Detainee Bill 'Legalizes Tyranny', Codifies Torture and Grants Bush Retroactive Immunity for War Crimes

Andrew Sullivan to Anderson Cooper: Detainee Bill "Legalizes Tyranny"

"Whatever else this is, it is not a constitutional democracy. It is a thinly-veiled military dictatorship, subject to only one control: the will of the Great Decider. And the war that justifies this astonishing attack on American liberty is permanent without end."

Following Sullivan's comments: A Syrian-Canadian is arrested in Canada, turned over to Syria by the US and tortured. The same thing could happen to you or me.

The Bush Administration is a fascist regime that must be stopped. Period.

I'll see you all in Guantanamo.

White Supremacist Editor at The Washington Times

The second most powerful editor at The Washington Times is a white supremacist racist who says blacks are "born genetically 15 to 20 IQ points lower than a white person" and that abortion is necessary "to keep the black and minority population down in this country." His wife, Marian, confirmed this, on the record, in an interview with reporter Max Blumenthal for the Oct. 9 issue of The Nation magazine.

Francis B. Coombs Jr., the managing editor of The Washington Times, a major media ally of the Bush administration, is described by multiple newsroom sources in Blumenthal's piece as an unreconstructed "racial nationalist" and a hater of blacks and Jews.

At least his wife has the guts to admit that she is racist and he agrees with her. It's better to be open about it instead of hiding. Of course, when you're in hiding, you can do more damage...

Hugo Chavez: Democrat or Dictator?

I'm trying to get to sort out the conflicting claims about Hugo Chavez. My conclusion is that he was democratically elected as president in all three of Venezuela's most recent elections, and had his new constitution democratically endorsed by Venezuela's voters. However, he has imposed some anti-democratic laws, though it appears not so much as to eliminate the possibility of anti-Chavez voters having a fair shot at unseating him and reforming their nation back to a more democratic bearing. This article claims that a goodly fraction of Venezuelans oppose him, including a lots of poor people. I believe that many of Chavez's measures will harm that country, and thus I hope that the voters there replace him with somebody who favors individual liberties, including free markets. If voters want socialism, they will get what they deserve!

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I find no basis for US involvement in unsuccessful anti-Chavez coup, except as a helpful claim for Chavez to assist in rallying voters to him despite the problems caused by his poor/leftist economic choices. Castro has used this ploy for a few decades, though at least in Castro's case the claims began as truth (and Castro needs to impress no voters!). But neither do I find a basis for democrats to have supported this recent coup. It appears that Venezuala's anti-Chavez critics have reliable democratic mechanisms with which to address their displeasure for Chavez's choices, including his anti-democratic measures on the nation's private news media.

http://www.economist.com/research/backgrounders/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1090110
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Chavez admires Simon Bolivar... a rich honkey Spaniard who merely won independance for South America from Spain, but not liberty for the people there. We can think of Bolivar as a mixture of George Washington (battlefield commander of war for independance from European colonial power) and Thomas Jefferson (archetect of post-revolution nation), except here Bolivar designed an independant nation under a dictatorship, his own own dictatorship. The nation he founded broke apart into today's South American nations, all as dictatorships. Why would anybody admire Bolivar?

http://www.answers.com/topic/sim-n-bol-var
==============

Here's a bio of Chavez. I didn't realize that he's a career military officer who led his own failed coup. That got him two years in prison (just two years?).

http://www.answers.com/topic/hugo-ch-vez

Economist: Bush Iraq War a Mistake

I afford the Economist quite a bit of credibility on most matters of economics and world affairs. If its analysis endorsed the Bush war, I would certainly take that as encoraging news for those of use who believe that democracy in Arabia will lead to prosperity and peace there, and that a US invasion of Iraq could facilitate just that. However, this analysis reaches the opposite conclusion.

My buddy in Iraq visits me this weekend in Detroit, a stop over on his way back to our hometown of Austin, Tx (specifically, the negro badlands known there as "the Eastside"). He supports Bush's goals, but concludes that too many people in Iraq are violently retarded, and that the downfall of Hussein merely opened the door for various other brutal, mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers. He sees only one possible mechanism of victory there: total war, which Nadir and the lefties claim Bush is already waging. In my friend's analysis, US troops are causing enough destruction to upset people and disturb various tyranical beehives, but not enough to wear-down the tyrants. He suggests that the US leave and let these people kill each other until they get tired of it.

He says the US made two enormous blunders: (1) Abu Graib. (2) A time or two they had neighborhoods full of tyrant madmen surrounded by war-lusting marines. In each case the marines could have eliminated those KKK-like bastards, and each time political considerations saved the bastards.

I supported Bush's war, though never 100%. My support is at pretty low point now...

US Students Getting Expert Help... From India

Many USA teachers even in horrible government schools make pretty good money for 8 months work. One reason I believe the schools are horrible is that the teachers are poorly educated themselves, mostly having degrees in a non-intellectual topic called "education." Here we learn that for a few bucks an hour USA kids can get internet video conferencing assistance from Indian tutors... tutors who I presume have respectable academic credentials. In this way kids with meager financial resources can get for a less than 5$/hr what other kids get for 50$/hr or more.

This opens all sorts of possibilities for home schooling. At what point does a family even with parents who work all day decide to tell their teenagers to skip school and perform work assigned to them, monitored, and assisted by rigorously educated Indians 10,000 miles away? If at least one parent has a work computer with internet access, now the parent can monitor the student's academic day. Now we have a mechanism for parents to get their kids to study seriously for 6 hours each day, with no need for home work, and full monitoring by parents, parents who (unlike government school parents) know every day what their kid got assigned and how they performed; no more waiting for those nearly useless 6-week report cards, or those completely useless daily "assignment books" in which kids every day inaccurately record what their teachers have assigned as homework. No more worrying about your kid getting hold of that attrocious smattering of food products distributed in the cafeterias, and in their chums' lunch pails. No more worrying about all the wasted school time each day devoted to non-academic assemblies, field trips, and rowdy behavior by kids that the school can't bannish.

