'Best of TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Short Takes
By Baron Dave Romm
Shockwave Radio Theater podcasts
I-35 bridge remnants will be recycled
From the Minneapolis Star Tribune Saturday January 12, 2008, pE11. The column is not online, so here it is in its entirety:
I-35 bridge remnants will be recycled
FIXIT Karen Youso
Q. What happened to all the debris from the Interstate 35W collapse?
A. Virtually all of the material from the collapsed bridge has been or will be recycled, according to Kevin Gutknecht, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Transportation.
The concrete was sold to a company that pulverizes concrete and uses that material for various building purposes. The steel goes to a scrap dealer that will also recycle the material. Some of the steel from the bridge is lying in a yard on the river flats south of the bridge site, pending completion of the National Transportation Safety Board investigation. Then it will be recycled, as well.
American Iron, 3 miles upstream from the bridge, is a recipient of much of the steel. According to its website, the company scaled back operations for several weeks as the Mississippi barge canal was being cleared. When river shipping resumed, twisted beams, broken decking and other materials from the bridge began arriving at the yard. The largest sections require sheering, and then the bulk of the material will be barged downstream, past the collapse site and on to foundries where it will be recycled. It is possible that the new bridge could contain steel that was part of the old bridge.
Meet the new bridge, same as the old bridge.
Will Your Vote Matter?
The conservative news media has consistently ignored one of the biggest political stories of our generation: The Republican's successful plan to steal elections. This is more than just politically motivated decisions by five Supreme Court justices, the ongoing story is about voter suppression and manipulation of the counting of the votes cast. The latest demonstration of how easy it is to manipulate the vote is from Princeton.
Princeton
University Reveals How the GOP Steals Elections. OpEdNews commentary
with link to video of the study. January 12,
2008:
Unless something is done, the GOP will steal the next election as well. Unless something is done, this series of primaries means absolutely nothing. The fix is undoubtedly in. Unless something is done, the GOP will walk away with another stolen election, another GOP nincompoop will foist upon the nation his personal and vainglorious ambitions of empire. The Military/Industrial complex is licking its chops and theocrats are lining up to play Torquemada.
The following video was produced by Princeton University. It explains precisely how the votes are stolen and will be stolen again. [See next story for direct link to Princeton study and video]
Princeton tested an AccuVote-TS which it obtained from a private party. The experiments were designed to determine whether the machine could be hacked under "real election practices", realistic scenarios in the real world. Princeton found the machine vulnerable to a number of "extremely serious attacks" that "undermine undermine the accuracy and credibility of the vote counts it produces." In other words, DieBold machines can be hacked and most have been.
Princeton University site on Information Technology Policy. Currently, this site has two studies on the main page.
Machine-Assisted
Election Auditing (pdf):
Abstract Election audit procedures usually rely on precinct based audits, in which workers manually review all paper ballots from selected polling places, but these audits can be expensive due to the labor required. This paper proposes an alternative audit strategy that allows machines to perform most of the work. Precincts are audited using auditing machines, and the output of the auditing machines is manually audited using efficient ballot sampling techniques. This strategy can achieve equal or greater confidence than precinct-based auditing at a significantly lower cost while protecting voter privacy better than previous ballot-based auditing methods. We show how to determine which ballots to audit against the auditing machines' records and compare this new approach to precinct-based audits in the context of Virginia's November 2006 election. Far fewer ballots need to be audited by hand using our approach. We also explore extensions to these techniques, such as varying individual ballots' audit probabilities based on the votes they contain, that promise further efficiency gains.Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine (pdf; this is the study referenced above, with a video):
Abstract This paper presents a fully independent security study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine, including its hardware and software. We obtained the machine from a private party. Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities - a voting-machine virus. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab. Mitigating these threats will require changes to the voting machine's hardware and software and the adoption of more rigorous election procedures.
This follows a Bruce Schneier on report on how easy it is to tamper with voting machine security and elections, 12/24/07. The article references an Ohio study and a California study on how simple it is to compromise voting machines.
