The Staton Jones Report

The New York Times reports that Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state, has banned Diebold e-voting systems "because of security and reliability concerns." Furthermore, he found working with Diebold to be a frustrating and deceitful experience:

Mr. Shelley said that he was recommending that the state's attorney general look into possible civil and criminal charges against Diebold because of what he called "fraudulent actions by Diebold."

In an interview, Mr. Shelley said that "their performance, their behavior, is despicable," and that "if that's the kind of deceitful behavior they're going to engage in, they can't do business in California."

Many voters in the Super Tuesday primary in San Diego were not able to vote because of Diebold hardware and software failures. The New York Times noted that "Mr. Shelley has said Diebold's missteps 'jeopardized the outcome' of the primary" because of the failures. For months, security specialists have warned of the ease by which Diebold's system is compromised through simple "cracking" techniques.

All I can say is: one down, forty-nine to go (including my home state of Texas)! I have no idea how this ban will play out, but in the eighteen "battlefield" states, e-voting must be blocked or Rove will be able to steal the election without firing a shot.

According to this article the U.S. coallition forces are handing over the control of Fallujda to one of Saddam's generals. Given the history of the town and the brutal oppression by Saddam, and the fact that the U.S. is now looking less and less like a benevolent dictator, this move seems utterly insane.

This Op-Ed from the Washington Post warns that demand for gasoline in the U.S. will soon exceed the capacity of our refineries to produce it:

The price of gasoline rose over the winter, but that was just the beginning of an inevitable upward trend. Summer will give us an even better feel for things to come. Complaints by motorists and accusations by politicians will not avoid the unavoidable: Most Americans simply cannot have all the gasoline they want much longer.

We already burn more of this precious but cheap commodity than U.S. refineries can make. For the past two years, imports climbing toward 1 million barrels per day have kept supply in step with consumption. But within three years, we'll be extracting as much from foreign suppliers as they can spare. At that point, demand cannot continue to grow at the current pace. It cannot exceed supply...

Let me stress an essential point. We must not pretend that a supply increase can save us. Even if public opposition and economic impediments to refinery expansion should disappear today, the oil industry could not install new equipment fast enough to prevent a shortage two or three years from now. No company can order the major process hardware to make gasoline -- pipe stills, catalytic crackers, alkylation units, cokers and reformers -- off the shelf. It takes three years to build and install those big, costly, complex units. Add another year for design, engineering, bidding and funding. In the real world, securing operating permits would entail anywhere from a year to as long as it takes for one to lose hope.

An article in the New York Times today provides some insight into the reverse-offshoring phenomena I'm predicting will surge by next year. In their headlong rush to core out hitech workers in this country, CEOs have "bet their dicks" (to use an old IBM phrase) on the productivity gains touted by the likes of Infosys and Wipro (two major Indian offshore consulting firms). The problem isn't that U.S. workers are lazy or over paid. It's that the customers of high technology (and in particular, software) don't really know what they want or how to make it. Software is written in a very haphazard way by all but the largest firms, requiring "dime turns" in design, long hours and weekends, but most importantly, direct and face-to-face interaction between the customers, managers and developers.

Pretty damned hard to do if you're 10,000 miles and 12 hours away.

For many of the most crucial technology tasks, they find that a work force operating within the American business environment better suits their needs.

"Only certain kinds of tasks can be outsourced — what can be set down as a set of rules," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist of Global Insight, a forecasting and consulting firm based in Waltham, Mass. "That which requires more creativity is more difficult to manage at a distance."

That was true even though programmers in India cost Bladelogic $3,500 a month versus a monthly cost of $10,000 for programmers in the United States. "The cost savings in India were three to one," Mr. Ittycheria said . "But the difference in productivity was six to one."

Bladelogic's chief technology officer, Vijay Manwani, born and educated in India, predicts that once the "hype cycle" about Indian outsourcing runs its course, projects will come back to the United States "when people find that their productivity goals have not been met."

The Indian entrepreneurs in this country — business executives with the cultural affinity and local connections that might be most conducive to making offshore partnerships work — do not fault the work ethic of the programmers in India. But they say the geographic distance and the differences in business contexts can be difficult to bridge.

A typical challenge is the difficulty of finding programmers overseas who can go beyond following well-known procedures to the next steps of identifying problems and creating new solutions.

In the end, many say the advantages of keeping some of the most sophisticated work in the United States are related to the factors that draw technology entrepreneurs from India and elsewhere to this country in the first place: Indian engineers and software designers in this country know that the businesses whose needs are driving technological innovation are mostly in the United States. It comes down to being where the customers are.

Indian developers are just as capable as the U.S. ones, but they're not living in the same geek culture that exists in the U.S., where change is rapid, constant and if you cannot handle it, you're toast. Further, the distance and time delay eliminate the ability of U.S. customers to demand a new demo or major alteration in the development project over a weekend, or even over night. So while many of the COBOL-oriented projects that are specified in gory detail can be sent abroad, much of the actual real-time development cannot, and it will be coming home over the next year or so if CEOs wish to retain their jobs and genitals.

This article in The Globe and Mail today discusses an economic political model that has accurately (retroactively) predicted the outcome of elections in the U.S. for President based purely on economic data. I think (and hope) it's dead wrong this time, because despite the economic outlook "improving" (for CEOs, at least) it has lead to a "decoupling" (as the model's author puts it) of the benefits of the renewed economy and the pocketbooks and jobs of real Americans. We will vote our pocketbooks, but we'll also vote our conscience, too.

Today's NY Times has an article about the effect that Bush's wisdom regarding NASA's direction is having on one of this nation's most valuable scientific resources. In particular, climate research will take a hit...

"And despite President Bush's promise to seek answers to the questions about global warming, about $1 billion has been removed from the projected earth science budget over the next four years, delaying by two years the launching of a satellite that will measure worldwide precipitation.

Today's Krugman column focuses on why the Bush Administration is so obsessed with secrecy. He delves into the secret records of the energy task force that Cheney is defending, and suggests that it's not the content that Cheney is defending but the overall principle that the public doesn't have the right to know what the government is doing.

What Mr. Cheney is defending, in other words, is a doctrine that makes the United States a sort of elected dictatorship: a system in which the president, once in office, can do whatever he likes, and isn't obliged to consult or inform either Congress or the public.

This pattern is consistent across the entire Administration, but I think it reflects the management style of Cheney himself. Further, this shows that when it comes to identifying who is really in charge, the answer isn't GWB; as one might expect from a patriarchial society -- the Dick rules the Bush.

