Songs of Hope, Songs of Despair

I have a lot on my mind this morning, too much in fact. Bits and pieces of news items that are tugging me this way and that way so I thought I had better put them down in one place. Without further freddie adu, here are some reason I am filled with hope.

1)Today the house struck part of energy bill that allowed for drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge. That means, maybe, the polar bears are safe once again. Oil Company Special Interest Groups have been pushing the republicans to open the Artic Preserves for their own profit for years now, despite the fact that there is no formidible knowledge about just how much oil is actually there. The Arctic Refuge's coastal tundra provides America's only land denning habitat for polar bears. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists, between 1981 and 2000, 42 percent of the on-land polar bear dens were dug within the Arctic Refuge's Coastal Plain. Polar bears with newborn cubs are especially sensitive to human activity, and can be prematurely displaced from their winter dens by the noise, vibration, and human disturbance created by seismic oil exploration. Current seismic exploration methods require numerous vehicles to move in a tight grid pattern across the tundra, discharging explosives or creating shock waves with large "thumper trucks." Early den abandonment can be fatal to cubs unable to fend for themselves, withstand the winter temperatures, or travel with their mother. Then of course there is the "incidental take" permit apllied for and received from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Incidental take, in federal parlance, means to kill. The permit allowed oil companies working along the edge of the Beaufort Sea to harrass and kill polar bear and walrus in the course of their extraction and exploration activities. This permit expired in March, 2003, then was renewed until March 28, 2005. So essentially, people voting for drilling are ANTI-BABY POLAR BEAR. Special thanks to the wildlife.org website for much of the above info.

But today the house dropped the controversial oil drilling rider from the energy bill. 25 Republican Moderates, led by Charles Bass of New Hampshire, signed a letter to GOP leaders asking for the change in the much larger $54 billion budget cut bill. The senate budget included the measure, so the two versions will have to be reconciled before it goes into effect. YEAH POLAR BEARS!!!

2) Another reason I am full of hope is the recent appearance on several different talk shows by one SENATOR JOHN McCAIN. McCain, one of the sanest men left in the Republican party, appeared on Steven A. Smith's sports talk show QUITE FRANKLEY and on the comedy central fake news program THE DAILY SHOW. In both interviews he was humorous, personable and smart. He is behind the the steriod legislation making its way through the senate, and the anti-torture bill (which Chaney and Herr President didn't want passed). He is becoming a more outspoken critic of the current administration and must have mentioned Colin Powell three times on the Daily Show, along the lines of 'I've spoken with Colin about this and he is in complete agreement.' I know it is early, but I don't think I can hold back my excitement for a McCAIN-POWELL presidential bid... Two moderates, two war heros, two men who have been critical of the current administration (Even while he was a part of it, Powell always seemed to be the voice of reason). McCain has a new book out, character studies of historical heros, looks pretty interesting. And the fact that he has been on the Daily Show three times now and can hold his own with John Stewart... it bodes well for the future.

3). Why else am I full of hope? How about the fact that Scooter Libby appears to want to fight his indictment. The less he rolls over, the more information will come out, the more we might get to see what was really going on. And how depraved is this guy? Anyone read this book he wrote in 1996? “The young samurai‘s mother had the child sold to a brothel where she swept the floors and oiled the women. At age 10, the madame put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest. Groups of men paid to watch. Like other girls who had been trained this way, she learned to handle many men in a single night and her skin turned a milky white.” WHAT?!?!?! And I'm worried about the polar bears. Yeah, this guy is going to exonerate the administration.

4) Oh, and maybe, just maybe Judicial Nominee Alito would not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, but he makes no promises.

OKAY, REASONS TO DESPAIR......

1) This is almost painful to write about. But on Tuesday, 76% of the Texans who bothered to vote (which is something like 18%) voted for HATRED, DISCRIMINATION, and INTOLERANCE. That's right, Prop 2 another of these so-called defense of marriage acts passed in Texas on Tuesday. I am sick of this FUCKING STATE on its high horse thinking these god damn churchies sitting in their pews judging everyone else are somehow more MORAL then people who want nothing more to spend the rest of their lives in a COMMITTED and LOVING relationship. Which is more than I can say for most of these evangelical shits, who have some of the highest divorce rates in the country. Not to mention incidents of spousal abuse and alcoholism. Who are you to judge how a person should live their life? And this doesn't even get into the CONSTITUTION of America which guarantees equal right to everyone... If the gov't wants to have an institution such as marriage, it cannot arbitrarily withhold that designation from one group of people. It could as easily say that blondes should not marry blondes, they should only marry brunnettes. Or how about a law that says Evangelicals can only marry Jews. That's just as ridiculous. I am really really realy disappointed in this state. At least I live in the ONLY COUNTY that voted against the ban. But that's little consolation today. As the number of states in which I feel it is acceptable to live gets smaller, I can only hope that a massive plague will some day come to wipe out all the intolerant people who are out of step with progress. YOU DO NOT REPRESENT ME! In texas, you are 76% of of the 18% of the registered voters which are only 60% of the state (not including illegals or students registered in other states). What is that? THat's right, 8%. 8% of the entire state is a biggot. And they are deciding for the rest of us.

2) How do I follow that? I guess with two bits from Keith Obermann's COUNTDOWN that may have flown under your radar. You looking for more corruption in the administration? Anyone heard of Tamiflu? The supposed best defense if the bird flu breaks out? Herr President‘s new $7 billion bird flu plan calls for up to $1 billion to be spent buying Tamiflu. That‘s driven the stock price of Gilead Sciences, which makes Tamiflu, from $35 a share to $47 a share. Do you know who used to be the chairman of Gilead Sciences? Who, though he has recused himself from decisions involving it, still owns between $5 million and $25 million worth of the company. DONALD RUMSFELD. Or how about this for independence of the media. The Web Site Political Money Line posts congressional ethics documents that indicate that a month ago, just after his indictment, Tom DeLay accepted a free trip to reach a previously scheduled speaking engagement. The cost of a round trip ticket from Houston to Washington and night in a hotel, $13,995.55. And the compant that sponsored that speaking engagement and put up the money for DeLay to trek back, FOX News. $14,000 for a round trip airfare? I can go on priceline right now and get a cheaper rate to Yemen.

3) Okay one last bit of outrage. Here's a little 1984 for you. Do you realize that every page that comes out of your color printer is encoded with hidden information that the government could use to track it back to you? That's right, an article in PC World magazine pointed out that printouts from many color laser printers contained yellow dots scattered across the page, viewable only with a special kind of flashlight. The article quoted a senior researcher at Xerox Corp. as saying the dots contain information useful to law-enforcement authorities, a secret digital "license tag" for tracking down criminals. It was supposed to be a secret, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco consumer privacy group, said it had cracked the code used in a widely used line of Xerox printers. The EFF said it has identified similar coding on pages printed from nearly every major printer manufacturer, including Hewlett-Packard, which makes my printer. And Seth Schoen, the EFF technologist who led the organization's research, said he had seen the coding on documents produced by printers that were at least 10 years old. The U.S. Secret Service acknowledged yesterday that the markings, which are not visible to the human eye, are there, but claims they are to track and prosecuting counterfeiters. As much as I beleive that intent, they are still INVADING MY PRIVACY. Schoen said that the existence of the encoded information could be a threat to people who live in repressive governments or those who have a legitimate need for privacy. It reminds him, he said, of a program the Soviet Union once had in place to record sample typewriter printouts in hopes of tracking the origins of underground, self-published literature. The original article which I have liberally copied and reposted her is available on the Washington Post.