Disenfranchising Democrats
As usual, though the skewed election results always seem to favor Republicans, Karl Rove and cronies always point the finger at Democrats and the conservative news media always goes along with the GOP talking points. Real news doesn't get reported while the lies are debated.
Rove and co. have claimed "election fraud" and used that stick to disenfranchise Democrats. The exact opposite is true.
Salon.com story. Garrett Eps, Salon.com, May 10, 2007 (Premium membership for direct link, but you can usually click through the ads):
May 10, 2007 | By evil chance, I spent the Saturday night before Election Day 2000 at a jolly dinner for high-level Republicans. Most of the talk over the entrees concerned why then-candidate George W. Bush had been too pusillanimous to tell the voters that Al Gore was not just a liberal, but a Soviet-style Marxist-Leninist. But as the desserts circulated, so too did a piece of comic relief -- an anonymous leaflet explaining to voters that because of heavy voter registration, the rules had been changed: Republicans would vote on Tuesday, Democrats and independents on Wednesday.
I think of that dinner whenever I read about the widening scandal of the U.S. attorneys and the politicization of the Justice Department under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Gonzo is probably the most endangered man since William Tell's son Walter. The pattern behind the scandal, however, transcends Gonzales' fate or that of his underlings.
At least part of the U.S. attorneys plot seems to derive from the "election fraud" hoax that Republicans are trying to perpetrate in order to gain control of the country's voter lists. So nailing this inept crew of thugs won't be good enough. We need laws protecting the right to vote from the kind of phony, partisan prosecutors that Gonzales, Rove and Co. were trying to put in place, and from the punitive, restrictive voter-ID laws that are a prominent part of the far-right political agenda.
Emails detail RNC Voter Suppression in Five States Long Truthout article, with evidentiary links and an interview with former US Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias July 27, 2007:
Previously undisclosed documents detail how Republican operatives, with the knowledge of several White House officials, engaged in an illegal, racially-motivated effort to suppress tens of thousands of votes during the 2004 presidential campaign in a state where George W. Bush was trailing his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry.
The documents also contain details describing how Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign officials, and at least one individual who worked for White House political adviser Karl Rove, planned to stop minorities residing in Cuyahoga County from voting on election day.
The efforts to purge voters from registration rolls was spearheaded by Tim Griffin, a former Republican National Committee opposition researcher. Griffin recently resigned from his post as interim US attorney for Little Rock Arkansas. His predecessor, Bud Cummins, was forced out to make way for Griffin. Another set of documents, 43 pages of emails, provided to Truthout by the PBS news program "NOW," contains blueprints for a massive effort undertaken by RNC operatives in 2004, to challenge the eligibility of voters expected to support Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in states such as Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Pennsylvania.
One email, dated September 30, 2004, and sent to a dozen or so staffers on the Bush-Cheney campaign and the RNC, under the subject line "voter reg fraud strategy conference call," describes how campaign staffers planned to challenge the veracity of votes in a handful of battleground states in the event of a Democratic victory.
Furthermore, the emails show the Bush-Cheney campaign and RNC staffers compiled voter-challenge lists that targeted probable Democratic voters in at least five states: New Mexico, Ohio, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Voting rights lawyers have made allegations of so called "vote caging," against Republicans previously. These emails provide more evidence. One Republican operative involved in the planning wrote "we can do this in NV, FL, PA and NM because we have a list to run against the Absentee Ballot requests, and should." Vote caging is an illegal tactic to suppress minorities from voting by having their names purged from voter rolls when they fail to respond to registered mail sent to their homes. The Republican National Committee signed a consent decree in 1986 stating they would not engage in the practice after they were caught suppressing votes in 1981 and 1986.
Now they're blaming Hillary Clinton, and the media is buying it. You shouldn't.
Was the New Hampshire vote stolen? Farhad Manjoo in salon.com January 11, 2008.
The Web is abuzz with allegations of fraud, and Dennis Kucinich is asking for a recount. The charges don't hold water, but this problem is not going away.
