Metro train crash is no surprise to me

That was my train that crashed today, and I might have been on it had I not called in sick today.

When I arrived here last October I found the Metro trains ever so charming. Oh, how I loved the train! But after months of commuting I’ve become increasing irritated by the incompetence-plagued system.

A typical commute on the Red Line usually involves stop & go as if you were sitting in a car on a busy highway during rush hour. At other times, the trains creep along at a snail’s pace. I don’t know how trains going in a straight line on rails can manage to have such issues, but they do. When the driver comes on the PA system to explain the predicament, it’s usually incomprehensible – like they’re talking with a mouthful of marbles. Like Charlie Brown’s teacher. (And was that the sound of a ballgame playing in the background?) Tourists exchange glances with locals, “What did he just say?”, as if we could understand him any better.

The worst part of the Red Line are the bumps and uneven tracks. Bumps on train tracks? “Did we just go over a POTHOLE?” I’ve often wondered. Sometimes, when a train comes to a complete stop (Yes, they often come to a complete stop and then sit still for minutes at a time) it leaves the passengers leaning one way or other, pressed up against the glass and each other, as if we’re parked on the bank of a race track.

I wish that were all. Sometimes the train delays cause them to run so far apart - and the signs showing arrival times are often dead - that the platforms fill up with such crowds that people can’t get off the train when it stops. The doors open but nobody can move. There’s nowhere to go. And the doors don’t stay open long enough for the passengers to sort through the mess. They mercilessly snap shut tight, separating people from their briefcases and parents from their kids.

If this weren’t enough, there are always dozens of escalators out of service at any given moment throughout the system. Sometimes there are multiples out in one station, causing people to have to walk up or down long, 200 foot sections of escalator. I’ve watched women wince as they painfully do this in heels. I saw one woman with a swollen, obviously injured ankle, navigate the long descent at Dupont Circle one slow step at a time. She was crying by the time she reached the bottom.

I once sat in the forward-most seat on the train and watched the driver through the one clear section of glass. I watched him for about six stops. (including those surrounding the accident) He wasn’t doing much. To my surprise, he wasn’t driving the train. The system was entirely automated with the train starting and stopping on its own. This, apparently, leaves the drivers bored and in need of a diversion to entertain themselves. Sometimes the drivers carry on conversations with other Metro employees who, from what I’ve seen, frequently come to visit (sometimes more than once on my 11-station trip). This particular driver just sat and played air drums during the trips between stations and then got up to, dutifully, check out the window to watch the passengers exit and enter before he sat down for his next set.

The news of cause for this accident hasn’t come in yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if one train jumped the tracks at one of those “potholes” and was subsequently rear-ended by another piloted by an air drummer or baseball game listener who wasn’t paying attention.

I hate to say it, but sometimes someone has to get hurt, or killed, before incompetence is dealt with.

Hopefully this will be a turning point.

“Pro-lifers” eager to get mitts on electronic medical records

Doesn’t it seem like conservatives are awfully eager to implement that whole “let’s make everyone’s medical records electronic” concept? I mean, Democrats love to talk about health care. Republicans are always shamefully absent on the issue, but one thing I noticed that happened all through the general election was that every time the subject of healthcare came up, the conservative would always LEAP at the opportunity to pitch the idea of making a nation’s worth of medical records electronic and available by network. And, I know from many years of practice and observation, whenever conservatives want any thing that badly, that has to be something to it. There has to be an ulterior motive.

It didn’t take long for those thoughts to simmer in my mind for me to cook up a conspiracy theory. I don’t think it’s all that far fetched.

Please indulge me.

If the anti-choice movement wants to, not outright ban abortion, but continue with their current tactic of chipping away at women’s’ freedom and privacy with laws like requiring parental notification, placing limits on terms during which a medical procedure can be performed, requiring ultra-sounds, and any number of other tactics that places a watchful eye between a woman and her doctor, they’re going to need access to that which they don’t have now. I’m talking about anti-choicers, or at least their enforcers – perhaps the courts - having access to people’s personal medical records.

It takes no large amount of science fiction or imagination to know how they can be used. Computers can, and do, very easily ‘flag’ certain activities and then provide information in a report. I have a credit card that has a pretty good anti-fraud feature on it. If I’m ever in another state or country and whip out the card to pay for a bed and breakfast or something, my credit card company will phone me to let me know it was used in a suspicious or unusual way and ask me if it was me. It’s a little creepy but I tolerate it because of the protection it offers.

How easy would it be for a pregnancy, or even a test for pregnancy, to raise a flag to some kind of monitoring agency which was permitted by some future law to do so?

Imagine, “pregnancy” + “teen” = letter mailed to parents.
Pregnancy + a certain amount of time passed = the police showing up if no delivery is recorded in records

Is the imagination running? Yeah, mine too.

