I don’t even know what else to say other than this makes me sick. The elected representatives of the citizens of the state of Texas are caught on film casting votes on one another’s machines and all they can say is “well, we’re very busy”?

I swear to God, I think they should all be impeached and special elections should be held to replace them. Furthermore, I think that any law passed during this session should be annulled by the courts because of the absolute possibility of vote fraud. I have no doubt after watching this video that people are cheating like hell on votes and taking advantage of the vacancy at the desk beside them.

How do these people expect me to have faith in a single vote? The system is corrupt beyond repair.
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October is Black History Month in the UK (it’s February in the US), and one very unique individual is Gil Scott Heron, an American poet and musician known primarily for his late 1960s and early 1970s work as a spoken word performer.

Mr. Heron recites a poem in which he uses sarcasm and wit to make the point that the white people who “discovered” Africa weren’t exactly discovering anything, and certainly weren’t good for the indigenous people.
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The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. It has a 9.2 rating on IMDB.

There are three one-hour films (embedded below), consisting mostly of archive footage with Curtis’s narration, which were first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and have been aired in multiple countries and shown in several film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

This series is as controversial as Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 or Sicko. And it will evoke strong opinions on both sides of the debate about the reality (or lack thereof) of a brewing conflict between Christianity and Islam.
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As some may know, Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was in the United States to participate in the UN General Assembly.

While he was in the US, he also took the time to lecture at Columbia University, where:

He said there were no homosexuals in Iran - not one - and that the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews should not be treated as fact, but theory, and therefore open to debate and more research.

The press, of course, has been having a field day with Ahmadinejad’s visit.

“Should a man like Ahmadinejad be denied the freedom of speech that he so brazenly and brutally denies others?”

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Imagine this… it’s 8am, you’ve just dropped your 8 year old off at school and picked up your 22 year old daughter for breakfast. While your daughter goes inside a restaurant to correct the breakfast order your wife, in the seat beside you, notices a woman waiving her arms as if in distress. So you roll down the window to see if she needs help and she leans her head into your car and offers her “services”.

Then, to add injury to insult, a few seconds later a bunch of cops rush your car, drag you out of it, and handcuff you for soliciting a prostitute. Meanwhile your wife is freaking out, and your daughter, returning to the car, screams!
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Tasers were developed as a non-lethal option to bring dangerous situations under control. But law enforcement officials are now using them with wild abandon in cases where simple diplomacy or a little hard work would otherwise suffice.

In the past I’ve written about the police tasering of a UCLA student for refusing to show his school ID, as well as the time a cop tasered an 11 year old at school because the officer on hand apparently couldn’t physically restrain him?!? (Gee, what would they have done 10 years ago?)

Police have also used Tasers against peaceful protesters (NPR audio about tasering protesters), a pregnant woman (8 months) and an elderly man who called 911 to get medical attention for his diabetic seizure.

So who’s next? Maybe you.
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Six years have passed. Say what you will about the war in Iraq, George Bush, or religion. America was attacked. The last time this happened was Pearl Harbor. The result - the USA demonstrated it’s political will and military might.

That makes the US 2 for 2. Two attacks on US soil = two foreign military powers and their allies utterly destroyed.
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During a presidential debate with Al Gore in 2000 Bush said the following:

“If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we’re going to have a serious problem.”

Now here is a quote from the incredibly one-sided Paul Sperry over at AntiWar.com:

The day after the presidential debate, in an interview with NBC’s Tim Russert, candidate Bush stressed that a “big difference” between him and Gore was “on the nation-building concept.”

“If he means using troops all around the world to serve as social workers, or policeman, or, you know, school-walk crossing guards, I’m not for that,” Bush clucked. “And I don’t think America is for that either. I think America wants judicious use of our military.”

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Can someone please tell me why the Russians are taunting the British by flying bomber/reconnaissance planes to the border of British airspace?

With relations between Russia and Britain deteriorating, the number of incidents in which Russia’s submarines have been found close to British shores or in contact with Royal Navy warships has also risen, reports said yesterday. London’s Daily Telegraph said there was a suggestion Russia could be testing the West’s air detection systems and response times.

Diplomatic tensions between London and Moscow — already stretched by the murder in London of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko — intensified as the Bear bombers headed towards Britain. It was the first time Russian bombers had threatened to penetrate British airspace since President Vladimir Putin indicated, with no little chutzpah, that he had ordered his bomber force to resume long-range patrols around the world.

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I was inspired by a fantastic article published by the Sietch Blog called Bending Swords Into Wind Turbines, so I decided to bring together some data to share on the opportunity costs associated with the ongoing war in Iraq.

Just to be clear, I’m not espousing any political position. I’m only interested in coming to an understanding of what alternatives we are forgoing by spending money, effort and lives in Iraq as opposed to spending them on something else. We’re talking about a whole boatload of money here, so it’s nice to know what else we could be getting for our dollar.
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I wish this article was some sort of political commentary, but unfortunatly I’m just reporting the news, not referring to President Bush as a dictator or anything like that.

In addition to the illegal wiretapping and other abuses of freedom the Bush administration has undertaken, a political watchdog group called the Center for Research on Globalization has pointed out that the White House released a directive called the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive on May 9th, 2007 in which George W. Bush declares that in the event of a “Catastrophic Emergency”,

“The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government. “

The language would create a Presidential dictatorship in the case of such an emergency by placing the executive branch in control of the coordination of the legislative and judicial branches - branches which constitutionally are equally empowered to the President.
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In case you’ve been living under a rock, my father’s country of birth (Greece) has massive fires raging all around Athens which have killed 63 people in just the last few days. Now, I don’t want anyone to take any of the comments I’m about to make the wrong way. I love Greece, and the Greek people. We are family.

But being that the ancient Greeks invented democracy, I’m going to exercise a little free speech here and tell you a few reasons I have little sympathy for the problems now being faced.
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