Linkmeister
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President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agencys latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques that are prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies. Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using such interrogation methods, which include waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad. I don't think the legacy Bush leaves behind will be one of "fighting for strong executive powers." I think it will be "led America into the first pre-emptive war in its history, bogging its military down in Iraq for years." It will be "led a compliant Republican Congress down the road to destruction of American civil liberties." It will be "imprisoned suspects without charge at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, limiting their access to lawyers and refusing to follow the Constitution's stated principles of habeas corpus, no unreasonable search and seizure, due process, the right to a speedy trial, and other attacks on American law." It will be "politicized the American judicial system by firing US Attorneys General for unwillingness to prosecute cases the Executive Branch trumped up." It will be "prevented investigations into wrongdoing of Administration employees by defying Congressional subpoenas." And that's the tip of the iceberg. - Volcano!
The Big Island's Kilauea has been erupting for the past twenty-five years. Yesterday the latest flow hit the ocean. Some of the photos are spectacular. Some of the video is even more amazing. Click the links in the box on the right. We had contracted to buy a lot in the subdivision called Royal Gardens thirty years ago; when it was overrun Dad said our land was increasing by accretion. - Lost, Season Four, Episode 6
Ryan's post. - Patriots all
If you're self-employed you know all about Social Security and Medicare taxes; that 15.3 percent of gross income you have to pay to the Feds on top of any income tax you might owe on your adjusted gross income each year. Everybody pays into it either through payroll tax deductions or when you file. Unless you're KBR, the biggest Iraq war contractor (or profiteer).CAYMAN ISLANDS - Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven. Oh, it gets worse, too. Not only has the company been avoiding paying into the SocSec and Medicare funds, it's been avoiding paying into Texas' state unemployment fund by employing people out of its Cayman Islands offices. What's that mean? Well, if you were hired from those places, when you get back to Texas (KBR's headquarters is located there), you're ineligible for unemployment benefits. Do I need to point out that when an outfit like KBR doesn't pay into those funds, the rest of us have to make up the difference? The story asserts that the Pentagon has known since 2004 that KBR was doing this. Good corporate citizens, aren't they? Congress is trying to close this loophole, but dollars to donuts and political contributions there'll be Republican opposition to it. via Think Progress. - Ouch!
$3.439 You guess what that is. - Urban v. rural
CNN just called Texas for Hillary. I went to look at its map of results by county. I have no insight as to why this is, but Barack won all the big cities and Hillary won everything else in the state. That's one of the weirder election maps I've ever seen between members of the same party. - The YouTube election
Teresa Nielsen Hayden has compiled quite the list of campaign videos created for the Presidential candidates. There's the obvious (Yes We Can by Will.i.am) and the ridiculous (John.he.is), plus a few historical recordings from past elections (way past; 1840s). Enjoy! - More of Mr. Young
Speaking of Neil Young's compositions, here's "Love is a Rose," sung by Linda Ronstadt. Crank up the speakers; the audio is really faint. If you look around YouTube for Neil Young, you'll find several songs in which he plays banjo; this Ronstadt arrangement is not an aberration. - National shame
If you watched "60 Minutes" last night you probably saw a segment about Remote Area Medical, a charity which was founded to provide health care to people who can't get regular access to it by virtue of where they live. It was pretty startling. They set up shop in Knoxville, TN on the weekend of January 5-6 of this year, served several thousand people, and had to turn hundreds away. Many of these people actually have some insurance, but their deductibles are too high to make going to a doctor feasible. One featured guy was a truck driver with health insurance whose deductible is $500; that's a good part of his take-home pay. What the hell kind of society is this that it can't provide basic services (RAM pulled around 1,100 teeth, made a bunch of eyeglasses and did a lot of mammograms; no special MRI/CAT scans or things of that nature) to its citizens? - Exploring the vinyl vault
Way down at the end of the aisle under "Y" I find a slew of Neil Young albums, including Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, his first release with Crazy Horse. There are three well-known songs from this album: "Cinnamon Girl," "Cowgirl in the Sand," and "Down by the River." The first one is short enough to get airtime on radio, the latter two are not. Both "Cowgirl" and "River" have extended guitar jams taking them above the 7-minute mark. Here is CSNY singing "Down by the River," from a television performance in 1969. To quote Dylan, "I was so much younger then, I'm older than that now." - Shelby Lynne sings Springfield
Shelby Lynne has done an album of Dusty Springfield covers and talks about it on Weekend Edition Sunday. There are clips at both links. It sounds pretty darned good. By the way, if you've never heard Lynne's little sister Allison Moorer, you ought to. Her latest album is also comprised of covers, including "Ring of Fire" and "Both Sides Now." Here she is, singing Brother Can You Spare a Dime. - Olfactory memory
As I was numb from the local anesthesia the other day, the dentist was shaving my tooth to ready it for molding the new crown. It didn't hurt, but the smell of burning enamel was really strong. I'm trying to remember what else I've smelled that's similar, and I can't. It's probably best not to have a really vivid imagination when someone's poking around in your mouth, you know? They put a dental dam on me; if I could have spoken coherently I'd have made some wisecrack about waterboarding. - Music losses
Buddy Miles and Mike Smith both died this week. Miles played drums with Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys and with Mike Bloomfield's Electric Flag, as well as with Carlo Santana. He was also the lead voice for the Claymation California Raisins, the sketch ads for the fruit in the 1980s. Smith was the lead singer and keyboardist for The Dave Clark Five (Clark was the drummer). The band had a string of big hits in the 1960s, including "Glad All Over" and "Because." I always thought the latter was one of the prettiest ballads of the time, and I'm glad to see Avedon agrees with me. She dug up a performance of the song, too. Hawai'i lost two of its greats as well: Auntie Genoa Keawe and Roy Kane. Auntie Genoa was legendary out here for her true falsetto and her impishness; here's a tribute to her on YouTube. Kane was a slack-key guitar master and a very self-effacing man. He always had singers fronting with him because he didn't feel he knew the Hawaiian language well enough to sing it. Here's a link to Amazon where you can hear some clips of his music. - Lost, Season Four, Episode 5
Ryan's post. Jon's post. From the teaser last week it appears we'll see Sayid and the helicopter. Will it arrive on the freighter? When? Will we get any hints to the names of the still-unidentified members of the Oceanic Six? Whose flash-forwards will we see? - And then there's "Lost" tonight
Poor scheduling, part 327: Dental examination to mold a crown for me at 11:00 AM. Mom's dental checkup immediately following my stint in the chair. Refrigerator repair (again; I wish there were a lemon law for home appliances!) between 1:00-5:00 PM. I feel like the White Rabbit. Update: Numbed, I am.
