Prize-winning photos

Yahoo Photos has the winners of the World Press Photos of the Year competition.
Here is the top prize:

It was taken by Reuters photographer Canadian Finbarr O'Reilly in Tahoua, northwestern Niger, on August 1 2005, showing the emaciated fingers of a one-year old child pressed against the lips of his mother.

Sports Features Singles first prize:

'Bullfighter, Medellin', Henry Agudelo, El Colombiano, Reuters

Arts and Entertainment Stories first prize:

Asa Sjostrom, Sweden, Reuters

Contemporary Issues Singles first prize:

A Sierra Leone boy helps his father to dress, by Greek photographer Yannis Kontos, Polaris Images.

People in the News first prize:

Rocky Mountain News photographer Todd Heisler shows the honour accorded to the arrival of Marine 2nd Lt. James Cathey's body at Reno Airport.

Sports Features first prize:

Australian photographers Mark & Jenny Evans show horse racing in Australia (AP Photo).

Spot News third prize:

New York Daily News photographer Michael Appleton captures this image of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath in New Orleans.

Accident update

A friend of ours from out of town was over tonight and said was wondering how I was doing after the car accident a week ago and he kept checking the blog but I hadn't posted anything.
So here is the latest:
- chest - still purple from the seat belt, but I can lie down to sleep now on my right side. My doctor gave me some great news when she said it was the worst brusing from a seatbelt she had ever seen (the reason this is great news is because now I can use what she said to get everyone to feel sorry for me without actually having to be a whiney ass titty baby about it myself!)
- left knee - still swollen but not sore to move anymore, at least for most of the time
- left ankle and right toes - still bruised; now on diueritic to reduce swelling
- head - still a little bruised (I think I concussed on the headrest)
- car - a write-off. When we went down to the insurance agency on Tuesday to clear out the glove compartment and trunk, that's when I realized that the passenger half of the engine compartment is just crushed. The car interior looked intact until I realized that the floor mounting around the gearshift and emergency brake is shattered. I don't know how fast the other driver was going, but it must have been a brisk clip. A nanosecond later and he would have come through my passenger door and right into me. Or, three nanoseconds later and he might well have missed me completely.
Anyway, after seeing the car, my husband started talking for the first time ever about the advantages of an SUV or at least something larger than a Ford Tempo.
But we are going to take a bit of time decide, because I won't be driving for a while anyway.
Thanks, by the way, for everyone's good wishes and kind thoughts.

Great lines of the day

In His Gentle Ears, Steve Gilliard sums up the reaction of American blacks to being told that George Bush may have felt insulted at the King funeral:

. . . Our diffrrences with George Bush are not trivial or based on policy. They are real and substantial. People's children are dying in Iraq, New Orleans is a wasteland, and we're supposed to be upset that he got his feelings hurt at a funeral . . .
If white commentators expect black people to react to their pained words of criticism, they are going to be sadly suprised at the indifference their complaints will meet. Black people bury their leaders how we choose fit. If Jeff Greenfield doesn't like it, well, no one asked his opinion.
Was he ripping into the online racists as they mocked the dead of Katrina?
Of course not.
When you have vermin like Michael Savage and Don Imus complaining, it isn't exactly going to impress most black people with their outrage.
You can't ignore the slights and insults to black people in their greatest crisis since the Civil War, while the right attacked black people without pause, and then act as if you have a claim to regulate their behavior at other times.
George Bush betrayed America, especially black America with his failed response to Katrina, why should he be allowed to sit before black America and go unscolded for his failure?
This is not the Minnesota Dems, we don't care about your Jedi Mind Tricks. Your opinion means less than nothing.

Boy, are they pissed!

I guess I really have been hanging around the Liberals too long. I am surprised at the depth of anger among Conservatives at what Harper has done, and how this anger just isn't going away.
Today's Globe story provides some choice new quotes from Conservatives:

"This looks like expediency, even hypocrisy ...This is shocking. It's just unbelievable. Who was Stephen talking to? We campaigned against this kind of stuff" - veteran Conservative MP from Western Canada
"I'm not sure how I'm going to explain these appointments to my constituents. It's bewildering." -- rookie MP
"brazen display of anti-democratic behaviour" - a radio talk show caller describing Emerson.
"I understand the pragmatism of it, but to be honest, I feel a bit uneasy about it." - MP Maurice Vellacott.