And no more begging teachers and administrators to entertain suggestions that they didn't solicit and will not respect (How about daily we postings and emails of attendance, grades, and homework? How about wholesome cafeteria food? Sir, those are impossible suggestions. If you had an Education degree, you'd understand.) Can my kid learn Spanish one-on-one for an hour each day? What about the trumpet? Now all we parents have to do is rush home each day early enough to drive our kids over to the public school to participate in the only things that they do excellently: sports and band programs.

As we learned last week, Detroit public schools spend every year for each student nearly $12,000, for what everybody considers to be a very poor average education experiance. The subburbs are better usually only because mediocre beats the "inner city" school performances. All too often school social experiance includes exposure to dangerous peer influences, and even interactions. Can a kid working at home with Indians over a video conferencing computer obtain a more productive academic day than going to many government USA schools? It would not surprise me.

The free market to the rescue.

Rethinking Birthright Citizenship

The USA's "birthright citizenship" manifests from the 14th Ammendment, added to the US Constitution to ensure that freed black slaves and their children would obtain full US citizenship. Today it gets used never for that, and usually for a purpose never envisioned by its authors: citizenship for illegal immigrants. Does this law still make sense? Does it make sense to confer US Citizenship to anybody born in the US automatically, even to a mother in the US illegally?

Other countries have adopted Birthright Citizenship... countries that seek to increase immigration. Do American citizens collectively seek to increase immigration?

I fully support immigration by Latin Americans, Africans, and Asians. I believe that those populations represent the future of America... a bright future for America. But I also believe in orderly and sensible processes. I believe that not enough native born Americans are working hard enough and making smart enough choices to best ensure our future, and that these immigrants are overall doing a better job than native Americans. But immigration flow should certainly procede according to the consent of voting American citizens, and observances of laws approved by those citizen voters and their elected representatives.

Since I believe that we should have lots of Mexican immigrants, I should advocate increasing the immigration ceiling, not laws that will make it easier for immigrants to sneak around border checks and enter illegally. Let's do this the right way. The current -- wrong -- way is dangerous and harrowing for the immigrants, and lets in too many criminals. Isn't there a way to permit and welcome lots of immigrants in an orderly and safe manner?

Another Argument for Universal Healthcare: Corporate Health Costs Reducing Profits

GM complains that healthcare costs are having a huge effect on their bottom line. A single-payer healthcare system would reduce or eliminate this problem allowing them to pay higher wages to their workers and still make a substantial profit.

It's a financial crisis expected to explode in the next 20 years as baby boomers join the ranks of senior citizens, who consume the lion's share of pills. With about four retirees for every active employee, GM is a harbinger of the problem the United States will face in coming years.

When a year's supply of some cancer drugs costs more than a $50,000 Cadillac DTS, General Motors and the rest of the country have a problem.

Other industrialized nations have also negotiated price ceilings with pharmaceutical companies, something else the corrupt US Congress has failed to do.

Fraud-Free Voting Reform Proposal

Here is my proposal for achieving the most accurate-possible voting for USA elections, which should set the world standard. I will modify this proposal based on feedback comments. Here's my first draft:

1. Electronic voting machines networked together.
2. Each voter presents a driver's license or alternate state-issued ID card. Yes, these can be forged, but requiring an ID will at least cut down on people voting for each other, and non-citizens voting. For the purposes of this discussion, the term "driver's license" means either a driver's license, or that alternative card for non-drivers issued by the same state agency.
3. Driver's license will declare either "US Citizen" or "Non-Citizen Resident", based on documents used to obtain ID.
4. Driver's license will include web address that will list voting dates and the polling location associated with the holder's listed home address. Citizens who lack a home address can select "indigent" (or some other happier word) but must declare a voting precinct.
5. Automatic voter registration for all holders of driver's license. Polling location officials will have a printed and web list of all driver's license holders with home addresses assigned to their precinct. The printout will include a sticker with the person's Name and Driver's License number.
6. The precinct will have:
- Government employees, and the agency in charge of the voting must be non-partisan.
- Up to two representatives from any Party or Candidate on the ballot, or anybody else who arranges to volunteer as an observer. These observers at any time can montitor or check the work of the government employees. The observers can have their own copy of the voter role.
7. When the voter appears at the station:
- Government rep will check the photo ID against the person, and against the electronic voter role.
- Government rep hands sticker to voter with the information: Place this on one of the three printouts you will get; that will be your copy to take home and keep.
- If the person went to the wrong place, the worker can check where the addressee is assigned to vote, or electronically communicate with the correct precinct to check the person off there and permit the person to vote at the current precicnt. Observers at both sites can communicate with each other to ensure that the the change gets made at both sites.
- Obervers can count the number of people who get approved to go to the voting booth.
- If there is a controversy, say if the voter's name doesn't appear on the registration list, he or she is entitled to submit a Tentative ballot, which will be recorded but not counted until the voter exhausts appeals through the voting agency at a future date.
8. Voter in booth:
- Initiates voting screen, which assigns the vote a unique number which includes the Precinct ID, time, and date.
- Voting screen will include ability to change vote, and a final Review screen which overviews each vote, giving the voter a final chance.
- Upon selecting the "Submit" button, three printouts materialize with a summary of every race and each of the user's vote. The user takes all three, and has the option of taking them to a Review Booth to ensure that all three paper documents are identical, and reflect the votes that the user intended.
- The printouts will have at the top a unique voting ID.
- The printouts are formatted so that an electronic reader can count votes, and humans can accurately and easily interpret them.
- The printouts for a Tentative vote will have a special obvious border all around, with the words "TENTATIVE".
9. Finalization:
- Voter places sticker with his/her name & driver's license one of the copies, and hands the other two to the govt worker.
- The govt worker places one copy in a safe box, and another in a box that the observers. Tentative copies both go into a special Tentative safe box. All boxes remain in veiw of all observers and govt workers at all times.
10. Station closes:
- Various Observer groups have taken a count of the number of approved voters, and the govt workers have their count. A govt worker announces the govt count. Observers have a chance to dispute the count. If any observer disputes the count, all observers and the govt workers enact a process to count the ballots in the Observer box. First a govt worker will submit them to the electronic counter. If that does not settle the dispute, any observer or group of observers has the right to hand-count all the ballots in plain view of all others.
- A govt worker announces the count for each item on the ballot first from the electronic results, and then from feeding the Observer ballots into an electronic reader. Any observers in view of all others can conduct their own hand-vote tally for any item on the ballot.
- All govt reps and observers sign a document containing their names, driver's licenses, and whom they represent, and contact info, certifying the vote for the precinct, including any objections.
- All ballot boxes will remain in the precint until any dispute is settled, and any observers will have the option to remain in the room with the box, runnign in 24-hour shifts until all observers agree to any disputes. The next day Tentative voters will have to return to resolve those disputes, in view of the observers.
11. Voter intimidation:
- People complain that partisan Observers challange people attempting to vote. Presumably the photo ID requirement would eliminate any desire by observers to challange voters.
- People complalin that police postings near voting sites intimidate voters. Ban police postings from a one mile radius of a voting precinct on voting day during voting hours; ban voter ID confirmation process as a mechanism for identifying people with outstanding warrents; ban any communication between govt precinct workers and law enforcement pertaining to any individual voter.
- Make plain that voting precinct hours of operation and location will be mastered on a particular govt website, and that no phone calls will ever inform voters about voting times, dates, and locations.

