Who the [bleep] steals a toddler seat out of someone else’s garage?

Well, I hope it was someone truly needy with a kid who wouldn’t otherwise be safe. They didn’t mess with the Mustang. Didn’t take either of the bikes, Didn’t touch the lawn mower or snow blower. Toolchest is still there. Just. Took. Our. Toddler. Seat.

[bleep]

[bleep]

Typewriter: Ulysses, a 1923 L.C. Smith #8

Warning: politics and bad language ahead.

"Say goodnight, Gracie."

Originally uploaded by olivander.

Yesterday, Republican senators Conrad Burns of Montana and George Allen of Virgina conceded victory to their Democratic opponents, giving control of the two houses of legislature to the Democrats for the first time since…um…Jesus, I think.

While I’m delighted to finally have a return to the system of checks and balances, I do not underestimate the Democrats’ ability to still blow this election. If they thought that the last twelve years of struggling upstream against Republican rule was difficult, now the hard part begins. Now the Democrats are the ones responsible for producing results. No longer can they sit by and fruitlessly complain of Republican shenanigans and thump their chests and rent their garments. Now they have to actually form ideas, and put those ideas into action.

It will still be difficult to get bills past the White House, and they shouldnt forget that their hold on the senate is tenuous at best, and that tiebreaker votes still come from the President of the Senate, Dick “Fuck You” Cheney. There will be fewer obstacles to them than before, but the obstacles remaining are formidable ones.

This is not the time for the Democrats to glide into their new positions riding on the wave of euphoria that came with their election victories. That’s what happened after the last election (remember, “I’ve earned political capitol, and I intend to spend it”?). The White House and the legislature steamrolled forward under the delusion that a marginal victory had made them invincible. Their hastily-passed plans stumbled, and they found themselves the political victims of their own bumbling. Almost from the day after the elections, the Republicans were in a constant downward spiral.

I hope that the Democrats can keep their heads. And I hope that they manage to pull a miracle out of their collective butt and get organized and develop a voice for themselves. I’m not terribly optimistic that they can hold themselves together (the very nature of the Democratic ideal makes them a particularly uncohesive lot), but right now, they’re the best hope I’ve got.

It’s worth noting that later this month, a movie about Bobby Kennedy is coming out. I hope that all of the Democrats–particularly the newly-elected ones–go to see it, and I hope that they are reminded of what it used to mean to be a Democrat. Bobby was the last one to represent the Democratic ideal of someone who watches out for the little guy, who attempts to bring fairness and equity to the social order. It was he who crafted the Civil Rights Act, and he who actually went out into the field to evaluate whether or not the “war on poverty” was working.

He cared, and it got him killed. I wonder if today’s Democrats care as much.

Crusade
Originally uploaded by olivander.

In the span of a few hours, 2,973 people–of many nationalities–died in the terror attacks of Sept 11, 2001. In this week of memorials and tributes and renewed debate, let’s not forget that long after the towers fell, the dying continues.

Total US servicemen and -women who have died in Afghanistan since the October, 2001, US invasion: 302

Total US servicemen and -women who have died in Iraq since the March, 2003, US invasion: 2,670

Minimum estimated civilians who have died in Afghanistan since the October, 2001, US invasion: 3,485 (since civilian deaths are not officially tracked, this number may be much higher)

Minimum estimated civilians who have died in Iraq since the March, 2003, US invasion: 41,650 (since civilian deaths are not officially tracked, this number may be as high as 280,000)

You may recall the NSA’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) project. The brainchild of convicted Iran-Contra conspirator and all-around wackjob John Poindexter, TIA was to compile every available data snippet on every US citizen and mine it to find out if you do or say anything that the government disapproves of. The public furor over the idea of such an invasive domestic spying program caused the Pentagon to withdraw the program, and Poindexter was ultimately forced to resign (but not before proposing a terrorism “futures exchange” which would have allowed people to bet on, and profit from, the probablity of future terrorist attacks, assassinations, etc.).

