Honeyfire Abroad

The Report on Violations of First Amendment Rights in the United States  published by The National Lawyers Guild details the systematic quashing of protests and dissent over the last five years. Oh, and for those of you who’ve noticed a decidedly anti-Bush flavor to this blog, please all me to point out that the report deals with case studies from both the Bush and Clinton administration. Although from what I’ve read these kind of infractions seems to have worsened in the post-9/11 world, in this case it appears that fear of a dissent crosses the aisle. How nice.

Bush's Ohio Valley - Why has he stopped campaigning here? By Chris Suellentrop
One can only dream...

Will Ferrell - A message from White House West
Very funny.

Video of John Stewart on CNN's Crossfire (IFilm.com)

Wow, take a minute and watch how powerful live TV can be. Stewart doesn't back down, not for a minute. I haven't read his book, "America (the book)", but I'm going to now.

Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville

Props to Mr. Moore again for helping resurrect this text from my vauge recollections of Mrs. Koon's 11th grade English class. If you can't find something, anything that speaks to you in this text, then you better "axe" somebody.

Wedding Pictures (MiBodorrio.com)

NPR : Doctor's Book Targets Drug Industry [real audio]
Suprise, suprise, suprise: looks like the drug companies just might be giving us all the shaft. What's next an exposé on... Insurance Companies refusing to pay for treaments?

"Want to know something funny about Taxachusetts? For every dollar it pays Uncle Sam in taxes, it receives only 79* cents back in federal services and subsidies. That ranks it 44th among the 50 states in federal expenditures per dollar of taxes. Indeed, there's a very strong correlation between liberal, pro-government "blue states" and states that are least dependent on federal spending. There's also a strong correlation between conservative, anti-government "red states" and states that are most dependent on federal spending. (Click here for details.) If you think of Red America as stubbornly self-reliant and Blue America as a drain on the Treasury, you've got it exactly backwards.

I don't begrudge the South and the West their many military bases and national parks. But I do wish people in those parts of the country would stop feeling superior to Northeastern welfare-staters. I will happily make an exception for the District of Columbia, where I live, which eats an appalling $6.17 for every dollar of federal revenue it kicks in. But lay off Massachusetts, Mr. President. When you took the oath of office, you swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of all 50 United States, not just the ones that voted for you. We fought a war about this, and the secessionists lost."

- Timothy Noah, "Lay Off Massachusetts"

It's interesting how easily you could apply this observation to Spain: I heard a statistic a while ago that stated that tax revenues from Catalunya and the Basque country, two of Spain's 17 autonomous communities, account for nearly 37% of the entire national budget. Despite their importance to the country as a whole, and despite their generosity (sure taxes are not vountary, but they still pay them with less complaint than most Americans) they are ridiculed and despised by the very people who depend on their tax "Euros".

P.S. Credit where credit's due: Kevmo, this matches your observations about Montana.

Roser made a fine pie this very eve.

Voter Registrations Possibly Trashed: "Employees of a private voter registration company say they saw evidence of fraud. It could mean that hundreds of people who think they are registered, may not be..."

Roser and I went to Mataró today, on our way to our final destination in St. Pol del Mar. Managed to snap a couple of nice pictures. As you'll note by Roser's expression, today we had our first taste of real autumn weather.

The long road to Mataro


Summer's over

Hello, all. This is my first post to the BLOG. Not much to say as it's already quite late here in Spain.

On interesting thing today, a nice column by Thomas Friedman: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/opinion/07friedman.html?oref=login.

G'night.