[Quote:]

A veteran state psychiatrist testified in court last year that he was asked to change the diagnosis of a state prison inmate and fired because he refused.

Narinder K. Saini, a state employee since 1990, dropped this bombshell in a Dodge County courtroom last July at the sentencing hearing of former Lodi resident Brian Locke. He stated that in mid-2004, he was asked by his boss, Dr. Kevin Kallas, to agree that Locke did not have a bipolar disorder, a serious mental illness, “so he could be sent successfully to Boscobel.”

At the time, Saini was in his 10th year of employment with the state Department of Corrections, then under a court order not to use the supermaximum security prison at Boscobel for patients with serious mental illness.

“[Kallas] asked me to change the diagnosis because they knew if I will not change the diagnosis, [Locke] cannot go to Supermax,” Saini testified. “I refused to do that.”

[Quote:]

If you’ve never visited the Answers in Genesis website, don’t worry. You’ve missed little.

But this little gem caught my eye. Apparently, a creation believer wrote in to their feedback asking a rational question: why is it whenever I repeat one of the “facts” I learn in creationist literature in internet forums do I get my ass handed to me.

Okay. I’m paraphrasing a bit. But the question is basically saying just that. The person writing in to AiG was specifically concerned with the creationist claim that mutations are not beneficial and do not add information to an organism. The person was also upset that his/her son wrote a paper for school, which was criticized by the son’s geology teacher as “full of inaccuracies.” And the answer provided by this creationist nut site is very telling.

[Quote:]

After a panel discussion in which Rice and Miliband fielded queries from Google Senior Vice President David Drummond, the audience of Google employees was invited to ask their own questions from floor microphones.

One of the first employees asked Rice: “If an American held by another country were subjected to simulated drowning by waterboarding, would that shock your conscience and would you consider that torture?” He continued by asking Miliband to what extent US use of the torture method against detainees had created a “strain between the United States and your government.”

Much of the audience responded to the question with applause.

Rice dodged the specific question, but spoke at length in defense of the administration’s interrogation methods, framing them as a necessary response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

[..]

Not satisfied with Rice’s answer, her questioner at Thursday’s meeting pressed further, demanding whether she was saying that waterboarding does not constitute torture. “I think I’ve answered your question,” the Secretary of State responded with a tight smile.

The Google executive cut the employee off and started to move to the next questioner before realizing that the British foreign minister was preparing to make his own reply.

Standing firmly in defense of the “special relationship” between London and Washington, Miliband acknowledged that there existed “differences in national law and national practice,” but insisted that these divergences did “not call into question the fundamental nature of our alliance.”

In other words, the British government is made up of war criminals as well.

[Quote:]

Bill Atkinson is the programming genius behind HyperCard, MacPaint and much of the original Macintosh operating system, but these days he’s wistful about what could have been.

Like, for example, the first Internet browser.

HyperCard was, indeed, a great product. The article is right - if it had been network-aware early on, the Internet would look very different today.

Obama’s response the Hillary talking about the Kennedy assassination was that the remark was “unfortunate and has no place in this campaign”.

[Quote:]

Responding to a statement by calling it “unfortunate and has no place in this campaign” is the weakest, most boilerplate message that an opposing campaign can send while still making it unambiguously clear that they completely disagree with the statement itself (and want no part of the fallout). Obama’s camp did not make a sideshow to, as Hillary would say, “reject and denounce” her words, nor did they take the opportunity to grab a soapbox and elaborate on their answer (they had responded with a very terse statement). If you want to see “capitalizing on her gaffes”, look to Clinton losing no time in calling Obama’s “bitter” remarks as “elitist”, or Obama accusing McCain of having poor judgment and understanding of foreign policy after McCain’s gaffe in confusing Shia and Sunni. The statement from Obama’s camp in this case is simply political speak for “go hang yourselves with your own rope, we want no blood on our hands.” Far from “dipping into the fray” here — the Obama people aren’t touching this with a ten-foot pole, even though the media obliged them to release a response on the incident.