When Pigs Fly: Business Leaders Agree With Nadir; Shun Paul Hue

In a striking story that will surprise only Paul Hue, the U.S. has fallen from 1st to 6th in economic competitiveness ranking.

The U.S., which held top spot last year, fell behind Switzerland, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, and Singapore. The top four counties all ran budget surpluses and have low levels of debt - something the US has not been able to achieve with the Bush tax cuts, his foreign adventures, and exploding deficits.

The report says, "The U.S. economy suffers from striking weaknesses. There is significant risk to both the country's overall competitiveness and, given the relative size of the U.S., the future of the global economy."

Tax cuts? Foreign adventures? Deficit spending?? Why these are the very policies that caused Paul Hue to vote for and provide continued support for the criminally and economically incompetent Bush administration!!

How could it be that business leaders around the world agree with little old leftist Nadir, who runs a small corporation, but obviously doesn't know economics from an E minor 7th chord, and disagree with right-wing intellectual giant, Paul Hue whose decision to paint his living room pink is seen by many to be the metrosexual investment move of the century??

How could it be that all the economic indicators support Nadir's view and not Paul Hue's?

Surely Adam Smith is turning in his grave, Hell hath frozen over and prized Berkshire sows are piloting F-16s over Iraq this very moment!!

The Reason Americans Are So Stupid

Truthout.org reports that Newsweek is selling hard news in its International issue and entertainment in the US:

Editor's Note: Newsweek has scrubbed the cover of its United States edition for October 2, 2006. The cover of its international editions, aimed at Europe and other world regions, has maintained the original title of the story, "Losing Afghanistan." The new cover for the United States edition features photographer Annie Leibovitz and is titled "My Life in Pictures." We offer the European edition cover and story here.

From Michelle Pilecki on Huffington Post:

So the powers-that-be at Newsweek figure that they can attract readers in Europe, Asia and Latin America with a dramatic cover depicting an Islamist armed with an evil-looking rocket-propelled grenade launcher that seems to be aimed right at the reader, who -- it is to be assumed -- would be thus "grabbed" by the prospect of a hard-hitting news story.

American readers, on the other hand, are assumed to prefer the soft pap of Newsweek Entertainment. "The audience is stupid" is the prevailing sentiment among the people at the top of the MSM, as Harry Shearer pointed out last week: "Whether or not they actually started out stupid, your programming [or editorial] decisions may help make them stupid." It's a self-fulfilling belief.

Conservative Mag Reports on Ease of Electronic Vote Hacking

Conservative magazine Insight finally reports on a subject that was widely known well before the 2000 presidential election - Diebold voting machines are easy to hack.

Electronic voting machines should not be used with or without a paper receipt. It is too easy to program computers to say what you want them to say.

Our primative electoral department in lowly Westland, Michigan uses a long paper ballot that even provides a paper receipt. It doesn't create any longer lines than our touchscreen voting system did during the 2000 election, and I am confident that when I darken the circle for Ralph Nader on my ballot, it will read Ralph Nader when it comes out the other end. I had no such confidence in 2000.

By the way, did I say Ralph Nader for president in 2008? Or maybe Jesse Ventura...

Battle of Silly Dark Age Costumes

The Pope's silly costume is more rediculous than that of this muslim clerics. Could orthodox Jews have them both beat, with those truly comical side locks and those French schoolgirl hats? In this meeting the dress-wearing Pope and the dress-wearing muslim will discuss, it seems, who was worse a thousand years ago, the Muslim Crusaders or the Catholic Crusaders? They might want to toss into the ring one of those silly jew hats, and ponder King David's bloody elimination of every soul occupying "Canaan", the land now called "Isreal" and previously called "Palistine" (named that by the brutal Romans, garbling the word "Philistine" -- a pagan people living in Gaza -- as an insult to the brutal, despotic Jewish rulers who were at that time calling the land "Judea").

After settling that 1,000 years ago the rulers of all nations were a bunch of deplorable savages (with the Christian savages violating their official New Testiment teachings, and the Muslim savages honoring their official Koran and "tradition" book teachings), they might get around to today, and which governments conduct themselves still as dark age brutes.

