Lower Expectations

You gotta admit, it's a very practical solution.

State lawmakers appear on the verge of dumping the math and science sections of the 10th-grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), and replacing them with a very different kind of test.

The idea is to do something about the fact that so few students pass the math and science sections.

  King5 article

Just following our leader, the self-acclaimed master of low expectations!

It reminds me of a college lecture course I took in chemistry. After our finals, the professor announced that he was grading the tests on a curve "so somebody in here will pass."

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Princes of Darkness

In 2005, investigators from the Texas Rangers found that guards and administrator [of the Texas Youth Commission] were sexually abusing institutionalized youths, who were recruited to provide "entertainment" during night-long orgies.

[...]

The Texas Rangers submitted their report of sexual abuse to the A.G. in Texas and to the U.S. Attorney for that state, Johnny Sutton, and to the Department of Justice. The Rangers wanted someone to prosecute the bad guys, and they felt they had a strong case.

Now, Johnny Sutton -- unlike, say, Carol Lam -- was never in danger of losing his gig, since he is considered one of the "loyal Bushies" among the U.S. Attorneys.

[...]

When the Texas Rangers asked to have the Texas Youth Commission abuses prosecuted, Sutton's chief assistant sent an extraordinary response: The office had decided not to pursue the matter because the sexually abused boys had not sustained "bodily injury."

[...]

The Alberto Gonzales Department of Justice declined prosecution as well. The paperwork is here. Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project believes that the case was shut down on direct orders from Washington.

  Cannonfire post

Update 3:20pm: TJ at POAC reminds me of Gonzales' recent claim under fire: "I'm not going to resign," he said. "I'm going to stay focused on protecting our kids."

Matt Angle, you note, doesn't "know", but "believes". However, I can understand that belief, considering how past Republican White Houses involving the Bush name have managed to avoid investigation in this hideous realm.

And I guess we shouldn't have expected the Texas "Justice" Department to do anything other than to tie a criminal action in a sexual abuse case to "bodily injury". The paper reads:

As you know, our interviews of the victims revealed that none sustained "bodily injury". Federal courts have interpreted this phrase to include physical pain. None of the victims have claimed to have felt physical pain during the course of the sexual assaults which they described.

Just taking their cue from the AG's office - the guy who defined torture as something producing organ failure.

I always think I can get away from this subject, and the view of the Bush circle as fiends, but it just keeps coming back up. It's not like I haven't completely been convinced of their involvement in narcotics, or that they truly are a Crime Family, but there's something so much more insidious and heinous about this that I subconsciously continue to put it aside. Which may be why it keeps coming back into my window.

Just about two years ago, when the Jeff Gannon case brushed up against this dark story, I asked a question on YWA:

Will this hideous business finally break into the light of day and the criminal predators in our government be stopped? Or will it be buried again?

Apparently the latter

Down the Rabbit Hole

[B]oth houses voted overwhelmingly to ensure Senate confirmation for U.S. attorneys. What a difference a scandal can make.

  TPM Muckraker post

And how deep does the rabbit hole go anyway?

The former No. 2 official in the Interior Department yesterday admitted lying to the Senate about his relationship with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who gained the official's intervention at the agency for his Indian tribal clients.

J. Steven Griles pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to a felony for making false statements in testimony before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in November 2005 and in an earlier interview with panel investigators. He is the 10th person -- and the second high-level Bush administration official -- to face criminal charges in the continuing Justice Department investigation into Abramoff's lobbying activities.

  WaPo article

The scope of the Griles, Federici and Abramoff scheme was not limited to a few casinos. It included defrauding the Federal Minerals Management Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and of course, Tribal Governments.

For reasons that either pass understanding, or are patently obvious, the media and its non-tribal alternatives construe Abramoff et alia as a morality play in which Indian Gaming alone occupies the central stage.

Similarly, the political control of US Attorneys, manifested in the Gonzales Eight, is construed as partisan voting rights, overlooking the peculiarity that six of the eight fired US Attorneys had significant MMS and Tribal lease prosecution responsibilities.

  Wampum post

So, has anyone in our government or media raised the question as to why it took John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee (at least from January, 2005, though previously still the lead Senator on the Abramoff investigation for the ten months prior) from March, 2004, when he first received emails and other documents implicating Steve Griles, until late October, 2005 - a full eighteen months, until Senate investigators even "informally" questioned him?

  Wampum post

I do believe there are a lot of dots to connect for some diligent investigator somewhere.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Of Emails and Document Dumps

We didn't really expect them to still be emailing the illegal stuff, did we?

GWB43 is the name of an internet server owned by the Republican National Committee.

The White House has its own internal email system, ending in the .gov suffix, as mandated by the Presidential Records Act. The law requires that public business be conducted on a public server.