Dick "Head" Cheney gave a speech yesterday at Westminister College in Fulton, MO where he "sandbagging the University President", according to Josh Marshall, when he denounced John Kerry's service record and suggested he didn't earn all his medals. This, coming from a war criminal who never served a minute's time in the military, let alone in active duty, let alone in combat, is the lowest of the low. If the Military Class in this country doesn't see this for what it is (hint: craven hypocrisy), I have no respect for them whatsoever. The GOP took Max Cleland's sacrifice and dishonored him. It takes John Kerry's sacrifice and disgraces it, just to win an election. If John Kerry wanted to give up his medals, that's his choice because he earned them the hard way.

While Shrub & Co. are busy "spreading Democracy" in the Middle East, the good citizens of Hong Kong lost theirs altogether yesterday when the Bejing government decided that they weren't going to honor the agreement they signed in 1997 with Britain when they took control of the region. Of course, they're just following the lead of the Bush Administration; international agreements are not really going to be respected by super powers (or former super powers -- these days Russia and China look pretty formidable to me). If the United States is supposed to be "exporting" Democracy, shouldn't it at least be able to maintain where it exists?

From Bloomberg...

"'OPEC is ready to fill any gap created from whatever reason,' United Arab Emirates Oil Minister Obeid bin Seif al- Nasseri said in a telephone interview from Abu Dhabi yesterday. 'However, OPEC has its limitations, if there's big damage in more than one place at the same time, then we will have a problem because we are already near our total capacity.''"

Interesting (and short) article in Janes about peak oil and the state of U.S. foreign policy.

"As the world's natural resources shrink and global warming changes the environment, competition for unimpeded access to them has intensified and will continue to do so."

Also, watch for the next issue of Oil and Gas Journal -- THE petroleum industry rag -- to predict 2006-2008 as the peak production years. But, bear in mind that we won't see the peak except in retrospect; it'll be a few years after the actual production peak that we will begin to notice consistent downward trend. Meanwhile, we will witness increasing price volatility and geo-economic-political instability.

BTW, non-OPEC production is already on the decline, I believe -- certainly production from conventional reserves. So, as our (and China's and India's and Japan's and ...) demand continues to rise, our dependence on OPEC oil will increase even moreso. The days of being able to shop elsewhere for oil, as we did after the OPEC embargo of the 70s, are fast drawing to a close.

Check out more anti-Bush hilarity at The Bean

Only in Canada.

Headlines this week focused on reports that Canada's birthrate has fallen to historic lows, and well below the replacement rate. The long term effect is more elderly than young, which as any economist will tell you is a disaster looming. Today's editorial ("No Sex Please: We're Too Busy Making Ends Meet") in the relatively conservative The Globe and Mail denounces the Liberals for not encouraging more sex.

Ahem. Only in Canada.

PS. This place rocks!

Just as two thirds of the American public is convinced there is a terrorist attack coming this year, some nuclear fuel rods have gone missing. CNN has this report:

"We do not think there is a threat to the public at this point. The great probability is this material is still somewhere in the [spend fuel] pool," said Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan.

Maybe Saddam Hussein can tell us where it went!

Matt Yglesias has some thoughts on our new Ambassador to Iraq:

Negroponte speaks no Arabic and has no background in the Middle East or the Islamic world. What he does have is a good deal of experience with counterinsurgency. Bad experience. Experience dating from the waning days of the Vietnam War through the Reagan administration's policies in Central America and consisting largely of propping up right-wing dictators, violating human rights, and working to deceive the Congress and the American people.

The post of ambassador to Honduras, which Negroponte held from 1981 to 1985, is not normally a crucial one in the grand scheme of U.S. foreign policy. Negroponte's main task, however, was a rather vital one: implementing the Reagan administration's illegal efforts to arm and train Contra rebels, who would then cross the border into neighboring Nicaragua to overthrow the Sandinista government there. As the CIA, which oversaw the Contra operation, eventually admitted, the rebel force "engaged in kidnapping, extortion, and robbery to fund its operations." Wishing to avoid combat with the Nicaraguan army, it became, in essence, a terrorist group, attacking civilian targets in an effort to disrupt Nicaragua's economy and society.

Honduras was, at the time, a military dictatorship operating beneath a civilian facade. Negroponte's policy was to use U.S. aid not to push the country toward democracy but to further increase the strength of its military. His predecessor had warned him that he ought to be concerned about an increase in recent years in repression and human-rights violations, but, to put it bluntly, he didn't care. Instead, he looked the other way as the CIA trained the infamous Battalion 316, a project of Honduran military intelligence responsible for widespread torture, kidnapping, and extrajudicial killing.

Along similar lines to the McDonald's posts below, from the Washington Post:

A small group of people who are drastically restricting how much they eat in the hope of slowing the aging process have produced the strongest support yet for the tantalizing theory that very low-calorie diets can extend the human lifespan.

The first study of people who voluntarily imposed draconian diets on themselves found that their cholesterol levels, blood pressure and other major risk factors for heart disease -- the biggest killer -- plummeted, along with risk factors for diabetes and possibly other leading causes of death such as cancer and Alzheimer's.

While it has long been known that eating well and staying trim helps people live healthier lives and avoid dying prematurely, evidence has been accumulating that following extremely low-calorie diets for many years may do something more -- significantly extend longevity beyond current norms.

Golly, there sure are a lot of revelations in Woodward's latest book, especially, if you're amount the 45%-50% of Americans who give a damn about Bush Administration lies. Finally, the Dallas Morning News has decided to spare some of their precious ink discussing one of those lies, this one from Colin Powell.

In the DMN story we discover that Colin Powell distorted — are you sitting down? — Pottery Barn policy. Read on, if you dare:

Mr. Woodward quotes Secretary of State Colin Powell as warning President Bush that invading Iraq would produce a "Pottery Barn rule" – which Mr. Powell defined as "you break it, you own it."

The term was news to Williams-Sonoma, the San Francisco-based retailer that owns Pottery Barn.

"The policy is completely incorrectly represented by the secretary of state," said Leigh Oshirak, director of public relations for the company. "I can't imagine you would ever hear that at any retailer at our level."

Take that, Colin Powell! Liar, liar, pants on fire! Let's praise the Dallas Morning News for taking a high-level Bush Administration official to task!

