Thursday, May 4, 2006

Moussaoui Lives At last, the grotesque spectacle is over. Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted (however periperally) in connection with the 9/11 attacks, will spend the rest of his life in prison. The United States will not be carrying out his execution. Those of you who are longtime TMBS readers know my feelings on the death penalty. For you new readers, here goes. I'm against it. Always. In every instance. Why? Because I have a soul, and I don't believe that I should kill other human beings out of revenge. If I won't do it, I won't have the government, acting on my behalf, do it and dress it up in terms like "the ultimate punishment." It's killing. We, as a civilized society, should not be in the business of executing people. This is not an abstract discussion for me. I've had my opportunity to face this decision directly, when the man who killed my brother was sentenced, and when it came time to make the call, I couldn't do it. I could not be a party to murder, even for a man who had murdered my own brother. The federal prosecutors had two challenges in this trial. First, they had to convict Moussaoui for something that would tie him to the 9/11 hijackings, even though everyone knows he was in jail in Minnesota when the planes took flight. So they wrangled a conviction on the grounds that Moussaoui should have confessed he was part of the plot when he was arrested in August 2001. As many civil liberties lawyers have explained, this is essentially convicting ZM for not implicating himself in a crime, which he has every right not to do under our Fifth Amendment. The precedent is disturbing, and no doubt will be challenged for years to come. So part one was successful. ZM was tied to 9/11. The jury decided he was eligible for the death penalty based on this bizarre conviction. Now they just had to push the jury to decide in favor of his execution. This is where the trial went over the edge from bizarre right into horrorshow. The prosecutors showed video of people jumping from the World Trade Center and hitting the ground. People on fire. Body parts in the street. They played the cockpit recording from Flight 93, the final moments of 40 people's lives who fought to save the U.S. Capitol or the White House from catastrophe. Giuliani was called upon to describe his personal anguish as a witness to the WTC attacks. Phone calls were replayed. Countless ghoulish scenes of death and chaos were shown. Tears were shed by nearly everyone in the courtroom. "That was a man on fire as he fell through the canopy. Those are the remains of his body," Rosbrook testified in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. And yet the jury refused to execute Moussaoui. When the prosecution mounted an all-out blitz of horror to push the jury to their emotional limit, they maintained their humanity and spared Moussaoui's life. He will not be released, of course - he spends the rest of his life in prison, and will die a tired old man instead of a martyr. On NPR this morning, I heard that Moussaoui claimed that the United States had lost, because they weren't able to get an execution. When we have a system that cheers murder as justice, when someone like Moussaoui practically begged to be executed by America's hand, and the jury was still able to hold onto their decency, I think the opposite is true. I feel pride today for those twelve jurors, our representatives of justice and, amazingly, of mercy. 3:23:55 PM     Speak up!  []

	Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Snow Lands in the White House Unbelievable. Bush hasn't done enough to alienate the American people. Now, he's appointing Tony Snow, from the Fox News Channel ("We Distort, You Decide") to be his new press secretary. As many trying-to-be-evenhanded journalists have noted, just because Snow made his living on Fox doesn't mean he's always been a fan of the Prez. Media Matters has looked over some of his past shows and columns, and has come up with a fun list of questions for Snow's first appearance in front of the WH Press Corps: Do you still think President Bush is a "wimp" and looks "impotent" for not "veto[ing] a single bill of any type"? With the failure of Harriet Miers' Supreme Court nomination, do you consider Bush's presidency effectively over? Will you pursue amicable relations with Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), even though he "behave[s] in such an inane manner," and "made official his descent into the Moonbat Grotto"? Check it out here. 10:36:54 AM     Speak up!  []