The Other Philpott on the Spinach Scare

Our sometime contributor Farmer Tom discusses the recent spinach hysteria on Grist. He surmises the real culprit is that infamous enemy of flavor and nutrition: industrial agriculture.

To avoid similar problems in the future, Tom encourages us to buy locally or grow our own.

Is Monotheism the Problem?

The Greeks and Romans, the Hindus, and the Egyptians all imagined many different gods who hang out together, the way people throughout the world do. These cultures envisioned social gods with busy existences who like pleasure, food, sex, art and other good things of life. As with people, the social ties among the gods loosely constrain their destructive impulses. Mostly these gods are so involved with each other they only sometimes notice the lesser beings, just as people only sometimes notice their household animals.

The multiple gods of great cultural systems, and the gods and spirits of many tribal cultures as well, are familiar, understandable. They project the human world into the sky, the same way science fiction does (except, of course, science fiction understands it is offering fiction).

If America's So Great, Where's Our Health Care?

An estimated 50 million Americans lack medical insurance, and a similar and rapidly growing number are underinsured. The uninsured are excluded from services, charged more for services, and die when medical care could save them -- an estimated 18,000 die each year because they lack medical coverage.

But it's not only the uninsured who suffer. Of the more than 1.5 million bankruptcies filed in the U.S. each year, about half are a result of medical bills; of those, three-quarters of filers had health insurance.

Those 18,000 dead and the 1.5 million people who file bankruptcies every year just don't care enough about themselves to get jobs that provide medical coverage, right? The fact that corporations are reducing benefits or eliminating coverage altogether is immaterial, right?

Jesus Camp

While Paul Hue is studying and blogging on all the things he believes are evil about Islam, evangelical Christians are indoctrinating their children to create in America the type of theocracy that he fears will rise up in the Middle East.

More Blacks Homeschooling Their Children Rather Than Deal With Failing Public Schools

Many black homeschoolers worry that their children will be labeled in a public school. Black public school students are three times as likely as white students to be categorized as needing special education services, a 2002 study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found.

"My son is high-energy, and I didn't want him to end up on Ritalin or feel bad about himself," Utsey said. "There is an assumption that black boys are violent if they are too energetic."

A desire for more rigorous academics and greater emphasis on black history also has led black families into homeschooling, educators say.

Falling Petro Prices: Where's the Parade?

Petro prices in my neighborhood are about to fall below $2/gal. I believe I saw $2.06/gal this morning. We free marketeers predicted a few months ago that the rising prices that caused Nadir and others to form pitchfork-and-torch protests would engender a variety of factors causing a subsequent price drop, including modification of consumer behavior and increased efforts to explore, retrieve, and process. These things all occured. The conspiracy hypothesizers of course believe that wicked oil executives turn their price dials according to what they want: increase the price to increase profits, or decrease the price to reward and assist capitalist candidates (republicans). As one friend proclaimed to me recently: "Apparently they figured they made enough money off of the $3/gal price, and now they want to help their republican friends."

So how to explain the 8 years of super-low petro prices under Clinton, which contributed crucially to those good economic times? Why not turn the price dial down to help Bush I, then turn it up to hurt Clinton in his reelection, and then to hurt Gore?

Islam Dissident Ayaan Hirsi Ali Moves to USA

Her former Dutch countrymen appear to have grown tired of protecting her from muslim savages, and did not want to confront those savages. So she has moved to the US. I hope she finds that the muslims in the US are, unlike Mohammad, not savages.

Chavez Giving Oil to USA's "Poor"

Charity is great: you give your posessions to other people. I endorse that. Forcing Nadir to give me money, that I generally oppose. The USA has something better than charity for "the poor": opportunity for people who make smart choices and work hard. That's why so many Venezualans immigrate here... and never leave. USA oil companies don't give oil away to "the poor." But they do something better: they reliably provide oil products universally at an optimal price, which means the lowest price that will permit them to continue this. The benefits of this system includes providing jobs and investment returns to people of all economic situations, including peole who make charatable contributions with the money that they've earned. Venezueala's economy is a mess, and it's no wonder given that its leader (perhaps an autocratic one) believes that the solution to "poor" people having the oil they need is to "give it to them." This mindset explains why there's so many poor people in Venezuela.

Dot org, The Big Lie

I have said for years that internet prefixes (www.) and suffixes (.com, .org) are mistakes. In the case of www., it's a small mistake, because there's just one, which is why it's unneccessary and thus we should remove it. What's the point of having internet addresses that all begin with "www."? There isn't.

But having multiple suffixes is a big problem, and getting worse. Imagine Nadir's dad, with his website ascot.com, where he sells "smart scarves for smart men." But what about:

ascot.org
ascot.edu
ascot.biz
ascot.co

Etc.? All of these can have different uses, including fraudulently stealing Nadir's dad's business. For this reason people with legitimate websites have to go grab all the same basenames with the various suffixes, just to guard against fraud.

Saladin not so Un-Mohamad-like in Battle Afterall

In an earlier post I charactorized the Muslim Crusade/Christian Counter-Crusades as incluiding a period in which the Muslim imperialists were far less brutal in battle then the Europeans. I tagetted Saladin's conquest of Jeruselem from the honkeys as an example. This website contradicts me about Saladin. I still believe that during some period of the Muslim empire those guys were more tolerant of heterodox views than were the honkey nations, which is to say that these Muslim rulers were violating Mohamad's brutally intolerant example and instructions.

Arabia

My continuing studies of Islam and Arabia have now convinced me conclusively of the validity of the word, "Arabia", to describe (at the very least) the Arabian penensula, and all the countries there collectively. This website uses the term "Arabia" in its title, defines "Arab" as "populations of countries whose primary language is Arabic, e.g., Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen."

Islam: What's the Attraction?

