Currently at hofstra university in upstate new york (or maybe staten island?) trying to sneak into the live debate between mccain and obama. secret service agents everywhere, lots of motorcades and shitty internet access. Everyone’s calls are getting dropped.
I have no idea why I came here. The debates embody nearly everything I detest about politics, the meaningless soundbites, the trivial format that prevents any solid exposition of issues, the savagely inept media talking head moderators who let even the most blatant of lies slip through. I wouldn’t watch this on television but for some reason decided it would be worth it to see a bullshit trumpeting competition live. Let me also add that there is a triumphant bannerism suffused into every interaction. Indeed, the candidate who’s supporters wave the largest placard is ideologically superior!! sigh, this is a massive step back from even the bumpersticker politics which I so deplore.

However, I am seriously considering a sweet moment of media reform activism by slashing the tires on a poorly attended cnn media RV control center. if there’s no blogging for a few days, it’s because I’ve been arrested.

I’m not sure where this is from orginally, but I got it from Liberal Symmetry.

This is short but totally worth watching kerry destroy mccain. And damn, looks like kerry has a good plastic surgeon.

:::Via Reader (THANKS!):::

For the first time, a federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release prisoners held at the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling Tuesday that 17 Chinese Muslims must be brought to his courtroom by the end of the week so that they can be set free.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said that the government’s authority to hold the men had “ceased” and that they were entitled to be released. The 17 are Uighurs who fled persecution in the far western reaches of China. U.S. authorities, fearing what Chinese officials would do, have refused to send them back to China

wait, back up a second. For 4 years the pentagon was saying “We have to keep torturing them, because otherwise they might get…tortured” ?!?!?!

did i get that right? because it is a fucking sad day to be an American. +1 internets to Ricardo M. Urbina.

:: Full Article via LA Times ::

Also, in the rumor mill and unsubstantiated second hand story department, I met a guy at a cocktail party last year who worked with a lot of the gitmo stuff and he said that nearly every single case was exactly like this. ie zero evidence.

From Project Censored

The exposure of New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer’s tryst with a luxury call girl had little to do with the Bush administration’s high moral standards for public servants. Author F. William Engdahl advises that, “in evaluating spectacular scandals around prominent public figures, it is important to ask what and who might want to eliminate that person.” Timing suggests that Spitzer was likely a target of a White House and Wall Street operation to silence one of its most dangerous and vocal critics of their handling of the current financial market crisis.

…
Curiously, Spitzer, who had been elected governor in 2006, defeating a Republican by winning nearly 70 percent of the vote, has been not charged with any crime. His case went into the hands of Washington and not those of New York State authorities, underscoring the clear political nature of Spitzer’s “offense.” New York Assembly Republicans immediately announced plans to impeach Spitzer or put him on public trial if he were to refuse resignation. Although prostitution is illegal in most US states, clients of prostitutes are almost never charged, nor are their names typically released while a case is in process.

Well I’ve officially been in Baku for one day. It’s 6:30 am on Thursday morning; I arrived around 11 pm Tuesday evening. The flight here was pretty miserable, as I got incredibly ill right before the flight (awesome!). I am feeling mildly better, but I am still obviously troubled by jet lag.

Some quick observations about Azerbaijan:

1. When flying in, Baku looks like a dirty, wasted hellhole. Seriously. It’s all brown, and you can see the dilapidated oil fields and big puddles of milky white filth.  Also, as you approach the city, I noticed that the city was remarkably unlit. Unlike flying into Paris, or New York, or any other major metropolitan area, Baku only has a handful of sparkling lights to distinguish it from the landscape. It’s a little disconcerting. Also, one of my suitcases didn’t make it. I am unsure if I will actually receive it. I am keeping my fingers crossed; Delta said it should arrive today.

