Diamonds are forever
Hope you all had a great V-Day...next time you can get your significant other something ridiculous.

Progress
At least 20 dead in a gun battle at a prison.

Message to Canada:
Lighten up.

PETA gets obnoxious
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has written a letter to the mayor of Slaughterville, OK, requesting that they change the towns name. But not just that. They say they should change it to "Veggieville." If there's one thing that would piss me off, it'd be living in "Veggieville."

Bending over for the firearm industry
What a great idea! This way tracking down corrupt gun dealers is more difficult! Whose brainchild is this? Let us rejoice.

Bush pushes abstinence
Because it's not like kids will have sex anyway:

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is proposing to double spending on sexual abstinence programs that bar any discussion of birth control or condoms to prevent pregnancy or AIDS despite a lack of evidence that such programs work.

A study by researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on declining birth and pregnancy rates among teenagers concludes that prevention programs should emphasize abstinence and contraception.

"Both are important," said Dr. John Santelli, the lead author of the study, which has not been published.

In Minnesota, a study found that sexual activity doubled among junior high school students taking part in an abstinence-only program. The independent study, commissioned by the state's health department, recommended broadening the program to include more information about contraception.

The official biggest tragedy of the day
If Bush wins the Nobel Peace Prize, I might just shoot myself.

Trade deficit hits record highs in '03
The trade deficit, which is overshadowed by the budget deficit but combined with it puts our overall deficit at over $1 trillion, was never as high as it was last year.

World Press Photo of the Year:

Sad....
Don't you hate it when real news is overshadowed by stupid news?

More positive news on medicinal marijuana
We get a lot of reports on marijuana easing pain related to cancer, and chemo, and HIV, and so on...isn't it obvious to everyone by now that one of the effects of marijuana is easing pain? Not just certain pains...it eases pain in general. We don't need to do a new study to see which new pains we can find for it to ease, because in the end, it's gonna ease 'em.

Watch and learn
The best act of defiance I've seen this year.

Bush does some touchups on MTP video
A reader showed me this today:

NEW YORK — A portion of President Bush's Sunday interview on "Meet the Press" was used by his reelection campaign Tuesday and included in an ad-style video message distributed on the Internet, drawing an immediate protest from NBC News.

The video, promoting Bush's foreign policy initiatives, was posted on the campaign's website and e-mailed to about 6 million supporters. Set to inspirational music and ending with a girl running through a grassy field, it included a lengthy quote from the Sunday talk show. In part of it, the president said, "I've got a foreign policy that is one that believes America has a responsibility in this world to lead."
After some back-and-forth by lawyers for the campaign and NBC News, the video was removed from the website around 5 p.m. PST. Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said, "While it was entirely legal and appropriate under 'fair use' guidelines to share parts of Sunday's interview with our supporters, we respect NBC's wishes and are working to remove the Web video."

NBC News spokeswoman Barbara Levin said the network protested the use of the interview because "it's not our purpose to create materials that political campaigns can use in their advertising."

Campaigns often include excerpts of interviews on their websites, without the media complaining.

Under U.S. copyright law, the doctrine of "fair use" allows the reproduction of material, subject to some limits, for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research.

The U.S. Copyright Office's website says that the "distinction between 'fair use' and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined."

NBC News said this situation was different. "This promotional video is set to music, edited for impact, and mixed with other images, graphics and footage unrelated to the interview," it said in a statement.

It was the kind of performance that only some serious editing could effectively stop the bullshit oozing from Dubya's mouth.

Drudge incites Kerry rumors
Kerry's alleged infidelity makes things interesting. Is this a fellow Dem trying to smash him? Did Rove pick out the frontrunner and go on the attack? Or is it legit? I'm not going to jump to any conclusions, but I find it hard to believe that a man running for president would take the risk of an affair. Once he gets the office...now that's a different story.

Wha....?
Did an Onion article slip into CNN?

Colin Powell's head:
Container of no specific opinion on anything.

HIV outbreak on campus
Considering the amount of sexual activity in college, this could be very dangerous:

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- A new test for human immunodeficiency virus has led health workers in North Carolina to identify the first HIV outbreak ever among college students.

The outbreak, reported at the 11th annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in San Francisco, involved 84 HIV cases in male students ages 18 to 30 from Jan. 1, 2000, through Dec. 31, 2003.

The students, most of whom were black, were enrolled in 37 colleges, all but 4 in North Carolina, the New York Times said Wednesday.