From this debacle, the Pentagon learned that if you are going to implement a Gestapo- or Kremlin-like dossier of your citizens’ activities, you don’t make it public. TIA was dismantled, and its core components renamed and spread out among other agencies. Now New Scientist has learned one of these renamed components has been reactivated. This one will scavenge and compile all of your online postings and identify relationships between you and everyone else you come in contact with on the web:

…the NSA is pursuing its plans to tap the web, since phone logs have limited scope. They can only be used to build a very basic picture of someone’s contact network, a process sometimes called “connecting the dots”. Clusters of people in highly connected groups become apparent, as do people with few connections who appear to be the intermediaries between such groups. The idea is to see by how many links or “degrees” separate people from, say, a member of a blacklisted organisation.

…

No plan to mine social networks via the semantic web has been announced by the NSA, but its interest in the technology is evident in a funding footnote to a research paper delivered at the W3C’s WWW2006 conference in Edinburgh, UK, in late May.

That paper, entitled Semantic Analytics on Social Networks, by a research team led by Amit Sheth of the University of Georgia in Athens and Anupam Joshi of the University of Maryland in Baltimore reveals how data from online social networks and other databases can be combined to uncover facts about people. The footnote said the work was part-funded by an organisation called ARDA.

What is ARDA? It stands for Advanced Research Development Activity. According to a report entitled Data Mining and Homeland Security, published by the Congressional Research Service in January, ARDA’s role is to spend NSA money on research that can “solve some of the most critical problems facing the US intelligence community”. Chief among ARDA’s aims is to make sense of the massive amounts of data the NSA collects – some of its sources grow by around 4 million gigabytes a month.

We’ve all seen them: those bracelets and necklaces and earrings made from old typewriter keys. The people who buy them think that they are somehow recycling parts from unusable typewriters. The sad truth is that the majority of those keys were cut from perfectly usable machines. Whole dumpsters filled with de-keyed typewriters have been spotted near flea markets. A look on eBay will reveal how desperate the situation is. Some of the key sets and typewriters being offered for harvest are highly collectible. Some are very rare (such as the Harry A. Smith branded Chicago typewriter whose keys were recently posted for sale). All are irreplacable, as these typewriters have not been manufactured for decades. I compare the harvesting of typewriter keys to the poaching of elephants for their tusks. Except the elephant has the advantage of reproduction.

Many, many years ago, on a trip through Montana, I clipped a ranting letter to the editor from a local newspaper. It was originally about drivers who fail to signal their turns, but I found that with very slight modification, it adapts nicely to my feelings about these keychoppers.

——–

People who cut off typewriter keys to make jewelry are of diseased instincts and flatulent morality. They are spavined and windbroken, possessed of the evil eye and have pockmarked brains.

They have the heads of goats, the perceptions of blind guppies and they dwell in malodorous holes beneath flat rocks.

Their eyes water. Their noses run without wiping. They lie, cheat and steal, beat children and spouses and pilfer from their employers.
Behind their ears there is perpetual damp.

Their lips move when they read, and the only writing they do is to forge signatures or leave messages on washroom walls.

All murder, rape, sexual depravity, dope-pushing, poaching and treason can be traced to them. they recite the Pledge of Allegiance backward and coin every dirty joke.

A yellow streak marches up their back, and then it marches down. They raid birds’ nests, to destroy the young. Their artistic appreciation is limited to graffiti, which they memorize and quote. When they think, they think Monday is the best day of the week.

The rarely vote, but everlastingly caterwaul about the worthless conduct of public affairs unless they can latch onto some political gravy train, whereupon they emit contented grunts and clap and claque for Sugar Daddy. They dote on pesticide, and curse the day defoliants were restrained. They streak.

They are America First for all native-born whites. They would burn crosses if they dared. They refer to Indian Americans as foreigners.
They hate all cops except those who beat up homeless people.

They belch in public places and spit on the sidewalks. Litter is their doing, as are the chuckholes in the streets. They light forest fires. They kick dogs. They vote early and often when they vote at all, and poison wells.

They cough and sneeze on others, spreading all infections. They waste electricity. Flowers wilt when they walk by. They rejoice in dirty streets, garbage-strewn alleys, and lynchings. They love biased news stories, corrupt politicians, shyster lawyers, medical quacks. Their armpits stink.

They consume most of the nation’s production of anti-itch medication.
They sing off-key and never brush their teeth. They strip mine. To multiply, they divide.

