Rayne Today

As so many have already pointed out, the march to war on Syria feels like deja vu, as if we are in the midst of a replay circa November 2002 when the drums began to beat, demanding war on Iraq. All we are missing is a passionate demand by a high-ranking White House or Pentagon official in front of the United Nations asking for international blessing to proceed. This is probably only days away from happening; I'll be Colin Powell can give us a solid estimate on exactly when this will happen, given his previous experience with pawning similar hyperbole on the UN in November 2002. The hypocritical nature of the demand for war cannot be ignored. We supported the Iraq regime under Saddam Hussein when he used chemical weapons. Decades later Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons is used as the justification for U.S. military intervention. There are deaths. We cannot deny this. The situation is tragic.  But we cannot justify our military intervention at this time. ...

Just moments from now, the House Armed Services Committee will begin a press conference to discuss proposed legislation addressing "America’s Terrorist Detention and Prosecution Policies." The announcement issued by the HASC's chair Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) says, The comprehensive legislation, among other things, would affirm the use of military force against al-Qaeda, the Taliban and affiliated terrorist networks; create certain restrictions which would make it tougher for detainees to return to the battlefield or share information with other terrorists or malign actors; and would permanently block funding for the creation or renovation of any facility in the continental United States to house detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay. That's three rather ugly things all bundled into one piece of legislation -- nasty little rabbits all stuffed together in a magician's hat. With a wave of his wand and a tap on the brim, Rep. McKeon will call them something else...

One of my circle of acquaintances in the blogging world has been wrestling with the issue of age and ageism. Jon Lebkowsky said in an email to others, "I've learned that over 60 in the U.S., you're pretty much out to pasture. And the pasture is bare, up to you to turn the soil and plant the seeds." While I find myself agreeing with Jon, I do so with reservations. The age thing is based in cultural stickiness. Decade after decade of improvements to our health and safety, we are still basing our measurements of human productivity on the mortality of our antecedents. Women frequently died in childbirth, men died more frequently of heart disease and fatal work injuries acquired from physically demanding labor, yet these have now become much more infrequent factors and our life spans are increasing rapidly. But our cultural notions of age and productivity are still stuck in the past and haven't kept up with us. (One example: how many employers still have concerns about...

As I came down the stairs I heard somebody moaning in the general vicinity of the kitchen. Unnhh. Mmmfff. Unh-huh. Mmm-mmm-mmm-unh. What the hell is going on, I wondered? Standing over the kitchen island, eyes closed, murmuring to himself is my spouse. With a half-eaten jar of pickles in his hand. "Oh my God, these are so good." "Good," he said, as if I didn't hear him the first time through the mouthful of pickles. "My mom would have loved these, these are soooo good. What are they?" Just bread and butter pickles. Pickles and peppers from our garden, and some big sweet onions from the farmers' market, with some extra garlic. That was a week ago. He's eaten another jar since then. I don't think I've made enough to make it through the winter, at this rate of consumption. Try them yourself, they're easy to make. But you'd better do it soon if you live in northern climes as hard frosts will take out the rest of the pickle crop over...

After a rather aggravating discussion this past week with rank-and-file members of the local Democratic Party as well as representatives for elected officials, it became clear that hold-outs in Congress who refuse to commit that they will do everything possible to obtain the public option are not on the same page as us. They believe they need to make no commitments to anyone, including constituents, in order to have maximum negotiating power when bargaining with the health care industry. We, on the other hand, believe they simply need to do their utmost to get the public option, which is not the same as bargaining away and settling for less. I was pretty steamed about this situation. Perhaps if I knew less about the health care industry's performance over the last couple of decades I might be more amenable and understanding. But I do know about these choice examples -– and they are only a very small number, a smattering of cases presented here in no particular order which exemplify...

The text of President Obama's speech scheduled for delivery tomorrow to public school children has been released today; I've read it. And I asked my both of my kids read it. With a bored, so-what shrug, the new sophomore said, "It's rather elementary, but I suppose it has to be since it's meant to reach elementary school kids. Like kindergartners." The new middle-schooler was more forthcoming. "Yeah, I read this part about Obama and his mom this past year," by which he referred to the portion of the speech in which Obama recalls how mother got him up at 4:30 a.m. to study. "I already knew about that. And the President is telling kids the same thing you already tell us, that we need to go to school and study and work hard." I asked him about parents being afraid to let kids hear President Obama's speech -- what did he think about this? "Profiling. They're profiling him." You could have knocked me over with a feather; I was...