There's a lot of shit on TV, and anyone who ever sat through an episode of Suddenly Susan knows exactly what I'm talking about. In a Broadcast and Cable News report, we learn:

Attorney John Thompson, whose complaints about Howard Stern helped prompt Clear Channel to banish the jock and the FCC to fine the company almost half a million dollars, says he has faxed a complaint to the FCC about Sunday night's 60 Minutes broadcast, in which singer Mary J. Blige uttered an under-her-breath "shit."

Oh no! Call out the SWAT team! Good thing there isn't anything more important going wrong in this country, like — let's say — criminals running the country.

Looks like times are getting harsher for poor little SCO (the radioactive remains of the former Santa Cruz Organization). In this article on eWeek it's noted that Baystar Investments, a front for Microsoft Corp.'s enormous investment group, is requesting a refund of 20,000 shares of SCO. This investment ($20M) was widely regarded as "throwing around" money for SCO to use to continue it's harrassment lawsuit against Linux vendor IBM and several smaller companies using Linux. Several industry pundits are now expecting SCO to bite the dust as a result of the defunding -- a well deserved finish if it proves true.

Following the lead that Winston offered in the previous post, I took a look at GWB's Miserable Failure Reappointment site. What a magical, weird world it is. Blue meanies abound.

For instance, according to the site, John Kerry is going to massively enlarge the size of the Federal Government by ... increasing financial aid to college students. Don't see how? Read their own words ...

John Kerry's answer to rising tuition costs is to enlarge the federal bureaucracy by a half-million people at a cost of billions of dollars and call it "national service."

Perhaps the idea of all these young people earning four-year public-university scholarships through two years of work appeals to you. Don't suppose, however, that needy, young people are not already receiving considerable help. One estimate is that 60 percent of students at public universities get aid of some kind.

Kerry is also calling for a tuition tax credit, which is a way of giving help to many who need it least and, thus, contributing still more to tuition inflation. There is little doubt that federal programs have caused student fees to go up in private schools by making consumers less reluctant to pay amounts that sometimes go to finance appealing frills. Kerry would contribute to that inflationary spiral through a beneficence that is not so beneficent, after all.

The fact is, taxpayers at all levels of government are already paying for most of the costs of higher education in this country, not the students. Kerry's ideas would cost taxpayers still more, which is in keeping with other ideas he has.

Clearly, the GOP feels that there's enough finanical aid out there, thanks very much. So can we stop calling him the "Education President"? I was at my alma mater two weekends ago, where I found out that four years at RPI costs as much as the median home price in the U.S. So ... all I gotta do is mortgage my home for 100% and I've got 1/2 of my college expenses covered ... who says there's enough finanical aid? Rich assholes.

The blogosphere has established itself as the communal voice of the intellectual elite — well, actually, the intellectual elite and about a zillion morons with AOL accounts. Well, make that a zillion and one morons as of this weekend, the Bush/Cheney Reappointment Campaign Web Site went live, blog and all. In a departure from the usual Bush endeavor, this one actually provides information without the need for court orders, or investigative panels. Of course, it's not a complete break from tradition, the information actually undermines the point it's presented to support.

Case in point: Iraq and Al Qaeda. Before the Iraq invastion, smart people repeatedly pointed out that there was no credible link between Saddam Hussein and Usama bin Laden. Iraq was defanged, and despite Hussein's bluster, was of little consequence, even in the shadowy world of middle-eastern terrorism. By the end of 2003, even Bush administration officials were conceding that Al Qaeda and Iraq were not connected in any meaningful way.

The contrived connection was not the real folly, however. Iraq war opponents predicted that Iraq would go from being a non-issue in terrorism, to being the biggest issue driving islamic radicals. Invading Iraq would not only fail to address actual terrorist threats, it would create new ones.

Sure enough, UBL's latest audio tape mentions Iraq prominently. Now, thanks to GWB's web site, Bush supporters will be informed of this. Of course, the Bush team highlighted it to show that Iraq and Al Qaeda are involved and people who said otherwise, like John Kerry were wrong. No, they weren't. They'd be wrong now, just like the Bush campaign — which was wrong before, too.

From Bruce Schneier's Crypto-gram:

There are major efforts by computer security professionals to convince government officials that paper audit trails are essential in any computerized voting machine. They have conducted actual examination of software, engaged in letter writing campaigns, testified before government bodies, and collectively, have maintained visibility and public awareness of the issue.

The track record of the computerized voting machines used to date has been abysmal; stories of errors are legion. Here's another way to look at the issue: what are the economics of trying to steal an election?

Let's look at the 2002 election results for the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. In order to gain control of the House, the Democrats would have needed to win 23 more seats. According to actual voting data (pulled off the ABC News website), the Democrats could have won these 23 seats by swinging 163,953 votes from Republican to Democrat, out of the total 65,812,545 cast for both parties. (The total number of votes cast is actually a bit higher; this analysis only uses data for the winning and second-place candidates.)

This means that the Democrats could have gained the majority in the House by switching less than 1/4 of one percent of the total votes -- less than one in 250 votes.

Of course, this analysis is done in hindsight. In practice, more cheating would be required to be reasonably certain of winning. Even so, the Democrats could have won the house by shifting well below 0.5% of the total votes cast across the election.

Let's try another analysis: What is it worth to compromise a voting machine? In contested House races in 2002, candidates typically spent $3M to $4M, although the highest was over $8M. The outcomes of the 20 closest races would have changed by swinging an average of 2,593 votes each. Assuming (conservatively) a candidate would pay $1M to switch 5,000 votes, votes are worth $200 each. The actual value is probably closer to $500, but I figured conservatively here to reflect the additional risk of breaking the law.

If a voting machine collects 250 votes (about 125 for each candidate), rigging the machine to swing all of its votes would be worth $25,000. That's going to be detected, so is unlikely to happen. Swinging 10% of the votes on any given machine would be worth $2500.

This suggests that it is necessary to assume that attacks against individual voting machines are a serious risk.

Computerized voting machines have software, which means we need to figure out what it's worth to compromise a voting machine software design or code, and not just individual machines. Any voting machine type deployed in 25% of precincts would register enough votes that malicious software could swing the balance of power without creating terribly obvious statistical abnormalities.

In 2002, all the Congressional candidates together raised over $500M. As a result, one can conservatively conclude that affecting the balance of power in the House of Representatives is worth at least $100M to the party who would otherwise be losing. So when designing the security behind the software, one must assume an attacker with a $100M budget.

Conclusion: The risks to electronic voting machine software are even greater than first appears.

This article can be found online here.

No news, just thought Skates' post needed a graphic.