On his post entitled One-day story (Day Three), Andrew Coyne provides some links to more coverage from Reuters, Vancouver Sun, Edmonton Sun, Calgary Sun, CBC News, National Post, and the Toronto Star.
And here are some more editorial reactions:

Don Martin, columnist for the pro-Conservative National Post, attacked the appointment as "flagrant capitulation to political expediency." He added: "A clean government is launched by dirty politics." . . .
"Despite all his lofty election promises to do government differently, Harper has constructed a cabinet more with an eye to political porking that principle," wrote columnist Greg Weston in the right-wing Sun chain of newspapers. Weston noted that the three ministries with the most money to spend -- public works, industry and transport and infrastructure -- had all gone to people from French-speaking Quebec . . .
La Presse, one of Quebec's most influential newspapers, said that for someone who had promised to do things differently Harper had "missed the mark" with his cabinet choices.

And here are some blogger reactions:

Stephen Harper promised us an end to the democratic deficit - he swore that a Conservative government would be more principled than the previous Liberal regimes. He lied. -- Bound by Gravity
I had hoped a principled Conservative government, unused to the corrupting trappings and temptations of power, might stem the rising tide of cynicism eating away at the political spirit of our great country. That hope is not extinguished, but it wanes. I still support the Conservative govenment on policy. But policy alone is thin gruel indeed for someone hungry for leadership. Babbling Brooks
It still stinks. We were not elected to be better at the Liberals' game. We were elected to change the rules of the game. By leading off with our chins the way we have with the David Emerson cabinet spot and the handling of Michael Fortier's cabinet appointment via the Senate, we not only suckerpunched the Liberals, but we suckerpunched ourselves. We suckerpunched all those Conservative supporters, who spent this Christmas looking their non-partisan friends in the eye and encouraging them to vote for a party they weren't 100% comfortable with, on the grounds that we were going to do things differently, and politics would be a little better at the end. . . . we bought into the message. We really did believe that things were going to be different. There was a great deal of idealism within the Tory party over the last few weeks, and in one fell swoop, it became muted. Hacks and Wonks
Say this for him: if you’re going to break a promise, you might as well rub everyone’s noses in it. Mr. Harper has achieved a great deal with these two appointments. He has demoralized his party’s supporters. He has ruined whatever honeymoon he might have had with the press. He has diverted attention from what was otherwise an impressive piece of cabinet-making. But most of all, he has undermined his own reputation for honesty. A priceless political asset has been devalued, and all for a couple of cabinet seats. Bad politics has driven out good.- Andrew Coyne

Harper's Emerson appointment, though unprincipled, didn't surprise me, really -- I guess I could understand why Harper would want to shore up his minority and give his Cabinet some experience by grabbing Emerson. But the more I think about it, the less explicable the Fortier appointment appears -- it is as blatant and obvious a piece of political pay-back sleaze as Chretien ever tried to pull off, though at least "Big Al" Galiano had been elected before he was given the plum public works appointment.
And Harper is also learning how, once you start buying people off, you just can't stop. The Globe also reports that Ontario Tory MP Helena Guergis was set to issue a press release reaffirming her support for last year's anti-crossing legislation. "However, Mr. Harper made her parliamentary secretary to Mr. Emerson yesterday afternoon, and the press release was not issued."
Cynicism -- I guess it must be contagious.

Great line of the day

Today's Great Line comes from Canadian Cynic, questioning a Reuters story stating that Harper broke his campaign promises in appointing Fortier to cabinet:

. . . is Reuters being a little too pedantic here? Did Harper actually explicitly say those things? Or did he leave himself some wiggle room? I mean, I may think Stephen Harper is an ignorant, hypocritical, lying sack of crap, but I do try to be fair about these things.

ROTFLOL. Emphasis mine.

New species

This is fascinating -- just when we start to think there can be nothing new in the world comes a story like this -- A Lost World in Indonesia Yields Riches for Scientists. Here are some of the photos they took on this expedition, including some of the new species they found.
Smoky honeyeater:


Six-wired bird of paradise (not new, but hasn't been seen for more than a century):


'Giant White' rhododendron:


new species of treefrog;


golden-mantled tree kangaroo (which had been thought to be close to extinction):

Great line of the day

At Daily Kos, Darksyde writes:

In that bloody light of conflicts past and won, as a son of parents who grew up in a Depression and the ensuing World War, and as a child of the Cold War, let me make this crystal clear: If you think you're going to scare me or my nation into reversing two hundred years of history, becoming a Police State, and subjecting ourselves to a tyrannical Overlord in the form of the President of the United States, then you damn well better come up with a significantly greater threat than that posed by a handful of religious maniacs armed with explosive belts and boxcutters.