It's been the rational for using torture, a la Kiefer Sutherland's character on the television series "24" -- tick-tock-torture, to keep the time bomb at bay. But there never was a ticking time bomb, and they knew it. Their actions prove it. The flight logs and the timeline of the rendition flights skipped helterskelter across the world to different locations and venues; some of the flight plans took days, especially when teams of personnel from other entities and countries were involved. They didn't land at the closest place, nor did they land someplace where they would be out in the open, clearly questioning their rendered prey about the tick-tock-time-bomb because the immediacy of a potential attack warranted immediate action. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Oh my. What a little time, less water and benign neglect can do to a garden. Compare this photo at right to the photos below at this post . Wowzer. These Early Girl tomatoes are just beginning to blush; I expect to pick them within the next 10 days. But they aren't very early, should have picked the first ones a few weeks ago. Another expectation shot in the keister: zucchinis are not yielding at all, only one has been harvested so far. You can see they've developed a case of mildew already, and that the young zucchinis yellow and drop off before they become established mature fruits. Going to hurt the double-chocolate zucchini bread forecast. Cucumbers, however, have been plentiful to the point of obnoxiousness. My spouse kept them picked while I was en vacance; I came home to a peck of them on the counter and more than a peck in the garden waiting to be picked. Unfortunately, the salad cucumbers outpaced the pickles on a 3-to-1 basis. May have to break down and pickle the sal...

This is an industry with rare consumer praise, even though consumers may want or need its services. Although there are far more than 1000 competing firms in this market, prices do not go down across the industry, suggesting competitive pressures have failed. It's a mature product, been around for most of our life times, yet the product has not earned more loyalty from consumers. Consumers die every day because of the failure of this industry to safely and effectively meet consumers' needs. It's been propped up by government through a number of different methods including market guarantees and supportive legislation. What industry is this? It's not the American auto industry and its supply chain, trying to reduce capacity and costs while taking government financing and benefitting from Cash for Clunkers. It's not the banking industry and the fat cat banksters wallowing in their TARP-funded bonuses. Give up guessing?

Methinks I see a squeeze play in the making, that President Obama's "stern talking to" could have been a warning shot from a different direction while Congress works from another. DailyKos diarist Badabing posted this morning that Sen. Carl Levin, chair of the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations, has subpoenaed Goldman Sachs, Washington Mutual and more financial industry firms with regards to the financial meltdown. Note this key graf from WSJ excerpted in the DKos diary: According to people familiar with the matter, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations also has issued a subpoena to Washington Mutual Inc., a Seattle thrift that was seized by regulators in last year's financial crisis and is now largely owned by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. It appears likely that several other financial institutions also have received subpoenas. Subcommittee investigators declined to comment. A Goldman Sachs spokesman declined to comment on the subpoena. Deutsc...

Maybe this is something, maybe it’s nothing; maybe it's only a movie script waiting to happen. There’s a rash of stories today about the “apparent” suicide of Kuwaiti broker Hazem Khalid al-Braikan, found shot to death in his home Sunday morning Kuwait time. Seems al-Braikan had been involved in running up the price of stock(s) in fake takeover attempts; he bought up enough stock that it appeared someone was going to take controlling interest of a firm, then dumped the stock after the price had run up because other firms bought into the uptick. The SEC had filed a lawsuit against al-Braikan’s firm and several others on Thursday this week, for alleged trading “around hoax bids for US companies.” Textron, a firm which has historically had government contracts, was one of the firms in which al-Braikan had been trading earlier this year. The most recent stock in which al-Braikan took an initial position on June 1 and sold out on July 20 ? Harman International . You may recognize the n...

The garden got off to a very slow start this year, between two and three weeks late due to cool and crappy weather. As you can see, the plants look a little small and lost in my raised beds at the end of June. The peppers in the middle bed were struggling, looking as if they might not even make it to July. But what a difference a little time makes. The peppers in the middle bed were still struggling through the first week of July, but they looked like they turned the corner. The peppers in the bed closest to the deck (and closest to me in this photo) are going gang busters. There are peppers large enough to pick already, but I'm going to let them go and mature a while longer since they have not yet developed thicker walls and deeper color. There are flowers on the cucumbers in the far bed and the middle bed as well as on the zucchini plants in the closest bed. Looks like they are now getting over the chill they experienced in June. Everything has now come up, including the pole bea...

