditha. what happened in balad is another story being untold in any corner other than the BBC:

The BBC is airing video that seems to support Iraqi charges, and contradict the Pentagon's account, of a different incident in which 11 Iraqis were killed by GIs near Balad. Knight Ridder had an in-depth report on the charges in March—and nobody much noticed, including TP.

anybody who disagrees that our troops are causing bad feelings

of the iraqis only needs to hear this:

The U.S.'s top commander in Iraq has ordered all troops to do "core warrior values" training, which USAT says will include handy "slides that depict professional military values and the importance of disciplined conduct in combat."

the above steps are being taken because of what happened in haditha. what happened in balad is another story being untold in any corner other than the BBC:

The BBC is airing video that seems to support Iraqi charges, and contradict the Pentagon's account, of a different incident in which 11 Iraqis were killed by GIs near Balad. Knight Ridder had an in-depth report on the charges in March—and nobody much noticed, including TP.

FARPOINT.FACTOID

when did a coup d'etat happen in America?

in 1898, in wilmington, NC. the only one recorded in American history.

attribution

American sentiment

the anti-bush sentiment is growing exponentially because when someone turns on the very people who laid out their trust for them and only to get shit upon, then that really makes it hurt more, hurt more = more upset = more anti-bush sentiment. actually, since there's a totally republican government, there's really not a whole lotta other people to take the heat off. no, they wanted the whole pie, let'em get sick eating it to the last crumb.

Testing photo message

Testing photo message,
originally uploaded by leQ.

Headline of the Day

Gay boycott could hurt Cox in primary

my resume from 1986

actually, i found two ... aren't YOU lucky.

HERE
and HERE

FARPOINT.FACTOID

THE NUMBER OF DEATHS ASSOCIATED WITH KATRINA: 1577

Letter Of The Day

it's been a while, but here's today's winner:

One recent evening I stood outside the Village Inn in Ankeny as people parked and got out of their cars and came out of the restaurant to view a full rainbow in the eastern sky — from horizon to horizon it spread its beauty. I hadn’t seen a rainbow like that for more than 15 years; it is a memorable experience, a community experience, a human experience that thrills me every time it happens.

As I looked around, I saw that no one was checking for citizenship papers; we were standing talking excitedly stranger to stranger, stranger to friend and friend to friend about this natural phenomenon we were experiencing.

We were men and women, people of color and Caucasians; we were challenged physically, emotionally and mentally and we were not; Republican and Democrat and folks who didn’t vote the two-party system. We were gay and straight, rich and poor, child and adult, tall and short, those who had broken laws and spent time in prison and those who had not, Protestant, Jew and Muslim. We did not all weigh the same. We had not all read “The DaVinci Code.” We spoke English, and we did not. We were American citizens and we were not.

There were no armed personnel telling us who could and who could not enjoy the rainbow; it was life at its finest in an American community.

I am begging this nation to begin responding from the heart with love and compassion, not fear and hatred, when it comes to any so-called problem we make up to divide ourselves. This pledge of allegiance was first used at the dedication of the World’s Fair grounds in Chicago on Oct. 21, 1892, the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.”

That is the America I want to be a part of today. I want all violent responses to human conflicts to stop today, right now, so there will still be an America in another 400 years.

— Patricia Moore, Ankeny.

attribution

has anybody thought or contemplated just how much energy

it's going to take to clean up the bushite mess? i mean, it'll take years to repair our reputation on the world stage. then there's all these lax laws in place that are hurting not only our civil liberties, but the environment as well. then lets not forget how the defense department is surging and bulging at its seams for more power (wants the intelligence community under their thumb).

i pity the first next president if he's not republican. he'll have a job, a really hard job, to do to regain America's pride and respect.

diva_in_bed.JPG

diva_in_bed.JPG,
originally uploaded by leQ.

i'm composing this from flickr. diva sleeping on the bed. i jus wanted to find out what this looked like on my blog.

want to get to the heart of the bushisita mindset?

read this.

In his 2002 book The War Against the Terror Masters, in a rare moment of unguarded intellectual honesty, neocon guru Michael Ledeen unwittingly let slip what is probably the best two-word description of the underlying agenda that has been pursued by the neocons over the last several years and is ongoing today: "Creative destruction."

"Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. … They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission."

so much for democracy on the march.

ecto's blogger tool

press a key, then tab, and you get a bunch of words listed alphabettically. not every word in the dictionary, but a lot - many that i wouldn't have thought of. all beginning with the sequence since the last space. iow, it changes every time you type a letter in the succession. type b, press tab, and you get one list of words. press e, then tab, you'll get a whole differernt list of words that start with be

it's just weird and i have yet to figure out what use it could possibly take.

according to the bible

man is only 6 days younger than the earth.

Quote of the Day

"Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night,"
--Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert

-source

corruption in iraq

just like corruption in washington:

It is "in every ministry, in every governorate," said the head of Iraq's anti-corruption agency.
--source

my next 3 act play

act I: atmosphere before sex

act II: atmosphere during sex

act III: atmosphere after sex

wouldnt take much to get a standing ovation would it.

fed-ex came to my house today

delivered an envelope from ligund pharmaceuticals. they're the makers of avinza, a product that costs $3200 a month. yes, that's right ... THREE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED for every 30 day supply.

they're responding to my complaint that avinza had no effect on me whatsoever. in fact, i still have some capsules. i could take some and see if they work. but they couldn't reproduce the effect in the labs. which tells me their labs are not capable of equating human reactions to their drugs.

what gets me is that they could have sent this out usps instead of spending $15 to fed-ex it. no WONDER these drugs cost so damn much. the makers are living high on the hog. at the expense of their consumers.

FARPOINT.FACTOID

the Army paid out half a billion dollars last year in re-enlistment bonuses

--source

no WONDER the army is not losing people.

an example of how bad this administration is managing iraq

Much more in-depth is a piece the NYT fronts on the Iraqi police force and the failure of the Bush administration to adequately train it. The administration rejected a plan to rebuild the force using thousands of American civilian trainers. Instead, a dozen ill-equipped advisers were initially sent to rebuild the force. Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik said he was sent to Baghdad with 10 days' notice and no preparation; he prepared himself by watching A&E Network documentaries on Saddam Hussein. In the two weeks he had to ready himself for his job, L. Paul Bremer wasn't sure he'd even been briefed on the Iraqi police. Even more troublesome—despite being unable to find foreign field trainers for the force or to trust the Iraqis signing up, American officials never sounded alarm bells. When Kerik returned to the U.S., he said the force had made "tremendous progress."

--today's papers

Question Of The Day

Bush's NSA nominee, General Hayden, appeared at his Senate hearing in uniform yesterday, and told the senators that he will be independent of the Pentagon while retaining his rank of Four-Star General. Isn't that grounds for a court martial?
--bushwatch

my flickr group

http://www.flickr.com/groups/66697600@N00/

stop by for some photo action.

FARPOINT.FACTOID

the number of deaths related to hurrican katrina: 1,577

they KNEW 9/11 was going to happen

and they did NOTHING about it

Because just now, some 56 months after the fact, we are learning that both Judy Miller and her editors at the New York Times had information that foretold the 9/11 terror attacks and elected not to publish it. Reading the new story carefully, it does seem that a decision to publish the article in the summer of 2001 was not a "slam dunk,' that there were legitimate questions whether Miller's tip was enough to hang a story on. But the episode does raise a couple of other serious questions -- surely about the pre-attack ineptitude of the Bush White House, but also over the Times' handling of this explosive info both before and after 9/11.

--source

the story as reported: http://alternet.org/story/36388/

for shame for shame

that our government would let this happen to someone who gave their all for this rediculous bush-war.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The nightmare of Iraq was bad enough for Vanessa Gamboa. Unprepared for combat beyond her basic training, the supply specialist soon found herself in a firefight, commanding a handful of clerks.

"They promoted me to sergeant. I knew my job but I didn't know anything about combat. So I'm responsible for all these people and I don't know what to tell them but to duck," Gamboa said.

The battle, on a supply delivery run, ended without casualties, and it did little to steel Gamboa for what awaited her back home in Brooklyn.

When the single mother was discharged in April, after her second tour in Iraq, she was 24 and had little money and no place to live. She slept in her son's day-care center.

Gamboa is part of a small but growing trend among U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- homelessness.

--reuters

Quote of the Day

"Now I am isolated," said one middle-class Sunni. "I have no government. I have no protection from the government. Anyone can come to my house, take me, kill me and throw me in the trash."
--source

tvland's advertising

the one with the girl rockstar, that tune. when will they EVER drop it from heavy rotation? it's the most annoying commercial on tv now.