My recent resumption of islamic studies has led to many shocking discoveries. Mohamad's commission of rape, murder, robbery, pederasty, deceit, kidnapping, cowardace, and slavery were the most shocking. I thought that he was a holy man, not a nazi or klansman. Less shocking was learning that most Islamic customs are just pagan customs practiced in Moh's community that he adopted into his violent new, anti-pagan religion that he forced onto those around him. The word "islam" means "submit," as in, "submit, or we will behead you."

The begining of Ramadan is a good time to learn facts about Islam, and to consider them critically. Just don't mention any criticisms to muslims who practice as Moh did; you'll get killed. Even during Ramadan, a time during which Moh led a murderous robbery on a camal train. I wonder what those young boys are for mixed in with the famous 72 virgins waiting the "faithful" in heaven. Nadir, what ever attracted you to this religion?

Surprise! Bill Maher Defends Willie Nelson

"Everybody's got something. But if there's one drug above all we should be cracking down on, it's oil. Oil is the addiction poisoning our lungs, and our political system, and our foreign policy. Willie Nelson, high though he might have been, was on a bus that didn't pollute anything, because it runs on bio-diesel. But bio-diesel threatens the profits of Big Oil, which means the only way we're ever going to legalize pot in this country is to convince Bush and Cheney it's a petroleum product. And it may be, all my bongs have a carburetor."

Clinton Goes Off On Fox's Chris Wallace

Linked above is a very rough transcript of Bill Clinton's Fox News Sunday interview with Chris Wallace that will air tomorrow. In it Clinton admits that he had a plan developed to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taleban well before 911 confirming a small part of Nadir's 911 Conspiracy Non-Theory.

But the best part is that Clinton goes off on his critics (like SixStringSlinger) who claim that Clinton was to blame for not getting Bin Laden.

I'm no Slick Willie fan, but I think it's about time that someone jacked Fox News up for their one-sided so-called reporting. If you watch the interview tomorrow, be sure to watch for editing tricks that make Clinton look like he is going "crazy" as Fox is already accusing.

Torture By Any Other Name

"Great, we won't be doing biological experiments on the detainees anymore. Since cruel and inhuman treatment's definition is not spelled out, this leaves us exactly where we were before. The president can order waterboarding, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, physical abuse, etc., etc. It's all cool as long as no one is getting raped or mutilated. Are we not merciful?"

Rove Promises Desperate GOP an "October Surprise"

According to two conservative websites, White House political strategist Karl Rove has been promising GOP insiders that there will be an "October surprise" before the midterm elections.

With Republican candidates losing faith in the president and "Bush's Brain", it is certain that the famous huckster has some dirty tricks up his sleeve...

Detroit Spends More Per Pupil Than Rich Schools

Detroit has some of the nation's worst public schools. Neither money nor racism can explain this. The fancy white-majority subburbs around Detroit all spend *less* per pupil than does Detroit, but they get much better results. Only one district in Detroit's county gets/spends more than Detroit, and it's also a failing, black-majority district (Inkster).

Wayne County Government School Per-Pupil Spending from all sources (local, state, federal):

Inkster: $14,400 - Black/Fail
Detroit: $11,600 - Black/Fail
Grosse Point: $11,000 - White/Pass
Dearborn: $10,000 - White/Pas
Grosse Ile: $ 9,300 - White/Pass
Wayne-Westland $ 8,600 - White/Pass
Livonia: $ 8,500 - White/Pass
Northville $ 8,400 - White/Excellent
Plymouth-Canton: $ 7,900 - White/Excellent
Dearborn Heights: $ 7,500 - Whte/Pass

I omitted many of the Wayne districts, most of which lie outside of the Detroit metro area. I listed the most famous and largest Wayne County districts within Detroit metro: Detroit and its near western neighbors. The top two best-funded schools are both black-majority, and the two worst. At least by reputation, the best are Northville and Plymouth-Canton, which are heavily honkey, but among the least-funded. These suburbs lie to Detroit's west. If we look across Detroit's famous "8 Mile" border along its northern edge, into Oakland County, a slightly different picture emerges, but one that confirms my assertion:

Bloomfield Hills: $14,400 - White/Excellent
Birmingham: $13,000 - White/Excellent
Southfield: $13,000 - Black/Fail
Farmington: $11,500 - Whte/Pass
Troy: $10,600 - Whte/Pass
Novi: $10,500 - Whte/Pass
Royal Oak: $10,400 - White/Excellent
Pontiac: $10,300 - Black/Fail
West Bloomfield:$10,200 - White/Excellent
Madison: $ 8,700 - White/Pass
Ferndale: $ 8,600 - White/Excellent
Berkley: $ 8,600 - White/Excellent

What do we see here? All black-majority schools in the Detroit metro area are failures, they are all run by black folks and they all are among the best-funded. Inkster ties for best-funded, and only two honkey schools get more funding than Detroit; Inkster also rates as having one of the very worst-performing districts in the state, even worse than Detroit! All the four black-majority districts receive more funds than do several excellent white suburban schools. None of the white-majority schools are overall failures, and many of them obtain excellent results with just a fraction of the budgets afforded the failing Inkster and Detroit schools.

What is the answer? Clearly not money, and clearly not more discussions about racism.

SOURCES:
Per Student annual funding:
"2004-05 BULLETIN 1014 Michigan Public School Districts Ranked By Selected Financial Data Published May 2006" here & here [For Detroit, see page 50 (County = Wayne, Detroit City School District, code 82010), header "All Sources".]
Update: 2007-8 data for Detroit (p. 51): $12,100.

Academic rankings:
This shows No Child Left Behind "Meets" vs "Does not meet". Search by district, then look for the High School assessment rating.

Detroit Public School Failure: Money, Racism? No!

