Ryo allready did some of the math, pointing out that the original $35 million tsunami-relief pledge by the U.S. is only slightly more than the cost of one M1 tank. Frank breaks down the new $350 amount: this new amount is equal to 42.27 hours of the cost of the war in Iraq. Somebody's priorities are screwed up.

I like this quote from Roger Nygard, creator of Trekkies, altough I don't see how it relates to the question

Something to keep in mind, post presidential election, is that in the long run conservatives always lose. If this statement were not true, we would still be living in caves. We wouldn't have cell phones, vaccines, and rockets. Conservatives will never go to the stars. They are too busy trying to hold society back.

Every new idea that is introduced is liberal at first. The idea that the Earth is round and revolves around the Sun was denounced by conservative leaders at the time. Fact-based evolution is currently being denounced and taken out of some school curriculums, to be replaced, or taught side-by-side, with faith-based creationism. Faith has it's place for some people in society, but it didn't get us to the moon and beyond.

"In a Democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve." -Winston Churchill

Two Faces. One Public, One Private. One Phony, One Real

On Thursday night sixty-one million people watched George W. Bush for the first time since 9/11 not as that symbol, but as a man. And for those who had not reassessed their belief in his personal leadership since 9/11, it was quite a shock. Their strong leader was inarticulate, arrogant, confused and immature. They must be wondering who that man was.

The Unfeeling President

A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children. He is the president who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the 35 million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the 40 percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills - it is amazing for how many people in this country this president does not feel.

...

Finally, the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail. How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.

From a Michael Moore interview, Bush's nominee for CIA directory explaining why he is not qualified to even work for the CIA.

It is true I was in CIA from approximately the late 50's to approximately the early 70's. And it's true I was a case officer, clandestine services office and yes I do understand the core mission of the business. I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified. I don't have the language skills. I, you know, my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background probably. And I certainly don't have the technical skills, uh, as my children remind me every day, "Dad you got to get better on your computer." Uh, so, the things that you need to have, I don't have.

Here are a few interesting things I came across today:

Another one of your civil liberties was taken away. The Supreme Court ruled that you must identify yourself to law enforcement despite your supposed rights to privacy and to not incriminate yourself. Next thing you know people will be getting arrested for not "showing their papers." Oh yeah, that is allready happeining

Pat Berry pointed out this great talk that Cory Doctorow gave to Microsoft's Research Group and other interested parties from within the company at their Redmond offices about the dangers of DRM. It is the reason this entry is in the CHSIB section.

And a free Cisco textbook (download, $20 for print version) "unofficially" written by a Cisco Networking instructor. I have skimmed throught the first ~100 pages and it looks as good as any of the other CCNA textbooks. Only problem I see is that it has some quiz sections but not the answers so that I can see if I am correct or not.
UPDATE: I went through the rest of section one and I am rescinding my statement that it is as good as any of the other CCNA books. I prefer the Cisco Press books and Todd Lamle's book. I will probably still look through the rest though. Guess you get what you pay for.

I am pretty sure this is the same Patrick Berry that works across campus from where I work. There are no doubt other Patrick Berrys in Wally's district but the one I know is a former EFF employee, so I am thinking it is him. I came across his site full of emails to and replies from (form letters) Wally Herger, our local congressional representative (2nd congressional district), via BoingBoing. I have sent some emails to Wally through EFF's action center and gotten back similiar form letters. It would be great to see Pat's site blow up and force Wally to directly address some of Pat's questions instead of just having his secretary send off the closest matching form letter. Keep up the good work Pat!

Update: I just found Pat's more personal blog, Vertical Hold where he mentions Chico...so this is this definately the Pat I have met.

Oh, and a link to help mess with Google: Wally Herger

It's pretty cool when you come across some writing that expresses what you have been thinking, only far better than you ever could. Then it takes it a step farther, to places that you imagine you would have made it to if you had continued to explore the issues concerned. Since this seems to happen periodically I decided to make a section in this blog for this phenomenon.

The writing that brought this to mind today is an essay by Kurt Vonnegut titled Cold Turkey. I have the feeling that if I read more or Kurt's stuff I would get more of the same feeling. I also imagine that many people experience this with his writing, explaining his popularity. I'll definately have to check out some of his other stuff to find out!

My government’s got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.

One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.

Other drunks have seen pink elephants.

Couldn't have said it better:

WAR IS DECLARED: The president launched a war today against the civil rights of gay citizens and their families. And just as importantly, he launched a war to defile the most sacred document in the land. Rather than allow the contentious and difficult issue of equal marriage rights to be fought over in the states, rather than let politics and the law take their course, rather than keep the Constitution out of the culture wars, this president wants to drag the very founding document into his re-election campaign. He is proposing to remove civil rights from one group of American citizens - and do so in the Constitution itself. The message could not be plainer: these citizens do not fully belong in America. Their relationships must be stigmatized in the very Constitution itself. The document that should be uniting the country will now be used to divide it, to single out a group of people for discrimination itself, and to do so for narrow electoral purposes. Not since the horrifying legacy of Constitutional racial discrimination in this country has such a goal been even thought of, let alone pursued.

There can be no more profound attack on a minority in the United States - or on the promise of freedom that America represents. That very tactic is so shocking in its prejudice, so clear in its intent, so extreme in its implications that it leaves people of good will little lee-way. This president has now made the Republican party an emblem of exclusion and division and intolerance. Gay people will now regard it as their enemy for generations - and rightly so. I knew this was coming, but the way in which it has been delivered and the actual fact of its occurrence is so deeply depressing it is still hard to absorb. But the result is clear, at least for those who care about the Constitution and care about civil rights. We must oppose this extremism with everything we can muster. We must appeal to the fair-minded center of the country that balks at the hatred and fear that much of the religious right feeds on. We must prevent this graffiti from being written on a document every person in this country should be able to regard as their own. This struggle is hard but it is also easy. The president has made it easy. He's a simple man and he divides the world into friends and foes. He has now made a whole group of Americans - and their families and their friends - his enemy. We have no alternative but to defend ourselves and our families from this attack. And we will.

--AndrewSullivan.com