Tom Delay helped murder his own father

From the LA Times:
http://tinyurl.com/4ly6n

""There was no point to even really talking about it," Maxine DeLay, the congressman's 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in an interview last week. "There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew — we all knew — his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way."

Doctors advised that he would "basically be a vegetable," said the congressman's aunt, JoAnne DeLay.

When his father's kidneys failed, the DeLay family decided against connecting him to a dialysis machine. "Extraordinary measures to prolong life were not initiated," said his medical report, citing "agreement with the family's wishes." His bedside chart carried the instruction: "Do not resuscitate.""

Hypocrite.

Industrial poisoning of our drinking and sporting waters

GULF OF MEXICO:
POISONING SPORTSMAN'S PARADISE
Mercury enters the Gulf of Mexico from many sources-from coal-burning
power plants, chlor-alkali plants, and other combustion sources, as well as river
discharges, particularly from the Mississippi River.1 Large amounts of rainfall
combined with high emissions in the Gulf States have created a "hot spot" for
mercury that runs from the Mississippi River in Louisiana to the southern tip of
Florida. According to the Mercury Deposition Network, in Mobile, Alabama, the
level of "airborne mercury deposits was two to five times greater than the
quantity recorded over much of eastern North America" in 2003. Mercury levels
ran from 18 micrograms per square meter west of New Orleans to 26.8 micrograms
near Bay Minette and 28.8 micrograms by Fort Lauderdale. These levels
are clearly higher than the 4.9 to 11.2 micrograms typically seen on the Atlantic
Coast, Northeast, and upper Midwest.2
Failure to limit these human-induced sources of mercury to the environment
has resulted in Gulf-wide fish advisories. For instance, larger king mackerel
throughout the Gulf are so contaminated that advisories, which frequently apply
only to women and children, instead apply to everyone. Because people who
live in the Gulf states rely so heavily on fish in their diet, they are at an
increased risk for mercury contamination. In a study of 65 people, the Mobile
Register found that Gulf Coast inhabitants who eat fish regularly might have
mercury contamination in their bodies five to 10 times higher than levels considered
safe by the EPA.3

FLORIDA:
IMPACT TO VACATIONLAND
All of Florida's waters, lakes, and rivers are
under fish consumption advisories for some
species because of mercury contamination.
Florida's largest emitter of mercury pollution is the
Crystal River power plant, helping the state to
rank 18th in the nation for mercury pollution.1
The Bush administration's failure to clean up
mercury pollution in Florida's waters recently
prompted the Sierra Club to file a lawsuit challenging
the EPA's illegal approval of a list of
impaired Florida waters. This list, submitted by
Florida's Jeb Bush administration, omitted 97
mercury-contaminated waters from the state's
mandatory clean-up list of polluted waters.
Instead, several of these waters were put on an
unauthorized "planning list," which means that
the state has no immediate schedule to clean up
these waters even though they are impaired by
mercury.
1 2002 Toxic Release Inventory

Family Guy back by popular demand

The Family Guy is the first show to be brought back to prime time by the same network that cancelled it. This is great news for folks who think Homer Simpson is a bit too intellectual.

I remember seeing an espisode on FOX not long ago wherein they blurred the naked animated butt of one of the characters, fearing a half million dollar fine from the FCC. An ANIMATED butt! And I know it was blurred out becasue I own all the episodes on DVD and there ain't no blurring there.

This show definitely has some wild antics that will keep the conservatives watching so they can complain. The FCC will probably hire a team just to monitor it. At least we'll be entertained before the moral majority shuts it down again.

Happy Easter

As a union worker I got Good Friday off, but I'm the only person I know in the Bay Area that got the day off other than the woman next door who works for Catholic Charities.

We just watched "Goodbye, Lenin", an interesting though too long look at the changes in East Germany after the wall came down. Recommended if you are interested in other cultures, or the effects of the West on the East. Not recommended if you can't read subtitles or hate contrived situations.

Terri Schiavo's parents have finally given up their fight to drag out her death.

I think I'll watch Hidalgo next if Erin's up for it. Right now they are comparing croccodiles and hippos on Wild Kingdom. Remember that show? It used to be the only way to see all the cool animals in the world. Now it's just one of many shows on the Animal Planet network. The hippo won as most powerful animal in the African river.

Blogging is fun.

Conservatives keep sending me mail

One of the most interesting and disturbing aspescts of being a Chuck Baldwin and owning www.chuckbaldwin.com is getting mail most likely intended for Dr. Reverend Chuck Baldwin, the conservative radio talk show host in Pensacola, Florida.

His Bush-bashing conservative talk show is allegedly one of the biggest growing radio shows in the South East. His website has a confederate flag waving next to the US flag with a link underneath espousing "The Truth Behind the Confederate Flag." If you are unlucky enough to click the link you are taken to an essay by Pastor John Weaver, wherein he blathers bible quote after bible quote for 1413 words--or 3 pages in Word--before he ever mentions the Confederate flag. Hardly any of it makes sense at all. All of it is irrelavent anyway as regardless of what this man says or believes, the Confederate flag is now the biggest symbol of racism and bigotry in America. Period. No number of bible quotes or psalms will change that.

I have been emailing a member of the Constitution Party of Tennessee, a man named Michael Goza, from time to time when he mis-sends another email to me along with a host of conservative media folk. We have actually agreed that we are on the same page for a lot of issues, namely the corruption of our country's leaders, the corporate-profit motive our government's actions, and our disappointment with the American people for blindly following Bush with hardly a question--in the name of American Patriotism.

He is as disgusted with the state of America as I am, though we do not agree on any fundamental issues. Kind of spooky. He is a prime example of the religious right that allegedly supported Bush in the election and he is equally disgusted. To his credit he did not support Bush, but rather the Constitution Party's Michael Peroutka for Pres. and Chuck Baldwin for VP. Amazingly, they were the first choice listed on the ballot in California. I kept my absentee ballot because I voted in person--I'm kind of a dork that way, if it says Baldwin or Chuck Baldwin, I'm keeping it.

Someday I may get my own name on the ballot, but I'm not old enough, yet. Of course by the time I am, the native born requirement and the 2-term limit will have been replealed and we'll be in the years of Chancellor Schwarzenegger, Supreme Leader of the West.

Anyone remember the Fire in the Reichstag? Or should I remind you with the falling of the Twin Towers? Oh well, I guess it doesn't really matter...

We be jammin'

Pussyfoot rocked last night.
I picked up GarageBand 2 on the home from work yesterday, because I couldn't stand not having two inputs into GB and I couldn't find ANYone to copy it from. So I broke down and spent the $85.
Well worth it though. Ari and I rocked the night away and when we listened to the playback it sounded as good as we thought it would.

The best part of GB2 is that now I can plug Ari's bass in and set the sound to his likeing and plug my guitar into the other channel and set the sound to my liking. AND THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE THE SAME SOUND! A year and a thousand dollars later and I can finally do with GarageBand what I thought all along I'd be able to do.

With a few guitar and bass jams in the can, we went back to them one by one and laid down some words--to your mother.

It is evident that we need a lyicist. Somebody has got to come up with something for us to say. We apparently can't.