Clearly money and/or racism cannot explain the continuing implosion of Detroit's public school system. For 30 or so years blacks have run the system and all city government. The fleeing of students from the system for at least 20 years has been all "black flight", as the district is 90% black, and has lost about 60,000 students between 2001 (160k students) and today in 2006 (about 100k). According to this article, DPS "enrollment dropped 23 percent between 1994 and 2005 but its per-pupil revenue increased 94 percent." In absolute terms, "Detroit received $11,631 per full-time student in state, federal and local cash -- more than several suburban districts."

I am attempting to verify that figure, and identify the "several suburban districts" that receive less per-pupil funds than does DPS (the Detroit News article's reference is vague). Many appolgists for failing public school systems claim that the failing systems get unfairly starved of funds, and that this at least partially explains their failure.

If these figures are accurate, they present more evidence that the failure of TODAY's black-majority public schools do not result from racism or lack of funding. As presented before on this blog, one of the nation's worst public schools is DS's, which also is the highest-funded and tied for most dominated by black municipal and school officials and teachers.

RL readers know that I believe US schools in general, including private schools, are slipping into medicrity, as are its students in general. But black students in particular, and the schools where they dominate, are on average performing much worse than average. Those school, and those students, more than any others need the reforms that I have articulated for solving all academic problems:

1. Require teachers to have BS and BA degrees in academic fields; eliminate "Education" as an accepted field.
2. Eliminate electives and all non-academic classes from the curricula.
3. Require non-english seconary language for all students every day K-12. As a practical matter, we won't fire all the Education teachers. But we will stop hiring them. And we'll stop increasing salaries for teachers who get advanced degrees in Education, but instead for scholarly degrees.
4. Require musical instrument every day K-12 for all students.
5. Eliminate inter-scholastic athletics from schools; shift those to local Parks and Recreation departments.
6. Transform some high schools to trade schools for students who prefer learning trades to earning a High School diploma. Take these facilities seriously, so that graduates with a "Trade Certificate" have something of value. Include some mandatory classes in reading, writing, and math, the sort of watered-down classes that dominate most of the current failing schools.
7. Declare some factilities as daycare holding pens for students who refuse to participate at either High Schools or Trade Schools.
8. Eliminate all non-academic activities from the school day: No AIDS Awareness or Career Awareness assemblies; no visits from local professional sports teams; no Just Say No rallies; no field trips.
9. Extend the school day, and reduce homework. When kids leave at 4:30pm, they should be ready to have fun and participate in sports. With all the above reforms, students will spend more time on scholarly matters, under the tutalidge of subject matter experts. Eight hours of serious scholarly work should be enough!
10. Eliminate junk food, and replace cafeteria foods with nurishing foods.
11. Eliminate mandatory attendance. Students who refuse to participate productively will get shifted over to the Daycare Holding Pens, where they will have options to earn their way back to schools. We cannot let refractory children ruin the sacred teacher-student efforts! Preachers and coaches would not tolerate such behavior, and teachers must not either!
12. Vouchers! And not just partial vouchers, or only vouchers for peopel below a special income level. Full vouchers... for everyone! Let Detroit parents have the full $11, 000 to spend were ever they like. The market will demonstrate who makes the better schools.

Black schools and black students need these reforms, on average, more than anybody else.

Spinach Hysteria

Yep. This spinach situation is a bad scene. Several longtime advocates of the healthy vegetable are second guessing their consumption of the leafy green.

Are You THREATENING Me???

President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan (shown above with two of his bodyguards) tells Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes that after 9/11, the U.S. threatened to bomb his country if it didn't help America's war on terrorism.

Musharraf says the threat came from then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and was delivered to Musharraf's intelligence director.

"The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,' " recalls Musharraf. It was insulting, he says. "I think it was a very rude remark." But he reacted to it in a responsible way, he tells Kroft. "One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation, and that's what I did."

Who says Armitage wasn't on Bush's team?

So this is how you treat your military dictator friends? Still a lot of good it has done them since Pakistan is most likely where your boy, Bin Laden, is hiding if he is still alive. (There is still a question of that, though Osama and Tupac are releasing new records at about the same pace.)

Of course, it has made Pakistan a willing customer of US weapons.

"Now YOU can purchase these powerful F-16 fighter jets! These are the very same ones that would have blown up bridges, electrical plants and civilian homes in your country if you hadn't chosen to become our ally in the war on terror! Buy now before we change our minds!!

Bush should change the name of his campaign to "The War OF Terror!"

Unjustified Spinach Hysteria

As I recall the statistics, 60% of all deaths in the US result from circulatory problems, including heart attacks, strokes and the like. Another 20% result from cancers. Two-point-four million Americans dies in 2004, which was 50,000 less than the previous year, a fact celebrated in this article, "USA records largest drop in annual deaths in at least 60 years". (An interesting anti-racism fact in the data: in increase of life expectancy increased more for negros than for honkies!)

This article shows lots of mortality figures for the US, including a claim that in 2000, a whopping 365,000 Americand died due to "Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity," whereas only 75,000 died from "microbial agents", which is very spurious since most such deaths really result from weak immune systems caused by... poor diet!

Surely spinach figures mightily in any effort to reduce "death from poor diets," and it sure seems to me that in the past five years bags of baby spinach has sky-rocketed in popularity. Could this and similar trends contribute to the recent reduced American mortality rates? Given all these FACTS, does it really make sense to DESTROY all the existing fresh spinach in the US, just to stop a few hundred people from getting sick, and two or three old people from dying?

Will this needless hysteria now diminish the previously popular growing appeal of fresh vegitables?

Commerce Department loses 1,137 laptops

And this is the same government that supposedly coordinated and pulled off the great 9-11 conspiracy?

You'll have to pardon me when I say that I don't buy it.

Racism in Coaching

I believe that racism is the only explanation for why blacks compose about 30% of college football players, but only 5% of the head coaches. Women compose 0% of the players and 0% of the coaches. Asian immigrants as well. But why don't blacks compose in the coaching ranks about what they compose in the player ranks? Is there really a behavior or personal choice phenomenon among black players that makes them so much less likely than their honkey peers to try coaching?