	Wednesday, February 15, 2006

The Worst Day of Dick Cheney's Life? So the worst day of Cheney's life involves shooting one of his best friends.  I still think it was worse for the other guy. Did anyone else think it was odd that right after Cheney called Harry Whittington to offer his sympathy, Whittington had a heart attack?  Is anyone else out there wondering what Whittington did to piss off old Cheney? I've heard various news folks, and press flaks like McClellan, try to change the tone of this incident by using terms like "sprayed" or "peppered" to describe what happened to Cheney's luckless hunting partner.  What happened was that Dick Cheney had a gun and pulled the trigger while another human being was in front of the barrel.  Cheney fired a shotgun shell that delivered over 200 small pieces of shrapnel (birdshot) into another man's body.  He shot another person.  Now, that poor man has suffered a heart attack because some of the shrapnel floated up into his heart.  Any question of this being a serious incident should now be over.  I can't help but be amused, and a little troubled, at all of the scrambling done by the White House Press corps.  The most egregious story I heard was that Scott McClellan heard that the Vice President was "involved in a hunting incident," but didn't get the details until later.  Now, if it was me, if I heard that Cheney was hanging out with a group of people with guns, and that there was a hunting incident, I'd want to get the rest of the story in a big damn hurry.  Meanwhile, McClellan was comfortable enough with the VP's shooting skills to make jokes about it.  During Monday's press gaggle, McClellan reportedly cracked a joke that a visiting football team was wearing orange because it was their school color, not because Cheney was in the building.   Let's all say this together.  It's okay for the late night comedians to make jokes about people being shot.  They are COMEDIANS.   It's not okay for the man who speaks on behalf of the chief executive to make jokes about people being shot.  6:58:56 PM     Speak up!  []

	Wednesday, February 1, 2006

The State of the Union is ... um ... NINE-ELEVEN!!! He's a liar.  I didn't even tune in, and I know he's a liar.  I'm totally going armchair quarterback here.  I can't stand to see his smug lying face, so I just read the Wonkette liveblog and gathered up some of the talking (head) points afterward.  Here's what I've got: The economy is strong.  See, when you have to go out of your way to tell people the economy's in good shape, you're in trouble.  I wonder what the good people of Detroit are thinking about the economy.  The ones who still have a job that doesn't involve handing programs to Super Bowl visitors, that is. Fact check:  Bush's estimate of job growth didn't include the first two years of his administration, when the economy was shedding jobs like cats on a white couch.  If we were only wiretapping when I came into office, September 11th never would have happened.  This sounds like a load of crap to me, and the Washington Post (among others) agrees with the diagnosis.  Apparently, the FBI didn't even know where some of the hijackers were until they got onto their respective planes, so how exactly were we going to wiretap them?  And look, for the 5 millionth time, what Bush was doing was illegal.  Claiming a hypothetical national security reason doesn't make it legal, any more than the black box prisons we've got around the world.  We're on the right track in Iraq.  Oh, come on, I don't want even to research how wrong that is.  The budget deficit is on track to cut by half in 2009.  Uh, yeah, if you shut down Congress during 2008, maybe.  And I'm sure that making those tax cuts permanent is going to do amazing things for the budget deficit.  Cloning, including the reprehensible (I guess) thought of human-animal hybrids, should be banned.  Or, as Wonkette put it, "Bush says no to werewolves!" America is addicted to oil.  Oh, fuck you.  The world has known this for years, but you just figured this out?  This is the president who refuses to raise mileage standards, who made his living (until he bankrupted the company) drilling for oil, who pushes and pushes to drill in ANWR for oil that'll last this country for five and a half minutes, who never met an oil company executive he didn't like.   Now we're addicted to oil?  Fuck you.  Fuck you and your bigass pickup truck that you drive all over your "ranch." Fuck your sudden conversion to environmentalism that will yield exactly zero conservation proposals.  Fuck you, fuck you, and furthermore, fuck you.  You see why I don't watch these things? 3:16:21 PM     Speak up!  []

	Monday, January 30, 2006

Political Blockbuster I heard on KUOW yesterday that the new state Democratic chair, Dwight Pelz, and the new Republican chair, Diane Tibelius, have both said that their parties need to reach out to the middle class. In other bold statements, they both announced that Boeing and Microsoft were fine companies, they really loved apples, and if they had to go out on a limb, they would both have to pick the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. 9:16:50 AM     Speak up!  []

