Saturday, April 29, 2006

Prove it to Yourself - Bush is a Psychopath

A couple weeks ago I was poking around Wikipedia, when I came across the entry for the tool that is used by psychologists to determine if a patient is a psychopath. When I started thinking about some of the recent revelations that George W was a chronic bedwetter until he was at least 10, and that he set fires and abused animals until he was a teenager, along with the long-known facts that he was for many years an alchoholic, I decided to put him to the test.

Here’s how to do it. Below is the list of 20 traits exhibited by psychopaths. Remember that it’s a continuum, and even “normal” people may possibly exhibit a couple of these traits.

Score 0 if the trait is absent, 1 if it is possibly or partially present and 2 if it is present. The item scores are summed to yield a total score ranging from 0 to 40 which is then considered to reflect the degree to which they resemble the prototypical psychopath. A score higher than 30 supports a diagnosis of psychopathy. Forensic studies of prison populations have reported average scores of around 22 on PCL-R; control “normal” populations show an average score of around 5.

Factor 1 is a slam-dunk - every single one of these is a 2. In spades.
Factor 2 is nearly as bad. I would say a 2 in everything but the first and last items, and those are probably a 1 and a 0.
Can’t really speak for any of the third column, but just the first 2 columns add up to 31.

Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Cascadia Hoisting

Collin S. Ferguson

Five and a half years ago, life was simple. The only thing to fear was the Y2k crisis, and Bill Clinton’s perverse distractions away from his troubling policies. As a result of the 1 1/2 terms of ol’ Bushy (hopefully he won’t finish the last 1/2), at the head of America’s most honorable position, which he has so effectively disgraced, Americans are waking up. Some are dazed and confused, some are defeatist, some are drowning in their tears; however, others are looking towards the future.

In the following weeks, at least 13 individuals who hail the Pacific Northwest (both “American” and “Canadian") as their home, will be hoisting a new flag that has a new message: consciousness.

In 1981, Washington Post journalist Joel Garreau wrote a best selling and a Book-of-the-Month Club selection titled, The Nine Nations of North America. Today, the book oft sits lost on the shelves of libraries, but the book shares a topic rarely discussed: North America’s cultural development. Garreau offers no extravagant theories as to how these cultures emerged, but his descriptions are both elegant and enlightening.

One of the cultural regions Garreau identified was Ecotopia, which stretched from San Francisco, CA, through Western Oregon and Washington, and British Columbia, to the Alaskan Pan-handle. To Garreau and many others, Ecotopia has a shared identity. However, he wasn’t the only to be published on the topic. In 1975, Ernest Callenbach wrote a book about a new nation called Ecotopia.

As a result, the belief of a shared cultural identity has slowly evolved into ideals in the region now known as Cascadia, The Land of Falling Water. Here in the Pacific Northwest something happened to Manifest Destiny. An interactive movie at the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute and Museum on the Reservation of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla said it best when Coyote bit the heart of the monster from the East.

Western expansion, capitalism, excessive consumption, globalization, Manifest Destiny, American Imperialism, whatever you want to call it, it has to end, or it will end on its own abruptly and harmfully. The Earth cannot handle it anymore, yet sadly, the current deliberation on the War on Terrorism, 9/11, Peak Oil, and Gas Prices is not encouraging peace, love and happiness, but is instead encouraging continual war, a blaming game where someone or something is responsible for all the world’s fixable problems. As many continue down an unforgiving path, others continue building a new road.

A few years back, there was a protest against a visit by George W. Bush at the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon. A small group approached me with flyers campaigning a new political party called the Cascadia National Party (CNP). I was receptive, asked many questions, became a member, sent a letter to the president, and began searching the Internet for information - and there is a lot of information.

Cascadians are developing new political theories based upon sustainability, bioregionalism, direct democracy, and expanding the consciousness of the Cascadian ideal of independence. Many new websites have been developed: FreeCascadia, Cascadian Bioregionalism, Republic of Cascadia, and many, many others. MySpace.com and Tribe.net now have several groups dedicated to Cascadia.

The memes are spreading. Many Cascadians are attempting to get the people of the Pacific Northwest to understand that their political concerns are based upon a culture and a unique identity not found anywhere else in North America. There is talk of a new newspaper called The Cascadian, talk of flyering and demonstrations, and now people are acting by hoisting a Cascadian flag named The Doug.

As of now, 10 people have ordered flags to be made by a Cascadian flag company called Small Flags Inc. in Oregon City, Oregon, where is all started. The complete order is due Monday, May 1st, 2006 “May-day” and for many “Beltane” or the first day of spring.

The Doug Flag is not like any other flag. It is about a connection and a willingness to fight in the name of the land even against all odds. It is democracy and ending oligarchy. It is the end of aristocracy and believing that all men and women are created equal. It is about taking your time, enjoying nature and drinking good beer. It is about white men finally listening to the indigenous populations. It is about communicating with people you wouldn’t usually communicate with. The Doug Flag is Cascadia and now it is time to hoist one of your own.

Monday, May 1st, 2006, I will be submitting an order for the production of many Doug Flags with Small Flags Inc. If you wish to show your colors and be a part of a new liberating movement called Cascadia, then send me an email saying you are wanting a 3’ x 5’ Doug Flag. If we get 25 orders each flag will cost $64.50.

10 States Sue EPA Over Global Warming

Thursday April 27, 2006
By Devlin Barrett
Associated Press

Ten states fired a new legal salvo at the federal government Thursday in a long-running court battle over global warming and pollution from power plants. The states, joined by environmental groups, sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its decision not to regulate carbon dioxide pollution as a contributor to global warming. New York, California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin filed the lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The states, led by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, want the government to require tighter pollution controls on the newest generation of power plants.

“We feel it’s incumbent on EPA to regulate carbon emissions from those power plants now in order to help us get our arms around global warming,” said Spitzer spokesman Marc Violette. Also joining the lawsuit are the cities of Washington and New York, as well as Environmental Defense, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club.

New York and other states have fought with the Bush administration for years over carbon dioxide emissions.

In July 2005, a three-judge panel in the same court upheld the EPA’s decision not to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars and trucks under the Clean Air Act. The agency argues the law does not authorize them to regulate emissions to reduce global warming, and maintains there is not enough scientific data to support such a move.

The lawsuit was filed largely in response to the 2005 ruling, in the hopes that the courts will rule specifically whether the Clean Air Act can be used to fight global warming.

“We think this is the case that will decide that question,” said Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer David Doniger. An EPA spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment.

Environmentalists say 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States come from power plants. Carbon dioxide is believed to be the greatest single contributor to global warming. A growing number of scientific studies bolster the theory that increased levels of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases are accumulating in the atmosphere, where they trap heat and raise the earth’s average temperature. 

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Will Somebody Give Bush A Blowjob, So We Can Impeach Him?

Just because it was good enough in ‘98.

And because apparently - lying, plotting and scheming to get us into a disastrous war, with nearly 2500 U.S. dead, 100,000 Iraqis dead, $400 billion spent, torture, secret prisons, illegal wiretaps, rigged elections, blatant corruption, destroying the country’s standing in the world, undermining the environment, turning budget surpluses into massive deficits to enable tax cuts for the top 1%, outsourcing our jobs, ignoring global warming, criminally inept responses to natural disasters, leaking classified information for political purposes, endangering national security by outing our top undercover operatives on WMDs for petty revenge, and now threatening yet another war and the use of nuclear weapons just doesn’t seem to be good enough…

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Here's why the Republicans are getting really scared...

Data from: http://www.surveyusa.com/50State2006/06041850StatePOTUSNet.html