Making the mistake in appearing to sympathize with Clinton’s remarks would only leave an opening for Obama himself to get dragged down by this. It would be exactly the kind of political naivety that he is accused of, not to mention how patronizing such a gesture would appear to be. And why is it that people are always asking for Obama or Dean or some other figure to intervene on Clinton’s behalf (for example, asking Dean and other party elders to denounce sexist remarks from certain media commentators)? Did Obama ask Clinton or Dean to defend him from, say, false Muslim smears? Nevermind that having someone else fight her battles would only undermine her carefully-crafted image of toughness. If you want to see sexism in this campaign: why do people keep asking the other principle players to help Hillary? It’s demeaning to make the suggestion. She can defend her own words, just as everyone expected Obama to defend his own “bitter” remarks.

The main sin of Clinton’s remarks: it’s completely tone-deaf. In the context of Huckabee’s joke during a recent NRA speech about someone pointing a gun at Obama, Kennedy’s cancer diagnosis this past week, and the ongoing concern about the safety of black presidential candidates (concerns that, for instance, led Colin Powell’s wife to forbid him from ever making a presidential run and led the Secret Service to start protecting Obama far earlier than usual due to death threats), what Clinton said was astoundingly careless coming from a seasoned pol with an iron media discipline. And while Huckabee to his credit apologized to Obama fully and sincerely in subsequent interviews, Clinton’s non-apology looked like it was more aimed to placate the Kennedy clan rather than smooth things over with Obama himself. All this has probably cast some serious doubts among the big donor-types as to whether Clinton still has “it” to play the political game on a national level. That famed Clinton mojo is fading, fast.

What one should really be mad about is how incredibly weak on the facts Clinton was in citing evidence for her argument. Bill Clinton’s last nomination contest was on June 2, 1992 (not mid-June as Hillary stated), but the nomination was already decided in March when Paul Tsongas dropped out. As for RFK, it’s true that his last race in California during June was closely contested and pivotal, but there were only 13 primaries in 1968 and it was only 12 weeks from the first contest (New Hampshire on March 12th) to June 4th. So her bringing up RFK might’ve said something about how late on the calendar it’s getting, but nothing about how long the primary season has dragged on: it’s been almost twice as long since the first contest this year. If she were writing an essay and chose to use the 1968 and 1992 contests to support her thesis that “primary contests used to last a lot longer,” she’d receive a D+ for this effort.

If Clinton were really trying to be intellectually honest in discussing extended primary contests, she’d be citing 1972, 1980, and 1984 as examples instead. And the track record there is dismal for the Democratic party. Despite having clinched the 1972 nomination, McGovern faced having his two opponents staying in the contest all the way until the convention while trying to peel away his delegates; on the Colbert Report, McGovern recalls his nomination struggle where he and his team spent the weeks before the convention on the phone with his California delegation instead of vetting his VP candidate, leading to the Eagleton fiasco. Democrats were obliterated that year. 1980? Ted Kennedy lost in delegates but took the fight all the way to the convention, getting no closer but forced Carter to chase him down on the stage when it came time to lift their hands together in a sign of party unity, demonstrating the exact opposite. Another Democratic loss. And 1984? Hart fell behind frontrunner Mondale but kept fighting until the bitter end under the premise that “unpledged superdelegates that had previously claimed support for Mondale would shift to his side if he swept the Super Tuesday III primary.” (Sound familiar?) And yes, yet another Democratic loss in a landslide. With the protracted nomination record like this, you can see why the Democratic party is trying so hard to wrap the nomination up and move on to the convention. Had Hillary Clinton wanted to talk about extended nomination fights, she should have been discussing McGovern and Mondale, not RFK and Bill Clinton whose fights weren’t nearly as long nor contested by historical standards. So that’s not why she brought up Bill Clinton and RFK.