While I have no proof one way or the other, the charges don't make much sense. Clinton was leading in New Hampshire until the Iowa caucuses, and it's far more likely (to me) that the polling was skewed, not the voting. Indeed, none of the charges leveled are even remotely in line with the polls as shoved on a nation by the conservative news media desperate for excitement in the horserace. I have no doubt Obama got a bounce from his caucus victory, but the winner in New Hampshire is rarely dependent on what happened in Iowa.
Applying Occam's Razor, the most likely explanations are a) the news media blew it and/or b) Republicans are setting up a gullible public to disbelieve any reports of tampering in their famous "everyone does it" dismissal. Republicans are always soft on crime when it's theirs, and they're usually wrong when they point fingers at the Democrats.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. More radio programs, interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
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Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Kerry Eleveld: Taking Stock of This Gay Election (advocate.com)
Clinton, Edwards, and Obama all reached out to the community in different ways, leaving gay activists to choose which candidate's approach will produce results for LGBT equality.
FROMA HARROP: N.H. Women Had Enough Insults (creators.com)
You could feel the swell of female angst. It wasn't even about Hillary Clinton. It was about what she was put through. It was about running while female. The Democratic race for president was supposed to herald a new era for blacks and women in politics.
Allen Barra: 50 Years of Pissing People Off (villagevoice.com)
And that's just at the Voice. After half a century, Nat Hentoff is still a work in progress
Nat Hentoff's Greatest Hits (villagevoice.com)
Excerpts from his first 50 years at the Voice
Allen Barra: Hall of Shame (villagevoice.com)
Once again, one of baseball's greatest is overlooked for his place in Cooperstown.
Jake Meaney: "Angel: Complete Series Collectors Set" (popmatters.com)
This show of moral quandaries, ramifications of choice, and consequences of indifference is one of the great unsung and underappreciated series of the turn of the century.
Roger Ebert: "Dusty Cohl: In Memory"
Nobody ever seemed to know what Dusty Cohl did for a living. He was a lawyer, and it was said he was "in real estate," but in over 30 years I never heard him say one word about business. His full-time occupation was being a friend, and he was one of the best I've ever made.
Jim Emerson: My Cap'n, Dusty Cohl (blogs.suntimes.com)
Dusty Cohl was a tall man and an even taller character. Larger than life? Absolutely. And he made my life feel larger just knowing him.
"This Modern World" by Tom Tomorrow
How William Kristol Earned a New York Times Column.
Commentoon: Hillary Tears (womensenews.org)
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and warmer than seasonal - and I'm not complaining.
The NBC-presented Golden Globes was the worst awards show - ever.
Having the talentless, but obviously connected, Billy Bush smirk his way down a list was a very bad idea.
NBC west coast must have liked, it though. They aired it live at 6pm, then puked it back at 9pm.
Yuck.
Here's a complete list of the Golden Globes - 2008 winners.
Celebrities Spread Around Donations
Hollywood
Actor Michael Douglas, for example, has contributed to five current and former Democratic presidential candidates. As of Sept. 30, the latest reports available, he had donated the maximum $4,600 - $2,300 for the primary campaign and $2,300 for the general election - to Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd, and $1,500 to Dennis Kucinich.
Another serial donor in the current election is Paul Newman, who gave the maximum contribution to Obama, Clinton, and Dodd, and $2,300 to Richardson.
And Republican presidential candidates got a few donations as well: singer Pat Boone donated to Mitt Romney and former candidate Sam Brownback, producer Jerry Bruckheimer contributed to John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani got money from Kelsey Grammer, Adam Sandler and Ben Stein.
For a lot more - Hollywood
Takes Palestinian Passport
Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim, the world renowned Israeli pianist and conductor, has taken Palestinian citizenship and said he believed his rare new status could serve a model for peace between the two peoples.
"It is a great honor to be offered a passport," he said late on Saturday after a Beethoven piano recital in Ramallah, the West Bank city where he has been active for some years in promoting contact between young Arab and Israeli musicians.