McDonalds is exploring ways to encorage it's adult and obese customers to exercise more. In an article in the NY Times, the food giant is promoting a "Go Active! Adult Happy Meal" product containing "a salad, bottled water, and even a pedometer and literature explaining the benefits of walking."

McDonald's action comes at a time when the fast-food industry is dealing with widespread criticism and legal challenges about its contribution to poor health and obseity. Surveys and government studies show that more than 60 percent of adults and 20 percent of children are now overweight or obese, and consumers filing lawsuits blaming fast-food makers for their wide girths.

KFC has tried to market its fried chicken as part of a healthy diet. Ads for Subway Restaurants show real people holding loose-fitting clothing and bragging that they lost weight by sticking to a healthy sandwich diet. And Wendy's is touting its spinach salads.

The companies say they are not responding to public criticism or the threat of lawsuits. But there is undoubtedly more pressure on them to offer healthier fare. Two bills before Congress would require restaurants to provide diners with nutritional information about meals.

In Canada, there is much political debate over an effort to impose a "fat tax" on fast food products (defined as costing <$4CDN). Liberals point out that this tax is highly regressive, hitting the poorest consumers the hardest.

This is a complex issue because of the fact that literally everyone must eat, and imposing taxes or new products to steer people towards a more healthy lifestyle is a difficult task made more so because of the ethical and legal issues it raises about the relationship between State and Citizen.

Page 54 of the U.S. D.O.E. Energy Information Administration's"2004 International Energy Outlook" asserts...

The decline in Canada's exports of natural gas to the United States is expected to be mitigated by the construction of a pipeline that would bring MacKenzie Delta natural gas into Alberta. The gas would then be available both to serve Canada's internal needs and to provide exports to U.S. markets."

Yet, an Edmonton Journal article indicates that Canada may have other ideas about how to use that gas. Canada has huge reserves of oil, but most of it is trapped as unconventional tar sands in Alberta. Tar sands are expensive to produce, and so the reserves only become proven -- or, economical feasible to produce -- when the price of oil is high enough to guarantee a return on the high investment costs. Well, now we are seeing high oil prices, and Canada is becoming increasingly interested in exploiting it's natural resources. From the Journal article, ...

Gas consumption by oilsands projects for heat processes and power generation is forecast to triple by 2015 to 1.8 billion cubic feet per day, a figure exceeding anticipated deliveries by the Mackenzie pipeline.

I have an acquaintance inside the U.S. National Energy Research Labs who confirms -- with an ominous tone of incredulity -- that, indeed, U.S. energy officials are depending on the MacKenzie gas (as the 2004 energy outlook report indicates).

Folks, I can't be emphatic enough about the severity of the problem that is indicated here, and I believe my friend at the NERL would agree. We are setting ourselves up for a serious natural gas crisis in this country over the next few years. This will affect energy and food prices, which in turn will have a trickle-down effect across the whole economy over the longer term. Most of the power-generating plants built in recent years -- and there have been quite a few, to address shortages that have become evident -- are gas-fired. I have heard that a number of fertilizer plants in the U.S., which depend heavily on natural gas as a feed stock to produce anhydrous ammonia fertilizer, have either idled or closed.

Oops! Gotta go! Takin' the Excursion down to the steakhouse for some o' that tasty CORN-FED BEEF! Yum!

Hey! George Tenet! Yeah, you! When did you learn about Zacarias Moussaoui?

Tenet: "...I was briefed on Moussaoui in late August. . . . I believe it's the 23rd or the 24th."

Whoa. Did you get a chance to talk to Chimpy — I mean, the President — about it?

Tenet: "In this time period, I'm not talking to him, no."

So, Mr. Tenet, that's what you said to the 9/11 Panel. Good job, but I, uh, found a puffy little piece on the White House web site. George W. Bush give a tour of his Crawford ranch on August 25th, 2001, in which he says this:

The CIA briefings, I have on our porch, the end of our porch looking out over the lake. When Tenet came up, that's where we visited, out there.

You know, everybody wants to see the ranch, which I'm proud to show it off. So George Tenet and I -- yesterday, we piled in the new nominees for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Vice Chairman and their wives and went right up the canyon.

So... when George Tenet learned about Moussaoui on August 23rd or 24th he was with the President in Crawford.

You can read Bush's puff piece for yourself.

Tenet's office has since amended his testimony to include this meeting — I guess so little of importance was discussed, Tenet just blanked on it.

The US wants democracy! Just ask anyone! Anyone in America, that is. From the outside, it doesn't really look that way.

Put me in the 21% who don't think it looks that way from the this side, either. Full, depressing report from The Pew Research Center For People and The Press.

It will cost more to put in the crop this year, according to agrinews. This is due largely to increased energy costs. The direct impact to farmers of higher energy costs is only moderate, as the fuels they use to produce and deliver their crops is only a small percentage of the overall production costs. But, when you throw in the increases in the costs of such materials as fertilizers, pesticides and other agri-chemicals that get used, nearly all of which are derived from petroleum, the cost increases become substantial.

And, this is one of the reasons that I harp on energy, and in particular oil and natural gas, as the linchpin of our economy, and in fact our whole modern civilization.

Bottom line: look for higher food prices in the fall.

Today is Income Tax Day! If you work for a living in the United States, you have to file your 1040 return today. If you are one of the luck receipients of GWB's $450B tax cut (and you know who you are) you should go celebrate by buying another Mercedes or yacht slip in the Virgin Islands, because today doesn't apply to you, the true "lucky ducks" of this Administration.

And hats off to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney for lowering their own personal taxes by more than my house is worth ... for this year alone. Remember to vote your pocketbook this fall, and not your lottery ticket.

In The Globe and Mail today is an article detailing George Tenet's testimony before the 9/11 Commission. While being questioned, Tenet made plain the fact that President Bush was, for all practical purposes, out of the loop during August of 2001 while vacationing in Crawford, TX [NOTE: Not a vacation paradise]. After further questioning it became apparent to Commission member Tim Roemer that Mr. Tenet was nearly as incompetent as the USA's #1 miserable failure, so he asked Mr. Tenet a softball question, "Who is most responsible for dropping the ball on 9/11?". Mr. Tenet, unable to answer the classified question during an open hearing, could only point to the likely culprit.

Charles Dharapak/AP

Most people demonstrating this level of incompetence are fired from their jobs, with cause, on the day the misdeed is discovered. But not this guy! He's too useful for GWB. Being the President's beotch is a fulltime job for Tenet.

