Internal Monologue

...you're always six months away! Atrios is doing a great favor for all of us by marking his calendar whenever a politician says we'll be able to withdraw from Iraq at some future date. Here's one that just came due : One senior Republican adviser says Bush has "until April or May" to improve things in Iraq. If he cannot, he could face a GOP rebellion that could result in reductions in spending for the conflict and legislation to start bringing the troops home. Is there a GOP rebellion in the works? All I hear are chirping crickets... Here's another one, this time from Iraq's Prime Minister : AMMAN, Jordan - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Thursday that his country's forces would be able to assume security command by June 2007 — which could allow the United States to start withdrawing its troops. "I cannot answer on behalf of the U.S. administration but I can tell you that from our side our forces will be ready by June 2007," Malik...

Short version: they're being resourceful, we're being corrupt. Longer version in Wired magazine (HT: Devilstower on DailyKos ). I think the American defense industry has become more about enriching itself than actually increasing our military capability. This kind of story seems to be cropping up a lot lately. It's outrageous enough that we spend so much money on military things. The fact that our troops still seem to have trouble getting equipment is an absolute disgrace. Note that I don't think de-corrupting and streamlining the military procurement process would fundamentally alter the dynamic in Iraq. They don't want us there. But fixing the procurement bureaucracy might make life a bit easier for our troops until our broken political process can get them out of there.

Yes, apparently someone thought that this concep t could recoup the costs required to implement it. Who knows? After all, Deer Hunter sold bajillions of copies and spawned numerous sequels. (From here via Feministe .)

Korea is the new model for Iraq, I guess. Apparently, Bush thinksthat it would be good for us to have a multi-decade presence there . I don't think that would be a good idea. For one, the Koreans aren't trying to blow us up. Negative reactions to this very bad idea can be read on Daily Kos , Crooks & Liars , and Eschaton . And those are just the ones I've stumbled on already.

Computer face recognition is apparently getting better and better: Sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the match up of face-recognition algorithms showed that machine recognition of human individuals has improved tenfold since 2002 and a hundredfold since 1995. Indeed, the best face-recognition algorithms now perform more accurately than most humans can manage. Won't it be cool (and terrifying) when you can submit a picture of a face to Google and get a name back? Wouldn't it be cool to wear a device that whispers the name of who you are talking to into your ear? I'd love that. I'm always forgetting people's names. The fun possibilities are endless. As are the creepy Big Brother possibilities. We have to reform our government, because the technology that is available to it is just going to get more and more powerful.

I Can't believe it isn't soy! Image from here . What is BOFU(TM)? BOFU(TM) is a product that looks, tastes, and feels exactly like regular tofu , but is made from 100% beef. Why BOFU(TM)? When you want to enjoy a dish that calls for tofu, but want to avoid the feminizing qualities of soy products and the hippie, tree-hugging, blue-state liberal associations that come with tofu, BOFU(TM) is the product for you. For some time now, vegetarians have been able to enjoy traditional meat dishes by using vegetable-based substitutes like veggie burgers, Quorn , and tofu. But meat lovers have been unable to enjoy traditional tofu dishes (like mapo dofu ) without sullying their carnivorous reputations by consuming a sissy food like tofu. This culinary unbalance has been a form of discrimination against meat eaters. But now, we carnivores are fighting back against anti-meat prejudice, with BOFU(TM) as our weapon! How is BOFU(TM) made? The actual recipe for BOFU(TM) is a closely-guarded tr...

This Sullivan post is quite chilling. It describes Nazi "Verschärfte Vernehmung", which is variously translated as "sharpened interrogation", "intensified interrogation", or of course "enhanced interrogation": Sound familliar? Sullivan states his case simply: Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death. The punishment in 1948 for doing what...

I think Internal Monologue will take the day off. It's Memorial Day. Remember those who have lost their lives in military service.

You can't make this shit up . Here's CNN : But Newton, who had insisted on the death penalty as punishment and made no attempt to appeal, chatted and laughed with prison staff throughout the delay. It took so long that the staff paused to allow Newton a bathroom break . Emphasis added.

