Welcome to Russ McBee Sign in | Join | Help

August 2007 - Posts

Just one sentence

Friday, August 31, 2007 9:21 PM
The zeitgeist of the Bush years can be summed up by one unintentionally meta-critical sentence from the ABC News blog " The Blotter " (via HuffPo ): The White House will not identify a private company which appears to be involved in the disappearance
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,

Watching the watchers

Thursday, August 30, 2007 8:39 PM
Well, this has certainly been an interesting year for Knox County government. Two main narratives have wound their way through local consciousness this year: the first, and longest running, is the controversy surrounding term limits on Knox County elected
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments

I'm taking up a collection

Wednesday, August 29, 2007 10:01 PM
I know there are a lot of philanthropic, generous people out there, so this is an appeal to all of you. I've decided to start taking up a collection for a noble, worthy cause: Y'all can buy me an island. For only $12 million, I could have my very own
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,

Bush's saber-rattling on Iran

Tuesday, August 28, 2007 8:10 PM
President Bush gave a speech before the American Legion today (perhaps one of his few remaining supportive audiences) in which he begged for patience on "progress" in Iraq. He ran through a dingy, moldy laundry list of reasons why we should stay in Iraq,
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,

Boeing's sexy new Dreamliner 787

Monday, August 27, 2007 9:57 PM
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is as fast as a jumbo jet, half the size of the Airbus 380, and 20% more fuel efficient. It's also selling like hotcakes : So far, 47 airlines -- including Continental Airlines Inc., Air Canada, Qantas Airways Ltd., Air India
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,

Idiotic police overreaction, verse 7,319

Monday, August 27, 2007 9:25 PM
Two members of a running club face felony charges in Connecticut after using flour to outline a running path. No, really : Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club inadvertently caused a bioterrorism
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments

Gonzales resigns

Monday, August 27, 2007 8:40 AM
Alberto Gonzales submitted his resignation to President Bush on Friday, and it was just announced this morning : Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation, submitted his to President Bush by telephone on Friday, the official said. His decision
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,

Sudanese government continues military offensive in Darfur

Sunday, August 26, 2007 9:09 PM
A UN-backed arms embargo is currently in place in Darfur which specifically prohibits the Sudanese government from engaging in offensive military operations against the people of that region. The Sudanese government continues to violate that embargo,
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under:

The Psychozilla Tribune is now live!

Sunday, August 26, 2007 10:05 AM
Pop open the champagne, folks -- the Psychozilla Tribune has gone live! In the spirit of the late, great Weekly World News (which recently ceased publication of its print edition), the PZT seeks to report news that is ... (ahem) ... "slightly off-center."
Posted by RussMcBee | 1 Comments
Filed under: , , , ,

Torturing whistleblowers

Saturday, August 25, 2007 7:15 PM
This article in Forbes (via Whitescreek ) tells the story of two Americans working in Baghdad who blew the whistle on some nasty illegal activity. After feeding the FBI documentation of illegal arms sales to civilians, the two whistleblowers were kidnapped
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments

Latest Minneapolis bridge collapse theory: pigeon poop

Saturday, August 25, 2007 3:41 PM
Inspectors investigating the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis have a new theory: pigeon poop may be one of the culprits. Seriously : It is thought the build-up of guano over many years could have speeded up the rusting of the steel beams in the eight-lane
Posted by RussMcBee | 2 Comments
Filed under: , ,

Please note: I'm changing my RSS feeds

Friday, August 24, 2007 10:32 PM
I'm changing the RSS feeds for this site from native Community Server feeds to Feedburner. If you've been using either my RSS feed or my Atom feed , please change your feed reader or aggregator to point to the new, sparkly feed . For most feed readers
Posted by RussMcBee | 8 Comments
Filed under:

Romney panders on health care reform

Friday, August 24, 2007 12:40 PM
So, what kind of country do we want, and what kind of people do we want to be? We can either continue making the mistakes of the past, pretending they never happened, or we can really apply ourselves and solve the problems that face us. That's the choice
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,

The dwindling of birds and the dimming of the lights

Thursday, August 23, 2007 8:27 PM
The phenomenon described in this op-ed piece is also happening here in the South: Earlier this summer, the National Audubon Society released a definitive study of population trends of North American birds, a monumental effort based on decades of Christmas
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments

McConnell spins his new surveillance power

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 10:05 PM
Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, gave an interview to the El Paso Times on his new warrantless surveillance powers. A superficial reading of the transcript (and this associated article , via Newscoma ) might suggest that all is well
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,

Oblivious to irony, Bush compares Iraq to Vietnam

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 12:24 PM
The White House has spent the last four years denying the quagmire in Iraq is in any way comparable to the quagmire we faced in Vietnam. That's suddenly changed. Bush gave a muddy, ham-handed speech in which he tried to make the case that pulling out
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,

