One of the Reasons I Read Balloon Juice

I came across the blog of John Cole, the very popular Balloon Juice, about a year ago, I'd guess, long after his break from the mind-boggling policies and actions of the Modern Republican Party. This small paragrapah highlights why he's become a must-read for so many on both the Right and the Left:

Read the whole thing, as it is just heartbreaking. In a just world, people like me who cheerleaded this disaster would have to pay a price for our foolishness. As it is, I have learned a horrible lesson at the expense of thousands American dead and tens of thousands of American wounded and hundreds of billions of dollars. It isn’t right.

I don't care if I still disagree with him about every other social policy and concept in existence; statements like that show him to be among the most reasonable people, on the Right or Left, writing on the internets today.

Saturday Sonata VIII: John Prine

My latest Satrday Sonata is up at The Peace Tree. Mr. John Prine and "The Great Compromise" are this week's feature.

Hitchens Gets His legs Blown Off by Vanity Fair

First, read this about one-time (the important lead up and starting time) rabid Iraq War supporter Christopher Hitchens. Here's some background and context for that.

Now read this.

Polygamist Church Has Fashion Web Site

The FLDS has a clothing line for kids - like the ones you saw the Feds take away from them. I shit you not.

This site is dedicated to provide children with clothing that meets the FLDS standards for modesty and neatness. Our commitment is to offer quality, handmade, modest, affordable clothing. Each piece is made with joy and care.

New Evidence From Last Mass Lynching

History:

State and federal investigators said Tuesday that they spent the past two days gathering evidence in the last documented mass lynching in the United States: a grisly slaying of four people that has remained unsolved for more than six decades.[...]

On July 25, 1946, two black sharecropper couples were shot hundreds of times and the unborn baby of one of the women cut out with a knife at the Moore's Ford Bridge. One of the men had been accused of stabbing a white man 11 days earlier and was bailed out of jail by a former Ku Klux Klan member and known bootlegger who drove him, his wife, her brother and his wife to the bridge.

The report says five of the men involved in the killings and butchering are still alive.

The Moore's Ford Memorial Committee.

Hitler Was a Funny Guy

Noted without comment:

The Fuhrer's sense of humour, which included disturbing jokes about concentration camp victims, has been revealed in a book called The Last Witness, to be published in Britain later this year.

Christianist Dobson Calls Obama a Fag

Subtle:

As Barack Obama broadens his outreach to evangelical voters, one of the movement's biggest names, James Dobson, accuses the likely Democratic presidential nominee of distorting the Bible and pushing a "fruitcake interpretation" of the Constitution.

When Dobson admits that he covets little boys and goes away, the world will be a better place.

Heinz is for Homophobes

Chickenshits.

Look! Theers queers on my TV!

3,000 in Food Lines in Milwaukee

The lede gets it right:

The chaos that erupted outside Milwaukee County's main welfare office Monday over disaster-related food aid had more to do with a weak economy and crushing poverty in parts of this community than the devastating floods that swept through the state earlier this month, local government and food relief officials said.

Yup.

RIP

I've edited the title to this post. You don't need to know what it said before.

This is a Newsweek article. It's an extremely depressing read.

Pvt. David Dietrich had a history of cognitive problems. He struggled in boot camp at Fort Knox, Ky., striking at least one of his superiors as unfit for the military. Dietrich was so slow at processing new things, some fellow soldiers called him Forrest Gump. His squad leader, Pfc. Matthew Berg, says Dietrich couldn't hit targets on the rifle range and had trouble retaining information. "He was very strong physically, but mentally he wasn't really all there," Berg says.

He lasted eight weeks in Iraq. Then he was shot and killed.

And this line:

He also said that in Germany, doctors had given him antidepressants and medication for attention-deficit disorder.

Jesus.

Cousin of Taser'd Seizure Victim in Comments

I've gotten a response this morning to a link I posted on Saturday about a 30-year-old doctor who had a seizure while driving in Palm Beach County, crashed his car - and was taser'd when he confusedly fought with paramedics.

The response is from his cousin:

Mark is my very dear cousin. He is a compassionate and loving young doctor who puts everyone's need before his own. The idea that after suffering from a seizure and being involved in an serious car accident and showing visible signs of injury and distress, the very people who were supposed to be saving his life and removing him from danger instead tased him 11 times. Thank god he is now out of his coma but is still in critical condition. I am utterly disgusted and of course my main concern is his full recovery but what in such a case of police brutallity I can't rest until justice is served. Please pray for him.