Remember yesterday's front-page article in the New York Times about Bush drawing up plans to lower the number of troops in Iraq? Here's the opening: WASHINGTON, May 25 — The Bush administration is developing what are described as concepts for reducing American combat forces in Iraq by as much as half next year, according to senior administration officials in the midst of the internal debate. It is the first indication that growing political pressure is forcing the White House to turn its attention to what happens after the current troop increase runs its course. Well, apparently that was just some wishful leaker talking, or some bogus trial balloon floating, or some pure bullshit, because Bush is furious about the report. Here's Think Progress : If there was ever any lingering doubt about whether the White House might finally be considering a redeployment, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol put those hopes to bed this morning on Fox News. He revealed that Bush is “furio...

Image of Paris from here . Answer: I guess you can't. Apparently, May 23 2007 was the day scientists estimated the worlds population became more urban than rural : There’s no big countdown billboard or sign in Times Square to denote it, but Wednesday, May 23, 2007, represents a major demographic shift, according to scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia: For the first time in human history, the earth’s population will be more urban than rural. (HT: Sullivan ) In the U.S., this happened in the late 1910's. Here's a link to the song referenced in the title of this post.

"Grr, I'm Evil Asymmetrically Face-Scrunched Man! Torture torture torture!" Image from The Raw Story Let me get this: the War on Terror(TM) is an eternal war that is being fought everywhere. Now Cheney implicitly criticizes the notion that those caught in the War on Terror(TM) should have rights under the Geneva conventions: "Capture one of these killers, and he'll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States," the Vice President said in the Saturday morning speech. "Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away." Cheney delivered the remarks in the context of moral and ethical lessons that the graduating cadets at West Point had learned in the course of their study. So it seems that according to Cheney nobody captured in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else (as long as it's part of the War on Terror(TM), and these days, what isn't?) ...

This Brownback supporter has a post entitled: Heliocentrism is an Atheist Doctrine Normally, I refrain from linking to wingnuts, but I'd love it if this one was spread far and wide. Here's the opening: What’s even worse than the debate raging in American schools about the teaching of the soulless doctrine of evolution, is the non-debate over an issue that rational Americans have foolishly conceded to the secular among us: the issue of Heliocentrism, or the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Now, it has to be granted that there may be some mathematical evidence going either way; mathematically speaking, Copernicus may be on ground nearly as firm as that of Tycho Brahe . Right-thinking people know the correct doctrine, however: Heliocentrism is the view that the sun is at the center of the universe. It was proposed by some ancient Greeks,[1] and became the dominant view in the 1700s and 1800s. It was abandoned in the 20th century. Since the advent of relativity theo...

Bill Maher's bumper stickers for Bush .

C&L Want to hear a summary of the latest round of bullshit testimony from DoJ officials? Tune in to The Daily Show : "Listening to their testimony, it's like the entire Department of Justice is taking a shit inside my head!" They would have us believe that the list of attorneys to be fired spontaneously generated itself out of thin air. Let's hawk a big loogie of disrespect upon Alberto Gonzales, Ultimate Stooge of the Universe, and all the lesser stooges who covered for him. And now: A discourse on the nature of stooges, and inquiry into the nature of the Ultimate Stooge If Person A is the stooge of person B who is the stooge of person C (in that case at hand, A=Goodling, B=Gonzales, and C=Bush), and person B is declared "Ultimate Stooge of the Universe" by an authoritative political commentator, what does that make person A? Isn't person A a bigger stooge than person B? The stooge of a stooge is more stoogey than a mere stooge, no matter how deep ...

OK, I knew infighting like this plagued the Bush administration, but I didn't know it was this serious or this bad : This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument. The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles). This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf -- which just became significantly larger -- as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and enga...

Edwards came out against it first, but Clinton and Obama thankfully voted against the Iraq supplemental I mentioned earlier .