Miserable Failure, Act II.

Since I know no one can get enough of this oil talk (like the commodity itself), here's more.

First, since I've mentioned Matt Simmons here in the past, here's an article from the Houston Business Journal that gives a pretty good view of the feud he is currently having with the Saudis regarding their reserves and capacity.

Next, since we've also discussed the effect that the growing economies in Asia are having on world resource demand (especially oil), here's some commentary on the Saudis' dealings with Japan and South Korea.

"The Saudis want a deal: oil at good prices if countries like Japan and South Korea help develop the kingdom's infrastructure, power stations, petrochemical plants, mining and water-desalination plants."

Brad Vanderburg pointed out this extremely helpful voting guide. It's an interactive guide that will help you figure out what you need to know to survive this election season. Give it a whirl. Everyone must report back here after they are done.

Chris Temple makes some interesting observations in a guest column at PrudentBear.com. He sees the Bank of Japan's recent announcements regarding the Yen, China's billowing economy and OPEC's decisions to cut output (which, so far, by the way, has proved to be a bit of a farce, given that OPEC's March output actually rose considerably) as extraordinary signs of America's weaking power in the world.

From The Globe and Mail.

Feminists — by which I mean people who support the concept that women have a right to run their own lives — have been unhappy with the Bush Administration, mainly due to John Ashroft climbing into the distaff citizenry's collective hoo-hahs and stamping "Property U.S. Govt." on their gonads. You'd think that people would be happy that he appointed the first female — and first African-American — National Security Advisor, but his true agenda on that has been outed. Bush appointed a black woman so that he could call his critics sexist racists when they accused her of lying (you'll notice that Bush likes to put minorities out in front to do his boldest lying for him).

Well, now there's been some real progress for women under Bush! Thanks to George W. Bush's policies, last Friday, Pvt. Michelle Witmer earned her place in the history books as the first female member of the Wisconsin militia to die in combat. Yea! Go Team Bush! Women around the world... c'mon! Celebrate!

There's an AP Newswire story.

On a serious note, there's a tragedy here. It's not that Michelle Witmer gave her life for a country that didn't think she was mature enough to drink legally. That's unfortunate, but dying is battle is a grim reality that every soldier faces. Calling it a tragedy implies that is was unexpected and unwarranted. No, the sad fact is that we knew Americans were going to die in Iraq — the tragedy is that the people who sent them to die can't give us a straight answer as to what, exactly we're buying with this sacrafice.

I think that American women should realize that we all need to lick Bush in 2004.

The NY Times is running a story about second thoughts the GOP is having, now publicly, about holding the re-coronation of Prince George in NYC.

"The premise for coming to New York is no longer valid," said Roger Stone, a longtime Republican political strategist who supports President Bush but is also known as a maverick who at times has opposed Republican candidates. "Karl Rove's master stroke idea may turn out to be an unmitigated disaster. It has the potential to highlight an issue that may be a negative by the time he gets to the convention."

It remains to be seen if Rove will carry through with the presumed speech at Ground Zero, which (if it occurs) will be the Most Craven moment in the week long conservative fete.

From MSNBC:

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was taken to a Manhattan hospital early Friday after several people called police saying he was pulling on their clothes and accusing them of being FBI agents, a police source told The Associated Press.

Police found Skilling at 4 a.m. at the corner of Park Avenue and East 73rd Street and determined he might be an “emotionally disturbed person,” said the source, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Jeffrey, since you are such a fine example of a whole class of arrogant klepto-pricks that most of us have had to work for every day for the past umpteen years, I have three words for you: HEADS ON STICKS!!!

Last month, I noted the shutdown — by American troops — of a pro-Sadr Iraqi newspaper. The rationale was that this paper was promoting violence against Americans. Well, if you've been following the body count, you can see what a fabulous success this turned out to be.

I also suggested that we start cracking down on the press here, just to show that we're not hypocrites. I was kidding!

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said just the other day:

"The Constitution of the United States is extraordinary and amazing. People just don't revere it like they used to."

Of course, you'll have to take my word for it because tapes of him saying that were forcibly erased by law enforcement. Yes, in a violation of statutes protecting the assets of news-gathering organizations, reporters were forced at gunpoint to destroy tapes of Scalia's ode the the Constitution.

Now, I have to ask, he was talking about the United States' Constitution, right?

I wonder what Heimie Gifeltistein will have to say about this article from the NY Times:

The Royal Dutch/Shell Group's oil production in Oman has been declining for years, belying the company's optimistic reports and raising doubts about a vital question in the Middle East: whether new technology can extend the life of huge but mature oil fields. [...]

While Oman represents a small part of Shell's reserves, oil industry experts say the company's experience there highlights broader questions about the future role of Western oil companies and their technology in the Persian Gulf, which has most of the world's oil reserves.

In the case of the Yibal field, for example, Shell and Omani oil engineers and auditors have expressed concerns that a technique Sir Philip said would recover more oil not only did not do so, but also increased the amount of water in the extracted oil to as much as 90 percent of the total volume, increasing production costs.

"In Oman, Shell seems to have fumbled on technology," said Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari, a senior official with the National Iranian Oil Company.

Perhaps more ominously for the world's oil outlook, he added that the failure of Shell's horizontal drilling technology in Oman suggested that even advanced extraction techniques "won't bring back the good old days."

This parody of the White House website features stories on:

• The creation of the Department of Wombland Security
• Scientists Discover The Right to Life on Mars
• Ashcroft Supeonas Self In Growing Medical Records Flak
• Congress: Occupied Uterus Subject to Housing Code

Thanks to The 18 1/2 Minute Gap for the link!

The Earth's magnetic field may already be shifting. This process is well documented in scientific studies of ancient rocks, and it seems to occur at stunningly rapid periods (around 1/4 of a million years). Evidence is growing that the process is under way, and that geologically soon we'll have to abandon our existing compasses.

One of our contributor's father wrote a book about this called Pole Shift. It makes an interesting read.

This week's Tom the Dancing Bug is awesome. You'll need a Salon.com subscription to read it. Buy one. Otherwise, read it next week on the Tom The Dancing Bug web site.

Scott Kirwin, a computer consultant in Wilmington, Del., was a contract worker for J.P. Morgan Chase for about three years when he was told he was being let go. He says the contract was ended so that Indian workers could replace him. He was asked to train the replacements, he says, in order to keep getting a paycheck.

This is demoralizing for several reasons, one of which is that I'm a contract worker for J.P. Morgan Chase. Read the USA Today story on Yahoo! News.

