The American Gallery of Psychiatric Art [via dublog]

“But why did Kelly have to die?” Guardian-Observer/UK

Cast your vote here:

I want my representative in the U.S. House of Representatives to vote to impeach President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John D. Ashcroft for high crimes and misdemeanors, and to have the case prosecuted and tried in the U.S. Senate.

a nation that commits political assassinations to get a better hand from a deck of playing cards. CNN No matter how despicable these brothers were, think of what you become if you rejoice at their deaths. And what the detestable leadership of our country has become, to conduct regime change by smart bomb, with no scruples, and with lie after lie to have their way, the ends justifying the means, with no hesitation about the cost to our souls.

Ray at Bellona Times asks:

‘I can’t decide whether the inability to distinguish either “apologizing” or “taking responsibility” from “making excuses” is a characteristically American trait or more generally human. Introspection is no help. Please advise.’

Aaron Lazare, psychiatrist and Chancellor/Dean, University of Massachusetts Medical School, dissects the essence of a well-formed apology:

“One of the most profound interactions of civilized people is the offering and acceptance of apologies. Some apologies have the power to heal and restore damaged relationships, avoid or undo vengeance and grudges, and diminish guilt and shame. Failing to apologize or offering faulty apologies may lead to strained or broken relationships, grudges, and even vengeance.” [more] For A Change

Enetation (my commenting system) tells me: “There have been a couple of failures of the comment counter in the last week caused by what appears to be a suspect chunk of code on the user forum which has caused the database sync to stop. We will upgrade the forum software this week.” I receive an email every time you click on “Comments?” and post a comment. I’ve noticed recently that, after someone has commented on a particular post, the counter has not been changing to reflect that. For example, I know there is a comment on the “Black Dots” item from 7/20 below. Until you start to notice that it is fixed (i.e. that you start to see “[1 Comment]” showing beneath this post, since I’ve placed a comment there), if you are curious about whether a particular post has comments, you must investigate by clicking.

This morning Mozilla 1.4 (under WinXP) would only give me a blank page when going to the default URLs for FmH. A friend writes that the same thng has happened intermittently this week with Mozilla for Mac. It seems to be spontaneous, unrelated to any changes I’ve made inthe weblog or in the browser, and it resolves spontaneously too. Sometimes, if a person tries to access the page just when I’m republishing after an update, they’ll get a blank page, but in that case a refresh seconds later will show all the content. This is not that problem.

When I can’t get here in Mozilla, Mozilla Firebird and IE6 still work, so I know the page content is still there. In fact, if I go to alternate URLs for the page, I can get there in Mozilla too, if that is a clue. I’ve turned off Mozilla’s built-in popup blocking to see if that was the problem, without it making a difference. I never find this with any other webpage I visit.

Does anyone more adept than I am with HTML and Mozilla understand why this is happening? Is it my browser, the server, or something about the page? or something else? Has anyone else experienced this with FmH or any other page in Mozilla? Any thoughts appreciated…

William Safire lays out a guerrila war strategy for the Iraqi opposition to the US occupation (and takes a tortured stab at suggesting a US response). He states as a given that Saddam is alive and orchestrating such a strategy now. “The elusive Saddam plots his comeback Countering his strategy will take guts – and faith”. STLtoday With twisted logic, Safire’s strategy to win in Iraq is to press forward blaming the domestic opponents of the war and the ‘liberal media’ for the American failure in Iraq. He advises that the American public keep the faith that the WMD will be found (“Drop the premature conclusion that if we can’t yet find proof of the destructive weapons, they never existed. “) and not question that Saddam Hussein’s regime represented a threat to the world… or still does; he blithely justifies the “loss of one soldier’s life” (uhhh, Bill, you scholar of linguistic artifice, that is one soldier daily) by counterposing the imaginary “loss of thousands of civilian lives caused or abetted by a vengeful dictator”. Pure sophistry. Are BushCo and its lapdog coalition following his advice: (Wolfowitz: ‘Finding WMD is now secondary’ WPXI vs. Blair: ‘WMD will be found’ ExpressIndia)?

Safire’s last suggestion is the most subversive: “This above all: To end guerrilla war in Iraq, find Saddam. Those he terrorized must be assured the tyrant will never come back.” Is he trying to make the dysadministration look more like the bunch of contemptible buffoons they are? An October administration report warned that a defeated Hussein would be a threat (Washington Post) , BTW. Just as with our inability to find bin Laden, what is crucially important is that the American public forget that we are unable to find Saddam, Bill. Don’t remind them.

Do Food Additives Cause Republicans? “If you can’t effect change through the electoral process, try adding a little P & G yellow to the Freedom Fries.” — Dante Langston, Orion

“…(W)hat cheers me are the ways people are learning to read the silent histories of objects and choosing the objects that still sing.” — Rebecca Solnit, AlterNet

“The Bush administration didn’t like the odds of being forthright with us, and so they went another route. Now it’s time to follow that route to the logical conclusion. You can’t start a war based on a premise and then come around after it’s over and say, ‘Who cares if that was bogus? Based on the real reason for the war, things are going great!’ Well, actually, you can. The question is whether or not people are willing to go along with it.” — Rafe Coburn

“A report by internal investigators at the Justice Department has identified dozens of recent cases in which department employees have been accused of serious civil rights and civil liberties violations involving enforcement of the sweeping federal antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.

The inspector general’s report, which was presented to Congress last week and is awaiting public release, is likely to raise new concern among lawmakers about whether the Justice Department can police itself when its employees are accused of violating the rights of Muslim and Arab immigrants and others swept up in terrorism investigations under the 2001 law.” NY Times

This is ridiculous: Ronald Reagan tied for number 1 with Thomas Jefferson?? Rush Limbaugh on the honorable mention list? No women and only two men of color (MLK and Frederick Douglass) on the top twenty, along with Harriet Tubman on the also-rans. Right Wing News

Dismayed Americans contemplate Canada: “A husband and wife in Minnesota, a college student in Georgia, a young executive in New York. Though each has distinct motives for packing up, they agree the United States is growing too conservative and believe Canada offers a more inclusive, less selfish society.” CNN [Boundless opportunities to Californicate new territory?]

At Party Meeting, Most Rule Out Supporting a Democrat: “The Green Party emerged from a national meeting over the weekend increasingly certain that it will run a presidential candidate in next year’s election, all but settling a debate within the group over how it should approach the 2004 contest.” Washington Post

“Executives at Amazon.com are negotiating with several of the largest book publishers about an ambitious and expensive plan to assemble a searchable online archive with the texts of tens of thousands of books of nonfiction, according to several publishing executives involved.

Amazon plans to limit how much of any given book a user can read, and it is telling publishers that the plan will help sell more books while better serving its own online customers.

Together with little-publicized additions to Amazon’s Web site, like listings of restaurants and movie showings, the plan appears to be part of a strategy to compete with online search services like Google and Yahoo for consumers’ time and attention. ” NY Times

Ed’s Musings from Space: “While he’s living aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 7 NASA ISS Science Officer Ed Lu is writing about his experiences. His letters are listed below, beginning with the most recent addition.

You can also ask Ed or Commander Yuri Malenchenko a question by going to our Ask the Expert Web page.” HSF – International Space Station