Sadly, Democrats like Barack Obama lack the imagination to be suspicious of these motivations and support this technological [ahem] achievement.

Let's keep 'em paper and on our doctor's shelf. (After all, look what happened when we got rid of our paper ballots and went to electronic voting - some of us art still trying to stuff that genie back into the bottle!)

Oh, and if you were a conservative wanting to put this new, potentially invasive, abortion-fighting technology on the fast-track and implement it like now, who would you get to do it?

Wal-Mart Stores is striding into the market for electronic health records, seeking to bring the technology into the mainstream for physicians in small offices, where most of America's doctors practice medicine.”

Who else, but Walmart!

Atheists get a shout-out during Obama’s Inaugural address

As far as I know, Atheists (the wicked little step children that we are) have never received any kind of respect from a President, let alone acknowledgement during an Inaugural Address. That changed on Tuesday. Here’s the relevant part of Obama’s speech:

“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”

Thanks for that, Mr. President! -JJ

8 Bush years in 8 Bush minutes

Everyone should see and/or read this.

(Taken directly from Truthout.org who got it from MSNBC. I'm just trying to spread the word.)



George Walker Bush.

43rd president of the United States.
first ever with a criminal record.
our third story tonight,
his presidency: eight years in eight minutes.

early in 2001 the U.S. fingered Al Qaeda
for the bombing of the USS Cole
Bush counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke
had a plan to take down Al Qaeda.
instead by February the NSC
had already discussed invading Iraq,
and had a plan for post-Saddam Iraq.

by March 5 Bush had a map ready for Iraqi oil exploration
and a list of companies.
Al Qaeda?
Rice told Clarke not to give Bush a lot of long memos.
not a big reader.



August 6, 2001
a CIA analyst briefs Bush on vacation:
"Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S."
Bush takes no action tells the briefer - quote
all right, you've covered your ass now.

next month Clarke requests
using new predator drones to kill Bin Laden
the Pentagon and CIA
say no.

September 11th
Bush remains seated for several minutes
to avoid scaring school children
by getting up and leaving.
he then flies around the country
and promises quote a full scale investigation to find
those folks who did it

Rumsfeld says Afghanistan does not have enough targets
we've got to do Iraq.
when the CIA traps Bin Laden at Tora Bora
it asks for 800 rangers to cut off his escape
Bush outsources the job to Pakistanis
sympathetic to the Taliban
Bin Laden
gets away

in February General Tommy Franks tells a visiting Senator
Bush is moving equipment out of Afghanistan
so he can invade Iraq.
one of the men who prepped Rice for her testimony
that Bush did not ignore pre 9-11 warnings
later explains quote we cherry picked things
to make it look like the president
had been actually concerned about Al Qaeda
they didn't give a bleep about Al Qaeda

July and Britain's intel chief says Bush is
fixing intelligence and facts around the policy to take out Saddam
January 03
Bush and Blair agree to invade in March
Mr. Bush still telling us he has not decided
telling Blair they should paint an airplane in UN colors
fly it over Iraq and provoke a response
a pretext for invasion

the man who said it would take several hundred thousand troops
fired
the man who said it would cost more than a hundred billion
fired
the man who revealed Bush's yellowcake lie
smeared
his wife's covert status
exposed
the White House liars who did it
and covered it up
not fired
one convicted
Bush commutes his sentence

then in Iraq, stuff happens:
Iraq's army, disbanded
the government de-Baathified
200,000 weapons, billions of dollars just
lost
foreign mercenaries immunized from justice
political hacks run the Green Zone
religious cleansing forcing one out of six Iraqis from their homes
Abu Ghraib
the insurgency
Al Qaeda in Iraq

other stuff does not happen:
WMD
post-war planning
body armor
vehicular armor

the payoff?
oil
and billions for Halliburton, Blackwater and other companies
while Mr. Bush denies VA healthcare to 450,000 veterans
tries to raise their healthcare fees
blocks the new G.I. Bill
and increases his own power with the USA PATRIOT Act
with the Military Commissions Act
public orders exempting himself from a thousand laws
and secretly from the Presidential Records Act
The Geneva Conventions
FISA
sparking a mass rebellion at the Justice Department

secret star chambers for terrorism suspects,
overturned by Hamdan v Rumsfeld.
denying habeas corpus,
overturned by Boumediene v Bush.
200 renditionings
sleep deprivation
abuse
Rumsfeld warned in 2002 that he was torturing
that it would jeopardize convictions
out of 550 at Gitmo
hundreds ultimately go free with no charges
dozens are tortured
eight fatally
three are convicted

on U.S. soil twelve hundred immigrants rounded up
without due process
without bail
without court dates
without a single charge of terrorism

it wasn't just Mr. Bush no longer subject to the rule of law
he slashed regulations on everyone from banks to mining companies
appointed 98 lobbyists to oversee their own industries
weakening emission standards for mercury
and 650 different toxic chemicals
regulators shared drugs
and their beds
with industry reps
the Crandall Canyon mine owner told inspectors to back up
because his buddy, Republican Mitch McConnell
was sleeping with their boss
McConnell's wife is Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao
her agency overruled engineer concerns about Crandall Canyon
and was found negligent
after nine miners died in the collapse there

