No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up

Chickens roosting, dots connecting, petards hoisting, and all that.
Remember the educational software company started by the President's brother, Neil Bush? When Barbara Bush made a big deal about donating money for the Katrina refugees in Texas, it turned out that the "donation" was only to be used to buy Neil Bush's products -- remember that?
And remember how cronyism is a Bush family value?
So keep that in mind while reading this AP report:

Reading First, created by President Bush's signature No Child Left Behind law, offers intensive reading help for low-income children in the early grades. But investigators say that federal officials intervened to influence state and local decisions about what programs to use, a potential violation of the law. Some of the people who were influencing those decisions had a financial interest in the programs that were being pushed, officials said.
"I think we're very close to a criminal enterprise here," House Education and Labor Committee chairman George Miller, D-Calif., said at an investigative hearing Friday. "Have you made any criminal referrals, Mr. Higgins?"
"We have made referrals to the Department of Justice," Higgins said.
Miller said his committee may also make criminal referrals. "I think when we put the evidence together we may join you in those criminal referrals," Miller told Higgins.

The article doesn't mention Neil Bush. But the commenters at Firedoglake put it together.
Well, that could explain why Bush is hanging on so hard to Abu Gonzales as Attorney-General.
Oh yeah, and some of the commenters at Firedoglake also note that Reverend Sun-Myung Moon is apparently invested in Neil Bush's company.
You remember Sun-Myung Moon? The Unification Church? Neil Bush travelled with Moon in a "world peace tour" in 2005.
Moon was the one who apparently bailed out Jerry Falwell's Liberty University a few years ago. That university is graduating its very first class of lawyers this spring. I wonder how many Liberty University grads will end up working for the Justice Department, alongside the lawyers from Pat Robertson's Regent University law school?

Great line of the day

From beep52, commenting at The Carpetbagger Report:

Bush leveraged a national tragedy into reelection. He’s seeded the federal government with true believers, expanded executive authority while marginalizing Congress and appointing 2 radically conservative SC judges. He’s expanded government surveillance of our phones, e-mails, libraary borrowings, bank accounts and medicine cabinets. He’s stalled efforts to curb global warming, cut protections once provided by the EPA, FDA, and silenced scientists who dare refute the literal word of bible or the backward beliefs of those who claim to know the mind of the almighty. The US can now torture, imprision without providing cause and prosecute without allowing a reasonable defense. He’s built bases in the middle east, and fattened the bank accounts of those whose bank accounts were already obscene. The middle class — the masses — have not been so economically impotent in decades.
For such an idiot, this guy has been awfully successful.

I read the news today, oh boy

Kurt Vonnegut quotes from The Freeway Blogger: "There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president."
"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."
"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."
"Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules— and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress."

Extreme sports:

A sturgeon jumped out of a river and hit a woman riding a personal watercraft, the latest such injury involving the flying fish along the Suwannee River . . . the Gulf sturgeon migrate into the Suwannee River in March to spawn, and remain in the river until the fall. And researchers still aren't sure why the large fish jump.

Maybe the fish are just fighting back.

Leading: You can always tell which Democratic presidential candidates the Republicans are most scared of -- its the ones they are working hardest to swift-boat with baseless, irrelevant smear campaigns. Right now, its John Edwards and Barak Obama, either of whom would make an excellent president.

Harper's "personal primper": On the other hand, this is actually funny, though as a taxpayer I laughed 'til I cried:

. . . taxpayers are picking up the tab for Prime Minister Stephen Harper's personal primper.
After two days of ducking media and opposition questions, the Conservatives finally revealed Wednesday that Michelle Muntean is on Harper's government staff.
. . . Harper has been travelling with his personal image adviser for major domestic and international events - most recently at ceremonies at Vimy Ridge in France last week. Muntean helps him perfect his look, including managing his wardrobe and general grooming . . . Muntean began working with Harper during his run for the Conservative leadership, and stayed through two federal campaigns. She hails from the world of film and television, and had become CBC's head of makeup by the late 1990s.
A warm, bubbly personality, Muntean has now become a fixture in Harper's entourage and remains the only staff member he tolerates style advice from. Sources said Harper has tried to convince her to move to Ottawa, but she remains based near Toronto.
In addition to her travels to Vimy Ridge, Muntean was also with Harper in Hanoi, Vietnam when he met with Pacific rim leaders, and in St. Petersburg, Russia for last summer's G8 summit.