Wal-Mart took a body blow yesterday in California, after spending $1M to promote a ballot measure to, in effect, create a mini-zoning district exclusively for it's planned "Super Store" in Inglewood, CA. Repeatedly rebuffed by the city's zoning board, Wal-Mart paid signature gatherers (sound familiar? This is the only growing job industry in California) to get a measure on the ballot to create a seperate zoning district (in effect, a mini-city) exclusively for the site. They lost at the ballot box, 60 to 40, in a clear triumph for unions and the working poor.

"I think that it means that Wal-Mart has to go through the front door and deal with cities and communities as equals," said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, leader of the Coalition for a Better Inglewood, a group formed to fight the Wal-Mart project. "They can't trick cities and communities into giving away the store, getting everything they want without any oversight. They're going to have to do business differently if they want to do business in California."

Wal-Mart rarely backs down from a fight, and has vowed to keep on pressing this ballot measure across the state in communities that (let's face it, from Wal-Mart's perspective -- defy) deny them zoning for their mothership stores. The question I never hear answered is how much money does Wal-Mart lose to get one of these stores built? Is there some region of the nation that is subsidizing this by having the profits from their stores funnelled into these expansion drives? I'd love to see the internal numbers; it's so very much like how Microsoft funds new tentacles ... er ... products, by taking profits from existing monopolies ... er ... operating systems.

Arianna Huffington, apparently, thinks us boys at The Staton Jones Report are hot stuff. She writes in her weekly column for Salon that blogging is the closest thing we have to Thomas Paine's political works in the public square. I'd agree that bloggers can cover stories as they see fit, but I have to admit that getting the story out quickly is often more exciting than getting it right. Even so, it's nice to be wanted:

I've got a confession to make. I've got a big-time crush. I'm talking weak-in-the-knees infatuation. But it's not Brad or Orlando or Colin or any of the cinematic hunks du jour who have set my heart aflutter. No, it's Atrios and Kos and Josh Micah Marshall and Kausfiles and Kevin Drum and Wonkette. Bloggers all. Yes, when it comes to the blogosphere, I'm a regular cyberslut. And I don't care who knows it. Bring on the fines, Michael Powell!

This just leaves me dumbstruck. Here's a quick link to the picture enlarged.

Sure, people are silly, vain, and generally foolish, and it's probably a >99% safe procedure. But it is your eyeball we're talking about! I had corrective surgery on my orbs in 1990, and even though I was highly confident about the procedure and have been utterly pleased with the result, I still agonized over it. I treasure my vision, such as it is.

To risk one's eyes for this sort of vanity -- at over $1k each -- what are these people thinking? And there are people lining up for it! Incroyable.

So what's the logical extension? We've all heard of retinal scans being better unique, personal identifiers than fingerprints; and fingerprint scans are already being used in some banks for check cashing and withdrawals. Combine these corneal implants with RFID technology and we've got retinal scans that can be used for personal commerce. "Welcome to Wal-mart, please wait for opti-scan."

I don't like that level of complex, individual traceability. The cautions and abuses far outweigh the merits.

I love improved technologies, but I loathe how some of them are employed.

As I suspected, the forward month natural gas futures are moving upward -- all above $6/mmbtu now. And, given today's report of an unexpected drop in U.S. crude inventories, oil prices are headed back up into the mid-$36/bbl range.

It appears that refineries are gobbling up more oil now in an attempt to bring surging gasoline prices under control by increasing output to match demand. The demand for gasoline is rising, with U.S. inventories also declining. This is a little unsettling, since we haven't even reached peak gasoline demand months.

So, as increased refinery output is likely to slow the rise in gasoline prices a bit (perhaps not much; I also expect to see more calls for (a) reducing the diversion of oil into the strategic petroleum reserve, and (b) relaxation of EPA rules on gasoline formulations -- both a sign of desparation, and loaded with election-year implications), we will continue to see increased demand for crude in the coming months. As power generators and other industrial consumers feel the pinch of the subsequent price increases, those that can switch fuels, will, driving the demand for, and therefore price of, natural gas higher still.

To make the natural gas story a little more bleak for the U.S., increased oil prices has the effect of increasing proven reserves (for all nations), and Canada in particular will be keen to take advantage of this opportunity to develop their unconventional sources -- mainly, Alberta tar sands -- which will require a large increase in utilization of their domestic natural gas resources. That is likely to result in decreased willingness to export to the U.S. (watch for political battles over this issue in Canada), or at least a higher price for that gas to the U.S.

Again, pray for a mild summer.

Postscript: There's a fair bit of talk about liquified natural gas -- LNG, which allows natural gas to be transported overseas in tankers and stored in a compact form -- as a way to ameliorate domestic shortage problems. This article presents a pretty good view of the plans and challenges with LNG. Also, regarding natgas prices, some pretty good discussion about the relationship between commodity prices and natgas futures is presented here.

I urge you to read this article in the New Republic covering the Newdow case before the Supreme Court. Michael Newdow is defending his 9th Circuit Court win in his "crusade" to remove the phrase "Under God" from the Pledge of Allegance. The article shows how defenders of God in the Pledge are undermining their own religious beliefs.

But the conservatives were not the only ones at the Supreme Court who denied religion by the manner in which they defended it. Justice Breyer wondered, in a challenge to Newdow, whether the words "under God" referred only to a "supreme being." Citing United States v. Seeger from 1965, though he might have illustrated his speculation more vividly with the historical precedent of the Cult of the Supreme Being in revolutionary Paris, Breyer proposed that such a faith "in any ordinary person's life fills the same place as belief in God fills in the life of an orthodox religionist," and so "it's reaching out to be inclusive"--so inclusive, in fact, that it may satisfy a non-believer such as Newdow. Breyer suggested that the God in "under God" is "this kind of very comprehensive supreme being, Seeger-type thing." And he posed an extraordinary question to Newdow: "So do you think that God is so generic in this context that it could be that inclusive, and if it is, then does your objection disappear?"

Needless to say, Newdow's objection did not disappear, because it is one of the admirable features of atheism to take God seriously. Newdow's reply was unforgettable: "I don't think that I can include 'under God' to mean 'no God,' which is exactly what I think. I deny the existence of God." The sound of those words in that room gave me what I can only call a constitutional thrill. This is freedom. And he continued: "For someone to tell me that 'under God' should mean some broad thing that even encompasses my religious beliefs sounds a little, you know, it seems like the government is imposing what it wants me to think in terms of religion, which it may not do. Government needs to stay out of this business altogether."