	Saturday, January 28, 2006

Equal Rights in Washington, Finally After the drama and gnashing of teeth last year, Washington's gay rights bill seemed to fly through the Legislature this time.  Yesterday, the bill passed the State Senate for the first time in thirty years on a 25-23 vote, with exactly one Republican supporting it.  Governor Gregoire is expected to sign it on Tuesday.  The bill adds "sexual orientation" to state law banning discrimination in housing, employment and insurance based on race, gender, age, disability, religion, marital status and other factors. The back-and-forth maneuvering by Microsoft was absent this time:  they signed a letter encouraging the Legislature to pass the bill, along with corporate giants Boeing, H-P, and Nike.  So now the only drama remaining is watching the response by the gay-hating loonies and Republican windbags. The loonie brigade, led by one Rev. Ken Hutcherson of the Antioch Bible Church in Redmond.  He has threatened a massive boycott of Microsoft, and is apparently instructing people to buy Microsoft stock and then dump it all on May 1st (in honor of the people's revolution?)  To my untrained ear, that sounds like stock manipulation.  But let's check in with an expert. "The chances of him being successful with that are slim to none, and slim just left town," said Hans Olsen, chief investment officer at Bingham Legg Advisers. Hmm.  Okay, then.  Windbag. Meanwhile, Republicans are in competition to see who can say the stupidest thing about this bill.  A few selections: "I believe this bill places us on a slippery slope toward the legalization of gay marriage in our state. ... The governor and others are trying hard to separate this issue - gay rights from gay marriage. The two are linked." - Sen. Dan Swecker, R-Rochester.  Ah, yes.  Once you let those gays think they're equal members of society, they go ahead and start acting like it.  Note:  Swecker's also the guy who said that this bill would "trample unrelentingly" on the rights of religious people who don't accept gays.  In other words, it would discriminate against people who want to discriminate. "I think it's very important that we don't go down the road of protecting people because of how they choose to act." Sen. Joseph Zarelli, R-Ridgefield. The topper comes from Sen. Val Stevens, R-Arlington, who mournfully said, "This is a very sad day for the state of Washington," once it became clear there were enough votes to pass the bill.  Come on, people, we're talking about letting people keep their job and their apartments, not giving them the keys to your gun cabinet and kiddie porn collection.  One touching note from Olympia:  Eric Ishina, the partner of civil rights bill torchbearer Cal Anderson, was on hand for the bill's passage in the Senate yesterday.   The much-beloved Anderson sponsored the bill for eight years before his death from AIDS in 1995.  Ishina said yesterday, "I don't doubt that he's really smiling down on us right now."   8:22:51 AM     Speak up!  []

	Saturday, January 21, 2006

Boycott Sony and Their Love Monkey "Love Monkey" is a front. Sure, I almost got sucked in, too.  The premise called to me - a young hipster who founds his own record label.  It sounded tempting.  And one of the real life indie tastemakers, Nic Harcourt, was signed on as music supervisor.   This might be worth looking into, says I to myself.  But oh, no.  Hell no.  The beast that is "Love Monkey" will never illuminate my tv screen.  Why?  Because it's a goddamn front.  A shill.  A scam.  Newsweek said "there's nothing else like it on tv," and they didn't know the half of it.  In the ultimate example of cross-pollination and secret product placement, Sony BMG is calling the musical shots at "Love Monkey."  As Thomas Bartlett pointed out on Audiofile, they're promoting their own artists through the show, putting up their new acts to be the new signees at the new "indie" record label.  So all of those people who are supposedly new and unsigned and being "discovered" by Mr. Indie Hipster Lovemonkey are really part of the giant monstrosity that is SonyBMG.  I'm sure there are those who might defend the creators of this commercial chimera.  It's a show about rock bands, they might whine.  How are you supposed to find good bands now without the help of a label?  Oh, let's see.  "Square Pegs" was able to get Devo on their show and the Waitresses to do their theme song back in the day - they sure weren't owned by any goddamn music label.  Shows like "The O.C.," "Joan of Arcadia," and "Gilmore Girls" are able to come up with lots of good, compelling, occasionally indie artists, and they aren't owned by any goddamn music labels.  (I'm willing to believe that there's a little bit of product placement fees going on there, but I can overlook that.  It's a difference of degree.  The above-mentioned shows exists as shows first, and have music as an incidental part of the show.  LoveMonkey is looking to be a music promotion machine disguised as a tv show.)  Y'all might remember that I've got a bit of antipathy towards Sony for hating their customers.  They hate their customers so much that they planted rootkits surreptitiously on millions of CDs to keep them from doing things with "their" CDs that Sony didn't want them to do.  The rootkits have destroyed computers, allowed viruses to seep in, pissed off the world in general and set Sony up for lawsuits by the score.  So now unsuspecting millions are going to watch what they think is a tv show, but it turns out to only be an infomercial for the SonyBMG beast.  Don't be taken in. Fuck Sony.  If you end up watching it, then you only have yourself to blame.  You've been had.  You've been took.  You been hoodwinked.  Bamboozled.  Led astray.  Run amok.  8:59:12 AM     Speak up!  []