No, Hillary Clinton didn’t simply “referred to the fact that Bill Clinton and Bobby Kennedy and their opponents were were still campagining in June” when she chastises us by saying “people have short memories. Primary contests used to last a lot longer.” To take that at face value and actually believe her rationale is to drink her Kool-aid, because those nomination battles weren’t the real long, protracted primary fights when you look at things in a historical perspective. No, she had invoked Bill Clinton and RFK to place herself in the same narrative that she was just like them, a deliberate spin implying that she was also a nominee who fought the Democratic establishment and eventually won the heart of the party, despite the fact that she herself was the DLC establishment candidate. Her followers aren’t rooting for a charismatic underdog like Bill Clinton or RFK — they’re rooting for an “inevitable” frontrunner who bungled her campaign badly and lost. And with her latest RFK assassination remarks, she delivered her campaign spin completely ham-fistedly and wound up being hoisted by her own petard. Schadenfreude, anyone?

Anyway, the media will be playing her remarks non-stop over the weekend (just as they did with Wright, etc.), but it isn’t even one of the top two real nomination stories leading into the weekend. The biggest is “The Cardoza 40″, a group of largely California superdelegates who have previously endorsed Clinton but will be defecting to endorse Obama in the coming weeks. (Al Giordano who broke this story also broke Obama’s Kerry, Kennedy, and Edwards endorsements before the MSM did and has had two superdelegates contributing to his site in the past, so he is considered a credible source and this story has been hitting the political blogs big.) Cardoza declared in his endorsement: “I am deeply concerned about the contentious primary campaign and controversy surrounding the seating of delegates from Florida and Michigan – two states Democrats need to win in November. I will not support changing the rules in the fourth quarter of this contest through some convoluted DNC rules committee process.” It’s a signal that rather than winning her more superdelegate support, Clinton’s powerplay for Michgan and Florida has instead closed her final “path” to the nomination with the superdelegates (which was alway an illusion, since superdelegates won’t overturn a pledged delegate victory). The other story is Obama’s major policy speech in Miami on his Cuba and South American policies, which will have a large reception in the Spanish-language media. “Assassinate-gate” isn’t really news — it’s just the noise of the MSM gawking at what is increasingly becoming a Hillary Clinton trainwreck. Before this primary season had begun, I doubt anyone had predicted that this would be the way she’d be ending her campaign. It’s going to be a very long summer for her and her supporters.

Obama, on the other hand, has slowed his superdelegate endorsements down to a trickle in recent days, leading to the speculation that he’s gaming the delegate count so that the pledged delegates from final June 3rd primaries will be what finally pushes him over the post-Florida/Michigan pledged+unpledged delegate “magic number” to officially seal the nomination. This would be understandable, considering that the Obama campaign would prefer not to appear that it was superdelegates who pushed him over the top (even though he’s already won a majority of the pledged delegates) and no superdelegate wants to be the one to do it, either. If Obama does indeed work the numbers to make this happen according to the alleged script, then it’ll be a fitting capstone to his primary campaign and yet another masterful piece of political stagecraft that would make the “Mission Accomplished” people seethe with jealousy. Then the rest of the superdelegates will endorse en masse between June 4th and June 10th (including the Pelosi club and the remainder of the Cardoza 40) in a sign of rallying around the nominee, and Clinton will choose how she makes her exit — or not, if she decides to hopelessly continue by appealing the May 31st ruling. Whether Obama nails the delegate totals on the nose on primary night or not, I’ll be saving some popcorn for his speech marking the end of the primary season. Instead of Chicago, perhaps he’ll have the chutzpah to deliver the speech from Denver itself. It promises to be a good one.

So wrong it becomes right again:

[Quote:]

In a move that could foreshadow a public push from the Hillary forces to get Barack Obama to invite her on the ticket, Hillary’s top campaign fundraising official said in an interview that there’s a “risk” that Hillary’s political and financial supporters won’t get behind Obama in time for him to win in November if she’s passed over for the veep slot.

The fundraiser, businessman Hassan Nemazee, is Hillary’s leading finance chair and one of the most influential money men in the party. He’s the first prominent Hillary campaign official to raise the possiblity of an Obama loss should she not be invited on the ticket, and his comments suggests that this argument could emerge as central to any Clinton camp push to make her veep.