Mr. Bush's hands off
as Enron blacks out California
doubling electric bills
after months of rejecting price caps Mr. Bush bows to pressure

the blackouts end

Mr. Bush further deregulates commodity futures
midwifing the birth of unregulated oil markets
which just like Enron jack up prices to an all time high
until Congress and both presidential candidates call for regulations
and the prices fall

deregulating financial services and lax enforcement of remaining rules
created a housing bubble
creating the mortgage crisis
creating then a credit crisis
devastating industries that rely on credit
from student loans to car dealers

firms that had survived the Great Depression could not survive Bush
those that did got
seven hundred billion dollars
no strings, no transparency
no idea whether it worked

unlike the auto bailout
which cut workers' salaries.
a GOP memo called it
a chance to punish unions

but Bush failed even when his party and his patrons
did not stand to profit
investigators blamed management cost cutting communication
for missed warnings about Columbia
Bush administration convicts include
sex offenders at Homeland Security
convicted liars
every kind of thief in the calendar
and if you count things that were not prosecuted
the vice president of the United States actually
shot a man in the face

the man apologized.

Mr. Bush faked the truth
with paid propaganda in Iraq
on his education policy

tried to silence the truth about global warming
rocket fuel in our water
industry influence on energy policy

politicized the truth of science at NASA, the EPA,
the National Cancer Institute, Fish and Wildlife
and the FDA

his lies
exposed by whistleblowers from the cabinet down
"complete BS" the treasury secretary said
of Mr. Bush on his tax cuts.

Rice's mushroom cloud
Powell's mobile labs
Iraq and 9-11
Jack Abramoff
Jessica Lynch

Pat Tillman
Pat Tillman again
Pat Tillman, again.

the air at Ground Zero
most responders still suffering respiratory problems.

global warming
carbon emissions
a Clear Skies initiative lowering air quality standards
the Healthy Forests initiative increasing logging
faith based initiatives
the cost of medicare reform
fired US attorneys
politically synchronized terror alerts

the surge causing insurgents to switch sides
that abortion causes breast cancer
that his first recession began under Clinton
that he did not wiretap without warrants
that we do not torture.

that American citizen John Walker Lindh's rights
were not violated
that he refused the right to counsel

heckuva job Brownie
some survivors still in trailers
New Orleans still at just two-thirds its usual population

the lie that no one could have predicted the economic crisis
except
the economists who did
no one could have predicted 9-11 except
one ass-covering CIA analyst
or thirty
no one could have predicted the levee breach
except literally
Mr. Bill
in a PSA that aired on TV a year before Katrina

Bush actually admitted that he lied about not firing Rumsfeld
because he did not want to tell the truth.
look it up.

all of it
all of it and more leaving us with
ten trillion in debt
to pay for 31% more in discretionary spending
the Iraq War
a 1.3 trillion dollar tax cut

median income down two thousand dollars
three-quarters of all income gains under Bush
going to the richest one percent
unemployment up from 4.2 to 7.2 percent

the Dow, down from ten thousand five hundred eighty seven
to eighty two hundred seventy seven
six million now more in poverty
seven million more now without health care

buying toxic goods from China
deadly cribs
outsourcing security to Dubai
still unsecure in our ports
and at our nuclear plants
more dependent on foreign oil
out of the international criminal court
off the anti ballistic missle treaty
military readiness and standards down

with two unfinished wars
a nuclear North Korea
disengaged from the Palestinian problem
destabilizing eastern european diplomacy with
anti missile plans
and unable to keep Russia out of Georgia

2000 miles of Appalachian streams
destroyed by rubble from mountaintop mining
at his last G-8 summit,
he actually bid farewell to other world leaders
saying quote - goodbye from the world's greatest polluter

consistently undermining historic American reverence
for the institutions that empower us
education, now "academic elites"
and the law, "activist judges"
capping jury awards

and Bin Laden?
living today unmolested in a Pakistani safe haven
created by a truce endorsed and defended by George W. Bush

and among all the gifts he gave to Bin Laden
the most awful, the most damaging not just to America
but to the American ideal
was to further Bin Laden's goal
by making us act out of fear rather than fortitude

leaving us with precious little to cling to tonight
save the one thing that might yet suffice:

hope.