Image from passedoutdrunkguy.com . Yes, there are entire websites devoted to the genre. I was surprised by this. I shouldn't have been. Mark Morford on SFGate.com asks a good question: What the hell is the appeal of severe, excessive drinking, over and over again, to the point of illness and physical collapse and extreme stupidity and brain-melting moronism? I have never understood the appeal either. The author goes on at great length explaining that he's not talking about getting "buzzed" or even just "drunk", but actually drinking so much you get incapacitated. And he's not talking about people who have an alchohol addiction, either. After trying out a few explanations (generally crappy life, a desperate attempt to connect, sadness and self-loathing), he goes on to say: Or maybe it's none of those things, and what I see and what you see every weekend in bars and street fairs and house parties across America is merely the way of the culture, just e...

Image of Orwell from george-orwell.com I just read " Politics and the English Language " (HT: Sullivan ). I probably should have read it before I started political blogging. But I'm glad I read it. This passage reaches out of 1946 and punches you in the face: In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification . Millions of peasants are robbed o...

from C&L And now, an utterly substance free tidbit from Internal Monologue: Channelling public opinion, a passing bird took a shit on Bush during his press conference. Were I an animist, I would say that Nature herself has become appalled at Bush's behavior. Since I do not believe in supernaturalism of any kind, I will take what is essentially a random, meaningless event, and using my human capacity to imbue the world with meaning, applaud the bird's action and say a great Nietzschean/Yoko Onoian "Yes!" to it.

I hate to engage in too much Dem bashing, because ultimately I think the Democratic party will be the vehicle for a real people-powered re-alignment in this country. Even in their current condition they are so much better than the Republicans. But they do need to be kicked for this latest Iraq capitulation, and Jon Stewart helps. See the video on Crooks and Liars .

Image from here . Bob Dylan is 66 today. I don't normally do birthdays on Internal Monologue , but someone on Kos mentioned it. I was thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice if there was a new Bob Dylan who could channel the popular outrage about the Iraq situation?" But then I realized we don't need a new Bob Dylan, because the old Bob Dylan is (sad to say) just as relevant now he was when writing "Masters of War", "Blowin' in the Wind", and "Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall".

Chris Bowers has a post on MyDD that tries to answer Why Some Democrats Are More Scared Of Bush Than Their Base : By now, I'm sure most people have seen this : Democrats said they did not relish the prospect of leaving Washington for a Memorial Day break -- the second recess since the financing fight began -- and leaving themselves vulnerable to White House attacks that they were again on vacation while the troops were wanting. That criticism seemed more politically threatening to them than the anger Democrats knew they would draw from the left by bowing to Mr. Bush. This isn't just a reporter putting words in Democratic mouths. As Matt showed earlier today, several specific Democrats are actually scared of Bush on this . Now, if you think it seems more than a little inane to be scared of a guy whose approval rating just hit an all-time low today , especially when it comes to a war which just reached its all-time low in terms of support today , and when, on Tuesday, cent...

Edwards just gained a lot of respect from me, as has Dodd: Edwards told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City today that the current war-funding bill is a "capitulation" to President Bush, since it does not include a timetable to begin a troop withdrawal. "Congress should send the president the same bill he vetoed again and again until he realizes he has no choice but to start bringing our troops home," Edwards said. "We need to get out of Iraq on our own timetable, not when we are forced to do so by events." On Wednesday Dodd announced that he will vote against the measure, calling it another "blank check" for the president. Meanwhile, Clinton and Obama dither on the issue: Two front-runners, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, declined to say how they intended to vote on the measure.

In the most scathing " special comment " I have yet seen, Olbermann denounces the Democrats for caving compltetely to Bush, despite the extremely clear mandate they received in Nov. 2006. And he excoriates Bush for taking our troops hostage to enhance his power in the political game of chicken he's playing with the Democrats. His sense of outrage and disgust mirrors what I feel exactly. The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq. You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions - Stop The War - have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.