Old bums exit there . . .

New bums enter here. Its funny to see how simply furious many of the blogging tories are about the Cabinet picks of Emerson and Fortier.
That said, there's nothing wrong with what Harper did today -- a prime minister has to do what he has to do in order to run the country. He may be a little surprised, however, at how quickly his press honeymoon ends now.
And by the way, I don't think there is any such thing as a "temporary Senate seat", though the media kept reporting it that way today. Once Fortier is appointed to the Senate, I don't think he would ever have to resign, even if Harper expects him to do so. Would you?

Embassies burning

If you are seeing photos of burning embassies and wondering what the heck is going on, read Sisyphus Shrugged - shouting fire in a crowded theater, Piss Christ, Der Sturmer and other speech issues. Here's part of her sensible overview:

. . . full-metal hell didn't break loose until various newspapers in Europe, giving reasons ranging from support of free speech . . . to anti-religious principles (France, of course), went ahead and reprinted the cartoons again. One brave soul printed them in Jordan. He's been fired. The boycott, largely a pipe dream before last week, is now severely damaging danish industry. Meanwhile, the original newspaper, which apparently has more sense than the Prime Minister does, acknowledged that although the publication of the cartoons was completely legal, they were offensive, and apologized for causing offense. European leaders (with, of course, the exception of Denmark and Norway) have pointed out that while free speech is a basic human right, the material printed in this case was deeply offensive and to be condemned.
By this time, of course, the culture warriors of the anti-islamic right had succeeded in attracting enough attention to their antics to draw the attention of the violent extremist wing of the muslim world.
So now embassies are burning and (while mainstream islamic leaders condemn the riots) there is lovely juicy footage of islamic mob violence on every station and in every newspaper just as the effort to escalate against Iran ramps up.
Quel coinkydink.
If you want a real educational experience, go look at the Google hits for this, and read what the LGF wing of the blogosphere has to say about it, and how few facts about the situation they give you (among other things, they uniformly suggest that the boycott and the violence have been going on since the original publication of the images in September rather than since late December or mostly in the past week).
If you want another educational experience after that, Google what the same sites had to say last week about free speech in the matter of Cindy Sheehan's tshirt . . . Free speech means that you have the right to express yourself. You even have the right to be protected by law from people you've offended who want to express their offense in illegal ways. It does not mean that if you act like a dumb [fuck] you're really a brave warrior for truth and the rights of man or anything but a really, really dumb [fuck]. Congratulations, o culture warriors of the right. You've gotten the deep offense and the highly-telegenic violence you wanted. You must, although resembling them closely in many other significant ways, be much happier than pigs in shit . . .

Thanks to Steve Gilliard for the reference.

True patriots

The Washington Post reports on the domestic spying program and toward the end of the article I found some interesting stuff.
First, the National Security Agency machines are not selective:

. . . the agency has acknowledged use of automated equipment to analyze the contents and guide analysts to the most important ones. According to one knowledgeable source, the warrantless program also uses those methods. That is significant to the public debate because this kind of filtering intrudes into content, and machines "listen" to more Americans than humans do . . .

Second, in the NSA version of reality, they haven't actually done anything even if their machines listen to every single phone call and email ever sent anywhere:

NSA rules since the late 1970s. . . have said "acquisition" of content does not take place until a conversation is intercepted and processed "into an intelligible form intended for human inspection."