Yet documents made public in the course of the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal reveal that key Administration figures used such email addresses ending with "gwb43.com."

  Trust Me article

Waxman wants 'em. Good luck with that.

Bubble Boy, of course, doesn't even use email.

Let's see...AG Gonzales' First Boy, Kyle Sampson, takes the blame (maybe), and Monica Goodling takes a leave of absence and the 5th Amendment.

Here's a handy Attorney Purge Timeline should you need one.

Sacrificial Lambs?

Fifteen British servicemen were scooped up in (debated) Iranian waters.

A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted.

[...]

The penalty for espionage in Iran is death. However, similar accusations of spying were made when eight British servicemen were detained in the same area in 2004. They were paraded blindfolded on television but did not appear in court and were freed after three nights in detention.

  Times article

Of course, this isn't 2004.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

The low cost heating oil deal from Venezuela to U.S. cities was to run from Nov. 15, 2006 through March 14, 2007. Somehow that seemed like it happened a long time ago to me. Time's funny like that.

But what I really wanted to talk about is...

Massaging the base

What about that fence? To keep out the Mexicans. That little 14 miles of fence along the California-Mexico border. Estimated at $14 million - a million a mile. Whose first nine miles actually cost $39 million.

Lycos photo

Weren't we supposed to build some more? In Texas?

President Bush authorized the construction of a border fence. [...] In October of last year, just before the midterm elections, the president signed the Secure Fence Act. It authorized the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to stop illegal immigration and drug smuggling and prevent terrorists from sneaking into the country. The act also authorized additional checkpoints, lighting, and high-tech devices to monitor the border. But the problem is the word "authorized." "No money was attached to the bill," says Democratic congressman Silvestre Reyes of El Paso [...] "It was more of a political piece of legislation designed to appeal to conservatives before the election."

[...]

While the Secure Fence Act did not provide any funding, Bush had already signed a spending bill that allocated $34.8 billion to homeland security. Of that, $1.2 billion was earmarked for a "security barrier," though that language is intentionally vague. [...] Initial estimates ranged from $2.2 billion to $9 billion. That difference seemed ridiculous enough until a government study came out in January that suggested the price could swell to more than $60 billion after figuring in costs such as purchasing the private property that lies in the path of the fence and solving environmental issues related to construction. And that's not even for the whole border.

  Texas Monthly article

What a surprise, eh? Like Bush's support of anti-gay marriage legislation.

And what do Texan politicians think of the deal?

Governor Rick Perry said, "Building a wall across the entire border is preposterous." Then he joked that a wall would only benefit "the ladder business." (That's a pale version of what Arizona governor Janet Napolitano said in December 2005: "Show me a fifty-foot wall, and I'll show you a fifty-one-foot ladder at the border.") Of course, Perry didn't think it was so preposterous to have cameras at the border hooked up to a public Web site so that average residents could report suspicious activity, but that's another story.

Yes, that is another story. Part of the story of how a bunch of people with European heritage manage to steal land and dignity from native residents time and again.

Where is the study that elucidates the differences in relations between the descendents of the European invaders of this part of the North American continent and Mexican-Americans, Native-Americans and Afro-Americans? There is some national tendency toward an apology for the treatment of Native Americans. At least there is some sense of national guilt about it. But the Euro-American attitude toward Mexican-Americans seems to be more like our attitude toward Afro-Americans. Why? Mexican-Amerians are natives to the southern US. They weren't imported for slavery like Africans. They were swallowed up. Much more like Native-Americans. Well, in fact, they are Native Americans.

But...back to that fence...

In September Boeing won a contract, estimated to be worth $2 billion, from the Department of Homeland Security to construct a "virtual fence." The project, known as the Secure Border Initiative, or SBInet, doesn't focus on permanent walls; it features a series of 1,800 towers similar to the ones you find in shopping-mall parking lots during the holidays. In addition to cameras, these towers will be equipped with high-tech heat sensors and motion detectors. Boeing will install the first group of towers along a 28-mile stretch of the border near Tucson, Arizona, and the company says it can have the entire program up and running in three years.

Estimated cost: $8 billion, possibly ballooning to $30 billion.

Sooooo much better a deal than the fency fence that never got funded anyway. I feel safer already. Oh, wait. I'm on an island in the Gulf. I want some floating patrol piers. With helipads.

We need a president who will actually do something here. Actually fund something. None of this pretty talk to sucker us into voting and then letting us hang out in the wind!

Seriously, this is a matter under the control of the Department of Homeland Security. Terrorists and illegal immigrants fall under the same agency. They're starting to all look alike to us pale-faces.

Raise the drawbridge!

