I looked a bit more at that Chick publications page and just laughed so hard at one of the images, I had to share it:

I actually think this is quite believable! Hah! Anyway, I fired up the gimp to see if I could make the image match the text a bit more…

I was doing some odd surfing tonight and stumbled across what has got to be the worst brainwashing material I’ve ever seen. It’s so scathingly stupid, impossibly illogical, and amazingly amoral I can’t believe that people actually buy this crap. It is downright scary that people actually believe so strongly in the minutia of religious myths that they would force feed such loaded nonsense to the hands of others. Or even worse, innocent children who could take it all in at face value. Click on the image to see the rest of the story. I call it, “The parable of the imaginary guilt trip”:

I just filled out a form over at Wired that estimates your CO2 emissions based on a number of factors. My total: 27,312 pounds of CO2 each year. Probably more though because our local power plant uses coal.

My biggest saver: My Prius, which only emits about 4,226 pounds of CO2 each year (had to look it up since Wired’s chart didn’t go up to 45MPG).

My biggest emitter: My house: 15,500 pounds. Second: Air travel: 6,440 pounds.

Apparently if you take your home off the grid that is quite effective at reducing emissions. As solar tech improves I’m sure we’ll start seeing more and more homes that take advantage of it.

What’s your CO2 footprint?

I’ve been following the political debate surrounding lobbying reform and I have an idea that would probably be the most effective way to prevent lobbyist corruption as well as prevent special interests from wielding too much influence over Congress: Make it illegal for non-citizens to donate to political campaigns.

Put a yearly cap on citizen contributions at $5,000 to prevent wealthy individuals from wielding too much power.

Under such restrictions, Congressmen and Senators would be forced to raise money by seeking it from the people themselves. Rich companies and organizations should not be able to sway the vote of a Senator by dangling a carrot of campaign contributions.

Henry David Thoreau once said, “For every ten people who are clipping at the branches of evil, you’re lucky to find one who’s hacking at the roots.” There is real evil in Congress right now and at it’s root you’ll find campaign contributions from special interests. We need to end it before the next Abramoff comes along.

A concerned citizen

Today I learned that Vermont legislators have introduced their own resolution to impeach Bush. Then I thought to myself, “Wow! That’s three states doing this. The media must be covering the story now.” Nope.

I did my check of the major news sources… Nothing. Though, Boston.com (the web arm of the Boston Globe) is pretty big. The story is definitely building momentum.

I also have to mention that when I checked the Politics section on FoxNews.com I had quite a laugh. Here I was, checking to see if Fox (the news organization that is so pro-Bush he hired one of their reporters to be his Press Secretary) would have coverage of the Vermont impeachment resolution and lo and behold, the front-page story is, “Series of Setbacks Angers Religious Right”. Now that is just classic! The tag line for the story is this:

Citing a lack of progress on social issues, fiscal indiscipline in Congress and scandals among lawmakers, some conservative grassroots leaders say enthusiasm is waning among ‘values’ voters.

Lack of progress on social issues? The text of the article is surreal. Here you have an organization claiming to be reporting “news” with a front-page story (note: not a column) completely making up a meaningless “story”. There’s absolutely no event associated with the article. The “Religious Right” didn’t have a convention. They didn’t have a rally. No major religious conservative leader gave a speech this morning. They’re not even commenting on any recent past events!

Fox is making up news. Are they pulling at strings to report anything other than the impeachment proceedings?

Nokia today announced it’s successor to the N90 (my phone): The N93. It will feature a 3.2 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens (slightly improved), Wifi, UPNP, USB 2.0 (mass storage support!), Symbian Series 60 version 3, a mini-SD slot, and get this: DVD-quality video recording! 640×480 at 30 frames per second. That is the equivalent to what you’d get if you were to buy a regular 8mm digital camcorder at your local electronics retailer!

I just read a rather insightful article about the Bush presidency. It appears on the cover of this month’s Rolling Stone magazine. One of the most interesting facts from the article is that a survey of 415 historians showed that 81% of them think Bush is the worst President in history. Click the image to see the full article (which is surprisingly thorough)

I just read that in the wake of rising gas prices, not only has Bush halted deposits into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), he also completely suspended all the environmental rules for gasoline.— Specifically, that means eliminating the requirement that ethanol be added to all gas to reduce toxic emissions. This coming from the guy who stated in his last State of the Union address that we need to reduce oil imports and increase ethanol production.

My opinion of this situation is that Bush has missed an incredible opportunity. Instead of announcing the halting of deposits into the SPR and clearing the way for more toxic gas he should have:

• Announced that the Federal government is going to “conserve” gas by halting deposits into the SPR.
• Asked all Americans to conserve gas and invest in cars with better fuel economy and flex fuel vehicles.
• Announced a plan to add solar panels to the White House (or something along the lines of, “Look, even I’m going to live off of alternative energy!”).
• Announced a plan to increase the fuel efficiency of the White House fleet vehicles and to only purchase new vehicles that can take advantage of alternative energy sources (e.g. flex fuel, bio-diesel, etc).

• Announced progress (even if it is made up) in his Alternative Energy Initiative he introduced in his last SOTU speech.