Crooks and Liars : NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports on how the Bush administration pays the Pakistani government $1 billion a year to hunt down Osama bin Laden, and demands zero accountability as to how that money is spent. I like Slacktivist's analogies : Imagine this happens to you: Some big Manhattan publisher gives you a $100,000 advance to write the Great American Novel. Then you look at the fine print and you realize that your deal gives you $100,000 every year until you finish the book. You call to double check. "Does this mean I get $100,000/year forever? " you ask. "Not forever," the publisher says, "just until whenever you're finished writing." And once the book is completed, the publisher says, you will receive a $2,500 bonus. [...] Let's try one more analogy. Imagine you're Halliburton. You've been hired by the U.S. government to rebuild Iraq's refineries and oil infrastructure. In the meantime, until that job ...

Another doozy from the "real people get whacked by stupid laws" category: LUBBOCK, TX -- An obscure law sends one local lingerie store clerk to jail. And now she may forever have to register as a sex offender. The lingerie store, Somethin’ Sexy was raided by police last week for violating Lubbock`s sexually oriented business ordinance. [...] What’s illegal and what’s not when it comes to sexual devices comes down to marketing and intentions. "If the seller is selling it as a novelty and the buyer is buying it as a novelty to make fun of, then it probably has not reached the level of an obscenity" says [Assistant DA] Grace. According to state law, it’s illegal to sell obscene devices with the intention of sexual gratification. But what is an obscene device and who`s going to be the judge of that? "What’s considered obscene in LA is different than Lubbock and different than Des Moines. The community ultimately decides what is obscene" says Grace. (HT: Sul...

With screw-ups like this , is it any wonder we're faring so poorly in our multitude of taks in the Middle East? Al Hurra television, the U.S. government's $63 million-a-year effort at public diplomacy broadcasting in the Middle East, is run by executives and officials who cannot speak Arabic , according to a senior official who oversees the program. That might explain why critics say the service has recently been caught broadcasting terrorist messages , including an hour-long tirade on the importance of anti-Jewish violence, among other questionable pieces. (HT: C&L ) Ouch. I think this is kind of symbolic of all our efforts in Iraq: We make some ham-fisted attempt to win hearts and minds, appoint a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing to run it, and then discover our efforts have been infiltrated or co-opted by those who wish us ill.

Why is a Democratically controlled congress sending Bush a blank check to continue this war when a majority of Americans want to start getting out of there? Meteor Blades on Kos : It would be hard to find a progressive who had a good Tuesday as far as Iraq is concerned. The Senate-House conference committee put together an ugly compromise that would give Mister Bush tens of billions of dollars to continue the catastrophe in Iraq. Call it what you will - a blank check, a sell-out, a surrender - it ultimately amounts to failure, unless victory is defined as getting a signable bill on the President's desk regardless of its contents. Compromise is when two sides each give up something they want in order to get something they want in return. But from this compromise among themselves, what exactly is it that the Democrats will be getting in return from the White House? Nothing. Because the President refuses to compromise. Clearly, some people need to primaried. This is a disgrace. W...

Image of Alberto Gonzales surrounded by what he has enabled from resistir.info I think we need to get rid of Bush and Cheney, but getting rid of Gonzales would free the Justice Department from the grip of one of Bush's most servile cronies. Any replacement Attorney General would have to be confirmed by a Democratically controlled Sentate. It might also warm-up the impeachment process and remind America that it's there. So I support it. You can sign a petition here . (HT: rubber hose ) (Busy day today, sorry for the light posting.)

(HT: Sullivan )

This poster was taped to the wall of my church. I saw it yesterday an thought it was worthy of sharing with you. Yes, it presents a theistic worldview. But I still think it's awesome.

