Technology:

If you're a geeky type, you're probably like me and have several different Web browsers installed on your computer. The Washington Post had a review of one of my favorite browsers, Opera, in yesterday's edition.

The European browser makers have recently released their 9th rendition of the browser that invented tabbed browsing. I've been using the browser for a number of years, and since the 8th version, it's become not only the safest browser, but by far the fastest. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it. It's a small download and won't interfere with any of your other browsers, although it might make you forget to use them.

War Profiteering:

A lead story in today's New York Times reports massive cost overruns being hidden by the State Department, on Iraq reconstruction, focusing considerable attention on one children's hospital. One name in particular keeps popping up—Bechtel. This is one of the companies that is intertwined with VP Cheney like a cancerous growth.

The Politics of Hate:

“We have a way of doing things here, and it’s not going to change to accommodate a very small minority,’’ said Kenneth R. Stevens, 41, a businessman sitting in the Georgetown Diner. “If they feel singled out, they should find another school or excuse themselves from those functions. It’s our way of life.”

The quote comes from today's Times, in an article about religious based bigotry and fear in Delaware. The article reports on the practice of school prayer in the public system. Some of us may be under the impression that school prayer was outlawed some decades back, but whatever the Supreme Court may have ruled on religion in school, the practice is still taking place in many locations around the country, where fear and bigotry still rule.

It is certainly interesting that so called Christians are convinced that their churches and families are so impotent at instilling "Christian values" in their own children that they must rely on the public school system to do it.

Obviously, this is not the case. Religion is simply being used by demagogues in an attempt to homogenize the electorate. Those familiar with World War Two history will recognize the process.

Chicago Requires Big Box Stores to Pay Living Wage:

Chicago's City Council has required big box stores, like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, to pay $10 per hour and at least $3 per hour in benefits. The measure still has to get past Mayor Daley, who was opposed to the bill, as the stores have threatened to leave the city if the measure is passed.

A Wal-Mart spokesman, John Simley, called the measure "sad—this puts politics ahead of working men and women." Reportedly, starting wages around the Chicago area for Wal-Mart employees is currently $7.25 an hour with average pay at $11 per hour.

Up Against the Wall …:

Over at The New Republic, Peter Beinart has published an article about the stupidity of "the wall with Mexico" idea. There are, of course, already "walls" along the border, and Beinart points out some of the results. The walls haven't even slowed the flow of illegal immagrants, they've simply sent them through different routes:

As it happens, the United States has already experimented with border walls. In the 1990s, it built them in two of the places that were experiencing the most illegal immigration, San Diego and El Paso--and succeeded in diverting illegal immigrants into the countryside, particularly in Arizona, which is now seized by the same immigration panic that convulsed California a decade ago. The walls went up; the Immigration and Naturalization Service saw its budget triple between 1993 and 2002; the Border Patrol doubled in size. And, according to the best estimates, the number of people illegally crossing from Mexico into the United States remained roughly the same.

* * *

By sending illegal immigrants across deserts and over mountains, the United States made their journey much more brutal. Border-crossing deaths are up eightfold over the last decade; far more people now die trying to cross into the United States than died trying to traverse the Berlin Wall. To survive their arduous journey, illegal immigrants pay large sums to human smugglers--many of them connected to gangs that have used their newfound wealth to launch a crime wave, particularly around Phoenix.

* * *

[T]he border crackdown has also convinced many illegal immigrants to stay in the United States--for fear that, if they return to Mexico, they'll never make it back. Since the '90s, according to one study, the average illegal immigrant's stay in the United States has doubled. And, when illegal immigrants lay down roots, they place a greater burden on America's social service system. In Massey's words, that means "increased costs to society for schools, housing, and medical care. We've accomplished the very thing we set out to avoid."

The conservatives who are proposing the wall, naturally, have no desire to "correct the problem" of illegal immigration from Mexico. They are practicing simple demagoguery. Their base has a strong racist stream running through it, and they are paddling down it. They are simply exploiting the bigotry of willing fools.

Specter to Challenge Bush's Signing Statements:

According to the Associated Press, Republican Senator Arlen Specter (PA) has announced that he intends to take Bush to court over the "signing statements" the President has attached to numerous bills related to national security:

“We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will … authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president’s acts declared unconstitutional,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said on the Senate floor.

Specter has been frustrated for months over Bush's attempts to castrate the congress. According to American Bar Association President Michael Greco, over 800 statutes have been tainted by the process, thus acheiving a level higher than all other presidents combined.

The question at this point is whether Bush's power exceeds that of the strongest members of his own party within the senate.

Bush Rushes Aid to the Rich:

In another move to rush aid to the beleaguered rich, the Bush administration plans to lay off some 157 lawyers whose job it is to audit the top one percent's tax returns. The thinking in the Bush White House is that, if there are fewer people to audit Bush's buddies' taxes, …, well, you get the idea.

This, some say, is just the latest Bush move in concentrating as much of the country's wealth in as small a number of hands as possible.

Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Read the Government Accountability Office's Report.

Bush Forces NASA to Ignore Earth:

The Bush administration, in an attempt to force our leading scientific community to ignore the most serious problem facing us, global warming, changed NASA's mission statement: “To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can.”

The phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” was deleted and substituted with “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.”

This might seem like a small thing to Texans who don't hold much with words no how, but the mission statement reflects how all the money is spent by NASA in leading the country's research projects. If you haven't caught on by now, the Bush administration has only two constituencies: the handfull of oil companies and the northeastern banking concerns.

You can read more about the situation in today's New York Times. Oh, and check the weather. What we are seeing now in record setting heat waves and storms are a direct result of global warming, more examples of how the Bush administration and the people who bought the White House are failing you and your children.

Cultural Shift?

The New York Times reports that a growing number of Baptist Colleges are cutting their ties to the mother ship, their state conventions. The colleges, evidently, want to pursue "education" as opposed to "indoctrination."

The great irony here stems from the history of the Baptist movement in the U.S., which originally was at the forefront in fighting for many of the freedoms that the U.S. claims to hold dear, such as separation from church and state.

About a quarter of a century ago, demogogues in the U.S. realized that any group of people who believed in "the literal interpretation of the Bible" could be led around by the nose and made to charge into burning buildings for the sole purpose of enriching the scum who ordered them into the buildings.

The definition of "literal interpretation" is "to read aloud without explanation or explication." This act defies any notion of education beyond the simple ability to form sound.

And then there is the question of the "Bible." Which "Bible"? According to Baptists, the Bible is the word of God and cannot be altered, but they themselves have advocated different versions of the Bible, including the King James version, which nearly all authorities agree is inaccurate.

Warning! Dangerous! Poetry Alert! This Could Damage Your Ignorance Level:

Poetry, the magazine based in Chicago that fell heir to an impressive financial windfall in recent times, has for the past two years published a "humor issue." This summer's issue has a poem by Dean Young that should engage all of you Hollywood buffs:

Sean Penn Anti-Ode

Must Sean Penn always look like he's squeezing
the last drops out of a sponge and the sponge
is his face? Even the back of his head grimaces.

You can read the rest of the poem at Poetry Daily. Have fun with it, but be aware that reading poetry might just cause you to think, always a dangerous form of behavior in the U. S. of A.

The Immigration Debate:

Washington Post writer, Dale Russakoff, placed an excellent story on the subject in this morning's edition: "U.S. Border Town, 1,200 Miles From The Border." The story relates the situation in Dalton, Ga., 1,200 miles from the Mexican border. Georgia is the current poster child for the conflict, and Russakoff's piece portrays the struggle from both sides, including the hypocracy of its ellected officials, like Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss, who currently advocates deporting illegal aliens after having intervened on their behalf only a couple of short years ago. Chambliss is one of those people who claims to lead by simply getting in front of whatever mob seems to be on the move at any given moment, bobbing around like a cork in the water, racing towards whatever direction the current will take him.

Improving Democracy:

Arizona has a novel idea for getting out the vote. The good people of the sunshine state are considering whether or not to turn their next election into a lottery. No, not as a means of electing officials, but in an attempt to increase the voter turnout.

Some forces within the state have proposed that $1,000,000 be given to one lucky voter. You can read about the proposal in today's New York Times. The Times also reports the follow statistics that ought to interest anyone interested in odds making:

If the general election in 2004 is a guide, when more than 2 million people voted, the 1-in-2-million odds of winning the election lottery would be far better than the Powerball jackpot (currently about 1 in 146,107,962) but not nearly as great as dying from a lightning strike (1 in 55,928).

In Related News:

The Bush administration, as part of its War on the Elderly, wants to cut Medicare payments to hospitals by 20 to 30 percent. The argument is that not all care costs the same and that they want to make payments to health providers (those people who think your grandparents are their private dairy herd) reflect this fact. You can read about the proposal in today's Times.

Constitutional Amendment Proposed:

No elected or appointed official shall leave office with a net worth greater than that which he or she entered office at the time of his or her initial election or appointment to said office. Further, all newly generated wealth acquired by said elected or appointed official's family shall be subject to continuous and completely transparent examination during the time of said official's term in office.

Critics will argue that all "good people" will avoid public service under these conditions, but doesn't that beg the question "what is a 'good' person?"

Lobbyists Now Own Republican Party:

Campaigning to reform the Grand Ol' Party after the Abramoff/DeLay scandal, the Republicans elected John A. Boehner as House Majority Leader. Turns out Boehner sold his soul to the lobbyists a long time ago. He's spending all of his time raising money from the lobbyists, making DeLay look like a piker of corruption.

The Ohio Republicans who "fixed" the last presidential election are in bed with every lobbyist they can find under any rock, including the tobacco industry, that bastion of health oriented folks who brought you cancer as a central part of the American Way. Good job, party of Lincoln.