Fund raising is one of the things Obama does really, really well (McCain, however, not so much), so one blowhard businessman with a fat checkbook and an outdated view of party politics isn’t going to help Hillary very much.

[Quote:]

Here’s an intriguing report from ImportGenius, a search engine that gathers “competitive intelligence” by monitoring U.S. Customs records of ocean containers entering American ports.

Searching for shipments to Apple, Inc. (AAPL), employees at the Scottsdale, Ariz., company reported on Friday that they’ve spotted a “major spike” since mid March in ocean containers marked with a mysterious new label: “electric computers”

“They have never before reported this product on their customs declarations,” says ImportGenius managing director Ryan Peterson, who notes that there has been no corresponding falloff during this period of shipments labeled “desktop computers” or any of the other labels Apple usually uses.

“The fact that they are importing millions of units, combined with dwindling stocks of the first generation of iPhones,” persuades Peterson that these “electric computers” are, in fact, the 3G iPhones Apple is expected to release in a matter of weeks.

Is there any other company that is being watched the way Apple is?

[Quote:]

Obama came to Clemson University sometime before the South Carolina primary, and my son went to hear him speak.

His first and most-lasting impression? The sharpshooters on the rooftops that he spotted around the area where Obama was speaking.

This is a kid who’s probably never seen weapons like that in person. His nearest reference to that kind of firepower is from video games. And he was amazed to see those guns panning the crowd at his school.

Which gave me the opportunity to explain to my son: Merely standing before us and offering himself to us as a Presidential candidate is an act of courage on behalf of Barack Obama every day he’s on the campaign trail.

Death threats came early, we know, judging by how early the Secret Service stepped in to try to protect him. I suspect, the death threats come in greater numbers for him than any Presidential candidate before him.

And yet, he still stands before us. He stands before us with his wife and with his daughters by his side. Think about that.

Think about what it would take for any of us here to believe so strongly in the need to change our country that we could handle constant death threats. That we could handle the danger inherent in our campaign not just to our spouse, but to our children?

Think about Wing-Nut radio show hosts who feel free to joke about the possibility of him being assassinated. Didn’t a Fox News person make some kind of reference to assassination, too?

And the good Rev. Mike Huckabee? How funny. That sound? Someone shooting at Obama. That was within the last week, right?

Apparently, it’s still OK in this country to many people to joke about shooting and killing a black politician.

And yet, Obama stands before us, offering himself to us.

[..]

To take jokes from Republicans and wing-nut radio hosts is one thing, but to take it from a Democrat is something else. And to take it from a person claiming to be fit to be President, is something else entirely.

(here is the source of all the ruckus)

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

It appears many other western Canadian farmers are facing harassment from Monsanto. Monsanto had already declared war on Saskatchewan farmers immediately after their judgment against Percy Schmeiser, but it appears their approach now is to the extreme.

Schmeiser has received hundreds of phone calls from farmers who are facing similar circumstances. Monsanto representatives have threatened and pressured these farmers with demand letters. Their approach borders on the extreme, as many of the farmers who have called Schmeiser are in the same circumstances; they never signed any contracts with Monsanto, nor wanted to use their product, however, Monsanto says their canola fields have traces of their Round-Up Ready canola and they must pay.

[Quote:]

A new South American union was born Friday as leaders of the region’s 12 nations set out to create a continental parliament.

Some see the new organization, Unasur, as a regional version of the European Union. Summit host Brazil wants it to help coordinate defense affairs across South America and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez calls it a counterweight to the United States.

“The number one enemy of the union of the south is the empire of the United States,” Chavez said, claiming that the U.S. is “trying to generate wars in South America” to “divide and conquer.”

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, invited other Latin American and Caribbean nations to join the venture. “Unasur is born, open to all the region, born under the signs of diversity and pluralism,” he said.