Hmmm...I'm not so keen on this whole Iraq thing... Image of Gordon Brown from RP.Online It seems Tony Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, has not drunk from Bush's Kool-Aid bowl as much as his predecessor: Gordon Brown is prepared to risk the future of the "special relationship" with the United States by reversing Tony Blair's support for the Iraq war, President George W Bush has been warned. He has been briefed by White House officials to expect an announcement on British troop withdrawals from Mr Brown during his first 100 days in power. It would be designed to boost the new prime minister's popularity in the opinion polls. The President recently discussed with a senior White House adviser how to handle the fallout from the expected loss of Washington's main ally in Iraq, The Sunday Telegraph has learned. (HT: C&L ) Nobody thinks this occupation is a good idea, Mr. Bush. Get us out of there before we figure out a way to get you out of there. (Ther...

Graphic from McClatchy Washington Bureau Apparently, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has only spoken 281 words during oral arguments since October 2004, when the court began identifying individual justices in its transcripts (HT: C&L ). That's a whopping rate of 1.29 words per hour of oral argument. The last time Thomas asked a question was over a year ago on Feb 22, 2006. I know Supreme Court Justices have duties aside from participating in oral arguments. But that is the public face of their work. Would it kill the guy to ask a lawyer a question or two now and again? No More Mister Nice Blog speculates why this might be the case. I suspect it's because Thomas isn't that great a justice and doesn't really have much to say that his fellow right-wingers can't say better. But NMMNB does make the following pertinent inquiry: ...[W]hat was it about George Bush the Elder? Why did he stick us with so many people who can't put two sentences together? Dan...

Military Times is doing an online poll about the use of torture. Now, it could have been freeped, but right now the results are pretty disturbing: Equally disturbing is the U.S. Central Command study mentioned in the poll question: A recent U.S. Central Command study found that 36 percent of soldiers and 39 percent of Marines who recently served in the war zone believe torture should be allowed to gather information about insurgents. Sullivan comments : Those two categories basically make torture an option for all soldiers in a dangerous war-zone. Six years after Bush's approval, 70 percent of Military Times readers endorse torture - not even the newspeak "enhanced interrogation techniques" - as a routine military option. Congratulations, Mr President. Bonus congrats to Joel Surnow and Fox. What the hell has happened to our country? Or was it always like this and I just didn't know it? We desperately need some moral leadership on this. And Bush is our president. Arg...

You'd think a game so simple wouldn't need a strategy guide , but of course thanks to the Web it has one (HT: Sullivan ). Of course, it also has an extensive Wikipedia entry . My favorite bit the section about variations of this game from different cultures: For example in Japan there is a variation which uses a tiger, a chief and the chief's mother as the three elements (the tiger beating the chief's mother, the chief beating the tiger and the chief's mother beating the chief). In Indonesia another version is played with the elements as an elephant, a man and an ant (the elephant crushing the man, the man crushing the ant and ant humorously defeating the elephant by crawling into the animal's ear and making it go insane). It also has competitive tournaments with cash prizes . And I thought my hobbies were a bit silly.

Interesting tidbit I picked up over at Jeff Weintraub : [New Foreign Minister] Kouchner, on the other hand, is a veteran humanitarian and human-rights activist, a founder of Doctors Without Borders, the first UN Commissioner in Kosovo after the 1999 war, a strong proponent of international measures to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities, and one of the few important figures in French politics who supported serious international action against Saddam Hussein & his regime (long-time clients of France ). I don't know much about French politics, but this seems to signal that France will be taking international human rights issues very seriously.

You can see our family's public photo albums here .

I love the 1884 novella Flatland , by Edwin Abbot Abbot. Essentially, I think it is a story about expanding your mind, though it's also a satire on victorian social mores and a fun bit of alternate universe science fiction. I'm not convinced that this performance art stunt is really worthy of the name Flatland : In this semi-extreme performance, 6 curious artists strip away not only most of modern life's familiar structures, but an entire dimension: they have elected to inhabit a structure that effectively forces them to live in 2 dimensions. The structure is 4 stories high, 24 feet wide, and 24 inches deep, covered in transparent plastic (vinyl). It resembles a terrarium or "ant farm" and is inspired by the 19th century science fiction novel it is named after, "Flatland". (HT: Sullivan )

Image from Crooks and Liars , of course. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of what's going on in the USA attorney firing scandal. For a fun summary of the latest developments, check out this The Daily Show segment , in which Jon Stewart marvels at Gonzales' sudden recovery of his memory, now that he is no longer under oath: Gonzales on April 19: “Looking back, things that I would have done differently…? I think I would have had the Deputy Attorney General more involved, directly involved.” Gonzales on May 15: “The Deputy Attorney General would know best about the qualifications and experiences of the minds; it’s a community and he signed off on the names.”