Maybe if they called her a butler, rather than a primper, the whole thing would be less offensive (I guess I'm just glad Canadian Press didn't call her a "personal fluffer"!)
Whatever you call her, Harper should be paying for this type of employee with his own money, not ours. But darn it, I guess we won't be seeing any more photos like this one:

Great line of the day

Discussing the US Supreme Court decision to allow legislatures to outlaw abortion procedures even if women's lives are at stake, Digby points to this March, 2006 post from Mahablog about abortion rights:

. . . the anti-abortion rights position is based on an assumption that women aren’t real people — especially women who get abortions. Oh, they’re human in a scientific sense, but they aren’t people. They are archetypes who live in the heads of the anti-abortion righters — Careless Woman, Selfish Woman, Woman in a Vacuum. The same people who imagine embryos can think and feel emotions — and therefore deserve protection — must believe a pregnant woman is just a major appliance.
There are copious anecdotes from abortion providers who say that often the same people protesting outside the clinic one week are patients (or parents of patients) the next week. These people assume that their situations are unique and should be the one exception. They often want the abortion staff to know they aren’t like those other women who get abortions. This inspired the bitter joke that the legitimate reasons for abortion are “rape, incest, and me.” Such people recognize their own humanity (or their daughter’s), but those other women who get abortions are just archetypes who don’t deserve respect or considertion.
I’ve long believed that whether one is pro-choice or anti-choice does not depend on whether one thinks embryos are human beings. It depends on whether one recognizes that women are human beings. Not archetypes, but real, individual human beings. Including women who get abortions.

Emphasis mine.

I'm thinking of this song tonight

Feeling old?

I heard on the radio on the way to work -- Bobby Vinton is 72 years old today.
Sigh...

What war is like

Dave at The Galloping Beaver writes about the real, raw, painful experience of war:

The nightmares of past events come more often and with more clarity. And, in the middle of a conversation with people who know nothing of my history, I suddenly recall an event which sends my mind flying in a thousand different directions.
Back then, I used my weapon precisely as I was trained to do: automatically, surgically and as an extension of my arms. Often, I did not feel it kick into my shoulder or hear the metallic working of the action. Now, I can feel the trigger and the pressure against my index finger as I release the round that will kill the human in front of me. I can see the faces of mere boys who were given no choice but to die by my actions. In a particular instance, I replay an event which at the time I could not afford to second-guess. And I now wonder if the wounded young conscript laying in a fire-pit ahead of me was not reaching for his weapon but crossing himself in the style prescribed by his Catholic faith. I put two rounds into his chest before he could finish his act and I will never know whether he intended to kill me or whether he was simply asking for help from his God.
My mind randomly and with no warning suddenly erupts with one thought: “You are a killer.” It is something I have to fight back because when it happens I can see the edge of an abyss. It is a debilitating feeling that no matter what I have done in my life or what good I do, I will always be a killer; someone whose conscience was able to repress remorse for over two decades.

I commend Dave's bravery in telling the story of his war -- and hope that telling it will help reduce the stress.
I once read an article about people recovering in a burn unit of a hospital. Psychiatrists help them by visiting them each day and getting them to tell "the story" of their accident or experience. The theory is that telling it out loud helps them to integrate the experience and deal with it openly, which prevents the nightmares and the other symptoms of post-traumatic stress which burn victims apparently are particularly prone to.
I wonder if everyone who has experienced traumatic events would be better off to tell "the story", rather than let it eat away at them inside. Its hard to find someone to tell the story to -- families and friends are often too emotionally involved to just calmly listen without judgement or comment or reassurance, tending to say "don't think about it" when they can't really think about anything else.

Great line of the day

Posting at Eschaton, Thers suggests a reason why the liberal blogosphere is "reflexively derisive" to right-wingers:

It's because so many conservatives want to argue things like global warming is fake and that there were significant ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
These aren't arguments: they're conspiracy theories . . . such "arguments" are treated as conspiracy theories deserve to be treated: with derision and scorn. Taking them seriously only gives them and those who make them an undeserved and in fact dangerous legitimacy.

Emphasis mine.

Too bad

Its just too bad. I would love to have the summer Olympics in North America again, and Chicago is even in our same time zone. But at long as George Bush is president, the International Olympic Committee will never vote to award a US city the Olympics.
Just another measure of how popular the Bush administration is around the world...

Three more things on Imus

Three little-noted aspects of the Imus story, before it fades completely into last week's news:
First, as illustrated by this Americablog post, instead of the supposedly liberal Imus being defended by liberals, the liberal bloggers were some of the first voices criticizing what he said and pointing out that racism and sexism were long-standing problems on his show.
Second, in spite of that, it was not the bloggers who were organizing the sponsor boycott and show cancellation. From my reading of the liberal blogs, the general opinion was that while Imus SHOULD be fired, they didn't ever think he actually would be -- they thought Imus was too powerful and well-entrenched for such a thing would ever happen.
They thought the story would just degenerate into another "I know you are but what am I" talkfest blather where Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and rap musicians and Hilary Clinton end up on the receiving end because of what THEY said or didn't say or didn't say soon enough or said too soon or too quietly or too loudly or whatever, rather than focusing on what Imus said.
This time, it was the sponsors, and the CBS board, and the MSNBC employees who apparently stepped up to the plate and cut through all the BS and said "Enough! There's a limit and we've finally reached it!"
Third, the Imus firing sends a pretty clear message to the media. Listening on Friday morning to our own talk-radio host, I got the distinct impression that there was a cool breeze blowing on the back of his neck. Not that our guy is a shock-jock racist blowhard, but I think he had said to himself "If even Imus can get fired, then maybe I'd better make damned sure my brain is in gear before I open my mouth."

