Impeach Gonzales (First)

Remembrance of Things Past

For those of you who want to probe the past, Ancestry.com has opened their files for a limited time (June 6) to search military records. You will have to register (guest) to see the actual documents, but it is well worth it. Even if your relatives never actually served in the military, they probably had to register.

Earth is a Rube

Are we all dupes? I don't watch American Idol and I really got tired of that Sanjaya guy, but what if this is true? Double dupe!

Heaven is A Cube

When my father was dying of prostate cancer spreading to his bones, Pastor Birner, our long-time minister in the Lutheran faith, came to visit. The family gathered in our parents bedroom, where Dad lived his last days.

Birner read from the Bible, Revelations 21:16.

21:16 And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.

A furlong is 1/8 of a mile so that would be a cube 1500 miles on a side. Heaven is a giant cube.
Now some say the Bible (especially Revelations) is not to be taken literally. But if that’s true than what about the famous Water Into Wine episode? Maybe it was just red water.

I say this Revelation is to be taken literally. A giant cube 1500 miles on a side – floating in space. Crammed with billions of souls. Not good.

I always thought heaven was all of the universe, with the souls zooming along through giant rivers of plasma, streaming from one galaxy to the next. This little cube, about the size of the western US, seems very restricting. Why would god want to wall off all the good souls in a tiny cube?

Speaking of heaven (by way of a very well written blog – The Human Race & Other Sports)

The most recent good news from the Vatican was Pope Benedict XVI’s approval of a
Vatican report released April 20 by the International Theological Commission that said there were “serious” grounds to hope that unbaptized children might get into heaven. Prior to this report it was believed that unbaptized children went to a place called “limbo”. Theologians (none of whom, I have it on good authority, has ever visited) describe “limbo” as a place where children enjoy an eternal state of perfect natural happiness. It almost certainly has enough teeter-totters and swings for everyone as well as cotton candy, lemonade, computer games and all the other things children enjoy. According to those in the know, the only thing lacking in limbo is communion with God which in the vernacular means the children there have no adult supervision, a condition that most of the children would find very much to their liking and in many cases probably comports with their idea of heaven.

If the International Theological Commission in its continuing studies of this issue concludes that the unbaptized can go straight to heaven without passing limbo and that view becomes church doctrine, there are two obvious questions. Will the new policy be retroactive and will there be an age or geographical cutoff?

With respect to the first question, it seems likely that in the divine order of things there are a certain number of unbaptized infants who die each year and if they are now permitted to enter heaven, their entry will occur in an orderly fashion. Those presently in limbo present an entirely different problem. There are surely billions of unbaptized infants cavorting about in unsupervised perfect happiness in limbo. Although all may not want to leave their perfectly happy state, others may welcome the chance to get to heaven which, even though none of them as been able to visit it, almost certainly enjoys as good a reputation in limbo as it enjoys here on earth. If billions decide all at once that they want to go to heaven, the question is can heaven accommodate what might be described in today’s parlance as a “surge”.

The second question is whether there is an age or geographical cutoff for invocation of the dispensation. At what age does failure to be baptized become an offense that
warrants limbo or, worse yet, hell, and is there consideration of where the child is located geographically. It is a lot easier to get baptized in Manhattan than in a remote village in Tibet. Those are questions that I, being a columnist and not a theologian, cannot hope to answer. I suspect the Vatican will appoint yet another commission with an appropriate Latin moniker to study the question and make appropriate recommendations to the Pope. The children in limbo as well those still on earth will eagerly await its conclusions.

Say hello to all the new babies, Dad. I hope it isn't too crowded up there.

The New "It"

Ever hear of the "It" girl? Google it yourself if you haven't.


My premise: There is a new web "it". It's a human connection over the internet. Hard to define, easy to recognize, and rare.

This lady has it. You may have seen her in the little "Take your mind off it." video to the left. Watch her sing a song or two and then check out her "it".



Update: As usual, I'm a bit behind. Catch up with Ysabella Brave - the true story - here.

You in a Tube (click here for more)

The Dow Is Crashing! A Story in Pictures by Mike Maloney


For your convenience, this article is written in three parts. You can skip down the page to any part by clicking these links

The Dow Is Crashing – Part 2 Call The Cops… We've Been Robbed!

The Dow Is Crashing – Part 3Swimming With The Tide

On October 4th 2006, the Dow broke its old high of 11,750 set back on January 14th 2000, and from then on all you heard from the financial press was "Dow sets a new, all time, record high"… at least that's all you heard until the correction on February 27th, 2007.

I just don't get it. How can anyone at this point in time (including the financial press) believe they are actually making gains being invested in general equities? On February 20th, the Dow hit its "brand new, all time, record high" of 12,795, and at the writing of this article hovers at 12,560, 6.9% above its 2000 high.