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Getting Up To Speed

Yahoo headline: Bush calls Democrats' Iraq timetable 'political theater'.

And he knows political theater if anyone does. (Mission Accomplished, Turkey Day in Iraq, Secret Flight to Turkey Day, Scripted Town Hall Meetings, Bring 'Em On, and on and on and on.)

After spending nine months in México and several more back in the U.S. without blogging, I was getting used to floating above the continuing madness. Because it truly is madness. There's nothing sane about the world.

So much has happened in the meantime - beginning with the Katrina disaster down to the federal justice purge (media headlines these days are either surge or purge) and (for me) the anti-climactic conviction of Scooter Libby for lying to an investigator. Karl Rove lied too. To the same investigator. In the same investigation. I don't see him in jail.

Well, anyway...

Too much has happened for me to try to go back and recover it all, but at the same time, nothing has changed. So the game goes on.

I recently listened to Molly Ivins' last public speech, and she had some good advice for the Colorado audience she addressed: Don't lose your sense of humor. Molly will be missed. While things are crumbling around us, I sometimes (less and less frequently) get down in the muck and mire and heaviness, but I remember the ancient Egyptian admonition about not getting to heaven unless Anubis weighs your heart on the scale and finds it to be lighter than a feather. I used to think that meant that you had a pure heart - only the good make it to heaven, right? But there's no need to make that interpretation. Light is light. Light-hearted. A heavy heart traps you in Hell.

Of course, it's no doubt a lot easier to be light-hearted for people with some financial security. And who don't have a kid in Iraq.

And, speaking of Hell...

That's a picture of my new neighbor on the other side of the island.

I recently moved from Columbia, Missouri, to Galveston, just south of Texas (as a Texan liberal who lives here on the island described it). That's Halliburton on the north side of the channel between me and the mainland.

There's a lot of poverty in Galveston. Demographically, the minority populations are just barely a minority. There also seems to be some resentment of the Katrina victims who came and stayed. I guess even the poor don't want the poorer around.

But Galveston was once the richest city in Texas, before that other great storm that drowned over 6,000 people and wiped most of Galveston right off the earth. It has a glorious history, still some of the old mansions, and a lot of charm. Not to mention, Gulf tides, palmetto palms, and sea gulls. And pelicans. And dolphins.

But I wanted to talk about Halliburton moving its headquarters to Dubai. Remember Dubai? That place that can't be trusted to manage our seaports? They're Arabs, remember? Even the Right-Wingers didn't like that one.

Halliburton, the company making a killing, so to speak, in Iraq from U.S. taxpayer dollars. Take the money and run.

Skipping a segue....I might be able to come up with one, but this post is long and I need a break. So do you....

Bernie Sanders wonders why the gaping chasm between the few haves and the multitude of have-nots isn't a topic of discussion in this country. Probably because the media owners and the "journalists" aren't homeless. And neither are the people being targeted by the advertisers. Recently I heard a couple of reports on Democracy Now! giving the following figures: in 1980, the average CEO of a corporation made 4 times the amount paid to its hourly-wage-earners, whereas now, the amount is 300 times. Now that's growth.

And those are the ones that are doing it legally.

Blogger made a lot of nice changes since I stopped posting, and I'm trying to catch up to the format. The label function (at the end of each post) is nice for tracking topics, but since it didn't exist in the first years of YWA, I have to go back through each post and add labels. It's a tedious process. So far, I've gotten 100 posts labeled. Only 5,800 more to go.

And, lastly, the French government has opened up all its UFO files to the public. Have at 'em - if you can get through the crowd.

Okay, that's it for bridging the gap. Just like those White House crooks, Nixon and Bush. 18 minutes. 18 days. Mine's 18 months. Don't expect a document dump.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Meanwhile in Iraq

With healthcare in Iraq deteriorating "to a level not seen since the 1950s," the U.N. warns that a shortage of safe water risks an outbreak of cholera this summer, and the BBC reports "horror stories" from Iraqi doctors who have fled to other countries.

'Betrayed' is how George Packer sums up the treatment of Iraqis who worked with the U.S. for years but who now get no help in their search for asylum because it would send a message "that it's game over" in Iraq.

  Cursor, March 23, 2007 - links embedded

Just too depressing. Let's change the subject.

Woody Harrelson's father died.

Actor Woody Harrelson’s father, Charles Harrelson, died of a heart attack in the Supermax federal prison where he was serving two life sentences for the murder of a federal judge in Texas, officials said Wednesday.

[...]

The actor was just 7 when his father was first sent to prison, for murdering a Texas businessman. He was in college when his father was convicted of the judge’s assassination.

