Abuse of power

I wrote a post about a sex negative, misogynist, homophobic culture utilizing sex as power and as carte blanche to harm. Gotta find it and link to it.

In the meantime, I was surfing and found that Amnesty International is advocating that American citizens outcry against this:

Redefining rape: Bush deal would allow for sexually abusive tactics. Tell Congress to vote against it.

UPDATE: the House voted and passed President Bush's detainee legislation, which would redefine rape and sexual abuse to exclude acts previously considered abusive.

But there still time to call the Senate.

No human rights activist can remain on the sidelines in the days ahead. Call on your Senator to oppose these dangerous provisions.

Please call your Senator today and tell them you're outraged.

Dial 1-800-AMNESTY and our operators will connect you or call the Congressional switch board directly at 202-224-3121 (or lookup your Senator's info).

Let the person on the phone know that you are a constituent, and tell them that this "deal" must be fixed before it's sent to the President.

Tell them that the Senate should not rush to pass a bill that sets this country back on the legal standards for rape, sexual abuse and other forms of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. TELL THEM TO VOTE NO ON THE BUSH DEAL.

Wow!
Fascinating...

Everybody knows that Georgie got into office not once but TWICE by cheating.

Joe Francis, "child" pornographer From Maker of 'Girls Gone Wild' Runs Afoul of Law on Minors - Los Angeles Times:

Joe Francis and the Santa Monica-based company he built on soft-core "Girls Gone Wild" videos pleaded guilty Tuesday to violating federal laws designed to prevent the sexual exploitation of children and agreed to pay fines totaling $2.1 million.Under the terms of a deal with the Justice Department, Francis agreed to personally pay a $500,000 fine to settle charges in Los Angeles that he failed to keep records of the ages and identities of the women who appeared in his films. As a result, Francis said in a statement, footage of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct appeared in at least two DVDs he released.

Link Do a Google News search on child pornography and you will get thousands of news articles about (mostly) men being thrown in jail for being consumers of "child pornography".

I don't know about you, but I am damned sick of the right wing nuts exploiting 9/11 for their own benefit. This year they plan to do it again and ABC is hosting it. From Truthout:

Clinton, 9/11 and the Facts
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Wednesday 30 August 2006

The fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks is less than two weeks away...ABC intends to mark the occasion in far more grand a fashion. Starting September 10th and ending September 11th, the network will show a miniseries titled "The Path to 9/11." According to reports from early screenings, the writer/producer of the miniseries, Cyrus Nowrasteh, has crafted a television polemic intended to blame the entire event on President Clinton.

Nowrasteh, an outspoken conservative...spoke last year at the Liberty Film Festival, described by its founders as Hollywood's first conservative film festival. Govindini Murty, actress, writer, and co-director of the Liberty Film Festival, wrote a review of "The Path to 9/11" for the right-wing online news page FrontPageMag.com.

In the review, Murty states, "'The Path to 9/11' is one of the best, most intelligent, most pro-American miniseries I've ever seen on TV, and conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible. This is the first Hollywood production I've seen that honestly depicts how the Clinton administration repeatedly bungled the capture of Osama bin Laden."

Not long ago I was chided for targeting Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio. I considered him a target while the person who chided me said he was unassailable, too hard to defeat.

Well, once again events prove that no politician is safe if they are corrupt. Bob Ney is going down. And if we play our cards right, we can win big in Ohio this year because of Republican corruption.

I keep saying that even in districts where Republicans seem safe, the corruption issue can be huge. No one seemed safer in their corrupt complacency than Tom DeLay (TX), Randy Cunningham (CA) and Bob Ney (OH). DeLay is dropping out in disgrace, Cunningham is in jail and now I am happy to report that Bob Ney is following in DeLay's footsteps. Bob Ney, who I have included in some of my Ohio diaries, will drop out in disgrace in November. From BBC News:

A leading US Republican lawmaker facing corruption allegations has said he will not run for re-election in November.

Ohio congressman Bob Ney said he would stand down from the seat he has held for 12 years because of his family.

I got it right here, baby!