Amen to that.

Besides, the argument that Olson makes implies that we only added the phrase "Under God" to counter the Soviet threat during the Cold War. Well, look around. We won that conflict. The fifty year clock has run out ... let's drop the line now. If your religious belief is so fragile that it will only be sustained by forcing millions of American children to repeat the token phrase, which is exactly what I think the religious leaders who politicize religion are doing, it's not very strong now is it?

Having just seen to sparring that goes on between Democrats challenging each other for a nomination — economic policy, what do do about Iraq and the like — we now look at a Republican contest. In Dallas, Sam Walls and Rob Orr are vying to win the Republican nomination for a Texas House of Representative seat. Sam Walls, bouyed by solid endorsements by prominent Texas Republicans, was expected to win the April 13^th contest.

Well, that was beforel photos of him in drag were circulated. Read the Reuters story, printed in the Houston Chronicle:

Walls, 64, who describes himself as a fervent Baptist, told the paper his family had "dealt with" the issue of his cross-dressing and that he asked for forgiveness.

Hate the sin, vote for the sinner? Who knows, and — let's face it &mdash who cares?!

Charles Schmalzried pointed out this Frontline website for the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Take a look at the content ... it's hard to look at but a harsh reminder that you don't need smart bombs or lasers to kill a lot of people. Just a warehouse full of machetes and some grim, twisted determination.

Senator Ted Kennedy (yes, that Ted Kennedy) gave a strong speech concerning the lies and deceptions of the Bush Adminstration yesterday. Here is the conclusion:

This is the pattern and the record of the Bush Administration. Iraq. Jobs. Medicare. Schools. Issue after issue. Mislead. Deceive. Make up the needed facts. Smear the character of any critic. Again and again and again, we see this cynical and despicable strategy playing out. It’s undermining our national security, undermining our economy, undermining our health care, undermining our schools, undermining public trust in government, undermining our very democracy. We need a change. November can’t come too soon.

I urge you to read the whole text. Re-defeat Bush.

Thanks to Skates for the link to the video of Bush sitting on his ass on 9/11. Watch it. Then read this New York Post story in which the teacher of the class Bush was visiting recounts the events. These are Bush-quality lies:

"The president bolted right out of here and told me: ‘Take over,' " Daniels told The Post yesterday.

Really? Then why did she says this for a report in the London Times?

Mr Bush left us mentally for a moment so I had to go and do what I do as a teacher and kind of take over.

Now, that's the President Bush we all know and love. I wrote in greater detail about Bush's deer-in-the-headlights routine and what it means about his "leadership" in one of the chapters of my essay comparing Hitler and Bush: The Terrorists Win.

From What We Now Know week of 4-5-2004:

If anyone needed proof that war is hell, it was provided last week in Iraq.

Update no. 2: As we go to press, events in Iraq are unfolding with the force of an avalanche. In next week's edition, you'll read more about Muqtada al-Sadr and the Iraqi debacle.

This link to The Memory Hole shows how long GWB's input queue is on any given day (approximately five minutes). My guess is that his brain's parser is written in VB emulated in Java. Nonetheless, not only did GWB not leap into action, neither did the Secret Service, a group of people allegedly non-partisan and theoretically competent.

What did the Commander in Chief do? Nothing. He sat there. He sat for well over 5 minutes, doing nothing while 3,000 people were dying and the attacks were still in progress.

Way to go, Commander in Chief.

Salon has an article on the horrors of offshoring in today's edition. It highlights the gross inexperience Indian programmers have, the CYA mentality of American management in going the offshore route (it'll save us a fortune!), and the reality of the experience:

"I had to explain to them what batch processing was," says Smith, exasperation showing in her voice. "I had to explain what a job dependency was. Totally basic things you'd expect any 26- or 27-year-old American programmer to know, they didn't know."

Anger venting, Smith ends with a flourish: "Where did all our savings go when, at the end of the day, we have a piece-of-shit system that'll just need to be replaced in three years?"

I'm particularly amused at the rapid rise in wages in India caused by the American corporate rush to offshore. Soon enough, these guys may well be as expensive as their first world counter-parts. That I would be ok with.

"I had one company take a huge portion of our code," he says, recalling an Indian contract. "They slapped a new front on it and began selling it as a competitive product. That wasn't fun."

I've been predicting this for some time. Asian firms are not at all squemish about taking your product developed under contract offshore and turning it into their product sold everywhere. American firms that outsource and offshore all their intellectual property are committing suicide. Just look at how hard Microsoft struggles to defeat pirate versions of their stuff.

Ashcroft's Justice Department has, for the first time in ten years, ramped up it's anti-obscenity efforts. And it's goals are more widespread than most Americans realize.

Nothing is off limits, they warn, even soft-core cable programs such as HBO's long-running Real Sex or the adult movies widely offered in guestrooms of major hotel chains.

The Baltimore Sun article points out that venerable pornographer Larry Flint is steeling himself for another huge Federal assault on his business, which he describes as "plain old vanilla sex." The Showtime series Family Business aired an episode about Seymore Butts' business being sued from across the country for shipping adult material across statelines -- an omnious return to Reagan era anti-obscenity tactics.

No doubt Europeans will look at this activity and shake their heads. Why isn't the Justice Department going after terrorists?

This month's edition of the Libertarian magazine Reason will feature a custom printed cover with a satellite image of the subscriber's neighborhood on it, with their home circled in red. The magazine is trying to point out the convergence of technology and government omnipresence, but of course, they're doing it to their own paranoid readers. Expect an uptick in rightwing nutcases.

A while back, I showed some folks how one might take advantage of the natural gas shortages of the past winter to make a few dollars through mock investments. Originally, I'd been thinking it was a short-term opportunity, taking advantage of more-volatile-than-average seasonal natgas prices. The fake investments (trading futures) turned out wildly profitable, and it was a little painful that they were not real, since it wasn't clear to me if/when other such opportunities might arise. I mean, in general, the trend seems to be in this direction (more frequent shortages and crises, etc.), but one can never be quite certain beyond a three- or four-month horizon.

Well, this Financial Sense article lays out a pretty strong argement that we may see more such opportunities sooner than we think.

From the last paragraph of the piece...

"... look for gas to put in a price floor of $6.50US by the middle of the summer and trade much higher as we head into next winter."