And I do admit that if racism clearly exists in coaching, then I should expect to find it in other areas. That's a logical point that I must concede. However, I do not believe that the facts bear that out. It appears to me that racism is fading away in the USA and enjoys only a few pockets of survival, such as sports coaching.

The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing

A long, but interesting essay on the relationship between Marxism and anti-Americanism.

"America-bashing is anti-Americanism at its most radical and totalizing. Its goal is not to advise, but to condemn; not to fix, but to destroy. It repudiates every thought of reform in any normal sense; it sees no difference between American liberals and American conservatives; it views every American action, both present and past, as an act of deliberate oppression and systemic exploitation. It is not that America went wrong here or there; it is that it is wrong root and branch. The conviction at the heart of those who engage in it is really quite simple: that America is an unmitigated evil, an irredeemable enormity.

This is the specter that is haunting the world today. Indeed, one may even go so far as to argue that this America is the fundamental organizing principle of the left as it exists today: To be against America is to be on the right side of history; to be for it is to be on the wrong side."

It's worth reading the whole thing.

Smackdown at the UN

Today’s world leaders look more like professional wrestlers every day.

Why Not Photo ID To Vote?

Surely we all agree on the need for as-close-as-possible to 100% accurate voting in the US. Every vote cast gets accurately counted, with all voters casting a single ballot and representing living people expressing their electorate desires in an atmosphere free of intimidation. Is it possible to achieve such a goal without govt-issued photo IDs and a record at each voting site of who voted? Without such a system, what prevents me from voting twice under my own name? And then a third time under Nadir's? And then again at a different site?

Nadir has claimed that "illegal immigration" is a problem not just from Mexico, but also from European nations. So without such US govt-issued photo ID card requirement, what prevents these dreadful honkey invaders going to Nadir's Westland, Mi voting site and voting for Bush and the anti-abortion ammendment?

It seems to me that lefties and righties must agree on several requirements for voting reform, and this must be one of them. This article has lefties equating a photo ID requirement with racist Jim Crow voter literacy tests. Are black folks in 2006 so intellectually feeble that although a photo ID requirement to drive, obtain employment, and fly does not "intimidate" them, it would for voting? Who are these black folks who would feel "intimidated"? Surely those making this claim are *themselves* strong and assertive enough to stand up to a voting official asking for an ID. So who is it that they are worrying about?

CIA to Bush: We Refuse to Run Your Secret Torture Chambers

When Mr Bush announced the suspension of the secret prison programme in a speech before the fifth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, some analysts thought he was trying to gain political momentum before the November midterm congressional elections.

The administration publicly explained its decision in light of the legal uncertainty surrounding permissible interrogation techniques following the June Supreme Court ruling that all terrorist suspects in detention were entitled to protection under Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions.

But the former CIA officials said Mr Bush’s hand was forced because interrogators had refused to continue their work until the legal situation was clarified because they were concerned they could be prosecuted for using illegal techniques. One intelligence source also said the CIA had refused to keep the secret prisons going.

If the CIA is questioning the legality of your policies, you KNOW it's some dirty, underhanded $h!t.

Impeach, Indict, Prosecute, Convict and Incarcerate Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Rice!

Walmart Evil?

Lefties claim Walmart pays too little, but 25,000 apply for 350 openings. Chicago democrats require a "minimum wage", resulting in zero Walmarts in Chicago... and hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans traveling to the subburbs to spend billions of dollars at scores subburban Walmart outposts, as well as thousands of Chicagoans commuting there to work. But at least the politicians get to congradulate themselves for protecting Chicagoans from getting "exploited" by Walmart within their city limits. Good show!

It's happening again....

From the BBC (linked above):

The UN nuclear watchdog has protested to the US government over a report on Iran's nuclear programme, calling it "erroneous" and "misleading". In a leaked letter, the IAEA said a congressional report contained serious distortions of the agency's own findings on Iran's nuclear activity.

The IAEA also took "strong exception" to claims made over the removal of a senior safeguards inspector.

There was no immediate comment from Washington over the letter.

From Editor&Publisher:

A report today by veteran McClatchy (formerly Knight Ridder) reporters John Walcott and Warren P. Strobel warns that some of the same type of shaky intelligence that proved false in the run up to the Iraq war may be rearing its head again in regard to Iran.

"U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Bush political appointees and hard-liners on Capitol Hill have tried recently to portray Iran's nuclear program as more advanced than it is and to exaggerate Tehran's role in Hezbollah's attack on Israel in mid-July," they write.

Again, from From Editor&Publisher:

When Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst, leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971, it created one of the most significant newspaper stories -- and battles -- of the century. One thing it did not do was prevent the Vietnam War, although it may have shortened it. Now he is calling on officials within the government to leak "the Pentagon Papers of the Middle East" to modern reporters, to short-circuit another possible war.

Ellsberg's challenge is found in the October issue of Harper's magazine, to appear next week. E&P has obtained an advance copy. The article is titled, "The Next War," with the conflict in question a possible face-off between the U.S. and Iran. Ellsberg, based on unconfirmed reporting by Seymour Hersh and others, believes there is a "hidden crisis," with government insiders aware of "serious plans for war with Iran" while "congress and the public remain largely in the dark." His remedy: "Conscientious insiders" need to leak hard evidence to the press and public, while risking their current and future employment, as he did in the early 1970s.

Where's Judy Miller when you need her?

Needed Divorce: Sports and Academics

Here we see that honkey skateboarders drop out of high school to maximize their financial and professional success in their sport. Many opt for home-schooling, but some just drop out. Figure skaters and tennis players do the same thing. Why not for football and basketball players? Why must football and basketball teams accept the obligation of (supposedly) educating its participants in math and literature? And why must schools accept the obligations (taken seriously!) of feilding the best football and basketball teams? Should they now also accept the task of fielding the best possible skate-boarders?

