A very small thing
One person to one person;
Justice justice tirdof

John Pike is something of a master when it comes to the zinger. Here are two recent ones that my fellow Democrats should tape to their bathroom mirrors for reading every time we get full of ourselves. To win Democrats have to be clearly, unquestionably, loudly for the things that matter to the people who cast the votes. It’s not that hard. Is it?

Why does my party make it so difficult for me to support it? Again, thank God my only other choice is the Dems.

Just when I despair over the colossal failure that is George W. Bush (domestically), I then realize that we only have to beat the Democrats to win in 2008.

My Soundtrack: I’ll Believe In Anything by Wolf Parade on WOXY.

Watch the video…

Years ago, in Kansas City, Missouri, the keynote speaker for the National Recycling Coalition’s annual convention was Paul Hawken. Before he began his talk, Hawken asked the audience’s indulgence to watch a short, simple video. It consisted of a darkened map of the world on which to a metronome beat, dots of light appeared.

Each dot, Hawken told us, represented one million people.

For the first few minutes of the video, few dots appeared. Gradually the dots winked into existence more quickly. With the exception of one period of die-back — the years of Black Plague — the growth was relentless until as the video reached the end of the 20th century, it was hard to find distinguishable single dots.

This, said Hawken is the problem.

Seeing the map above on Daily KOS was what called Hawken’s video map to mind. We see this map as static. It’s frozen on Monday, 1 August. But imagine it with that same metronome tick. Perhaps a tick a second and one U.S. fatality in Iraq for each tick. It would take 30 minutes to reach the 1,799 service personnel lost as of the beginning of the month.

Adding August would require a further minute and 15 seconds for the 75 deaths in the first 26 days of August.

Perhaps someone out there with skills with Flash will create and post the Internet version of Hawken’s population video. Can you hear the tick, tick, tick, as the death toll climbs with no end in sight for the United States or Iraq?

In another war a combat veteran asked the members of Congress sitting on the House Foreign Relations Committee: How do you ask the last American to die for a mistake?

A majority of Americans, 58 percent according to an AP poll released today, think the war in Iraq is a mistake. Every day the administration hesitates, hoping against hope that somehow it will all work out, prolongs the inevitable: a universal draft and the massive commitment of troops on a scale not seen World War II.

We will have to fix what we have broken and the legacy of President George Bush will be his squandering of American lives and resources for a purpose only he fully knows.

Tick…

Tick…

Tick…

My Soundtrack: Freakin’ Out by Graham Coxon on WOXY.

If you are offended by nudity or pornography, skip this post. OK, everybody out of the room? Good. Try this experiment. Go to Google. Click on preferences and under Safe Search Filtering, select Do Not Filter My Search Results. Then click on Save Preferences and OK in the Your Preferences Have Been Saved dialog box. Next, select Images and type in the word Nude and hit Return.

My result was 2,390,000 hits. Some I would categorize as classical or art nudes; some slide over to the soft porn realm and a whole bunch are hardcore pornography. Now, I’m not particularly upset about that.

I’m a pretty rabid 1st amendment kind of guy, but the folks at Perfect 10 magazine are calling foul, not because they’re offended, but because they claim Google is stealing business from them. According to InformationWeek:

Adult magazine publisher Perfect 10 Inc. is asking a federal court to prevent Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. from displaying pictures and links to the company’s copyrighted photos.

[Snip…]

The Beverly Hills, Calif., publisher is asking a federal judge to set a Nov. 7 hearing on its request for preliminary injunctions against Seattle-based Amazon.com and Google, based in Mountain View, Calif.. The Amazon.com case is set to be heard that date, but a decision on the Google case is pending, Norm Zada, founder of Perfect 10, said in an interview Thursday.

[Snip…]

Perfect 10 objects to having displayed in search results thumbnails of its models’ pictures, along with the links to third-party sites where larger photos are available. The pictures are copyrighted, and nearly all the sites are displaying the photos without permission, Zada said.

Those third-party sites are the real offenders, but they’re hard to get at.