2. The drive into the city shows that Baku is actually a lot cooler than it looks from the plane. Fountain Square, which is in the heart of the Old City, has a magnificent statue of who I presume to be Heydar Aliyev (former president), and it has some really pretty looking fountains. The whole square is made of marble, and in the winter, it freezes over and people go ice skating. Also, there are a lot of people (mostly men) walking around at night, chatting on street corners, buying fruit, smoking, etc.

3. When I finally woke up on Wed., the person I am staying with offered to help me get a cell phone. We traipsed around the pedestrian area, which looked really nice and reminded me a lot of Avenida Florida in Buenos Aires. We went to three different cell phone stores while I searched for a suitable phone. Phones here are pretty expensive, and they don’t generally come with contracts. The Motorola Razr cost about 320 AZN. I settled on something that looks a little bit like the Motorola Slvr, and its cost me about 65 AZN. It has a camera phone, but I have no way to hook up the phone to DL photos, nor can I use the internet…

The most interesting part about the phone was that I also needed to purchase a sim card, and for that, we had to go to an entirely different place. The guy in the store pointed us in the direction of a different cell phone store. Along the way, J. (who I am staying with) told me that sim cards can range from 5 AZN to well over 200 AZN (to get a feel for how much this is $1 = 1.23 AZN). The reason for this is that each phone number is worth a different value; i.e., there are “good” numbers and not so good numbers. I asked what constituted a good number, and he said its basically a phone number that only has two numbers, repeated. For example: 553 3553 is a good number. He also says that some numbers are bad luck.

The first cell phone place we went only had phone numbers that cost more than 20 AZN; they said that the 5 AZN numbers were across the street. When we got to that store, all the 5 AZN numbers were already sold, but they said I could choose one that was 6 AZN and they would only charge me 5 AZN. They then pulled out a binder with a list of phone numbers and their corresponding prices. I chose the first 6 AZN number in the list, but it turns out that one was already taken. I finally ended up getting one that is 8533229. I hope its not bad luck.

4. After successfully securing my cell phone, J. took me to a local restaurant that had Azeri food. As soon as we entered, he mentioned, “Oh, I dont know if women really ever come to this place…” The place was full of men eating lunch, and as soon as I walked in, everyone was staring at me. It was a little bit awkward, but I figured I was with a foreigner and I look pretty foreign, so I hoped they just chalked it up to some weird American thing. Because I am sick, I was nervous about eating anything too weird. I ended up eating  some sort of soup that was similar to chicken noodle soup, but with lamb (or something) meat balls instead of chicken. It was actually pretty good, but I didnt have much of an appetite. What I did really enjoy was the Georgian “lemonade” that J. ordered, which is this incredibly sweet, pear-flavored soda. It’s a little too sweet and a little too syrupy, but in contrast to the salty not-quite-chicken-noodle-soup I had, it provided a really nice balance.

Tomorrow, I am actually going to start hunting for apartments. Also, I was going to mention that I saw Ralph Nader speak during the DNC and it totally reminded me why voting Democrat is for losers…But now I am conflicted, because who will I vote for? Additionally, its interesting to see how passionate people get when I tell them that I may not be voting for Obama anymore; you’d think that I had just said I ate babies. I think it really says a lot about our political system when everyone tells me I just have to “accept” that we are a two-party system and things will never change. Sorry folks, but real change has never been effected by working within the rules of the system…

One an interesting note, I get to vote by email! At least, if everyone works the way it should. I called up the Denver Election Commission and told them I would be leaving the country for a year, and asked what I needed to do in order to vote. And they sent me a card that asked how I preferred to vote: mail-in ballot, fax or email. The mail here is pretty sketchy, so I opted for email. I hope it works.

Laws governing Marijuana use in the United States could charitably be described “Fucktarded.” In an interview, Barney Frank said that many politicians recognize this obvious truth but are afraid to act on it. Realizing that he’s got political tenure Frank decided to go all bullworth and introduce legislation that would decriminalize Marijuana at a Federal level. Which is awesome and surprisingly rational. Of course, he needs help so please sign a Marijuana Policy Project petition asking your politician to cosponsor the bill HERE.