Photo courtesey of the National Weather Service

NOAA PREDICTS VERY ACTIVE 2006 NORTH ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON Residents in Hurricane Prone Areas Urged to Make Preparations
"For the 2006 north Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA is predicting 13 to 16 named storms, with eight to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become 'major' hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher," added retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.

On average, the north Atlantic hurricane season produces 11 named storms, with six becoming hurricanes, including two major hurricanes. In 2005, the Atlantic hurricane season contained a record 28 storms, including 15 hurricanes. Seven of these hurricanes were considered "major," of which a record four hit the United States. "Although NOAA is not forecasting a repeat of last year's season, the potential for hurricanes striking the U.S. is high," added Lautenbacher.

Killing an innocent bystander because he looks "muslim" is acceptable as long as it is meant to protect said by-stander from the actual terrorists.

Better err on the wrong side of right than to not err at all.

England has become the new United States, were murder is not a crime but an unsanitary nuisance.

Some have criticized NY State for being behind in compliance with the Federal government's HAVA requirements for new voting machines, but in reality our state may be slow because we are being more careful. While many states are simply taking vendor statements at face value (something I NEVER do in my job and our government shouldn't either), NY State has been standing its ground, even if in some cases it has only been because of a lack of decisiveness among our legislators. From Vote Trust USA:

The history of New York's purported non-compliance with Help America Vote Act (HAVA) is a long one. Much has been made of HAVA's lack of requirements for voter-verified paper audit records (VVPARs) or paper ballots that can be used to allow independent verification of e-voting system tallies produced by Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) and Optical Scan (OS) systems (paper ballots provide this capability inherently of course). But bills in the New York State legislature from both sides of the aisle have required VVPARs with random audits since at least 2004. New Yorkers may be stubborn but they're not stupid.

It would be patently absurd to replace a transparent, statewide, non-proprietary, low-tech mechanical lever voting system that even prevents write-in overvotes and can only be corrupted the old fashioned way -- one machine at a time -- with opaque, proprietary, computerized e-voting systems, programmed en masse by as few as a single insider, with no means of independent verification whatsoever. And contrary to popular belief the potential for programming error or malfeasance applies equally to DRE and Optical Scan technologies. Fortunately, the independent verification issue was resolved here years ago; the legislature declared, "There shall be paper." So too was the issue of source code escrow, which recently prompted at least one major e-voting vendor (Diebold Election Systems) not to compete in the state of North Carolina. As in the Tarheel State, the escrow of vendors' proprietary software has been a requirement in New York's legislation for years.

Ken Lay, convicted and corrupt Enron exec who became the poster boy for what is wrong with the Republican culture of corruption, has died of a heart attack. He was scheduled to be sentenced in September. Seems like nature beat the court to it.

Condolences to Lay's family.

Sometimes I wonder about Democrats. We don't know whether the elections were stolen in Florida, 2000, Georgia, 2002, and Ohio, 2004. Think about that. We DON'T KNOW. Other elections around the country, including a couple in San Diego, California, have had suspicious outcomes and flaws.

One concern are voting machines. America, after 2000, decided it needs to upgrade its voting machines. Fine. That sounds good. But ONLY if it improves the efficiency and accuracy of our voting system.

Today in NYC and around the nation we are faced with a choice: upgrade to DRE machines where the vote is all done on a touch screen, or PBOS machines where the vote is done in Scantron fashion with a real paper ballot, but computer tabulation. These are the only choices being offered by manufacturers.

Democrats got burned potentially in three election years in a row. And part of the problem are these new machines. Both DRE and PBOS machines have had problems. The difference is that if an election board wants to completely check the accuracy of an election, it can be done with PBOS machines. It can't with DRE machines.

With PBOS, as a last resort, a non-partisan or bi-partisan election board can fairly and accurately count the paper ballots that are left as a record of the vote. In fact, the voter him or herself can check before leaving the voting booth to see that the vote is properly cast. With DRE machines it is all in the computer and the software is a company secret. That means, with DRE machines we will never and can never know how the votes are recorded and tabulated. Only the company knows. That puts private companies in charge of our vote, and puts oversight of the accuracy of an election in the hands of the companies that are selling us the machines.