Great, I am getting Iraqi reconstruction spam. Hurray for war profiteering. ‘War profiteering’, isn’t that redundant?

Oh how nice! Pentagon: Bush Military Records Destroyed

Bush has declined invitations in each year of his presidency — becoming the first president since Herbert Hoover not to attend an NAACP convention.

The amendment appeared on its way to victory as the roll call’s normal 15-minute time limit expired, but GOP leaders kept the vote open for about 20 more minutes as they persuaded about 10 Republicans who initially supported the provision to change their votes. Patriot Act Wins House Vote

Remember how Florida won’t recount electronic voting machines? Well, it looks like the machines have some major problems.

GOP helping out Nader again.

Interesting read at Slate: The real reason to oppose the minimum wage.

The World Court said Israel’s barrier in the West Bank should be torn down and called on the United Nations Friday to stop a project it said had illegally imposed hardship on thousands of Palestinians. “tantamount to annexation” Guess who Israel is going to ask to veto all of this stuff? And people wonder why they think of the US and Isreal as the same thing.

CNBC looks at the next wave of airline bankruptcies

Why your electricity bills are soaring – You are using more, and it is deregulated. Thank god the free market fixes everything, haha. We need to look into efficient electronics before we start to think of using solar.

Should science tell the truth? You’d think that question would need no answer. But in the vortex known as Washington, DC, the obvious too often gets bent.

Wired takes a look at Alberta’s oil sands.

Harlem of the West: Historic Downtown San Diego Community

Well I am completely moved over to Firefox. With these plugins, Firefox is the best thing out there.

1)Adblock kills most ads (default adblock script)
2)Bugmenot for all the sites that want registration
3)DictionarySearch for right click searches of your choice
4)IEView for the extremely rare page that only wants IE (windowsupdate for example)
5)GMailCompose for all the Gmail users out there

I’m hooked.

The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce ‘High Value Targets’ by the election.

Wired takes a look at contractors & Iraq: The role of private companies in Iraq has been widely reported. What hasn’t gotten so much play is that, taken as a whole, contractors make up the second-largest armed force there, after the US military. Although this “army” is mostly on the Pentagon’s payroll for now, it doesn’t fly any flag or belong to any state. It’s a multiethnic, for-profit, postnational force, and its sole agenda is to mind the bottom line. It has no incentive to stand down as long as there’s money to be made. It’s not afraid of terrorists, and whatever passes for an Iraqi government in the future will likely live at its mercy. Coalition of the Billing

Voting rights groups sued Florida election administrators on Wednesday to overturn a rule that prohibits manual recounting of ballots cast with touch-screen machines, a lawsuit with echoes of the state’s disputed 2000 presidential election voting.

About damned time: Newly created military tribunals will review the legal status of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and advise them that they can challenge their detention in US federal court, senior US officials said. How can the US expect other people to obey laws, when it doesn’t follow its own?

Ah yes: Ridge says al Qaeda planning attack in an effort to disrupt the democratic process.

Looks like the French Pox may be back: Antibiotic-resistant strain of syphilis is spreading

Lastly, Evilbible.com – your source for all the old testament wackiness.

I had no idea that snake plants could bloom. My plant at home (around 2ft) has just started. It is very fragrant, and quite nice. Who knew?

The cat that lives on the roof next door has apparently had kittens. The disgustingly cute balls of fur were playing on the roof tonight. It is kind of funny, my window is only 6 feet away (it is level with the roof) from where they are, but with a drop of two-stories, it might as well be an ocean.

A depressing read at The Nation: The Bush Administration has so violated and corrupted the institutional culture of government agencies charged with scientific research that it could take a generation for them to recover their integrity. The Junk Science of George W. Bush

I don’t think these people know the definition of a ‘public employee’. A senior Defense Department official conducted unauthorized investigations of Iraq reconstruction efforts and used their results to push for lucrative no-bid contracts for friends and their business clients, according to current and former Pentagon officials and documents.

Environmentally correct housing has never been more popular. But even the most eco-friendly home may do more harm than good when it is super-sized. Great big green monster mansions.

I went out to Phoenix last weekend to visit with Mike and Dan. It was a good time. We tubed down the Salt River and managed to not kill ourselves on the rocks. Though Mikey got a lesson in kinetic energy. The fireworks show was quite impressive. It was probably 30 minutes long, with a huge finale.

I am looking forward to the Annual U.S. Open Sandcastle Competition in Imperial Beach. I will be working for part of the weekend though. Bah.

Israel finally starts to acknowledge that they have nuclear power.

It’s a strange dichotomy: Most Americans claim they don’t believe what they read in newspapers or see on TV — only a third say news organizations generally get the facts straight — yet their opinions continue to be influenced by the media. Wired brings us New Media’s Age of Anxiety

HIV infection at record high. But there is good news as well: Many countries, including Brazil, Uganda and Thailand, have reduced HIV infection.

Hah: Night-time cough and sleep quality were no better with cough mixtures than with a simple, non-medicated syrup. Cough medicines ‘have no benefit’