Their fingernails are black and they eat with their hands while lying on their bellies. Their hands are clammy, their feet are cleft. They are creatures of the Devil, and constitute a good reason for the death penalty.

And that’s only the bright side–the sweet talk.

They can, nevertheless, attain instant and perpetual grace, become radiant, beloved to God and man, by keeping their typewriters intact. Amen.

Remember The Siege? The 1998 Denzel Washington/Annette Bening flick about the US government rounding up all Arab-Americans in the wake of a series of bombings seemed like heavy-handed paranoia at the time. Then came Sept 11, and the FBI began rounding up and detaining thousands of Arab-Americans for questioning. It was WWII all over again, when Japanese-Americans were pulled from their homes and held without charge in POW-style concentration camps. All that was missing was the concentration camps.

Guess what?

According to this rather undernoticed article, Halliburton has been awarded yet another no-bid contract, this one to build detention centers within the US. (Halliburton also built the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, camp where thousands of “enemy combatants” are being held incommunicado.)

There seem to be contradicting stories about exactly what branch of the government has contracted for the camps, or precisely what their use will be for. The prevelant story is that the camps will be used in the event of an “immigration emergency”, which is vague. Regardless of label, once built the camps could be used for almost any purpose the Bush administration desires.

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling that the president has the power to detain American citizens outside the judicial system, and given this administration’s dismal civil rights track record, I wouldn’t be surprised if that purpose involved American citizens of Middle Eastern descent becoming “disappeared”.

Since articles older than 14 days get archived by the Press-Telegram, here is the full text, with apology.

Halliburton subsidiary nets contract amid suspicion

By Mason Stockstill, Staff writer

A Houston-based construction firm with ties to the White House has been awarded an open-ended contract to build immigration detention centers that could total $385 million a move some critics called questionable.

The contract calls for KBR, a subsidiary of oil engineering and construction giant Halliburton, to build temporary detention facilities in the event of an “immigration emergency,” according to U.S. officials.

“If, for example, there were some sort of upheaval in another country that would cause mass migration, that’s the type of situation that this contract would address,” said Jamie Zuieback of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Essentially, this is a contingency contract.”

Under the contract, which was awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, KBR could also be tasked to operate one or more temporary detention facilities, and to develop a plan for responding to a natural disaster in which ICE personnel participate in relief efforts.

The contract is good for one year, with the option for four one-year extensions.

The open-ended nature of the contract raises concerns about overcharging and other potential abuse, said Charlie Cray, director of the Washington-based Center for Corporate Policy and a frequent Halliburton critic.

The Government Accounting Office has criticized both Halliburton and KBR for cost overruns and inappropriately obtaining government projects under a similar contingency-based program connected to reconstruction work in Iraq, Cray said. Halliburton’s billions of dollars in revenue from federal contracts, many of them awarded without competitive bidding, have made it a frequent target of critics who accuse the Bush administration of cronyism.

Vice President Dick Cheney is Halliburton’s former CEO.

KBR also has faced allegations that, through subcontractors, it hired numerous illegal immigrants to perform rebuilding work in the Gulf Coast region following Hurricane Katrina, and paid them sub-minimum wages. The company’s hiring practices in Iraq have come under scrutiny for the alleged exploitation of foreign workers.

But KBR officials said the contract for detention facilities is well-deserved, because of the firm’s experience in building infrastructure and support networks for U.S. military and law enforcement.

KBR’s revenues totaled $3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005, according to company figures released Friday, and Halliburton plans to sell part of the subsidiary in the coming months.

“We are especially gratified to be awarded this contract because it builds on our extremely strong track record in the arena of emergency operations support,” said Bruce Stanski, KBR’s vice president of government and infrastructure, in a statement.

There’s no guarantee that any work will be performed under the contract; if no immigration emergency or natural disaster occurs, there won’t be anything for KBR to do, said company spokeswoman Cathy Mann.

You were doing so well. We could hardly believe it when you died, and it was all the sadder because you had (we thought) cleaned yourself up. What happened, man?

Comedian Mitch Hedberg died accidentally in March of “multiple drug toxicity,” including cocaine and heroin, Spin magazine reports, citing reports filed by the New Jersey medical examiner’s office.