Zada claims his company has tried to contact the third-party websites, but found most of them are based in foreign countries and nearly impossible to reach. He also argues that Google and Amazon.com are making money illegally on Perfect 10 pictures by selling advertising that appears on results pages.

While pornography of any firmness is problematic and profitable in the extreme on the Internet, Perfect 10’s case has ramifications for bloggers, like myself, who use snippets of information from all over the Internet.

This is an example of Old Media attempting to shove the jinni back in the bottle. If Perfect 10 is successful in its suit, it can go after the deep pockets of Google and Amazon, but what about the millions and millions of websites that will continue to copy and redistribute photographs?

Just as the music industry is slowly discovering that it can’t stop the copying of music, so too will image distributors discover that they can’t ultimately prevail.

It’s a new world. Old solutions just make you look old.

My Soundtrack: Audience Appreciation by Staggering Statistics on WOXY.

Not for herself, but
For her husband, children and
Grandchildren: damned to kvell

Public television station KVIE produced California Heartland for nine years and aired more than 1,000 stories about farm life in California. At the end of 2004, the station retired the program in its old format and began retooling for a 20-show-per-year national series with a budget of more than $1 million.

KVIE needed deep pockets to make American Heartland happen.

It found those pockets in a consortium of agribusiness giants, not the least of which is Monsanto. And that has some people in a panic.

Detractors are heaping a litany of wrongdoings on Monsanto that include manufacturing: Roundup herbicide, DEKALB, Agrow seed products, biotechnology traits, Agent Orange, PCBs , DDT , Bovine Growth Hormone, Aspartame and the 18,000 kiloton Fat Man trinity bomb. Yes. Monsanto is being pilloried for it’s contribution to the Manhattan Project.

I’m no great fan of Monsanto. I’m sure the company has been involved in lots of perfectly legal and sound business decisions that have come back to haunt it. The recent shot at it’s herbicide Roundup and its effect on tadpoles is just one example.

But if you’re going to go back more than 60 years to nail a company for its work on the Atomic bomb, then I’d better not see you driving a Volkswagen, Honda, BMW, Toyota or Mercedes.

My television went on the treelawn long ago so I haven’t seen much of PBS, or any other station, for nearly 15 years. I don’t know how much PBS has changed from the days when my college buddies and I would huddle around my 13-inch black and white set to watch Dr. Who, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Universe and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

I also recall watching Mystery, sponsored by Exxon and Mobil; and Masterpiece Theatre, sponsored by some-equally-evil-American-corporation-thats-name-I-can’t-think-of-at-the-moment. Granted, Mystery didn’t do too many Murder in the Refinery shows that I know of; but I don’t recall any This Old House fans getting livid over the long list of building supply sponsors that made it possible for them to see Norm do his thing.

And, I’m going to give people who watch PBS and American Heritage a lot more credit than others might. I don’t think anyone is going to walk away smiling and singing Monsanto’s praises because it spent a few hundred thousands of dollars on a 30-minute farm program.

My Soundtrack: Choked by Sons And Daughters on WOXY.

Safia Souhail was the Iraqi woman that President George Bush recognized during his last State Of The Union address to Congress. She held up her purple finger in triumph to symbolize the elections her country has just completed. Well, she seems to be holding up a different finger these days.

According to Reuters, Souhail, now Iraq’s ambassador to Egypt has this to say about the process to write a constitution for her country:

When we came back from exile, we thought we were going to improve rights and the position of women. But look what has happened — we have lost all the gains we made over the last 30 years. It’s a big disappointment.

Human rights should not be linked to Islamic Sharia law at all. It should be listed separately in the constitution.

Andrew Hammond, writing for Reuters continues:

The prominent women’s rights campaigner denounced wording that grants each religious sect the right to run its own family courts — apparently doing away with previous civil codes — as an open door to further Islamicise the legal system.

Although in practice, many Iraqis end up having recourse to religious authorities or informal tribal law, the idea of a united civil code is central to the modern state, Souhail said.

This will lead to creating religious courts. But we should be giving priority to the law, Souhail said.