++ Disclaimers ++
* Despite having huge hippy dreadlocks, I don’t smoke weed because it’s not fun or beneficial to me. However, drug laws are major contributors to the prison industrial complex.
* To the person who says “There is no way in hell this will pass, so I’m not going to waste time signing this.” Several studies have shown that the future is very hard to predict and successful legislation is largely a function of how much time, money and energy people put into it. If you’ve ever been annoyed by Marijuana laws, take 20 seconds and sign. If you know anyone who’s been busted for marijuana use, sign and donate money to Marijuana Policy Project.

Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator and a figure in Alaska politics since before statehood, has been indicted on seven counts of falsely reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in services he received from a company that helped renovate his home. From May 1999 to August 2007, prosecutors said Stevens concealed “his continuing receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of things of value from an [Oil Company].” Stevens, who has served in the U.S. Senate for 40 years, is up for re-election this year, and Democrats view his seat as one of their top pick-up opportunities.

1. Powerful argument for term limits!
2. What the fuck, it took 40 years to bust this guy? Imagine how bad it had to be for him to get busted during the Bush Administration!!

:: It’s a Series of Tubes via msnbc ::

analysis by Maplight.org indicating that those Democratic representatives who changed their vote on telecom immunity between March and June received on average 40% more in contributions from telecom interests than those Democrats who held firm. Maplight asks, “Why did these ninety-four House members have a change of heart? Their constituents deserve answers.” Across both parties, representatives who voted for immunity in June had received almost twice a much telecom money as those who voted against. Wired’s coverage includes a quote from Larry Lessig, who is on the Maplight board: “Money corrupts the process of reasoning. [Lawmakers] get a sixth sense of how what they do might affect how they raise money.”

:: Sigh via Wired via Google Reader (thanks AB!) ::

Race, which Harper says has been implicated as a key factor in sentencing criminals to death, was not found to be an important factor when it came to the decision to execute. The most striking factor by far was educational level - the number of years the inmate had spent in high school. This may be crucial because it indicates how well an inmate can manage their appeal process. “This finding confirms that being executed is not about what you’ve done, but more about your ability to defend yourself,” says Simon Shepherd of Death Watch International, a group that campaigns against the death penalty worldwide.

::: Epic Fail via Google Reader (thanks AB!) :::

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

So you might be sort of astounded by how fucking insane a strategy that is, but wait! there’s more!

This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.

It worked! Can you fucking believe it? But remember, Impeachment is off the table as unilaterally decided by Nancy Pelosi. Even Mecha-Abe Lincoln is surprised:

Yeah, I had absolutely no idea that the EPA was this easy to roll over. I wonder what it would take to get a senior epa bureaucrat to drink their own piss? I mean you would think that a rational response to the White House refusing to open an email would be to plaster that information all over epa.gov and then initiate a lawsuit…

This part is great:
The Transportation Department made its own fuel-economy proposals public almost two months ago; they were based on the assumption that gasoline would range from $2.26 per gallon in 2016 to $2.51 per gallon in 2030
LULZ!!!!
—Mecha Abe Lincoln

This entire article is full of keepers, check it out
:::: White House via NYTimes ::::

Khadr’s case has been on track to be one of the first to trial at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba. Khadr, the son of an alleged al Qaeda financier, is accused of throwing a grenade that fatally wounded a U.S. Special Forces soldier.

Military prosecutors had been pressing Brownback to set a trial date, but he has repeatedly directed them first to satisfy defense requests for access to potential evidence. At a hearing earlier this month, he threatened to suspend the proceedings altogether unless the detention center provided records of Khadr’s confinement.

:: via the Miami Herald ::

Insanity! Absolute insanity. Fired for demanding evidence…in a court of law. Fancy that.

“They say in the stock market … buy stock in a business that’s so good that an idiot can run it because sooner or later one will. Well, the United States is a little like that. We can take a little mis-management from time to time.”

