Archive for October 11th, 2005


And the wall of corruption and lies starts to crumble

Bob Morris @ Oct 11th 2005 20:12 - Category: Unfiled ;


Is Cheney the Target?. A few hours ago, reporting suggested special prosecutor Patrick Fiztgerald was going after Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby. Now the Huffington Post suggests the target is much, much bigger.



“The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are working on stories that point to Vice President Dick Cheney as the target of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name.”

DeLay and Frist are in trouble, now quite probably Cheney. This
adminstration is going down. I saw the same thing happen during
Watergate too. The DC sharks smell blood in the water. This time it’s
neocon blood. The predator becomes the prey.

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How very progressive of them

Bob Morris @ Oct 11th 2005 12:26 - Category: Unfiled ;

Bono, U2 in Fundraiser for Senator Rick Santorum

Update: U2 flatly denies it and it appears Santorum, sleaze that he is, rented a luxury box at the concert, and then misrepresented it as a U2 fundraiser.

As I have learned,
it is a private luxury box at the arena and not an exclusive concert in
the entire Wachovia Center in Philadelphia. Sen. Santorum . . . you may
want to wipe those eggs off of your face.

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Deliberately comatose reporting

Bob Morris @ Oct 11th 2005 11:42 - Category: Unfiled ;


History? Don’t bother us with history!.

I just caught a piece on CNN by reporter Gary Tuchman, discussing how
many of the residents of New Orleans Ninth Ward believe that the levees
were blown intentionally to flood the Ninth Ward and rid the city of
poor black people. There is no evidence for this as far as I know, but
surely it would be relevant to note that it is a fact that, in 1927, a
levee was deliberately dynamited to protect the richer residents of the
city at the price of flooding two poorer parishes. A New Yorker article,
which was mentioned by Tuchman and probably formed the impetus for the
piece, notes this quite clearly as one of the perfectly rational
reasons why people might think something similar had happened in 2005,
albeit clandestinely rather than openly. CNN, however, evidently didn’t
think that bit of history was relevant to its reporting.

In the 1927 flood in New Orleans, levees were dynamited in Black areas
to protect White areas. Of this there is no doubt. And CNN must have
known it.

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Wi-fi and travel

Bob Morris @ Oct 11th 2005 10:01 - Category: Unfiled ;

As mentioned, I blogged the past several days while on vacation in Connecticut using the free wi-fi at Panera Bread
a fast growing national bakery/coffee/light food chain. Unlike
Starbucks and
Barnes and Noble who charge for wi-fi, Panera Bread offers it for free
at many of their stores,
and thus will be serious competition to any Starbucks it is near for
those of us who value wi-fi with our coffee! The atmosphere is
friendly, and the coffee and food excellent. (Update: I just discovered
they have 4 stores in LA, search for their Wifi locations here.)

On the way back, I used the free wi-fi at Hartford/Springfield airport
(Bradley Field) Having free wi-fi at an airport is certainly nice, however it
kept dropping out then re-connecting, which makes it problematic for
anything except web surfing and checking email. Bradley also loses points
for having loud and deeply annoying high pitched shrieks on the
people-mover carts in the terminals. There has to be a better way to
alert people a cart is coming than by continual high-pitched whines
that the entire terminal hears.

LAX still gets the Polizeros award for most Orwellian (and unceasing) warning announcements in the transportation pickup areas.

PS. To those in LA, don’t even think of trying to pickup passengers in a bus loading zone. It’s a near-instant $65 ticket.

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Something to think about

Bob Morris @ Oct 11th 2005 09:17 - Category: Unfiled ;

USA
Today reported that gasoline sales are down fifteen percent. They said
high gas prices are wiping out cigarette, candy and soft drink sales.
There’s a risk everyone could live to a hundred and bankrupt the entire
Social Security system. — ­ Argus Hamilton

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Nix on the first six!

Bob Morris @ Oct 11th 2005 09:14 - Category: Unfiled ;

From Mack Reed at LAVoice.org

Hey, Bob:

Thought you might be interested in this - Assyman Paul Koretz has
coined a phrase for opposition to the Schwarzenegger special-election
initiatives (”NIX on the first SIX!”).

At the prodding of one of our bloggers , I turned it into a series of buttons and banners that can be downloaded for placement on one’s anti-Arnold blog. They can be found in the comments on this post.

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Northampton. MA yesterday

Bob Morris @ Oct 11th 2005 08:24 - Category: Unfiled ;


This is a sugar maple, known for the bright reds in fall. We missed the peak of leaf peeper season by a week or two. Still, this tree was quite amazing, and probably even more so today.

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Blogs vie with news for eyeballs

Bob Morris @ Oct 11th 2005 08:21 - Category: Unfiled ;

 
From the Beeb, no less

Bloggers are
gaining a higher profile alongside traditional news sources with Yahoo
including blogs in its expanding news search system.

Also, Yahoo has a new Podcast finder.

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Using the Air Force for grunt work

Bob Morris @ Oct 11th 2005 08:20 - Category: Unfiled ;

Thousands of Air Force personnel are being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to perform low-tech roles and help the Army keep up force levels.

This must be sending Air Force morale crashing to new lows, and also
clearly shows how Armed Forces recuitment has slowed to a trickle.

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That’s our money, they’re ‘running out of’

Bob Morris @ Oct 11th 2005 08:05 - Category: Unfiled ;

Disrupting Reconstruction.
Attacks on corporations have disrupted (see Halliburton Targeting for
more on this strategy) the pace and scale of reconstruction in Iraq.
The costs of private security have added 25-35% reconstruction
contracts. A second category of costs is market disruption.



Given these costs, it is obvious why the US is running out of money for reconstruction.

Imagine how many hospitals and schools could be built in the US for
what they’re spending in Iraq. Let’s see, first they blow shit up, then
they “rebuild” it., with huge cost overruns the whole way. Someone is
getting rich off this and it sure isn’t the US public.

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