My Soundtrack: Kissing Families by Silversun Pickups on WOXY.

President George Bush took time out from his record-breaking vacation to speak to veterans in Idaho this week while a deceased veteran’s mother returned to her camp vigil outside the presidential vacation estate in Crawford, Texas. But that isn’t surprising since he had the chance to speak to an almost friendly audience.

The leadership of organizations like The American Legion (for veterans who served during time of war, but not in a war zone) and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (for veterans who served in a war zone) support President Bush.

(Full disclosure: I am not a member of either organization; although I qualify for the VFW as a result of service in the Gulf of Oman in 1979.)

As part of it’s annual convention, some 4,000 American Legion members unanimously passed Resolution 3 which states:

The American Legion fully supports the president of the United States, the United States Congress and the men, women and leadership of our armed forces as they are engaged in the global war on terrorism and the troops who are engaged in protecting our values and way of life.

According to Editor & Publisher, Thomas Cadmus, nation commander of the American Legion had this to say yesterday:

The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples.

[Snip…]

It would be tragic if the freedoms our veterans fought so valiantly to protect would be used against their successors today as they battle terrorists bent on our destruction.

[Snip…]

No one respects the right to protest more than one who has fought for it, but we hope that Americans will present their views in correspondence to their elected officials rather than by public media events guaranteed to be picked up and used as tools of encouragement by our enemies.

[Snip…]

For many of us, the visions of Jane Fonda glibly spouting anti-American messages with the North Vietnamese and protestors denouncing our own forces four decades ago is forever etched in our memories. We must never let that happen again….

[Snip…]

We had hoped that the lessons learned from the Vietnam War would be clear to our fellow citizens. Public protests against the war here at home while our young men and women are in harm’s way on the other side of the globe only provide aid and comfort to our enemies.

[Snip…]

Let’s not repeat the mistakes of our past. I urge all Americans to rally around our armed forces and remember our fellow Americans who were viciously murdered on Sept. 11, 2001.

Now, compare Cadmus’ sentiments to those of his predecessor, Harold Miller:

Dear Mr. President:

Harold L. Butch Miller
National Commander

I, for one, don’t subscribe to the formula: President Bill Clinton war (where not one member of the armed services lost their life in combat) — bad; President George Bush war (where the death toll is 1,871 and climbing) — good.

Having said that, however, I do not think those who want to bring the troops home tomorrow or want to set some deadline for a withdrawl are right. We, all the American people, have created a horrible mess in Iraq that threatens to further destabilize the entire region and destroy millions more lives. We broke it. We now have to fix it.

My Soundtrack: Damage by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion on WOXY.

Scuffed and worn, time-end
Concealing dark smalls the world;
Our loss heralds growth… Yom

Via Brewed Fresh Daily comes this bit of genius. Bill Moyer, 73, decided that he need some extra protection during President George Bush’s speech to a safe audience of Veterans Of Foreign Wars in Idaho. You can make your own Bull Shit Protectors using the template from Wiseass.

I recently wrote my 100th post on Wal Mart and now I’m shifting gears a bit. Because I don’t want Have Coffee Will Write to be perceived as a one-issue blog, I’m going to consolodate items concerning the Bentonville Behemoth into a once-a-week post. I expect to include multiple items in each Wal Mart Wednesday Wrap-Up. So, on with the show…

From WTIC AM Radio, via Building Brewsmith: Walmart agrees to pay more than a million dollars, as part of a settlement with the state. The company was accused of allowing rain water to runoff from pesticides, fertilizer, or oil at twenty-three locations in the state. Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Gina McCarthy says no matter how big a company is, it still must follow the law.

From The Arizona Republic: A northwest Valley man seething with anger turned a Wal-Mart Supercenter parking lot into a shooting gallery Tuesday, police said, leaving two store employees dead and investigators stumped for a motive.

The suspect, identified by police as Ed Lui, 53, was tracked to a nearby retirement community and arrested a few hours later.