3 red states left

count 'em as andy sullivan suggests

Letters of the Day

today we get two winners:

Catholic Sister Dianna Ortiz visited Des Moines on May 6 and spoke tearfully about the torture she endured while serving as a missionary in Guatemala in the late 1980s.

She has continued to be "tortured" by our government during a long struggle to obtain full disclosure about her case and the United States' involvement.

Yet, the hardest thing for Ortiz, and myself, to understand is that our country continues to accept torture as an option. President Bush has proclaimed, "We do not torture." Yet many examples have refuted this, including Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and the alleged CIA secret jails in Europe.

Where is the outrage about our country's involvement in torture? We must take the lead in following international law and not become terrorists ourselves. Zero tolerance of torture is the only acceptable option.

- Jane Alderman, Ankeny.

and

I had the privilege of hearing Sister Dianna Ortiz speak about the torture she endured at the hands of men trained by the U.S. military. She also told of the thousands of others who are being tortured every day. As those of us in attendance witnessed the toll the torture has taken on this small but courageous woman, we understood when she asked, "Where is the outrage?"

After hearing about the abuses even children are suffering at the hands of torturers, I can no longer be a bystander.

The recent Amnesty International report, "The Threat of a Bad Example: Undermining International Standards," exposes the United States' torture of those captured in the war on terror. As taxpaying and voting citizens, we are responsible for what our government does in our name. On behalf of Ortiz and her continued suffering, and all victims and families of victims of torture, I say no more torture in my name.

- Dixie J. Webb, Ankeny.

attribution

amazling race contestants

the frat girls?

so they ARE gay!
(giggle*

they say they have no plans on bombing iran?

BULL SHIT

THE US is updating contingency plans for a non-nuclear strike to cripple Iran's atomic weapon programme if international diplomacy fails, Pentagon sources have confirmed.

--source

what else would you expect from LIARS CHEATS & THIEVES?

not the America i support

... last weekend the NYTflagged—and stuffed—the U.S.'s apparent support for the warlords
--today's papers

Letter of the Day

Preventing genocide is a noble cause, but Brian Duffy's May 2 political cartoon was in error. The Armenian genocide in 1915 came before the Holocaust. It is worthy of note that few know about the Armenians. In fact, our ally Turkey continues to officially deny that genocide ever occurred.

In addition, the United States entered World War II because of the Japanese attack, not because of the Holocaust. Hitler declared war on us.

History tells us that our government acts long after the fact, and it would be a denial of our history to think otherwise.

- Leonard V. Larsen, Ames.

attribution

all the indicators are there

in almost every respect, Democrats should be able to sweep house come november. they have been given so many goodie gifts on which to run on, that if they fail, they will have been victims of cheating.

freedom on the march

THE death threat was delivered to Karazan’s father early in the morning by a masked man wearing a police uniform.

The scribbled note was brief. Karazan had to die because he was gay. In the new Baghdad, his sexuality warranted execution by the religious militias. The father was told that if he did not hand his son over, other family members would be killed.

Haydar Faiek, 40, a transsexual, was beaten and burnt to death last September in Karrada’s main street.

The Interior Ministry says that it is investigating a claim by gay activists that a 14-year-old male prostitute was killed in al-Dura last month by men in police uniforms. The gunmen told the boy’s father that he was executed for “corrupting the community”.

--story

ever hear of C&C Music Factory? or the Cover Girls?

or 2 Puerto Ricans, A blackman and a dominican?

i knew robbie when he was just spinning out of his bedroom on east 28th street back in ... oh golly, 84? 85?

found this picture of him

the news of karl rove being indicted?

was met with a standing ovation in michigan trial lawyers association dinner.

At a Michigan Trial Lawyers’ Association dinner Saturday night in Dearborn, Mich., the group's vice president Robert Raitt announced — according to the Detroit Free Press — that President Bush’s longtime strategist had just been indicted. The announcement reportedly prompted a standing ovation by the crowd of 700, which included Sen. Hillary Clinton.
--source

the numbers

wow... if you like figures, you'll luv this site:

http://www.surveyusa.com/50State2006/50StatePres060515State.htm

column of the day

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060515/OPINION03/605150314/1035/OPINION