"I have also accepted it because I believe that the destinies of ... the Israeli people and the Palestinian people are inextricably linked," Barenboim said. "We are blessed -- or cursed -- to live with each other. And I prefer the first."
Though he dismissed any wish to play a political role, the former music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra took a dig at Bush's strikingly forceful call in Jerusalem last week for Israel to end, in the president's own words, "the occupation."
"Now even not very intelligent people are saying that the occupation has to be stopped," Barenboim said.
Daniel Barenboim
Studios See Dollars, Sense
Film Preservation
Much is made of the need to preserve old films for art's sake. Funds are raised, grants given out to ensure that even cinematic historical footnotes like the 1945 Fox melodrama "Leave Her to Heaven" are given as much care and attention as, say, the Mona Lisa.
But in the end, the real reason more and more movies are being preserved these days is about economics. After decades of letting films decay, the industry has seen the light, which came -- as many Hollywood epiphanies do -- in the form of flashing dollar signs.
Credit Blu-Ray Disc, its antecedent DVD and high-definition television. The proliferation of such technology has educated the consumer, creating a demand for high-quality images and audio, and has given studios an ideal economic motive for keeping their libraries in top condition. And once most consumers become accustomed to crisp visuals and booming audio, nothing less will do.
Michael Pogorzelski, director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Academy Film Archive, points to the jump from VHS to DVD as film preservation's turning point.
Film Preservation
Dame Edna Told To Rest
Barry Humphries
Australian comic Barry Humphries has been ordered to rest for six months because of complications over appendix surgery, a spokesman for the Magners Glasgow International Comedy Festival said on Sunday.
Humphries, the creator of Australian characters Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, had his appendix removed at the end of December.
The enforced rest means Humphries, 73, has been forced to cancel a North American tour -- due to start later this month -- as well as his only British-scheduled appearance in Glasgow in March.
Barry Humphries
Baby News
Max Liron Bratman
Pop singer Christina Aguilera has given birth to a son in Los Angeles, her label said on Sunday.
Max Liron Bratman was born on Saturday night. He is the first-born for Aguilera, 27, and music executive Jordan Bratman, 30, who were married two years ago. RCA Records said mother and son were doing well.
Max Liron Bratman
More Baby News
Luisa Danbi Grier-Kim
David Alan Grier is the father of a new baby girl, according to published reports. The actor and comedian's wife Christine Y. Kim gave birth to the girl Thursday afternoon, People magazine reported. The baby was delivered at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, according to Us Magazine.
Luisa Danbi Grier-Kim - "Danbi" means "sweet rain" in Korean - was 7 pounds, 6 ounces at birth, People magazine reported.
Luisa Danbi Grier-Kim
Still More Baby News
Jacob Emerson Fishman
Courtney Thorne-Smith has given birth to a baby boy, the actress' publicist said Sunday.
Thorne-Smith delivered the baby - her first - at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Friday, publicist Karen Samfilippo said.
The father is Thorne-Smith's husband Roger Fishman, a media consultant. The couple named the boy Jacob Emerson Fishman.
Jacob Emerson Fishman
Linked To Killings
Veterans
At least 121 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have committed a killing or been charged in one in the United States after returning from combat, The New York Times reported Sunday.
The newspaper said it also logged 349 homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans in the six years since military action began in Afghanistan, and later Iraq. That represents an 89-percent increase over the previous six-year period, the newspaper said.
The 121 killings ranged from shootings and stabbings to bathtub drownings and fatal car crashes resulting from drunken driving, the newspaper said. All but one of those implicated was male.
About a third of the victims were girlfriends or relatives, including a 2-year-old girl slain by her 20-year-old father while he was recovering from wounds sustained in Iraq.
Veterans
Humor Deprived
Clay Aiken
Clay Aiken, who joins the cast of "Monty Python's Spamalot" this week, says its humor was initially lost on him.
"The first time I saw it I thought it was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen in my entire life," the "American Idol" runner-up told Newsweek. "My tour drummer is the 'Spamalot' drummer, and (he) said you've got to see it again."