Brilliance in blogging

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 10:34 PM
Randy Neal deserves some kind of blogging Oscar for this post , even though it'll only make sense to people familiar with recent events in Knox County government. I am in awe of his blog fu. Brilliance, I tell ya. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,

London mayor and Hugo Chavez strike an interesting deal; media bias shows clearly

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 9:25 PM
London Mayor Ken Livingstone and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced a deal today with some interesting terms. Venezuela has agreed to sell a certain quantity of oil to the UK at a 20 percent discount, as long as it's used only for London's public
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: , , , ,

Some stories from today worth thinking about

Monday, August 20, 2007 9:00 PM
These stories from today's news either struck a chord or struck a nerve with me; I'm not sure which: Americans who've lost their homes due to foreclosure are subject to a huge tax hit by the IRS . The amount of the forgiven debt is considered taxable
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under:

Doctors speak out against torture

Sunday, August 19, 2007 10:40 PM
Finally : The American Psychological Association ruled Sunday that psychologists can no longer be associated with several interrogation techniques that have been used against terrorism detainees at U.S. facilities because the methods are immoral, psychologically
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments

Losing hearts and minds

Sunday, August 19, 2007 9:35 PM
An important op-ed appeared in today's NYT , co-written by seven active-duty US soldiers. It cuts through the spin from the White House and the wishful thinking among the 101st Fighting Keyboardists. Some choice passages: To believe that Americans, with
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under:

Puerto Rico resists US military recruiting

Saturday, August 18, 2007 2:00 PM
Puerto Rico has long been a reliable source for recruits into the US military, but sentiment is shifting : On this island with a long tradition of military service, pro-independence advocates are tapping the territory's growing anti-Iraq war sentiment
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,

Jose Padilla's conviction

Friday, August 17, 2007 10:45 AM
Jose Padilla was convicted yesterday on terrorism support charges, after spending five years in legal limbo. His guilt or innocence long ago stopped being the primary issue in this case; rather, the issue has been whether we as a society are willing to
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments

Danes sort of apologize for Viking raids, Irish cool with it

Thursday, August 16, 2007 9:04 PM
A replica Viking ship recently embarked from Denmark on a thousand-mile journey to Ireland, recreating one of the many Viking voyages/raids conducted over 1,000 years ago. Here's how The Guardian (among others) reported it : The Havhingsten (Sea Stallion)
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,

A couple of notes on poverty

Thursday, August 16, 2007 10:02 AM
One of the flashpoint issues of the 1965 Watts riot was the lack of a hospital in that inner-city LA district. As a result of the riots, Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital was built. Its recent failures of care and performance have made headlines;
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments

Follow-up on trusting Gonzo with the death penalty

Thursday, August 16, 2007 9:05 AM
Previously, I blogged about the new provisions in the revised Patriot Act which give the attorney general the power to put executions on the fast track. We're supposed to trust Alberto Gonzales with the responsibility of deciding when to short-circuit
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,

Spy satellites to be used domestically

Wednesday, August 15, 2007 9:37 PM
Today's Wall Street Journal reveals that the US government plans to expand the domestic use of spy satellites ; among other things, they plan to grant law enforcement the use of spy satellite imagery with no apparent judicial oversight or warrants: The
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,

Trusting Gonzo, part II

Tuesday, August 14, 2007 8:40 PM
First, we're told that we're supposed to trust Alberto Gonzales to certify that the government's warrantless spying on us is Constitutionally valid and not at all Orwellian. Now, it turns out that the revised Patriot Act requires us to trust Alberto Gonzales
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,

Rove's resignation

Monday, August 13, 2007 8:54 PM
Karl Rove tendered his resignation today . And nothing will change at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Don't get me wrong; I think Rove neatly encapsulates everything wrong with the current incarnation of the GOP. He is evil, pandering, anti-intellectual, dishonest,
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,

The price of ignoring human rights

Sunday, August 12, 2007 9:08 PM
Six Bulgarian health workers were wrongfully imprisoned in Libya for allegedly infecting children with HIV; this turned out to be a lie. Their death sentences were commuted, and a still-shadowy deal between the EU and the Libyan government eventually
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under:

Short thoughts on torture, the creeping police state, and Bush's illiteracy

Sunday, August 12, 2007 7:46 PM
Four stories from today's news have stuck with me. First off, the enduring and irreversible effects of US government torture on Jose Padilla have left him with permanent mental damage: Jose Padilla had no history of mental illness when President Bush
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments

Album review: Prince's "Planet Earth"

Saturday, August 11, 2007 2:54 PM
Practically anyone who knows me will attest to the truth of this statement: I am a huge fan of Prince. For nearly thirty years, he's been my favorite artist; in fact, I'd go so far as to call him the most brilliant musician alive. Whenever a new Prince
Posted by RussMcBee | 2 Comments
Filed under:

Did life evolve from electrically charged dust?