Just because you said "no" to Bush once doesn't make you a saint : Compared to the likes of, say, David Addington and John Yoo, it is certainly true that James Comey, John Ashcroft and Jack Goldsmith had slightly greater limits on what they would tolerate. But the praise for the latter has become excessive. The "heroic" trio still ultimately endorsed the unquestionably illegal warrantless eavesdropping program, along with the whole host of other radical and lawless Bush policies, from the indefinite and process-less detention of even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil to secret Eastern European prisons and a whole range of "enhanced interrogation techniques." [...] The issue is that to canonize them -- to pretend that they are some sort of Crusaders for the Rule of Law -- is to ignore the fact that they have endorsed and enabled some of the most radical and lawless presidential behavior in our country's history. Their "rebellion" is quite redole...

Shorter David Brooks : Terrorists and insurgents are smarter than we are. I often find myself supremely annoyed with Brooks, but I think he's right about this. Here's an excerpt from the column: That’s because setbacks in the war on terror [how annoying that Brooks uses this ridiculous phrase!] don’t only flow from the mistakes of individual leaders and generals. They’re structural. Thanks to a series of organizational technological innovations, guerrilla insurgencies are increasingly able to take on and defeat nation-states. [...] There are between 70 and 100 groups that make up the Iraqi insurgency, and they are organized, Robb says, like a bazaar. It’s pointless to decapitate the head of the insurgency or disrupt its command structure, because the insurgency doesn’t have these things. Instead, it is a swarm of disparate companies that share information, learn from each other’s experiments and respond quickly to environmental signals. [...] Robb is pessimistic (excessively so...

You'd think that after the Nov 2006 electoral drubbing and with Bush's approval ratings in hideous territory, Republican presidential candidates would be doing everything they can to distance themselves from him. But they aren't. The Republican base still loves Bush, and these are the people who need to be wooed to win the Republican primary. Paul Krugman takes note of this in his NYT column today: But the leading contenders for the Republican nomination have given us little reason to believe they would behave differently. Why should they? The principles Mr. Bush has betrayed are principles today’s G.O.P., dominated by movement conservatives, no longer honors. In fact, rank-and-file Republicans continue to approve strongly of Mr. Bush’s policies — and the more un-American the policy, the more they support it. [...] But aside from John McCain, who to his credit echoed Gen. Petraeus (and was met with stony silence), the candidates spoke enthusiastically in favor of torture ...

Image from game-times.com It has been my personal quest to have the game Settlers of Catan replace Monopoly as the national default boardgame. JonMichael Ramsus of Flak magazine says that in some ways, it already has: Has [Settlers] become the new Monopoly ? In many ways, yes. It won the Game of the Year award in Germany, the vanguard of the modern boardgaming world. It has released not less than 25 expansions, rethemings and sequels, all of which significantly change gameplay and offer varied degrees of difficulty. Settlers has sold (and continues to sell) millions of copies in Europe and the United States and thousands of game are played daily on Internet gaming sites and, now, on Xbox Live Arcade, for those who believe "putting away the game" should involve hitting an off switch. Heck, there's even a junior edition called the Kids of Catan — it's gotta be better than Chutes and Ladders . You may think, "If there was a game that was on its way to being...