As I write this, we're seeing natgas spot prices edging up toward $6 after a couple of months hovering in the mid-$5 range. And, prices for six-month-horizon futures are all below $6. From an investment perspective, that looks like potential opportunity to me (albeit short-term and risky), although consumers will be in for high natural gas and (especially) electricity prices in the coming months. Pray for a mild summer.

Allan Sloan details the hidden agenda behind Bush's tax cuts in this week's Newsweek cover story:

The blather from both sides obscures the real, but largely hidden, agenda behind the Bush tax cuts. Bush has been open about each item he wants: lowering taxes on capital income, such as dividends and capital gains; creating two big new income-sheltering investment plans; eliminating the estate tax. But he's not been at all forthcoming about the ultimate effect of his program. If Bush gets what he wants, the income tax will become a misnomer—it will really be a salary tax. Almost all income taxes would come from paychecks—80 percent of income for most families, less than half for the top 1 percent. Meanwhile taxpayers receiving dividends, interest and capital gains, known collectively as investment income, would have a much lighter burden than salary earners—or maybe none at all. And here's the topper. In the name of preserving family farms and keeping small businesses in the family, Bush would eliminate the estate tax and create a new class of landed aristocrats who could inherit billions tax-free, invest the money, watch it compound tax-free and hand it down tax-free to their heirs.

By drastically favoring investment income over salary, fees and other "earned income," Bush would make it harder for people who start out with nothing to earn their way up the economic ladder, because they'd pay full taxes on almost everything they make, but he'd shower rewards on people who have already made it to the top rungs.

As noted in many journals, the U.S. Labor Department declared that in March, 308K new jobs were created. But, not all jobs are equal, and some ugly trends continue:

• Manufacturing gained no new jobs, but hit a statistical zero in losses, a first in 44 months.
  
• The only sector losing jobs last month was information services, where companies cut about 1,000 jobs.
  

The Bush White House is throwing away the U.S. lead in biotech research to appease the religious loonies afraid of living hundreds of years without the spectre of cancer or even old age. I predict that, ironically, Cuba and Israel will lead the world in this research (Ponce de Leon would be pleased to know that Cuba will develop the first usable longevity technology). If we don't have regime change this fall, the U.S. will continue to sink under it's own weight -- we'll be the other Russia.

The venerable DJIA is being tweaked. According to a report in E-Commerce Times:

The Dow Jones industrial average is getting rid of the losers, again. Dow Jones announced Thursday that it was dropping AT&T, Eastman Kodak and International Paper from the list of 30 industrial stocks and adding Pfizer, American International Group and Verizon Communications.

An important observation about the DJIA is made near the end of the article:

The Dow is the oldest index in the United States, and that history is one reason it is still widely followed despite the fact other indexes, such as the Standard & Poor's 500 or the Russell 3,000, are viewed as more representative of the overall U.S. market.

The Simpsons Outsourced to India posting was a joke, but this isn't! According to a Reuters wire story:

The actors who do the talking for Homer, Bart and the rest of the cartoon stars of the long-running Fox television show "The Simpsons" are keeping their mouths shut until producers pay them more money, a source familiar with the situation said Thursday.

I have just two things to say on this:

1. The Simpsons program is a cash cow, so it's only fair that some of that bounty fall in the pockets of the talent behind the show. Is it ridiculous to pay someone US$360,000 for a day's work? Not when that day's work has a 7-figure ROI!

   The only unfairness is that the "faceless" talent — the rank and file who produce the show — don't have the leverage that the on-air talent does. No raises for them.

2. If anyone from The Simpsons is reading this: I can do all of Harry Shearer's character voices dead on, so call me.

My personal "History of Iraq" seems to be unfolding in real-time; I finally updated it tonight. I added Iraq 1960-1965: Oil, Kuwait and Saddam (Episode I). Visit the Never Fight a Land War in Asia site to learn about Iraq's hilarious history (as well, as reading my brilliant comparison of George Bush and Adolph Hitler — Hitler comes out ahead).

Here are some excerpts of the new chapter:

Qassim was also irritating the British with more of that crazy talk about annexing Kuwait. I say "the British," because the Americans had already agreed to let them have it in 1958.

…

The year 1963 was chock full of political assassinations. The murder of Vietnam's Ngô Ðình Diệm, helped ignite the Vietnam war. The subsequent death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy made sure it would last a good long time. Finally, the shooting of Abdel Qassim promoted Saddam Hussein from a mere murderer to a state-sponsored murderer.

The coup in Iraq had no effect on the Vietnam War, although it initiated a sequence of events resulting in a war that the people born during the Vietnam War could compare to it.

Given President Bush's actions to provide rights to human fetuses as "people", I guess it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume that tax cut-happy Bush would have no problem changing the tax status for these little in-utero citizens. So, a woman who becomes pregnant in the second half of the calendar year should be able to claim a dependent deduction for her little cell-glob of joy in that tax year, no?

Personally, I don't think they are going far enough. Hell, every little sperm cell has the potential to develop into a new Republican under the right circumstances, right? Now, there's a nice deduction, eh?

From the Kerry campaign: Bush Tries to Outsource Deficit
Now how much will you pay? But wait, there's more!

From E-Commerce Times: Memo: Bill Gates To Sabotage Linux Using "Time-Travel" Machine
The latest "smoking gun" memo from Microsoft!

From ThinkGeek: PC EZ-Bake Oven
An EZ Bake oven that fits in a 5¼" PC drive bay!

From CNN: Bush to sign Unborn Victims of Violence Act
Wait... that's not a joke. Uh oh.

Add your favorites in the comments. What fun we have here on the Internet!

As Spring comes to Texas, everyone looks forward to wildflowers, oppressive heat, and some crazy religious woman killing her children. But first, we have to sentence last year's Psycho Mom, Deanna Laney.

This morning, the Dallas Morning News released a transcript [free registration required], of Laney's December interview with a psychiatrist — and boy howdy it's a page-turner. Here, Laney waxes nostalgic about her inspiration from previous Texas Psycho Mom, Andrea Yates:

I remembered that Andrea Yates, that she had, because I had thought we were going to be witnesses together. And, uh, I thought, I thought she must going to be a witness, too, because she had to kill her boys. And I thought we were going to be witnesses together.

Yeah, well, instead of witnesses, you were "the accused." Tough break.

And I thought it was the Lord telling me that I was -- I thought it was -- I, I thought he was giving me time to really value the time that I was gonna, that I had left with them. ... And I thought because I had gotten this same feeling back four years ago at the Burger barn.

Someone get Mel Gibson on the phone!