A 6.9% gain over the entire 7-year period… hasn't anyone heard of inflation? Don't investors know that if their portfolio doesn't outpace inflation they are actually losing ground?

The Dow is actually crashing, but if you have not yet educated yourself on the insidious ravages that inflation can have on your portfolio, you can't see it. This is a blind spot investors must be mindful of, and guard against, if they are to prosper.

Anytime that it looks like everything is going up, stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, and virtually every kind of investment there is, you have to stop and ask yourself, "why?" The only reason the Dow looks like it is going up is because the Fed has pumped so many more dollars into the currency supply, that all asset classes are rising.

Under these conditions, the only way to see where true value lies is to eliminate the dollar from the equation… you have to measure each asset class, not with the dollar, but against another asset class. continue reading with lots of graphs

No Exit

Published on Monday, April 30, 2007
by The San Francisco Chronicle

Why There Was No Exit Plan
by Dan Hamburg

There are people in Washington … who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq and they’re looking for 10, 20, 50 years in the future … the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in the Gulf region, and I have never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi people that 10 years from now there will be no military bases of the United States in Iraq

former President Jimmy Carter, Feb. 3, 2006.

For all the talk about timetables and benchmarks, one might think that the United States will end the military occupation of Iraq within the lifetimes of the readers of this opinion editorial. Think again.

There is to be no withdrawal from Iraq, just as there has been no withdrawal from hundreds of places around the world that are outposts of the American empire. As UC San Diego professor emeritus Chalmers Johnson put it, “One of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn’t intend to leave.”

The United States maintains 737 military bases in 130 countries across the globe. They exist for the purpose of defending the economic interests of the United States, what is euphemistically called “national security.” In order to secure favorable access to Iraq’s vast reserves of light crude, the United States is spending billions on the construction of at least five large permanent military bases throughout that country.

A new Iraq oil law, largely written by the Coalition Provisional Authority, is planned for ratification by June. This law cedes control of Iraq’s oil to western powers for 30 years . There is major opposition to the proposed law within Iraq, especially among the country’s five trade union federations that represent hundreds of thousands of oil workers. The United States is working hard to surmount this opposition by appealing directly to the al-Maliki government in Iraq.

The attack upon, and subsequent occupation of, Iraq can be seen as a direct result of the 2001 National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as vice president Cheney’s energy task force) that was comprised largely of oil and energy company executives. This task force — the proceedings of which have been kept secret by the administration on the grounds of “executive privilege” — recommended that the U.S. government support initiatives in Middle Eastern countries “to open up areas of their energy sector to foreign investment.” As Antonio Juhasz, an analyst with Oil Change International wrote last month in the New York Times, “One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve.”

The people of the United States have indicated, in the national election last November and in countless polls, that they no longer support the Bush administration’s war. The Scooter Libby trial revealed that top administration officials, including the vice president, “cherry-picked” and distorted intelligence in order to sell a “pre-emptive” war to a spooked public. The squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars, some billions of which, according to Seymour Hersh writing in the New Yorker, is being siphoned into “black-ops” programs being run out of Cheney’s office (a stunning redux of Iran-Contra carried out by many of the same actors), has also strained the patience and credulity of the American people.

Another betrayal is the “contracting out” of “war-related activities” to corporations such as Halliburton, Bechtel, Chemonics and Blackwater. Halliburton, Vice President Cheney’s previous employer, calls itself an “energy services company” but has tentacles reaching into nearly every aspect of the war (originally dubbed Operation Iraqi Liberation until some bright bulb among the Bushies realized that “OIL” might not be the best handle for this venture). Halliburton has also profited handsomely from no-bid government contracts awarded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the construction at the national embarrassment known as “Gitmo,” and most recently, from the fiasco at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Unfortunately, all this corruption, mayhem and death are good for some (or it wouldn’t go on).

The U.S. military budget, larger than the military budgets of the rest of the world’s nations combined, continues skyward, even without all the “supplementals” passed regularly by Congress to fight the “war on terror.”

The question we must ask as citizens is this: Is the United States a democratic republic or an empire? History demonstrates that it’s not possible to be both.

Dan Hamburg, a former U.S. representative, is executive director of Voice of the Environment.

It's Like the '60s, Only Different

At an Anti-War Demonstration in Denver, 2005

(click to watch vidie)

Be Moved

I've often wondered when these new media will start to be used in more powerful ways. To me, the secret of film and video is that it can permeate your brain and cause you to have emotions. These emotions can help bring new ideas to more cortical areas and move you to decision and action.

It is with this in mind that I refer you to the VoteVets.org project. In conjuction with MoveOn.org, they selected 23 videographers to each produce a 2-min vidi of a military/family person expressing themselves.

I was fortunate to have been asked to participate and to be paired up with Pamela Osborne. Rather than just embed our work here, use this link to the gallery. You will be moved.