Aiken plays one of the leads, Sir Robin, in the Tony Award-winning musical in a stint from Friday through May 4. He told the magazine he was so sore from rehearsals he "couldn't even get off the toilet the other day."
"I thought Monty Python was a person until three months ago," Aiken told Newsweek for editions on newsstands on Monday.
Clay Aiken
Attacks Photographer
Bjork
Icelandic singer Bjork attacked a newspaper photographer shortly after she arrived at New Zealand's Auckland International Airport on Sunday, local media reported.
Bjork, who is in the northern city of Auckland to perform at the Big Day Out concert on Friday, tore "New Zealand Herald" photographer Glenn Jeffrey's shirt after he photographed her arriving at the airport early Sunday, he told news agency New Zealand Press Association according to a report on Monday.
Jeffrey, a news photographer for 25 years, said Bjork was accompanied by a man who asked him not take photos.
"I took a couple of pictures ... and as I turned and walked away she came up behind me, grabbed the back of my black skivvy (T-shirt) and tore it," he told the agency.
Bjork
2 Dallas Police Officers Fired
Steve Holy
Two city police officers accused of holding country music singer Steve Holy and a friend at gunpoint during a home game of foosball have been fired.
Officers Randy Anderson, 25, and Paul Loughridge, 48, each face a misdemeanour charge of deadly conduct in connection with the Dec. 27 allegation. If convicted, they could face a year in jail and a fine of up to $4,000.
"Their behaviour that night is disturbing and not consistent with how we expect our Dallas police officers to perform," said Police Chief David Kunkle, who fired the men Friday.
Steve Holy
Video Favorite
Glenn Beck
The video of a disheveled, unshaven Glenn Beck talking about a hemorrhoid operation gone wrong feels like one of those late-night, partying-with-your-friends pictures posted - to your eternal regret - on Facebook the next day.
The whole world can see one of your worst moments. In Beck's case, it rapidly became an Internet sensation, fueling the CNN Headline News host's new crusade against health care practitioners who don't care.
Beck made the seven-minute video for his fans, posting it on his Web site. The intention was to explain why he wasn't coming back to work until last week, but it took a detour into the truly weird.
What was expected to be an outpatient procedure put Beck in the hospital for five days, with doctors offering a medicine cabinet's worth of drugs to ease his pain. The drugs made him hallucinate and briefly suicidal, Beck said.
Glenn Beck
N.Y.-Based Probe
Steroids
A published report says a number of entertainers have been named in connection with an Albany, N.Y.-based steroid investigation.
The Times Union of Albany newspaper cites unidentified sources in a Sunday report that R&B music star Mary J. Blige, rap musicians 50 Cent, Timbaland and Wyclef Jean, and award-winning author and producer Tyler Perry may have received or used performance enhancing drugs.
Albany District Attorney P. David Soares launched an investigation into steroid trafficking last year. Law enforcement officials have said evidence does not indicate that the celebrities broke the law. Officials are focusing on the doctors, pharmacists and clinics that provide the drugs.
Steroids
Weekend Box Office
'The Bucket List'
Score one for the geezers. "The Bucket List," the tale of two cancer patients who decide to travel the world before they die, bested movies about treasure hunting, bumbling crooks and pirates to top the weekend box office, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The film was closely followed by the comedy "First Sunday," featuring Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan as hapless petty criminals who scheme to rob a church but end up being rewarded with a lesson about second chances. The Sony Screen Gems film banked $19 million at 2,200 theaters.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "The Bucket List," $19.5 million.
2. "First Sunday," $19 million.
3. "Juno," $14 million.
4. "National Treasure: Book of Secrets," $11.5 million.
5. "Alvin and the Chipmunks," $9.1 million.
6. "I Am Legend," $8.1 million.
7. "One Missed Call," $6.1 million.
8. "P.S. I Love You," $5 million.
9. "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A Veggie Tales Movie," $4.4 million
10. "Atonement," $4.3 million.
'The Bucket List'
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