–Warren Buffet, on Bush and why he’s supporting Obama

A lot of people are coming out of the woodwork to support Obama right now but only because it’s so painfully obvious that he’s going to win the democratic primary. For the record, that’s not really support. When John Edwards says Obama “is a candidate he can believe in”, it’s because he would have trumpeted the same empty bullshit about Clinton if she was winning.

this is big:

U.S. authorities have long considered Mohammed al-Qahtani one of the most dangerous alleged terrorists in U.S. custody, a man who could have been the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, plot if he had not been denied entry into the country. But yesterday, amid concerns about using information obtained during abusive military interrogations, a top Pentagon official removed Qahtani from the military commission case meant to bring justice to those behind the vast Sept. 11 conspiracy.

Officials close to the case said Crawford’s office was reluctant to sanction the charges against Qahtani because prosecutors had little evidence against him outside of his own coerced confessions, a point that most certainly would have become a central issue at trial.
“Their case was only based on evidence derived from torture,” said Army Lt. Col. Bryan Broyles, who represents Qahtani. “In six-plus years, the evidence comes down to what they beat out of him. The prosecution evidence was entirely unreliable and inadmissible.”

:: Via WashPost with a tip of the hat to Democracy Now! ::

This is an important, although typical, point for the way the US has been handling the “War on (some) Terror.” Torture is a total waste of time even for people with no respect for basic human rights BECAUSE IT DOESN’T WORK.

Top:A clip from an Obama/Clinton Debate
Bottom:A Clinton ad that shows Obama darkened to look blacker with his face elongated. Additionally the text is blatant lie.

Dirty, filthy politics coming straight from the Clinton camp. This Daily Kos article is a must read
:: Blacker via Email (Thanks Chloe!) ::

I wrote this a while ago and never published it because I wanted to make it one of those fancy three part blog posts. I think there’s a lot of power in realizing when you are never going to do something and just letting it go.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture yesterday asked U.S. farmers to keep their cloned animals off the market indefinitely even as Food and Drug Administration officials announced that food from cloned livestock is safe to eat. Bruce I. Knight, the USDA’s undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, requested an ongoing “voluntary moratorium” to buy time for “an acceptance process” that Knight said consumers in the United States and abroad will need, “given the emotional nature of this issue.”

Yet even as the two agencies sought a unified message — that food from clones is safe for people but perhaps dangerous to U.S. markets and trade relations — evidence surfaced suggesting that Americans and others are probably already eating meat from the offspring of clones. Executives from the nation’s major cattle cloning companies conceded yesterday that they have not been able to keep track of how many offspring of clones have entered the food supply, despite a years-old request by the FDA to keep them off the market pending completion of the agency’s safety report.

FDA: Hey, did you write down that stuff about about the experimental untested food like I asked?
Beef Industry: ohhh duuuuude, I totally forgot. My bad!

Now! from the people who brought you mad cow disease, CLONED MEAT!!!

You seriously have to read this whole article, it’s a fucking riot.
USDA Recommends Food From Clones Stay Off the Market

My favorite part is when the cattle/biotech companies are all “Cloning is just a way to make offspring” it’s like invitro fertilization. wtf, no seriously WTF!?!? Although maybe my favorite part is when the article talks about how the few clones that do survive are plagued with birth defects and abnormally high rates of disease but don’t worry, it’s safe to eat! And besides, we can’t label it because that would just keep people from buying it.

While the future is bright and shiny, it’s just as corrupt on the inside.

—-

A couple days ago the USDA issued the biggest beef recall in history, 143 million pounds. I’ve seen several articles on this and most of them gloss over a few salient points that I’d like to reiterate here

-This recall goes back two years. Wait, seriously? Yes, that is physically impossible and I’m concerned that there is no one in the media rational enough to collapse in ridicule.

-A two year recall means that most of this meat has already been consumed.

