End of Silence

Lots of stories this week adding more evidence to what I already suspected: this administration is a lying bunch of weasels. The NY Times story was mentioned on the Daily Show last night and I’ve seen the Rumsfeld video linked in several places including Russell’s and Wiley’s blog. I recently re-subscribed to HBO for the new season of the Sopranos and flipped over there last night during a commerical break in the aforementioned Daily Show. Bill Maher’s new show was on and, while I find him smug and irritating, I must admit that it was really good. I ended up not going back to the Daily Show, which is saying a lot. I’ll have to check out the live broadcast tomorrow night.

Blogging can be a great source of amusement, just ask Senator Rick Santorum. I read about this a few weeks back, but ended up not posting about it. I reconsidered in light of post.

While on the topic of sanctimonious republicans, the rumor mill is going at full tilt about our governor. I wonder when we’ll see it acknowledged by the press. They appear to be waiting for something more substantial, which is totally understandable. Not to give in to stereotypes, but if it’s true, it explains why he’s so meticulous about his hair.

Bob’s been posting about his new body and the workout/eating regimen that’s getting him there. He’s a little more hardcore than I can manage with two kids, but I’m trying to avoid any more “gathering around the middle” myself. Is anyone else amazed by the sudden explosion of this whole low-carb thing in mainstream media? The Atkins diet and others have been around for a long time, but what’s with everyone suddenly jumping on the bandwagon? I saw a report about it several months ago on Salon and now suddenly every fast food restaurant and food maker is scrambling to come out with low-carb versions of their food. I think it’s a little overreactive. As with everything in life, it’s moderation that is important. I don’t think you should completely cut any one thing out of your diet, just as you shouldn’t overdo it on any one thing.

Now if only I can convince LaLa that eating only Cheerios and soy milk is a bad idea, I’ll be getting somewhere. 16-month-olds are good at listening to reason, right?

I’ve been seeing a lot of speculation about the apparent massive reversal in support from Howard Dean to John Kerry. This one (via Aprendiz de todo) is interesting, as is this one (via Weblogsky). While the first may seem a little overly paranoid and prone to conspiracy theory, I think there’s something there.

The first speaks to the consolidation of corporate media, which is something the Bush administration has encouraged over the last four years and I think it’s becoming increasingly troublesome. The second points out that, while the Dean campaign made very good use of the Internet, they forgot that a large portion of the population doesn’t really use it much. I’m guilty of this as well. Those of us that use the Internet on a daily basis for news and social interaction forget that there’s an awful lot of other people out there that don’t. It’s the convergence of the two issues that’s really scary. It’s exactly the people who don’t use the Internet and rely on information spooned out by the corporate media outlets who might be responsible for the shift in democratic front-runners. As with anything, in order to get the whole story, one always has to get information from multiple sources. The time and effort needed to do so generally means that most people won’t do it. This gives greater weight to the coverage of major media outlets which are more and more intertwined with huge corporations whose interests may conflict with those of you or I.

While on the topic of conspiracy theories, this new book only fuels my inner conspiracy theorist. I need to get a copy, hopefully at our brand new library whose grand opening we attended on Saturday (also covered by Chip).

I personally haven’t decided who I’d vote for yet and since the Texas primaries are so late in the season, I won’t really have a say anyway (just like last time when I wanted to vote for Bill Bradley and didn’t get the chance). I can’t say that I was all that keen on Kerry, though. It’s sounds really shallow and vapid, but the current front-running democratic candidates are similar enough in policy and ideology that I almost have to go on personality to differentiate and I don’t get any connection at all with Kerry. I’ve been trying to narrow down between Clark, Edwards and Dean for the past few weeks and still have yet to come up with a winner (as futile as it may be). In the end, like everyone else, I just want to see GW sent back to Crawford where he belongs.

I just ran across this via BoingBoing. Mark, one of the editors, had his own run-in with some TSA employees. We had a similar incident of our own on our way back from Maui this past summer.

On the one hand, I can understand this from the point of view that I suppose it’s possible that some terrorists out there who wouldn’t be above using children to forward their cause. However, as Bruce Schneier often points out, security is about trade-offs. Currently, I don’t believe the government and, more specifically, the TSA is making the correct ones. I thought the whole point of the government taking over airline security was to raise the quality of the screeners/security personnel. Judging from the automaton-like behavior of those mentioned in these stories, I don’t think we’ve improved. There’s got to be a better way to handle families with small children, especially, mothers travelling alone with multiple children.

As for the childless travellers who give those of us with small kids attitude, I take great delight in pointing my children directly at that person during flight and making their life as much of a living hell as possible. The majority of people are civil and even helpful, but I’ve got no sympathy for impatient, “holier-than-thou”, childless assholes.

I attended the EFF Austin roundtable on eVoting Tuesday night. Stepan summarizes most of what went on and I added a comment. The bottom line is that many state and local governments have rushed to find a solution to the Florida 2000 election debacle and have in the process made some poor decisions. It’s going to take a little time, but these need to be remedied.

Second, there’s a lot of blogging on the arrest of a Cleburne woman for selling sex toys from her home. I share my fellow Texans dismay at this use of law enforcement resources. I’ve been getting more politically active over the past year or so and I’m going to continue that trend. I sent an e-mail to Eddie Rodriguez, my state rep, to see what I can get him to do on both of these issues. I’m a little green on what it takes for one voter to get some action on state and local government, but I’m hoping he or his staff can help point the way. I’ll keep you posted. I think all of the bloggers mentioned and anyone else who’s disturbed by these two developments should contact their reps as well. With all this blogging, it shouldn’t be too hard to get together a large enough number of people to force changes on both of these issues. I know the second one is kind of minor, but I gotta start somewhere.