They tased him 11 freaking times. And he showed visible injury, the cousin says, and the ordeal put him in a coma. Just impossible to understand. Absolutely deserving of a police brutality investigation and lawsuit and possibly criminal charges.

My best wishes for your cousin.

John McCain: Imprison and Torture the Innocent

John McCain called the recent Supreme Court decision to grant detainees in Guantanamo the right to habeas corpus "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country". They're "not citizens of this country," he said, and they're "bad people."

McClatchy news reports today that many of the men imprisoned in Guantanamo were innocent:

"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

Innocent men pulled from their homes and families by American troops and held in prison for years - and likely tortured. They are finally granted the smallest possibility that their nightmares might finally end - and McCain calls it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."

What exactly are John McCain's beliefs regarding good government? Do they somehow include stealing innocent people from their homes and imprisoning them thousands of miles from those homes simply because they're "not citizens of this country" and because someone in the military told us they were "bad people"? Is habeas corpus, a bedrock of modern understandings of liberty and freedom and good government, a decoration, a table piece, something to be tossed aside in difficult times and put back only when everything's nice and easy again? Is that good government to him? is that good anything to him?

President McCain. Think of that. Think of the justices he'd appoint to the nation's highest courts.

Here's the story of 17 innocent men who have been in Guantanamo for more than six years. The U.S. military admits that they are innocent, that they were wrongly imprisoned - but John McCain would be perfectly happy to keep these innocent men in prison.

President McCain. We really, really, need to think about that.

Saturday Sonata VI: A Father's Day Song

My sixth Saturday Sonata has just gone up over at the Peace Tree. I'm doubling the post up here.

* * *

A very simple one today. I wrote this song in around 1995 on a picnic table on the deck of a bar in Austin, Texas. It had been growing in my head as I drove and drove and drove through the heat of I10 from LA, and it poured all out pretty straight away in probably an hour or so. Later that day I realized it was Father's Day.

On a sad and very related note: My wife just called from Sydney, Australia. She just arrived. Her father died Thursday morning. Peace to her and her family, and to her father, Noel.

This is "Donald," from the CD Bottomfeeders. The song features the enormous talents of Bob Evoniuk on dobro, Jeff Addicott on bass, and Emy Phelps on the vocals.

Ovulation Filmed

Very cool photos of an ovarian follicle, structures found inside ovaries that each contain a single oocyte, or egg, expelling said egg. They've never had such clear photos, they say. And the egg is beautiful, like a drop of golden honey.

They were taken by Professor Jacques Donnez of the Catholic University in Louvain, Belgium. He was about to peform a partiel hysterectomy on a 45-year-old woman when he noticed the follicle—so he stopped and snapped come photos. Too cool.

Found at The Sideshow.

Have a Seizure: Get Tased

Unbelievable.

Update: That story gives the victim as "Mark Holder, 30; this story as Dr. Mark Holder.

Updated: here.

Not Safe For Bras

McCain Girl BUSTS OUT!

LTB's Not John McCain Log #3

A Long Tough Blogs Reason #3 not to vote for John McCain:

He's a big fat pander bear:

Tuesday: "I hate the Estate Tax!"

2006: "I love the Estate Tax!"

FOX Fires Assistant For Disclosing She Supports McCain

What can you say but wow?

A 24-year-old Fox News Channel production assistant was fired this morning for something she said during the red carpet arrivals at the Time 100 Gala last night.

Insiders tell us the assistant, identified as Jennifer Locke, was on assignment with a camera crew to cover the entertainment angle of the event. When Sen. John McCain walked by, the assistant said, "I voted for you in the primary, you're going to win."

[...]

A Fox News insider called it "journalistically unacceptable." An FNC spokesperson would not comment on the personnel matter but did confirm Locke is no longer with the company, where she'd worked for a couple of years.

Video of Ms. Locke's statement to McCain can be viewed here (about 1 minute in).

And now they can fire Sean Hannity for being journalistically unacceptable.

Habeas Corpus: It's Alive! It's Alive!

And a flashback to Keith Olbermann on the Military Commissions Act from October, 2006.

First, MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

In its third rebuke of the Bush administration's treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court's liberal justices were in the majority.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."

Now, Olbermann's Special Report from 10/18/06, just after the act passed Congress:



Adam B has a closer look at the decision, and says the suspension of habeas corpus actually goes back to the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

Oh No! Bonny Doon is Burning! [Updated]

Damn, one of my old haunts is on fire. Redwoods and mountains and coastline and just as beautiful as anywhere on Earth. Go firefighters.

6/12: Not good.