I just can't stop humming this, so join me please --

Seatbelt injuries

I'm seeing criticism of New Jersey governor Jon Corizine following his car accident that maybe he wasn't wearing a seatbelt.
Well, maybe he was wearing a belt and maybe not, but his injuries actually are consistent with what one would get in a car accident even with a seat belt or from the seat belt itself - see here, and here.
We have this idea that seatbelts prevent injury -- well, not completely. They prevent catastrophic, deadly injuries, but when your body is hurtling forward at 50 km per hour and hits the seat belt, your bones are going to break and that's all there is to it. Better your ribs hit the seatbelt than your head hits the windshield.
When I was in a car accident in February of 2006, a driver came through a red light and hit my right front fender when I was going through an intersection at about 40 or 50 km per hour. I was driving, so hanging onto the wheel did help to prevent some bouncing around, but I still had a mild concussion, and ended up with five or six rib fractures due to the seatbelt, my chest felt crushed due to the shoulder harness, and my shoulder and chest and pelvis were deeply bruised. (My car did not have an airbag.)
Reading up on this on the net, I found that these are all typical seat belt injuries.
Also, my knee hit the dash with enough force to tear the ligaments, damage the nerves, and give me a plateau fracture of the tibia. This is actually such a common injury in a car accident that this kind of knee injury is called a dashboard injury. If my knee had hit the dashboard with any greater force, or if my dashboard had been shaped differently, perhaps my femur would have broken too, like Corazine's did -- again, this is not an uncommon injury in a relatively high-energy car accident. My other foot was also pretty bruised when it whapped the underside of the dash, too.
All in all, it took me more than six months to recover, and my knee will never be the same.

One very good result of the US Attorney scandal

One result of the US Attorney scandal is that juries and judges will no longer find any of their prosecutions to be credible. And given this terrible story, that is a very good thing.
You will be utterly disgusted by this one -- in an effort to tarnish a Democratic governor and apparently also to save his own job, the Wisconsin US attorney charged a 55-year-old state employee with corruptly awarding a government contract to a Democratic firm. He got the jury to convict her -- apparently they found it very suspicious that she didn't admit her guilt -- and she spent four months in jail. At the end of February, the federal appeal court threw the case out -- the judges overturned the conviction and ordered her released on the very same day that they heard the oral arguments in the case, saying the evidence was "beyond thin".
So no one in Wisconsin will ever believe that prosecutor again.

OK, now for something completely different

Great idea, if they do it right this time

This savings plan for parents of disabled children is an excellent idea -- with one possible Catch-22: provincial welfare rules.

Parent Dave Lareau liked what he heard.
"The bottom line is that kids with disabilities, depending on their ability to work and earn an income, are going to be on welfare, which is way below the poverty line, so what kind of quality of life will they have?" he asked. "It's all about what we can do to augment that without losing the benefit of welfare and other things so all of the right factors are built into this."

The problem is whether provinces will be required to give someone welfare if they have money available to them in a Registered Disability Savings Plan. Apparently the March Budget only "suggests" that disabled people be able to receive both RDSP payments and provincial income support.
The Finance department's Expert Panel on Financial Security for Children with Severe Disabilities reported on this problem when it made the RDSP recommendation:

All of the provinces and territories impose a means test on the social assistance that is made available to persons with disabilities. All impose a limit on the assets that a person can have in order to qualify for social assistance payments. All also impose an income test in order to qualify for social assistance and, in most cases, the amount of income received by a person with disabilities reduces (usually on a dollar-for-dollar basis) the amount of social assistance payable. Each province and territory has its own limits and exceptions. However, since the proposed Registered Disability Savings Plan is a new plan, there is no provision made for its capital value to be exempt from the asset test or for Disability Savings Payments to be exempt from the income test. Without some such exemptions there will be no point in establishing a Disability Savings Plan for those most in need of it as the result would be no more than a transfer from the federal treasury to provincial and territorial treasuries. It is also important that other provincial programs such as prescription drug programs that are income tested not be reduced as a result of the receipt by a Beneficiary of Disability Savings Payments.

And I sure hope their follow-through on this promise turns out to be better than their follow-through on the "equalization" promise.