From The Labor Research Association: While Wal-Mart pays an average of $9.68 an hour, the average hourly wage of employees of Costco Wholesale Corporation is $16. After three years a typical full-time Costco worker makes about $42,000, and the company foots 92% of its workers” health insurance tab.

Costco CEO Jim Senegal has said: We pay much better than Wal-Mart. That”s not altruism. It”s good business.

Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti explained: From day one, we”ve run the company with the philosophy that if we pay better than average, provide a salary people can live on, have a positive environment and good benefits, we”ll be able to hire better people, they”ll stay longer and be more efficient.

A 2004 Business Week study ran the numbers to test Costco”s business model against that of Wal-Mart. The study confirmed that Costco”s well-compensated employees are more productive.

From The Associated Press: Union Network International, a federation of unions in 150 countries, said Tuesday it plans to launch organizing efforts by year’s end in South Korea and is also looking to target Wal-Mart in countries including Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. UNI, with headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, has already been working with labor groups in India and Russia to lay the groundwork for organizing if Wal-Mart enters those countries.

The campaign in South Korea — where Wal-Mart has about 3,000 employees and 16 stores — will be a joint effort by UNI, the U.S.-based United Food and Commercial Workers and a Korean union. The president of the UFCW, Joe Hansen, is also president of UNI, which has about 900 member unions.

Global companies need global unions, said Noel Howell, a spokesman for UNI, whose members are meeting this week in Chicago. The whole point is that we want unions in Wal-Mart wherever they operate in the world.

My Soundtrack: Over The Ocean by Low on WOXY.

George, Bill and Tim have their first political protege in the form of Jill Miller Zimon. The Writes Like She Talks blogger wants to do a suburban version of Meet The Bloggers. Candidates for the city council of Pepper Pike and and the Orange Schools Board of Education could be in for a shift from the usual media questions.

Curving lines of sweet
Flesh heavy fullness slips by;
Belly on back, shedeem

WEWS TV flags a story from The Canton Repository with the sweeps-weekesque tease: 65 Girls At Area School Pregnant. That 13 percent of Timken High’s 490 girls are pregnant is sexy; but what about the 65 (unless there’s a Don Juan or two invovled) fathers? Somehow 65 Boys At Area School Fathers doesn’t have that ratings-point zing.

From National Public Radio’s News & Notes With Ed Gordon comes a story of how Richard (Cranium) Blair at The All Spin Zone made people in Philidelphia take notice of a missing non-white woman who wasn’t running away from a wedding. Her story ended in tragedy, but reading Blair’s month-long coverage is instructive.

The question always comes down to: how do we get paid? From Jeff Jarvis: The war is over and the army that wasn”t even fighting – the army of all of us, the ones who weren”t in charge, the ones without the arms – won. The big guys who owned the big guns still don”t know it. But they lost. …The value is no longer in owning content or distribution.

As the Bush Administration increases the tempo of the drum beat on the the nuclear threat of Iran, the Washington Post reports this morning that the lastest smoking gun — like the infamous Nigerian Yellow Cake — is a dud. In No Proof Found Of An Iran Arms Program, Dafna Lizner writes:

Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.

The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions, said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity.

Iran has long contended that the uranium traces were the result of contaminated equipment bought years ago from Pakistan. But the Bush administration had pointed to the material as evidence that Iran was making bomb-grade ingredients.

Maybe we’re starting to learn from our mistakes. I hope so.

My Soundtrack: O’ Sailor by Fiona Apple on WOXY.

Following on the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution Georgia, watch for a White Revolution in Belarus (White Russia) where the president has banned pro-democracy groups from accepting money or technical assistance from outside the country. And, look for our Democracy Guy to have something to say.

[Update — 1001, 23 August 05 — As expected Tim Russo is in the hunt, watch Democracy Guy for his take.]

The Cleveland Memory Project has added proto-blogger Roldo Bartimole. PDFs of Roldo’s weekly newsletter, Point Of View start with Vol. 1 No. 1, published on 13 June 1968. The freedom to speak frankly gave me the ability to critically examine people, institutions and events by my standard, not simply following media conventional wisdom, says Roldo.