It's insane; it defies logic. If a kid shows a genius for skate boarding, acting, or basketball, logic demands that we permit that kid the option of persuing that life track to its ultimate conclusion. If the kid wants also to learn physics and history, he can do it on the side, or do it later. Leave schools alone to produce scholars, and leave sports teams alone to tend to their own affairs. DIVORCE THEM!

Why Not Gore?

I have never understood the democrats rejecting Gore as a "loser" after his razer thin defeat in 2000. His performance in that election trumped both Clinton victories: Gore 2000 got a bigger fraction of votes than Clinton did, including a absolute majority, which Clinton never did. Clinton only ever won because Perot split the right, and Gore only lost because Nadar split the left.

Gore has been beating a global warming drum since before a few hot summers cause most Americans to believe that claim, and he instantly and loudly opposed Bush's proposed Iraqi war which most Americans now oppose. Also, he gets to claim that the evil repos "stole" the election from him; many voters believe that. Why would the demos want anybody else?

People claim that Gore is a bafoonish bore, but they said the same thing about Clinton... until he won. Now Clinton's a beloved genius (a genius because Perot ran in both of his elections!).

The Crusaders: Christian evangelicals are plotting to remake America in their own image

Paul asked for examples of Christian extremism. In addition to our friends Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell, I offer the post above.

Cries of "Gender Inequity" Indicate Ignorance

Check out this fresh, unjustified outrage for the tired annual figure of gender salary "inequity", showing this go-round that last year "full-time working women in the US earned 77% that of men." Does this mean that the broad who works in the cube next to me, performing the same work, at the same level of expertise, with my same credentials and performance rathing, earns 25% less than I do? No, of course not.

When the writer of this article provides details, it undermines her indignation. For example: "Waitresses were paid an average of $46 per week less than waiters." Now, how can this be possible? All waiters at any restaurant earn the same hourly wage, and they all work for tips. Are American consumers -- HALF OF WHOM ARE CHICKS! -- tipping broads less than dudes? Of course not. And consider that some of the best-tipping jobs -- cocktail waitresses -- are off-limits to guys (except at the bars frequented by Nadir's dad). Surely something besides descrimination must explain this discrepancy.

Same for this writer's revelation that last year "Female physicians earned an average $679 per week less than male doctors." Are ho brain surgeons getting paid less? How could this even be possible? Or are chick MDs simply less likely than dude MDs to select the higher-paying specialties?

Afterall, chicks are now out-performing dudes in all areas of academics: a greater fraction graduate high school, attend college, graduate college, and their average test scores and GPAs trump those of fellers. Does this "gender inequality" result from anti-male descrimination? If broads can beat dudes in academics without descrimination, then maybe dudes can beat broads in income for similar reasons: personal choices. Whereas girls are making personal choices that translate into better academic results than dudes, dudes are making personal choices that translate into better salary results than chicks.

I wonder if the broad who wrote this column gets paid less than her fellow fellers who write columns at her paper.

Low Tax Rates = High Tax Revenues

Nadir: I know that you want the US Treasury to maximize its tax income, so that federal employees can do all sorts of wonderful things with the money (even things that I agree with you about, such as paying down the deficit). Well, as promised, once again we see that Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" has led to increases in "tax revenue from the rich." Would you rather "soak the rich", which would amount to confiscating a higher fraction of their income, but causing their income to decline... as well as the amount taxes that they pay? Would you rather get 10% of a million bucks, or 30% of 300,000?

Running College QB Matt Jones Shunted to NFL Receiver

Matt Jones stands 6'6'', runs the 40 in 3.37, and at at U-Arkansas his scrambling, option-running, high yardage rushing QB play drew favorable comparassions to Michael Vick and Vince Young... right down to "unconventional" throwing mechanics that had NFL scouts shifting him to reciever. His amazing vertical and standing-broad leaps translated into college basketball success, and he loves fried chicken. In his second year now at Jacksonville, he's the big play recipient of passes from the rather slow-footed, "pocket-passing" QB Byran Leftwich, and sports writers proclaim him the next superstar wide-out. Sounds like a familiar story? Fleet-footed "running" college QB funnelled into the NFL's reciever ranks? Think again: Jones is a cracker... and Leftwich is black. Even their names are backwards.

911 Questions For You Smart Guys to Answer

This is a test.

Since you guys know all the facts about 911, see how many of these questions you can answer. Feel free to use the Internet, books, make phone calls to public officials or use whatever method you wish to come up with the answers.

I know it is beyond the ability of sheep to question the leader of the herd, but I believe you guys are remotely intelligent. You have no problem questioning the reasoning of Muslims or liberals. Why are you afraid to question your own ilk?

I also know that you will laugh at me for even posing the questions. You would rather accept the word of your fearmongering leaders than to use your own brains and ask obvious questions when things just don't add up.

Yes, at least a third of Americans want these questions answered. If 911 is such an important event in American history, then for the sake of history, you should want the truth to be told as well.

So go ahead, smart guys. How many of these 500 questions can you answer? And this is an old list of questions (2002), so surely you can get some of them...

John McWhorter vs. The Boondocks

"The Boondocks" is a comic cum cartoon with black charactors, representing the Nadir view of America: white-on-black racism is a rampant obsticle to black folks, and this leaves many blacks with no options other than criminal behavior. Here Reformed Leftist hero John McWhorter critiques this nonsense.

Stanley Crouch vs. Islamic Crusaders

Not sure about the overall footing of this jazz critic and crusader against popular black culture. Does he oppose leveling and simplifying the tax structure ("tax cuts for the rich")? School vouchers not just for colleges, but also for K-12? I don't know. But here he shows that he hates those bastards who want to force humans into slaves of literal islam, and he wants to fight them. He does not regard Iran's president with Nadir's admiration, but rather as a target for US military weapons in a strike for freedom.