  Texas Herald Democrat article

Harrelson's attorney in the case with the businessman was Percy Foreman, attorney for Jack Ruby and James Earl Ray.

The judge he was convicted of murdering was about to sit judgment on a mobster/drug smuggler, Jimmy Chagra, who claims to have hired Harrelson, a "freelance hitman."

But wait. There's more.

Charles Harrelson, shortly after his arrest for the murder of Judge Wood, admitted his involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, stating that he was the shooter on the infamous Grassy Knoll. He later retracted that statement and would say no more about it.

  Sinister Forces article

Before his arrest for the Wood murder, the elder Harrelson bragged about taking part in the JFK murder. Although he later retracted the claim, Chagra's brother has said at trial that Harrelson was hired based on his alleged participation in the JFK assassination. Moreover, a reporter named Chuck Cook has said that Harrelson once promised revelations about "November 1963" if he ever got out of prison.

  Cannonfire article

Stick with me. I'll keep you swimming in mysterious waters, off that road to hell we've been paving.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Here There Are Prophets

Everyone is afraid of mirrors, Mr. Simon said, readjusting the knitted skullcap on his nimbus of white hair. “We hate the mirror. We don’t want to look at ourselves. We don’t like photographs of us — we say, ‘Oh, that’s not a very good likeness.’ We want to be much nicer than we are. But here there are also prophets who are mirrors, who are not afraid of kings and generals. The prophet says, ‘You are ugly,’ and we don’t want to hear it, but we have to look at the mirror honestly, without fear.”

  NYT article

Israeli soldiers talk about the occupied territories at Shovrimshtika.org.

The War on Ideas

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. --Mark Twain

Socialism - the new Communism

As president, McCain said he would work on political, diplomatic and economic fronts to counter the rise of socialism [...] Yet the United States must also stress the advantages of capitalism and democracy to win "a war of ideas" in the region, he said.

[...]

[McCain] said the Iraq war "has diverted attention from our hemisphere and we have paid a penalty for that" in the form of a growing leftism.

  Raw Story article

A war of ideas. I guess it goes pretty well with terror wars, come to think of it.

Apparently "leftism" is on McCain's hitlist should he become president. I like how he associates capitalism with democracy as though socialism can't be democratic.

Get the point: the Iraq Invasion is a diversion from the threat in our own hemisphere. Apparently the threat of socialism is even greater than the threat of WMD. Who knew?

I just watched a video of the Joseph McCarthy-Army hearings before the Senate (Point of Order). Are we going there again?

The more I read about McCain, the slimier - or maybe nutser - he seems. And if the Democrats insist on foisting Hillary Clinton on us, I have no doubt McCain would beat her hands down, no matter how great public intolerance of the current GOP administration grows.

By the way, not too long ago I watched the excellent Good Night, and Good Luck. If you haven't already seen it, do yourself a favor. You'll get to see what a real reporter (Edward R. Murrow) is like.

And, if you want to see some more real reporting - particularly war reporting - there's a nice clip of Morley Safer in Viet Nam (the burning of Cam Ne) in the Scorsese documentary on Bob Dylan, No Direction Home. Another video I highly recommend, as much for its clips of the U.S. scene in the late 50s, early 60s, as for anything else, including some great music by artists who influenced Dylan. I actually bought the DVD, even though I am not a big Dylan fan, his brilliance notwithstanding, and rarely buy DVDs - I only own two others.

-----------

Back on topic....closely related to the war on ideas....

Silenced

After questioning a Republican congressmember's "decency" for seeking to restrict housing reconstruction funds for Hurricane Katrina and Rita victims, a Democratic Representative was barred Wednesday from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

[...]

"He wants to punish [towns affected by Katrina] for mistakes of the Bush administration," said Rep. Taylor. "Mr. Price, I wish you'd have the decency, if you're going to do that to the people of south Mississippi, that maybe you ought to come visit south Mississippi, and see what has happened, before you hold them to a standard you would never hold your own people to, and that you fail to hold the Bush administration to."

Price immediately asked that Taylor's remarks be stricken from the record, which the Chair at the time agreed to. Taylor was then barred from speaking on the House floor for the remainder of the day.

  Raw Story article

[...]

Littig explained that criticizing Price's "decency" on the House floor had gone too far according to the body's rules of procedure. [...] [H]e should have used the word "courtesy" instead of "decency."

Oh, yeah. Huge difference. And I say, lock 'im up next time he says something like that. A veritable incitement to violence. No...no...it's the equivalent of a physical attack.

You must not question a Congressmember's "decency". Actually, "Congressmember" sounds a little indecent to my ear.

....and hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

The Decider Makes His Decision

Tom TolesClick to enlarge

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

You Got Away With It

You always do.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Click picture to view video at YouTube