If democracy belongs to whomever can buy it, who do you think will own it in Iraq? Not the Iraqi people, that's certain. We don't even own it in the U.S.

"I thought you were going to ask me about the pig?" — George W. Bush, trying to create a silk purse.

"[C]onsumer debt in America balloons to previously unimaginable levels, currently $2.2 trillion and growing." – The New York Times. That's the consumer debt, not the national debt. That's you and me, babe.

On the State of Education:

The New York Times ran an insightful article on the state of higher education in yesterday's issue. It's worth the time. Take a look: At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust by Tamar Lewin.

One interesting aspect of the story is the report that while a small percentage of males perform at the top levels, most males perform below women. Many theories are proposed for this; however, the truth is that this situation has existed for years. There's nothing really new about it. Test results back in the 1950s bore out the same results. The difference really has to do with the numbers of female students now in college. In order to adequately test for these differences, you need to examine how students performed in the lower grades where both sexes were more evenly represented.

Federal Debt Out of Control:

When Cheney/Bush took control of the helm in January 2001, the federal debt stood at $5.6 trillion. Today the debt has reached an astronomical $8.3 trillion, and it continues to grow more rapidly than a steroid enhanced athlete. Unlike the athlete, who develops illegal muscle that allows him/her to achieve greater success in his/her field of endeavor, the debt's only achievement is to weaken the majority while enriching a small minority, while sacrificing the future of the country.

In Bush's recent radio propaganda speech, he bragged that tax revenues were up, which they are, but they are nowhere near where he and his henchmen claimed they would be. Don't be fooled by the administration's spin. The ship is sinking, just not quite as fast as it was last year. That water we're taking on ain't ballast.

Russia to Become World's Nuclear Waste Dump:

Recently the Bush administration has agreed to Putin's desire to turn the former USSR into a giant dumping ground for the nuclear waste generated by civilian use of radioactive materials. This is a major step towards the renewing of nuclear power development here in the US and around the world. No new nuclear power plants have been built in the US for several decades. No doubt we will begin to see their construction again in the near future. You can't help but wonder how the citizens of Russia feel about their country becoming the most toxic dump ever imagined.

On Transparency in Government:

Once individual citizens attain power within government, it is imperitive that they conduct the public's affairs in a transparent manner if the government is to remain a democracy. If those individuals begin to take actions without providing the citizenry with explicit details of their actions—stipulating, for instance, that they are behaving in the citizens' best interests by behaving in a secretive manner—democracy will cease to exist. Where do you think Cheney/Bush stand?

Expect More Terrorist Arrests as Election Nears:

Three wanna be terrorists were arrested overseas recently in addition to the seven wanna be's arested in Florida in the past few days. In both cases we learned that the wanna be's had made little if any progress toward actually committing an act of terrorism. In the case of the three arrested overseas, some of them had not even met one another (none had even been to the US). In the Florida case, the leader seemed uncertain of which religious group he was actually a fanatical member of.

The in-your-face news briefings announcing these arrests comes at a time when the Bush administration must face ever increasing criticism about its handling of its oil war in the middle-east and its ineptitude in handling the situation in North Korea, not to mention Iran.

To top off low poll numbers that threaten many Republican incumbents, who also can't make up their minds about how to handle their racists views towards our southern neighbors, the news is being filled with stories about soldiers who are being charged with murder and rape and military cover-ups to protect ranking officers from accusations of incompetence.

All of this comes on top of near daily exposure of the corruption that comes along with the kind of power that the Republican Party has accumulated over the past several decades. The death by natural causes of a convicted felon brings back to the fore the relationship (Enron) that Republicans have with all that seems currently wrong in this country. Voters are beginning to wonder if perhaps it isn't time for a change, any change, as long as the faces aren't the same tired ones we've been forced to listen to who provide us only with empty, clichés.

Having no real answers for the problems that face the average American, the Bush gang will attempt to blow the fear trumpet as loudly as possible over the next few months in an attempt to convince us that change is dangerous.

Is this little shepherd boy knocking down cardboard wolves in order to convince us he can protect us from the real thing?

Vatican Attempts Return to Dark Ages:

The latest from Rome is the Vatican's plans to make stem cell research a hell-bound offense. Scientists who are involved in embryonic stem cell research (potentially the most important health related field in human history) will be automatically excommunicated, with no direct action on the part of the Catholic church itself.

Spokesmen from the Roman See did not clarify how this might affect Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Protestant, or atheist researchers. Some skeptics asked if this were simply another attempt to defray attention from the church's practice of simply slapping the hands of priests who are caught sexually abusing children. The spokesmen had no comment, other than to note the church's long standing belief in the sanctity of human suffering.

It is, in the church's view, quite okay to destroy human embryos as long as it's not done for the sake of alleviating human suffering. Currently, thousands are destroyed routinely without any sort of papal impunity. Fundamentalists, who a few years ago considered the Pope the Antichrist, cheered.

Next up: Billions to be donated to the discovery of the exact number of angels to dance on the head of a pin.