"We believe that this is a wake-up call" to direct new efforts to prevent further transmission of the virus among young people, said Dr. Lisa B. Hightow of the University of North Carolina. Hightow is an infectious disease specialist who worked with the North Carolina health department.

SD poised to challenge Roe v Wade
The house in South Dakota voted to ban abortion:

After debating for 2½ hours, House members voted 54-14 to outlaw nearly all abortions in South Dakota. ...

Getting the nation’s high court to revisit the Roe v. Wade decision is the very point of the legislation, House Bill 1191. Its language aims directly at Justice Marshall’s question. It declares that life begins at conception and that the due process of law under the South Dakota Bill of Rights applies equally to born and unborn human beings.

“This is the hour, this is the place, we are the people,” said Rep. Bill Van Gerpen, R-Tyndall.

No. The hour has passed. We have to let it be known. A large majority of people support early term abortion. With late-term gone, there is no way for the anti-choice forces to make an issue of it. When the government begins to hurl restrictions on us that we worked so hard to get removed years ago, you can be damn sure that we'll fight back. I assure you, if abortion rights go out the window, so will every Republican in every swing state in the country. Bring it on.

Advice for the WH
If I were Bush, I wouldn't say anything about WMD at all. Why remind people?

Primary update
Clark has dropped.

1,341 priests and counting
There is apparently a conclusive number on the amount of accused priests in the Church since 1950. Interesting.

Kerry takes Virginia
Edwards is in second. Tonights updates will be in this post.

UPDATES: Looks like Kerry wins all around.

Weather report for Hell:
Fucking freezing.

Rummy just forgets sometimes
When all else fails, claim amnesia.

Tune in tonight
If Kerry wins, this baby is over.

Documents regarding Washington aid to anti-Chavez forces found
Oops. Looks like Bush has been funding the opposition in Venezuela:

WH predicts large job growth
3.8 million jobs:

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The White House forecast for job growth this year is even more optimistic than it first appeared -- the Bush administration expects about 3.8 million new jobs in 2004, as opposed to the 2.6 million widely reported on Monday.

A White House source said Tuesday that the President's Council of Economic Advisers expects an average of about 320,000 new jobs to be created every month in 2004, or about 3.8 million in total -- about 2.9 percent higher than 2003's final level of payroll jobs outside the farm sector, as reported by the Labor Department.

Now I like it when the economy does well...but 3.8 million? Dream on.

Did Bush fulfill his duty?
Yahoo:

...
"These documents clearly show that the president fulfilled his duties," McClellan said.

Photocopied payroll records distributed by the White House were not all legible. The White House promised clearer copies later Tuesday afternoon.

Interesting...this seems well and good for Bush (I have no idea how pay records are recorded, so I won't challenge it for now). Except for one thing. This:

Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said last night that the listing of service dates, which the White House intends to make public today, documents Bush's longstanding assertion that he fulfilled his military obligation.

But the documents seem unlikely to resolve questions about whether Bush shirked his duty during his tour as a fighter-interceptor pilot for the Texas Air Guard during the Vietnam War. That is because some of the dates on the service list fell during a period in the fall of 1972 when Bush was reassigned to a guard unit in Alabama. The commander of the Alabama unit has said Bush did not appear for duty at his assigned unit there.

Bartlett said the Guard drills Bush is listed as attending in January and April 1973 were probably conducted at Bush's home base in Houston. But on May 2, 1973, Bush's two commanders at Ellington Air Force Base wrote that they could not evaluate his performance for the prior 12 months because he had not been there. Two other Bush superiors said in interviews four years ago that they do not believe Bush ever returned to his Houston base from Alabama.

The Globe obtained both of the documents from a political activist who says he acquired them in December 2000 from the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Colorado. The activist, Bob Fertig, is a cofounder of Democrats.com, a website that has no formal affiliation with the Democratic Party.

...

Bartlett said he could not explain why Fertig's group had access to more documents than the White House.

Change of heart for Dean
Dean has apparently changed his mind, and will not drop out of the race if he doesn't win Wisconsin.

WH says exporting America a good thing
Here's a line that won't work with the public: exporting jobs overseas will help Americans. And yet, the White House has decided that it's the appropriate position to take. Clever!

SEC gets into war on terror
If Congress gets its way, we may know a lot more about the business our corporations are doing in rogue nations.