Those of you who know me also know I have a couple of kids -- a teenager in high school, and a tweenager about to enter middle school. Both of my kids have met the infamous blogger who used, you know, THAT word on MSNBC this afternoon. In fact, they were watching the video of the infamous blogger. Neither batted an eye about the use of THAT word. And I am so proud of them. Because even my kids know the real obscenity isn't a euphemism for oral sex, or even that it happened on a cable show in the middle of the afternoon. My kids know that the real obscenities are these: * Our country went to war based on lies told by elected and appointed officials; * Their brother and the sons/daughters/brothers/sisters of many other families like ours served for this war, came back damaged or dead, for nothing but lies; * Their president and vice president lied repeatedly about all manner of things while refusing to accept responsibility for any failures which happened on their watch; * Their gov...

It's hard to tell which generated more bullshit over the last 24-48 hours: Karl Rove's deposition before the House Judiciary Committee, or the tech industry media reaction to Google's Chrome OS announcement. Rove can pile it on high and deep, but tech media sure is doing its best to create more hot air than Michael Jackson's postmortem circus. For those of you who aren't geeks, Google announced Wednesday that it was working on an operating system . It's going to be built upon open source software and target "people who spend most of their time on the web," with the intent to allow these users rapid access to the internet and be minimally invasive. Since Google's announcement, nearly all analyses produced by tech media pundits have concentrated on whether the new OS is the beginning of a cage match to the death between Google and Microsoft, or a skirmish for smart phone dominance between Google and Apple, or whether Google is simply bent on taking ...

Finally. The uproar over CBS' David Letterman's joke has begun to fade away, although not without the usual stupid overreaction by a couple of corporate sponsors who were spooked by fundamentalists without any sense of humor or proportion. And yet nobody has looked at the underlying cause of this brouhaha. Ask yourself this: If Palin had been a better parent to her children, would David Letterman have had any material for his wicked joke? Yeah. Sarah Palin is the real butt of the joke here, and she deserves it. The only problem with Letterman's joke is that he overshot, yielding collateral damage. Had he focused his aim at the appropriate target, there wouldn't have been any hubbub. Palin's the kind of parent who screams too loudly at hockey games, thinking that her kid's loss is a reflection on her. The kind of parent who's more worried about appearances than about substance. The kind of parent who can easily excise a child from her life if they crease the ...

WaPo's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt claimed it was low traffic which did in Dan Froomkin's blog. The truth is still quite sketchy, but uglier and not about traffic. Jane wrote yesterday about the Washington Post's ugly practices which squelched Dan Froomkin's traffic; she's also looked at WaPo's flat traffic in comparison to the increasingly popular Huffington Post and newspaper competitor The New York Times. And I've already looked at the performance of the op-ed team as well; we can rule out Hiatt's lame excuse about traffic as the reason for Froomkin's exit when half the team is doing badly or worse. We might be tempted ignore WaPo's less-than-happy performance and cut the crusty old newspaper some slack as they adapt to the internet, but unfortunately, WaPo cannot claim a lack of institutional knowledge about internet-based media. Most of us have forgotten that WaPo's parent The Washington Post Company owns Slate.com ; in internet...

Wow, has this place accumulated dust. Has it really been that long since I posted here? I guess I can't deny it, there it is in black and white. I haven't posted since last November. Conversely, you can see from my Twitter feed below at right that I've been posting at least a few times a week. Guess this means I can muster 140 characters easily, but not enough to post a full blog entry. And yet this isn't true, either. I've posted content at Firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette at least a couple of times a month. But for some reason I can't seem to organize the energy to cross-post here at my own blog. Ditto for the Facebook accounts -- plural. I exist as a pseudonym and as my real self, an account for each, and I've somehow choked out a few updates every so often at each account. (I draw the line at MySpace; you will never find me there since I'm not an entertainer.) Perhaps it's time I looked at a tool which would allow one entry to update all my out...

I doubt he'll pardon this particular turkey since he'd sing like a bird under oath without the protections of the Fifth Amendment. But I suppose there's somebody dreaming of this somewhere today. (photo: AFP)

The long goodbye has been longer than we ever thought it would be; instead of days or weeks, it's now been over a year since my mother-in-law was admitted to a nursing home. In hindsight it was naive to think that the suffering would be so short in duration. It was also not apparent at the time that the nursing home into which she'd first been admitted was integral to the condition she was in when I first wrote about her long goodbye .