[Quote:]

As business and consumers consider the implications for them of crude oil selling at US$130-plus per barrel, they should bear in mind that, at a conservative calculation, at least 60% of that price comes from unregulated futures speculation by hedge funds, banks and financial groups using the London ICE Futures and New York Nymex futures exchanges and uncontrolled inter-bank or over-the-counter trading to avoid scrutiny (see Speculators knock OPEC off oil-price perch, Asia Times Online, May 6, 2008).
US margin rules of the government’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission allow speculators to buy a crude oil futures contract on the Nymex by paying only 6% of the value of the contract. At the present price of around $130 per barrel, that means a futures trader only has to put up about $8 for every barrel. He borrows the other $120.

This extreme “leverage” of 16 to one helps drive prices to wildly unrealistic levels and offset bank losses in subprime and other disasters at the expense of the overall population.

[..]

Washington is trying to shift blame, as always, to Arab oil producers and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The problem is not a lack of crude oil supply. In fact, the world is in over-supply now. Yet the price climbs relentlessly higher. Why? The answer lies in what are clearly deliberate US government policies that permit the unbridled oil price manipulations.

[Quote:]

The most peaceful place in the Arab world is ruled by a gay sultan . At least that’s the word on the street in Oman, where the childless and divorced sultan Qaboos bin Said bin Taimur Al Bu Saidi is a popular and successful ruler. The 68 year old monarch is the 14th Saidi Sultan of Oman, his family having been in charge continuously since 1749.

[..]

There is no terrorism in Oman. No al Qaeda, no religious violence. There are some Islamic conservatives, but even they do not dare threaten the popular monarch. This despite the fact that the Sultan has expressed an interest in working out a peace deal with Israel. Most other Arab rulers consider the Omani Sultan a bit odd, and don’t consider him an example worth emulating.

[Quote:]

In another sign of growing tensions with the United States, Pakistan is threatening to turn over to Iran six members of a tribal militant group Iran claims are “spies” for the CIA.

The group, Jundullah, operates in Baluchistan on both sides of the border between Iran and Pakistan and has carried out a number of violent attacks on Iranian army facilities and officers inside the country.

The CIA has denied any direct ties with the group, but U.S. officials tell ABC News U.S. intelligence officers frequently meet and advise Jundullah leaders, and current and former intelligence officers are working to prevent the men from being sent to Iran.

Let me quote Bush on this, and see how the shoe fits…

[Quote:]

It’s important to have members of the United States Congress who understand the stakes and understand the nature of the enemy. They cannot exist without safe haven. And so one of the doctrines and one of the lessons learned after September the 11th is that we must hold people to account for harboring terrorists. If you harbor a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, if you house a terrorist, you’re as equally guilty as the terrorist.

[Quote:]

An anonymous reader sends word that Wikileaks has revealed that the United States is plotting a ‘Pirate Bay killing’ multi-lateral trade agreement, called ‘ACTA,’ with the EU, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Switzerland and New Zealand. “The proposal includes clauses designed to criminalize the non-profit facilitation of copyrighted information exchange on the Internet, which would also affect transparency sites such as Wikileaks. The Wikileaks document details provisions that would impose strict enforcement of intellectual property rights related to Internet activity and trade in information-based goods. If adopted, the treaty would impose a strong, top-down enforcement regime imposing new cooperation requirements upon Internet service providers, including perfunctory disclosure of customer information, as well as measures restricting the use of online privacy tools.”

So while torrents move on to a distributed setup, stuff that requires central servers, like wikileaks, are the only ones that really suffer. And again intellectual property laws damage society. The media companies think they can turn back the clock, but it doesn’t work that way. They can, however, hurt a lot of people with their attempts.

[Quote:]

People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.

Dan Quayle (1947 - )

[Quote:]

All political art is propaganda that is the point, but most political posters are bland, forgettable, wallpaper, like Fred Thompson on an off day. Fairey wanted something more iconic — aspirational, inspirational — and cool. In other words, he wanted to make posters that the cool cats would want. The 2008 Democratic primary season equivalent of the Che poster with all that implies. More Mao, more right now. The kind of poster that might make its way onto dorm room walls of fanboys. The kind of poster that might sell on eBay, as a signed Fairey Obama recently did, for $5,900. He wanted his posters to go viral.

[Quote:]

More logo math here