-Downed cattle requirements are in place because of mad cow disease. My understanding is that these regulations as they (ahem) stand right now are seriously inadequate. Also, mad cow disease is seriously under reported because there are strong disincentives for telling the truth.

-Almost universally the articles that I’ve seen completely fail to critically engage the beef industry’s claims about the safety of the food supply. I’ll try my best to paraphrase

Beef Industry: “The government forced us to recall an insanely large amount of meat because it’s been unsafe for two years. We didn’t notice that but trust us, eating meat is 100% safe.”
Journalists: “okay, well, we’ll just repeat your logically incoherent soundbite ad nauseum so that people don’t accidentally get really pissed off about how incompetent and greedy you are.”

-This is a recall spurred on by a video recorded secretly and delivered to the humane society. This didn’t come out because of vigilant regulators. I highly recommend watching the video.

Sometimes I feel like my approach to politics is like trying to stop spam by telling as many people as possible that penis enlargement pills can’t possibly work.

The adrenaline of super tuesday is building, so apologies in advance for being so mentally disorganized. It seems like everyone in my life is politically engaged right now at a level of intensity that I’ve never seen. I’m having constant discussions with all of you, of course, but also coworkers, family, old high school friends, etc. it’s nonstop.

It’s clear that people are inspired by him and the hope that he embodies. I think that makes people nervous. It makes me nervous. Can we really, after all these decades of disappointment and cynicism, just start trusting someone? How can we possibly fall for the promises of a politician? How can we liberals, so accustomed to shame, feel this sudden, dangerous pride in our country rising up within us?

Yet, there he is, saying the things that we didn’t think anyone in his position would say, moving to the top without selling off the integrity that we thought anyone in his position would have to sell.

I’m rambling. Here’s an actual thought: Obama’s policy positions (and his 700+ dream team of advisors) has serious substance. And, what is often misunderstood as a lack of substance is actually his strongest asset. I was commenting on a blog post of Logan’s about this, and I’ll copy most of it here.

I recently came across a videotaped meeting that Obama had with the editorial board of the SF Chronicle (link below.) First of all, he inspires in this conversation not because of grand rhetoric but rather because of his command of the details of policy in an enormous range of domestic and foreign issues.

More importantly, he really makes clear that that ability is not enough, and that it certainly isn’t all he has to offer our country. If you just have time to listen to a little of it, check this out at about 39 minutes in: One of the editors challenges his targets for fuel economy legislation, asking if he is promising too much. After all, the president has to work with Congress, right? The implication (intended or not) is that Clinton, with her type of insider “experience” would be more effective.

Obama’s reply is perfect:

“The problem is not technical. The problem is not sufficient mastery of the legislative intricacies of Washington. The problem is: can you get the American people to say ‘This is really important’ and force their representatives to do the right thing. That requires mobilizing a citizenry. That requires that they understand what is at stake.”
I had a longish argument with AB about whether everyone’s infatuation with Obama would really add up to any effective movement in Washington. Here, Obama makes clear the mechanism by which seemingly nebulous qualities like leadership and vision actually effect change.

Obama views the presidential office as more than a position of political leverage for sausage-making in the legislative branch. He views it as an office that should inspire all Americans. He views change as something that comes up from the bottom. His campaign — overwhelmingly funded by small individual donors, rejecting PAC and lobbying money — is an unequivocal expression of that vision.
His vision of America is one where thinking people like you and me are the drivers of progress. His vision is of a populace that shares so much in common that our individual actions will be powerful enough to push back against the concentrations of power and capital that stand in the way of the well-being of average people.

It’s an incredibly idealistic vision; one that has been absent perhaps since the civil rights movement. But I look around and see so many people I know out on the streets for Obama, canvassing, making phone calls, donating huge portions of their paychecks, having heated discussions with strangers on the ferry to work… I get the feeling that he may just be able to make that vision real.

~N

logan’s blog post:
http://www.loganotron.com/2008/02/04/undecided-as-of-yet

obama’s meeting with the editorial board of the chronicle:
http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1381682549