  All of these things (except the SPR change) are steps to completely rid this country of the gas price problem altogether. His temporary SPR measure will have almost no impact on gas prices and the retraction of environmental requirements for gasoline will end up costing tax payers more in the long run. Without the additional processing and additives, dirty gas not only causes health problems (which fuels our health care crisis), it can damage newer car engines that were specifically designed to work with the cleaner gas.

I’ve been reading these past few days about a resolution about to come up for a vote in the Illinois state legislature calling for the impeachment of President Bush and VP Cheney. For about three days it has been all over the blogosphere yet I haven’t heard a peep about it in the news. By “news” I mean, CNN, Fox, NPR, CNBC, The New York Times, Washington Post, etc. I actually did a search with google news and the only related results are from blogs and small-time newspapers!

You might be asking, “Is a state legislature calling to impeach Bush even meaningful? Is that really news?” While it may not seem like a big deal that one state is about to vote on sending articles of impeachment to Congress (as in, Federal one), but that is actually a legitimate path to a trial of the President in the U.S. House of Representatives. According to The Jefferson Rules of the House of Representatives, state legislatures may initiate impeachment proceedings.

If I were in charge of a newspaper that would be on the front page. At the very least, it would be included in the politics section! None of the news outlets I mentioned above even make passing mention of the Illinois resolution. As far as I can tell there aren’t even news stories about it in AP or Reuters! What the hell?!?

Now if that weren’t bad enough, today a bill to impeach Bush and Cheney was introduced in the California House of Representatives. So that makes two states with legislation under way.

Perhaps I’m being too rough on the major media outlets. After all, there’s only so much space on a page for news. Only so much time to cover it. So just what are our news outlets covering in the political arena today? “Bush to halt oil deposits” (CNN), “Gas Price Probe” (FOX), “Bush ratings hit new low” (CNN – you’d think they could mention these proceedings in passing in this one), ”’Emergency Spending’” (FOX – about Congress voting to approve more money for Iraq/Katrina problems), various immigration news (all of them), and re-hashing of last week’s news about calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation (all of them). Not a single news source that has a television channel is reporting this issue.

Dare I say that 8 generals calling for the resignation of Rumsfeld is less important? That perhaps 800 stories on gas prices is a bit overboard? That allowing the talking heads air time to wax on about immigration reform endlessly is a bit extreme for a single issue?

I was just reading about a TSA horror I didn’t know about when I started to wonder if people really understand all the ways in which their privacy is violated when they travel in the U.S. Here’s a bad day at the airport scenario:

You pack your bags and set off to the airport. You’re traveling home from an excellent photography session that is finally going to pay the rent. Here’s what happens:

1. When calling your airline to confirm your flight, your call is transferred to a call center in India. Annoying, but not unusual. Because your call is now International, it is picked up by the NSA and recorded for later processing because you just happened to mention “photographs” and “national monuments” in the same sentence. Your name is automatically added to a watch list.
2. At the airport you wait in line for an hour to get past the TSA security checkpoint. During this time you think about how there’s more people concentrated at this location (in line) than there are at any given terminal or on any plane. You speculate how trivial it would be for a bomber to just waltz into the airport and blow themselves up killing several hundred people without ever having to go through a security check. The checkpoint itself is putting you at more risk than if it wasn’t there on this particular day.
3. When you finally make it to the baggage scanning station/metal detectors you politely request that TSA check your photography bag without the use of X-rays to preserve your photographs. You feel safe knowing that they are required by law to do so. At this request, the TSA takes your photography bag away and sends you to a separate location to pass you through the “it blows then sucks” machine which promptly determines that you haven’t been exposed to bomb-making materials and you need to see your doctor about a potential infection in your right ear.
4. When you return you notice that the TSA has not only placed your camera bag in the X-ray machine conveyor belt, but they have stopped the machine for a closer inspection of the metal materials inside. You watch in horror as your bag sits inside the machine being bombarded by the photograph-destroying rays. The bag is then taken to a special machine that tests for chemical traces of bomb-making materials where the red light means it detected nothing (apparently this scenario plays out daily at airports across the country according to that link above).
5. When your ticket is scanned before boarding the plane, the airline personnel get a beep that indicates something is wrong. They ask you to stand aside while they run your name through the computer. They notice a code on the computer screen and immediately call security to escort you away. They just want to ask you some questions… You’re on the watch list, after all. After promising them “no funny business” you board the plane at the last second and you’re on your way home.

1. When you get home you find a little card in your bag that says it’s been “searched by TSA” and you seem to be missing an expensive telephoto lens! You call the airport and they refer you to the local TSA office who swears that their federally-funded staff are saints and would never steal. You’re just one of many, many other victims

   Now, it is probably not likely for all these things to happen to one person at once, but they’ve all happened to many thousands of people across the country. What do they all have in common? They all violate your rights and they all have no checks and balances. There’s really no recourse on the part of the passenger that can be taken. There’s no government agency watching the TSA! They don’t need a warrant for any of these things, and some of their policies are actually secret laws that you and I aren’t supposed to know about.