MSNBC’s faithy sisters

Today was Bring Your Religion to Work Day for Melissa Francis and Contessa Brewer who, together, host the “It’s The Economy” show.

First I was stunned by their utter lack of objectivity in reporting a story about a mother who took her daughter off life support based on the appearance of an angle-shaped image seen in a glass door in a security monitor. (That’s how the story originally aired. I have since read the correct sequence of events.) Any reasonable would be asking whether Mary-in-a-stain syndrome should be applied to healthcare decisions for children. Francis and Brewer never even questioned it. Instead, they had the following exchange: [emphasis mine]

They also showed the hospital and said that they couldn't imagine what else it (the image) could be.

Melissa Francis: “It's hard to explain what else that could be - I'm sure there are skeptics out there who have some good ideas about it but it… (interrupted by Brewer)

Contessa Brewer: “In a season like this faith is a good thing.”



Later, they introduced a segment by expressing disgust at the “Politically correct” use of the term “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. They then introduced two guests as “marketing experts who are here to explain why saying Happy Holidays may be bad for business.” (Only the text on the screen described them as "faith-based" marketers.) These two “marketing experts”, who clearly had an agenda, then proceeded to present the usual “War on Christmas” propaganda. No guest was asked to present the other side of the argument. No other point of view or argument was offered by the anchors.



At the end of their show, and perhaps ironically, during a segment on Festivus, they expressed concern that the holiday was being commercialized.

If this were Fox News, I would have been so unsurprised, I wouldn’t even mention it. But I’ve come to expect more from MSNBC.

Campbell Brown allows Rick Warren to lie about death and secularism

Breaking: Rick Warren on Campbell Brown: No bias, promoting his book The Purpose of Christmas, claimed that “secularism has killed more people than religion”, and called the Hitler regime “secular” on Brown’s show on 12/4.

The truth is that religious wars have killed far more, and Hitler was considered a gift of God by the Germans. Hitler frequently used Christianity as a justification.

One of my favorite bloggers, Austin Cline, covered this a while back.

I hope Media Matters for America picks up on this very soon. I’m a big fan of Campbell Brown, but she should be ashamed of dropping the ball o this.

A gas price conspiracy theory

Many are asking how, when gas prices were so high just a short time ago, they suddenly dropped so low.

Well, the conspiracy theorist in me says it’s all about an oil-industry-friendly Presidential administration leaving office, and an American auto industry in trouble.

Please indulge me.

Fuel prices became so high because we have such an oil-friendly Presidential administration. They’ve always been on the side of the oil industry and had policies to reflect that fact. During his 2000 campaign, Bush insinuated that, since he was so close with the oil industry, he’d be able to use his clout to control oil prices. Well, we saw how that worked out. The oil companies had their heyday for the last eight years.

However, with oil-friendly leadership nearing the end of their term, and a near certainty that, with such anti-Republican sentiment running deep in this country, the next administration would be a Democratic one that wouldn’t be kind to the oil industry, the oil companies decided to get as much profit as they possibly could while the getting was good. They knew they were in safe hands, so they gouged us for all we were worth while the hen house was guarded by foxes.

But then, recently, gas prices went down – in some areas by half!

What happened?

Well, their biggest enablers – the American car makers who were in love with manufacturing gas guzzlers, got in trouble, in major part for doing the very thing oil companies loved, making gas guzzlers while Americans cried for hybrids that were in short supply.

Public opinion right now is very much against the American car industry because they drove themselves out of business by pushing big gas guzzling trucks and SUVs while consumers wanted gas sippers – and now they have the gall to ask tax payers to bail them out.

The nerve of some people! We all got so excited about hybrids when they came out and went sniffing around for one of our own, but when we went to the dealership to check them out, we found that they were super expensive and not in stock. There were waiting lists! And don’t even think about dickering on price! So we bought little Honda Civics and other fuel efficient cars. We drove them around while rednecks with giant pickup trucks cut us off and intimidated us on the road. And all those gas guzzling, polluting bullies had big Chevy and Ford logos on their tailgates that stuck in our minds. Our nemesis on the road was a big pickup truck with an angry suburbia-dwelling redneck behind the wheel. Honking for you to get out of their way. You don’t forget that kind of thing.

So those all those auto executives flew their private jets all the way to Congress and asked for a handout to help them out of the hole they dug with their incompetence, bad marketing research and greed.

The American people told them to cram it.

“Cram it, you motherfuckers!”

As this spectacle unfolded, what do you suppose gas companies were thinking?

I suppose it went something like this:

“Holy fucking shit! The gas guzzlers are about to go extinct! We better lower gas prices so the makers of all those gas suckers can keep making the machines that keep us profitable!”

And that’s my theory.