Down and Down It Goes (US$ Index)

The Day the Bees Stood Still

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

Plunge Protection Team in Action

Look Out Below

The dollar is sliding towards the edge again this morning.

Go here to sign up.

New 9/11 Movie Focuses on Cheney

If you've watched the 9/11 movies you are probably already convinced that the buildings were demolished. Now the nagging story of Cheney hunched down in the White House Secret Bunker, getting the reports of how close "the plane" was, finally gets full exposure here. A full 4 stars out of 4.

Justice for 9/11

Thank You Josh Wolf

Thank you Josh Wolf. Thank you for not caving in to unreasonable government demands. Thank you for your sacrifice in spending 244 days in jail. Thank you for being articulate and accurate. Thank you for posting your original video footage to the public. And most of all, thank you for having your video camera running.

Roll tape!

Run-Up

Iran


It’s strange how this “run-up to war” thing happens. Usually we forget, from one war to the next, how it felt the time before. But this time it's recent and we can still remember the run-up to Iraq.

Cheney, aka Stentman, his brain regularly deprived of sufficient oxygen and consequently running in reptile mode, directs his secret government to ready the engines of war. Build-up of bunker busters, securing of necessary foreign bases, clandestine cross-border maneuvers, CIA financing of internal anti groups, and now kidnappings on both sides. The precursors are rolling in. Writers begin predicting, and heavy armament, aircraft carriers and missle ships, begin to move into position. You can almost hear the dull thrub across the land.

Bush is getting ready himself. He is reported to be having daily “end-time” religious instruction in the White House. Great pressure is building domestically, but he’s not paying attention, really. Fredo can speak for himself. Rove is getting down in public. All hell is breaking loose, but God and the meds make it seem far away.

Bush is starting to get that look, head thrust forward, squinty eyes darting from left to right, trying to surpress that heh-heh sadistic chortle. He’s peeved that nobody likes anything he does, but God has told him he’s right, and he knows what’s coming. That’s ‘cause He’s going to make it happen thru him, Bush, and Iraq will look like a comma in history.

That is, a comma before the run-up to WWIII.

It seems unstoppable. The following article puts the pieces together all too well.

Easter Surprise: Attack on Iran, New 9/11… or Worse
by Heather Wokusch
www.dissidentvoice.org
March 29, 2007

The Bush administration continues moving closer to a nuclear attack on Iran, and we ignore the obvious buildup at our peril.

Russian media is sounding alarms. In February, ultra-nationalist leader Vladimir Shirinovsky warned that the US would launch a strike against Tehran at the end of this month. Then last week, the Russian News and Information Agency Novosti (RIA-Novosti) quoted military experts predicting the US will attack Iran on April 6th, Good Friday. According to RIA-Novosti, the imminent assault will target Iranian air and naval defense capabilities, armed forces headquarters as well as key economic assets and administration headquarters. Massive air strikes will be deployed, possibly tactical nuclear weapons as well, and the Bush administration will attempt to exploit the resulting chaos and political unrest by installing a pro-US government.

Sound familiar? It's Iraq Déjà vu all over again, and we know how well that war has gone.

Seymour Hersh has published numerous articles in The New Yorker detailing the Bush administration's plans to invade Iran. Must read on ...

No Overlap (but if they stay, that will make 3)

US carrier deploys amid Iran tensions
Fri Mar 30, 12:01 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz will sail Monday to support US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Navy said, amid a spike in tensions over Iran's seizure of 15 British marines and sailors.

The Nimitz, and its battle group of destroyers and guided missile cruisers, will relieve the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which this week took part in war games exercises in the Gulf with another carrier, USS John S Stennis.

The new battle group will be in position by late-to-mid April, but there will be no overlap with the Eisenhower, and the number of US carriers in the area would stay at two, a navy official said on condition of anonymity.

"If anything, there would be a point where there is only one in the region," the official said, on condition of anonymity.

The Stennis and the Eisenhower wound down their show of force involving 15 warships in the Gulf on Thursday.

The two carrier deployment in the Gulf was the highest level US naval presence in the key strategic channel since the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The Nimitz will support operations in Iraq, the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan, the navy said in a press release.

The Stennis had been operating in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea but entered Gulf waters on Tuesday, escorted by the guided-missile carrier USS Antietam, the Fifth Fleet said.

Now That's Pretty Damned Specific!

by way of Rense.com

Sneak Attack By US Forces On Iran Planned
- Russian Military Sources Warn

General Ivashov Calls For Emergency Session Of
UN Security Council To Ward Off Looming US Aggression
By Webster G. Tarpley
3-25-7


WASHINGTON DC -- The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 AM on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly "Argumenty Nedeli." Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.

The attack is slated to last for twelve hours, according to Uglanov, lasting from 4 AM until 4 PM local time. Friday is a holiday in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.

The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and the for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out. Read more...