Apparently, the solar wind will induce enough ionization in our atmosphere to generate a magnetic field which will protect the Earth from solar radiation, should the poles shift, or the earth lose its magnetism.

So we got that going for us…

My least favorite Texas Senator was quoted on the radio this morning discussing the most recent photographs of prisoner abuse in Iraq. She pointed out that most of people she saw in the photographs weren’t actual soldiers, but contractors. So, that makes everything alright.

It gauls me the distance the Republican party has placed between their reputation and responsibility. She can’t honestly believe that by outsourcing the duties of our occupation that we are absolved from the behavior of the contractors.

And this from the woman who spent so much of her time harassing a sitting president for lying about a blow-job. Hmmm…consensual blow job, hired sodomizers…consensual blow job, hired sodomizers…

…bitch…

In a previous discussion of the Berg murder in Iraq, Mickey hit on a topic that has been prescient for me, too — how’s that for weird synchronicity? — in light of this tragedy. As a professed liberal moderate, the Death Penalty is one of the points where I have historically split with my left-leaning brethren. I support the idea that there are human beings who can not be saved and whose impact on society should be negated. I am starting to change my beliefs…slightly.

Ignore the typical arguments for abolishing the death penalty: only God has the right to take a life, the system is flawed, one innocent man put to death is worse than a thousand guilty men left to live, studies show that victim’s families never really receive closure, the dead never learn the lesson, the death penalty is not a deterrent. All fine arguments, but the Berg murder caused me to consider a new facet.

The men who comitted this attrocity enjoyed it. They gained pleasure — if not actual sexual pleasure then something akin to it. Death holds strong meaning to them. They hold it dear in their minds. If and when we find them, death and torture will only bring them closer to their secret passion. How much more powerful to remove them from the stream of reality they live in today and force them to lead a blank life? Put them in a cell. Bar them from all communication and let them grow old in a life stasis.

I think this idea can be applied to all convicts of violent crimes. By pulling them out of their reality and subjecting them to old age and life-long boredom we are hurting them more than anything else we can imagine.

But this looks almost too good to pass up – kind of like Netflix for games. Hmmmm… May have to give it a shot.

Our flight on Northwest from Austin to Memphis was delayed due to weather problems in Memphis. When we finally landed, we were held away from the gate while they waited out lightning strikes. They insisted on gate-checking our carry-on luggage so after deplaning we had to wait on the gangway while they lugged our bags from the belly of the nausea inducing beast. Then some old f’er with a 3 year old kid holding his hand blocked the gangway as they crept for the exit. After traversing all those obstacles we arrived at the gate for our 2:32pm flight to LGA at exactly 2:32pm…where the “nice” lady behind the counter informed us “I did everything I could. They held the plane as long as they could.” Did I say informed? I meant flat-out lied.

So, here we sit eating barely passable Memphis BBQ drinking Bud Light and Sam Adams — I f*cking hate Bud Light and Sam Adams — waiting for a 6:20pm flight.

p.s. I forgot to mention that the morons running MEM don’t have wireless access, and their data port phones have all been removed due to obsolesence.

I will be in NYC (or as you’ll see in a later post somewhere between NYC and Austin) through the rest of the weekend. My posting frequency will be light and, since it will mostly spew forth from my Sidekick©, I will be PWoL(Posting Without Links).

Today’s reason: W’s prison record.

The folks at CommonDreams.org are a little too left-leaning in their article on Bush’s Texas prisons recounting but they cover points that I was personally witness to.

… Governor Bush also flouted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by choosing to execute juvenile offenders, a practice shared by only Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. … Conditions inside Texan prisons during Bush’s reign were so notorious that federal Judge William Wayne Justice wrote, “Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from such abysmal conditions.” … Funding of mental health programs during Bush’s reign was so poor that Texan prisons had a sizeable number of mentally-impaired inmates; defying international human rights standards, these inmates ended up on death row.

My roommate during the Texas Governer changing of the guards — God bless Ann Richards — was working for a correctional facility under a special program that showed promise to signifigantly reduce recidivism. One of W’s first acts in office was to kill this program that offered counseling and reintegration services to inmates who showed a willingness to clean up their act — kind of a Magnet prison system. (On a sidenote, the current Republican Texas leadership have continued cutting mental services so hard that even the liberal city of Austin is reduced to having only a single facility for handling mental health issues.)

Some may think it’s a cheap shot to bring this up under the guise of the scandal in Iraqi prisons, but there is a clear pattern in the Bush-fueled neo-Con movement that is unwilling to show grace for all sinners.