The ABA caves
After fighting with BushCo over "POW" treatment, the ABA won't take a stance whether they should be tried in American courts:

SAN ANTONIO -- The American Bar Association declined Monday to take a position on one of the major legal issues to arise since the Sept. 11 attacks: whether terror suspects held at a military prison in Cuba should have access to American courts.

...

The ABA has battled with the Bush administration over the treatment of terror suspects arrested after the Sept. 11 attacks. It called last year for legal rights for U.S. residents classified as "enemy combatants" and urged the White House to change its rules for any military trials for such suspects.

"Enemy combatants" is the term used for captives who are neither traditional prisoners of war nor ordinary criminal defendants. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals this spring involving enemy combatants held in Cuba and in South Carolina.

The ABA decided to steer clear of the issue raised in the appeal on behalf of detainees at the Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The appeal asks if they may contest their captivity in American courts.

Interesting numbers
Recent polls suggest that "total morons" outnumber "normal, educated people" 2-1.

Kerry takes Maine
So Kerry is wiping the floor with them. Tuesday beckons....

Holy crap...
File this under "Sweet Christ":

Al-Qaida has obtained tactical nuclear explosive devices that can fit inside a suitcase, Israel Radio reported Sunday night citing the Al-Hayat newspaper.

According to the Arabic daily based in London, the devices are not intended for use, except in the event that the existence of the organization is threatened.

The report said that members of Osama bin Laden's group purchased the devices from Ukrainian scientists who sell them to anyone willing to pay the price.

More MTP deconstruction
I feel Dubya was a little confused here:

Russert: But can you launch a preemptive war without iron clad, absolute intelligence that he had weapons of mass destruction?
President Bush: Let me take a step back for a second and there is no such thing necessarily in a dictatorial regime of iron clad absolutely solid evidence. The evidence I had was the best possible evidence that he had a weapon.

Russert: But it may have been wrong.

President Bush: Well, but what wasn't wrong was the fact that he had the ability to make a weapon. That wasn't right.

Russert: This is an important point because when you say that he has biological and chemical weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles
President Bush: Which he had.

Russert: and they could come and attack the United States, you are saying to the American people: we have to deal now with a man who has these things.

President Bush: That's exactly what I said.

How long is this whole "Oops" schtick going to work before someone tries to find out exactly who fucked up, and how badly and how frequently they fucked up? Because from where I'm standing, the fuck-up was bigger than a Hallburton oil contract.

MTP deconstruction
Here's quite the little tidbit from George:

I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind. Again, I wish it wasn't true, but it is true. And the American people need to know they got a president who sees the world the way it is. And I see dangers that exist, and it's important for us to deal with them.

That's right. When signing a Medicare bill into law, Bush is still thinking about blowing shit up.

AFSCME withdraws support for Dean
Can a person or union withdraw an endorsement of a candidate? Not without looking stupid.

Meet the Press transcript
I, like so many others, will be having fun with it later, but for now, here's the transcript for yourself.

Bush to release Nat'l Guard files?
Russert: When allegations were made about John McCain or Wesley Clark on their military records, they opened up their entire files. Would you agree to do that?

President Bush: Yeah. Listen, these files I mean, people have been looking for these files for a long period of time, trust me, and starting in the 1994 campaign for governor. And I can assure you in the year 2000 people were looking for those files as well. Probably you were. And absolutely. I mean, I

Russert: But would you allow pay stubs, tax records, anything to show that you were serving during that period?

President Bush: Yeah. If we still have them, but I you know, the records are kept in Colorado, as I understand, and they scoured the records.

Who do you believe?
Fox News has Bush polling at 56% favorability, 37% unfavorability, with Bush beating Kerry 47% to 43%.

CNN has Kerry losing to Bush 50% to 48%.

Newsweek has Bush losing to Kerry 50% to 45%. But wait! Let's see this in chart form:

Primary Season: what happens now?
So Kerry took Washington and Michigan with authority. While that was, for the most part, expected, it leaves a question for the other candidates: "What the hell do we do now?" Well, the Clark campaign is strapped for cash - he's been pulling ads in Virginia due to lack of money. The Dean campaign doesn't have much hope of taking the important southern states on Tuesday...Edwards does. In my opinion, if Edwards or Clark can knock Kerry off in Tennessee and West Virgina, Kerry's lead is put into question (especially if Edwards takes both). However, if Kerry takes both, the race is sealed.