Friday, August 10, 2007 7:39 PM
This is fascinating : According to a new simulation, electrically charged dust can organise itself into DNA-like double helixes that behave in many ways like living organisms, reproducing and passing on information to one another. Maybe this is how life
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,

Climate change, Twitter, and billiards

Thursday, August 09, 2007 7:20 PM
A couple of random thoughts: Shortly after 7:00 PM tonight, it was still 101°F in Knoxville. A new computer model of climate change has been released which is able to model global warming over the next ten years. According to a story I just heard on the
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments

More of Bush's corporate welfare

Thursday, August 09, 2007 9:20 AM
Shockingly, Bush wants to hand out even more corporate welfare : President Bush said yesterday that he is considering a fresh plan to cut tax rates for U.S. corporations to make them more competitive around the world, an initiative that could further
Posted by RussMcBee | 2 Comments
Filed under: , , ,

The Pentagon is even lying about the small stuff

Wednesday, August 08, 2007 10:30 PM
US Army Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp wrote some unflattering first-hand accounts of serving in Iraq which have been published in The New Republic. The right-wing noise machine became incandescent, and acting true to type, began trying to "prove" he was
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under:

Smoke and mirrors and carbon dioxide

Wednesday, August 08, 2007 8:46 PM
Here's the understatement of the day : A U.S. summit in September on climate change, one of at least four international meetings set for this year, is already raising doubts about any action being taken before President Bush leaves office. Bush is trying
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,

The DLC speaks, but nobody should listen

Tuesday, August 07, 2007 9:20 PM
Martin O'Malley and Harold Ford, Jr. have penned an absurd editorial in today's Washington Post , pleading the DLC's case as the "centrist" wing of the party and therefore the most logical faction to lead into 2008. Bull. They're nothing but GOP-lite,
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under:

Woman with pencil in her head for 55 years has it removed

Monday, August 06, 2007 9:49 PM
The strangest lede I've seen in a while: A woman in Germany who has spent 55 years with part of a pencil inside her head has finally had it removed. Pencil. In head. For 55 years: Margret Wegner fell over carrying the pencil when she was four. It punctured
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under:

Quote of the day (from Newscoma)

Sunday, August 05, 2007 8:47 PM
Here's a recent Twitter from Newscoma , which I've been laughing about for the last couple of hours: I just sneezed on my dog. It was unexpected for both of us. I've had several Quotes Of The Day from her. Maybe I should create a Newscoma tag. Share this
Posted by RussMcBee | 1 Comments
Filed under: , , ,

Congress endorses police state tactics

Sunday, August 05, 2007 11:12 AM
The Dems in Congress caved to the White House's bullying and enshrined warrantless, blanket surveillance into American law: The Democratic-controlled House last night approved and sent to President Bush for his signature legislation written by his intelligence
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments

Twitter

Saturday, August 04, 2007 2:01 PM
I've been playing around with Twitter for the last day or so. I'm not yet sure what it represents, or how I'll use it, but I can already see how it can become addictive. I've added a feed for my most recent Twitter updates in the right-hand sidebar, just
Posted by RussMcBee | 2 Comments
Filed under: , ,

The continuing crisis at 1600 Pennsylvania

Friday, August 03, 2007 9:18 AM
Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, has admitted that the NSA's warrantless wiretapping activities are only the tip of the iceberg : The disclosure by Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, appears to be the first time
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,

Don Williams has a blog

Thursday, August 02, 2007 10:29 PM
Don Williams has a blog at Knoxville Voice. Yay! It's about time. Don rocks. Now, if the KnoxVoice people would only set up some RSS feeds, my blogroll would be complete. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,

Insurers bail on climate change coverage

Thursday, August 02, 2007 10:15 PM
Uh oh (via Tom Paine ): In the wake of skyrocketing insurance claims due to natural disasters—hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, blizzards and the like—insurers have been imposing steep rate hikes and, in some cases, fleeing high-risk areas, leaving consumers
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,

Good moves from Congress

Thursday, August 02, 2007 9:05 AM
Although they don't have the votes in the Senate to stop obstructionist Republican filibusters, the House has passed some important bills in the last day or two: The CHAMP Act (225-204): This evening, the House passed the Children’s Health and Medicare
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under:

Quote of the day (on news anchors)

Wednesday, August 01, 2007 8:35 PM
From the inimitable Newscoma , we have this perfect jewel of lucidity regarding the ickiness she experienced when seeing a Fox News anchor getting a bit too excited over a sex-related news story he was presenting: However, I do not want a Fox News Anchor
Posted by RussMcBee | 2 Comments
Filed under: , ,

Malarky on Roberts' seizures

Wednesday, August 01, 2007 8:45 AM
So, the Chief Justice has two idiopathic seizures fourteen years apart , and now some smart-ass doctors (probably paid off by the drug companies) have diagnosed him as epileptic and in need of medication : Because the seizure was his second — he had a
Posted by RussMcBee | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,