This blog is a partisan pro-Democratic blog, but there are times when the Democrats disappoint . The Reid-Feingold amendment in the Senate to bring a close to the Iraq occupation was defeated 29-67. The defeat was expected. A majority of Democrats voted for the amendment, which is good. But many did not, including some darlings of the netroots like Tester, Webb, and McCaskill. I just want to let them know that I'm disappointed in them, and that their actions will have reprecussions. When those e-mail solicitations for money come around, or when I'm scanning ActBlue 's donation page, I will remember this list (or dig back through my blog to find it). Here are the Democrats who voted no : Baucus (D-MT) Bayh (D-IN) Bingaman (D-NM) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Conrad (D-ND) Dorgan (D-ND) Landrieu (D-LA) Levin (D-MI) Lincoln (D-AR) McCaskill (D-MO) Nelson (D-FL) Nelson (D-NE) Pryor (D-AR) Reed (D-RI) Rockefeller (D-WV) Salazar (D-CO) Tester (D-MT) Webb (D-VA) Here's what Big T...

The photo is titled " Made 5000 Fishwiches Out Of Five Buns And Two Cod ", by Matthew Baldwin. (From defective yeti via rubber hose .)

I'm assuming my readers have heard about the Comey's testimony about how he raced to Ashcroft's hospital room to prevent Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales from getting Ashcroft to sign off on an illegal wiretapping program. Well, of course Bush was asked about it (actually, I shouldn't say "of course"; it's exactly the sort of question the press hasn't asked Bush enough of), and of course Bush dodged the question . The overall question is: how long is Congress going to take this kind of stonewalling? How long are our pundits going to take? And how long are the American people going to take it? Well, as you can probably guess, this American person has had enough already and thinks it's time to throw the Bush administration out via impeachment.

This is just weird. It's a 1981 North Carolina Moral Majority pamphlet containing a list of prohibitions for students. It's really strange some of the stuff that's on there. It's not what you might think, and it's very chilling. A few are actually good bits of advice. Here are the points: Don'ts for students. 1. Don't get into science-fiction values discussions or trust a teacher who dwells on science fiction in his/her "teaching." 2. Don't discuss the future or future social arrangements or governments in class. 3. Don't discuss values. 4. Don't write a family history. 5. Don't answer personal questions or questions about members of your family. 6. Don't play blindfolded games in class. 7. Don't exchange "opinions" on political or social issues. 8. Don't write an autobiography. 9. Don't keep a journal of your opinions, activities and feelings. 10. Don't take intelligence tests. Write tests only on you...

Photo by Christopher Irion Just another reminder about my one-person show, Dust Storm . It's Friday, June 1 at 7pm and Sunday, June 3 at 2pm. Here's the Oakland Museum's flyer for the event , and you can also see it on their calendar for June . You can learn more about the show itself here .

The latest revelations in the Wiretapping scandal, especially the recent testimoney by Comey, paint a picture of a "clear impeachable offence", according to Prof. Jonathan Turley. He spoke on Olbermann's Countdown . See Crooks and Liars for the video. I am losing respect for Congress. When they let Bush's lawbreaking and Gonzales' whoppers slide, they start looking like spineless fools.

Amen! I don't always agree with Hitchens (who does?), but I love the fact that he's not afraid to call Falwell and his ilk what they are. Money quote: You can get away with the most extraordinary offenses, to morality and to truth in this country, if you will just get yourself called "Reverend". Who would--even at your network [CNN] have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September the 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God's punishment if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification? People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup. (HT: Pharyngula via Sullivan )

Image by Stephanos Neofytidis from here . Soon, I bet we'll be able to purchase extra senses the way we now purchase extra peripherals for our personal computers. Sullivan links to a Wired article about someone who gave themselves an inherent sense of which way was north, via a vibrating belt: For six weird weeks in the fall of 2004, Udo Wächter had an unerring sense of direction. Every morning after he got out of the shower, Wächter, a sysadmin at the University of Osnabrück in Germany, put on a wide beige belt lined with 13 vibrating pads — the same weight-and-gear modules that make a cell phone judder. On the outside of the belt were a power supply and a sensor that detected Earth's magnetic field. Whichever buzzer was pointing north would go off. Constantly. "It was slightly strange at first," Wächter says, "though on the bike, it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations he had to make while trying to reach a destination. ...