I apologize for this short hit and run, but I'm at work and got an email from Sen Dodd's campaign office.

The Judiciary Committee will consider the FISA bill shortly.
Members of the Judiciary can prevent it from even coming out of the committee.  Please call them to ask that it not make it out of committee, and if it does, to strip out the Telco immunity. Members and numbers can be found here.

Yesterday there was a great diary on other reprehensible points of this bill, some of which allow anyone to be "deputized" to assist law enforcement to enter your home or business without a warrant to snoop around, copy your hard drive, etc...  

It sucks that we have to fight tooth and nail incessantly to protect our freedoms at home, in a supposed Democracy (or Representative Republic), but here we are.

Back to work for me....  Please call!

I have seen the light.  Everything he says makes perfect sense.  Really.  You just have to unnerstand, ya hear?

If you wrap your mind around the Prime Directive of:

Accumulate money for family and friends at any and all costs.

..you can then understand the cornerstones of his overarching action plan:

1. Control oil, as much as possible, which long term requires that you maintain:

2. regional (mideast) military domination presence within close striking distance of anyone who dare assert any actual sovereignty over it which will enable the fringe benefit of:

3. enriching the military industrial complex management base which in turn requires:

4. consolidation of powers in the US to fend off pesky libruls that catch on to the plan and dare notice the plight of most of the people in the US.

The largest economy in the world (US) is and has been based on petroleum.  Every sector spends money to buy petroleum products.

Controleum the Petroleum, and you will own the money spigot.

A brief article here in the Washington Post today reports comments made by Cheney's, Libby's and Rove's attorneys in an attempt to have the lawsuit filed against them by Plame and Wilson dismissed.

The lawyers said any conversations Cheney and the officials had about Plame with one another or with reporters were part of their normal duties because they were discussing foreign policy and engaging in an appropriate "policy dispute."

"Policy dispute" or not, this makes the leaker guilty of violating either the The Espionage Act of 1917 or The Intelligence Identities and Protection Act enacted in 1982.  There also is a good argument that the "leaker" committed conspiracy to commit fraud against the government.

Violating any of these is a crime, (let alone all three) punishable by up to 10 years in prison.  

If the leaker is Cheney and this doesn’t make Cheney slam-dunk, hands-down impeachable, what will?  Many have suspected it was Cheney and that Libby took one for the team... but it seems Cheney's attorney tipped his hand with an unusual claim of executive privilege.

Please follow me:

I'm on Senator Boxer's mailing list, and received her request (below the fold) to be a citizen co-sponsor of her Sanders/Boxer bill to fight global warming.  I already signed on... Will you?

Please go to Senator Boxer's Citizen Co-sponsor signup page to add your name and build momentum in Congress.  

We've already heard that Harry Reid wants to do something about Global Warming and the environment in this work period.  This is a chance to help get legislation out of Congress.  

Please add your support!

Disclaimer: I am no political expert.  And, I am baffled by the refusal of our representative government to exert the will of the people and end this war.

After reading Lithium Cola's excellent diary about the Warner-Levin trap, I started to get depressed.  Sure there was a great 100 hours agenda, but it is so apparent to me that the fundamental change we voted for will not come until 2008, if we're lucky.  To me, the process that allows all the non-related ammendments to get attached to Bills in the Senate defies logic and reason.  If it's something that needs to get funded and passed, it should stand on its own.

So if Congress is going to get bogged down by endless ammendments to bills of great import, unable to pass even a non-binding resolution against the war, it's time for Congress to generate some good news the MSM couldn't even ignore....

If you break it, you own it.

General Powell applied this concept to Iraq, and it has been a public justification for our troops to remain until some semblance of order returned to the nation.  

In light of the lies that convinced many of our fellow citizens and elected representatives to support the invasion, some still consider trying to restore order "doing the right thing."  We destabilized it, so its current state is our fault and we "own" the problem.  Seems noble enough.  We live in a society that makes ammends.  We're used to the concept of making victims "whole."

It's time to rethink the Pottery Barn Rule.  Army National Guard Captain Brian Sullivan, preparing to leave for Iraq, agrees in this op-ed piece yesterday.

I had written about my buying a more economical car to commute to a consulting gig even though I needed to keep my big, heavy, and inefficient truck (the original diary)I hoped it would inspire anyone in a similar position to make fuel efficiency their most important requirement of a new car, since one gallon of gasoline that weighs 6.25 pounds creates 19.5+ pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) when burned in an engine (excellent explanation here).

In my preliminary analysis, all I had to go on was my known commute.  I hadn't ever analyzed how much I actually drive.  It turns out, I spend a lot more time going from here to there and back again than I thought I did.

Think globally, act locally... we've all heard it a thousand times.  Hopefully most of us do what we can when we can,  although with the pressures of life and paying mortgages or rent, it can be tough.  I recently bought a commuter car for the sole purpose of lowering my emissions after I saw a CT public television show wherein a professor explained the conclusions of the UN report on global warming and carbon emissions.  I have yet to find the prof's name despite a lot of searches.. When I do, I'll do a diary about it as well.  It was clear and conclusive.  Being an engineer, I've never doubted the phenomenon of global warming, but I hadn't realized how dire the situation was.

Long story made short... I've owned one version or another of a full-sized pickup truck for over 27 years...  for a lot of reasons...  Besides being a consultant in network architecture, design, or operations, I have a second job renovating houses.  I also occaisionally hump a huge PA to gigs here and there.  Bottom line, I need a truck, but not every day.  

My car will singlehandedly reduce MY carbon emissions by at least 16,782 pounds over ten and a half months.  Some data follows:

I had an occaision to research a bit about the oil industry and its monopolistic practices this past summer.  I was alarmed and disgusted by the April/May "here comes the summer driving season price increases" heaped upon the world by the MSM.

It is so damned coincidental that after successive quarters of record-breaking profits, suddenly, before a now very important mid-term election, gas prices plummet.  Can the repugs affect gas prices?  Not the ones in office, but the ones running the industry can.  And they have in the past.  And they were found out...

But don't take my word for it... there is actually a congressional report on the subject....

I wrote this paper after I found some real-world data on the performance of solar generation facilities.  I had been researching solar thermal collection systems, contemplating peak oil and shortages when I heard the President refer to "nucular" energy as "clean" and "renewable."  I then stumbled across the "Real Sports" piece with Bryant Gumbel that got into kids sports in Ohio that have to be cancelled on days the wind carries coal electric plant emissions over playing fields, triggering numerous asthma attacks. I am an Electrical Engineer by schooling, and have spent a long time designing, building, and operating data networks.  It took some time for me to recall the necessary power terminology and measurements, but I believe the document is now error-free.  
There are some similar concepts to the (excellent) Energy Policy posted on dailykos, but this explores a different approach to jump start widespread adoption of the very cost-competitive solar generation infrastructure.