So the conclusion I draw is that all the phone calls that everybody makes could well be available electronically in the NSA database somewhere and NSA would continue to claim they actually had not "acquired" this data.
You see the hole here, don't you?
The data is sitting there, just waiting to be processed. Just because some NSA supervisor or even some judge hasn't approved it, doesn't mean that the data could not still be used.
To make money, for one thing -- imagine being able to listen in on Bill Gate's phone calls to find out when would be a good time to buy or sell Microsoft stock.
But mainly to keep the Bush administration informed about what the Democrats are up to. Remember that in Karl Rove's universe, absolutely everything is political. Democrats are, by definition, traitors. Cheney said a year ago that voting for Kerry was risking the security of the United States. It wasn't just a cynical ploy -- they really believe this.
So it might well be possible to convince some super-loyal, super-patriotic NSA employees that the Democratic congressional leadership, say, or Howard Dean or the DNC are a threat to the repubic -- particularly if the NSA is also hiring 24-year-old presidential campaign workers like NASA is.
They would think that listening in on Teddy Kennedy's phone calls would be the patriotic thing to do.

He's back!

The delightful prospect of a new war in the Middle East is bringing the old timey neocons out of the woodwork again. This Reuters article quotes Richard Perle advancing the self-serving argument that the lousy intelligence in Iraq justifies preemptive strikes against Iran -- because, after all, the only way you can "try to wait until the very last minute" to attack over Iran's nuclear program is if you are "very confident of your intelligence because it you're not, you won't know when the last minute is".
Time to stock up on the duct tape again, is it?

Ding, dong

Well, I know employers are supposed to be responsible and all that, but in this case I still think its too bad that they didn't just let Dingwall sue.
Now, the Globe is reporting that: "an independent arbitrator . . . concluded that Mr. Dingwall had not resigned, as the government suggested at the time, but had been fired . . . after a prolonged controversy about his six-figure office expense account. A subsequent review by PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm concluded Mr. Dingwall's spending was within the rules with minor discrepancies."
Also, its rather disingenous for Stephen Harper to act so amazed now at the news that Dingwall was fired -- he was deservedly shown the door for embarassing the government with his prolifigate spending and inane statements like "I'm entitled to my entitlements" -- which the Conservatives made good use of in in their TV commercials before the election.

Kettle, pot, tables turning, etc

Well, well -- how do ya like them apples?
Surveillance Prompts a Suit: Police v. Police:

The demonstrators arrived angry, departed furious. The police had herded them into pens. Stopped them from handing out fliers. Threatened them with arrest for standing on public sidewalks. Made notes on which politicians they cheered and which ones they razzed.
Meanwhile, officers from a special unit videotaped their faces, evoking for one demonstrator the unblinking eye of George Orwell's "1984."
"That's Big Brother watching you," the demonstrator, Walter Liddy, said in a deposition.
Mr. Liddy's complaint about police tactics, while hardly novel from a big-city protester, stands out because of his job: He is a New York City police officer. The rallies he attended were organized in the summer of 2004 by his union, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, to protest the pace of contract talks with the city.
Now the officers, through their union, are suing the city, charging that the police procedures at their demonstrations — many of them routinely used at war protests, antipoverty marches and mass bike rides — were so heavy-handed and intimidating that their First Amendment rights were violated.

If

On my way to work this morning, my car was hit on the freeway by someone running a red light -- he was from out of town and just didn't see it. He hit the front fender on the passenger side so my car is totalled.
I'm OK, though I had double vision at first -- very odd sensation, that -- and I am still very sore where the seatbelt hit me and my knee is bunged up from hitting the dashboard -- and the other driver is better than me -- he had an airbag which I did not.
Maybe some slow posting the next few days until my chest stops hurting when I type.
Interesting to think about what might have been, though, isn't it -- if I hadn't had to clean up a broken dish this morning I would have left for work earlier, and if I hadn't pulled into a different lane I wouldn't have been in this fellow's way when he came through the intersection.
Then again, in either of those scenarios he might have t-boned someone in the opposite lane and maybe even killed them, who knows?

Great line of the day

In The State of the Union, Driftglass examines Bush's appeal last night for bipartisanship to clean up the mess he had made:

This is the bitter and divided world you and your minions created, Mr. President. And you did it deliberately, calculatedly and with premeditation. On September 11, 2001, without earning or deserving it, you were handed a Truly United States of America. And for tawdry, partisan motives you and Karl and the rest of your Shitkicker Mafia decided to drive a venomous wedge straight through its heart without any regard of the poison you were unleashing into the body politic. Congratulations; you have reaped what you have sown . . . in the Dubya Era a person can be a Good American, or a Good Republican, but they can no longer be both. And that, Mr. President, is quite obviously the world you wanted all along.

Emphasis mine.