I often hear people decrying government regulations, all this oversight intruding into business and keeping things from running smoothly, thereby upping the time/cost to produce goods, resulting in higher retail prices, which result in higher sales tax so we can pay for all the oversight...

Regulations do not exist in a vacuum, there isn't a room full of guys going "how can we stick it to businesses this week?"  Regulations exist for (generally) very good reasons.  For example, regulations that prevent people from dumping toxic waste in a river exist because duh, somebody dumped toxic waste in a river to the detriment of the health and well being of others.

Why am I on this particular toxic stream of consciousness?  Perhaps you recall the news stories recently about people who's pets died suddenly (or became very ill) after eating certain brands of pet food?  The trail has led to concentrated rice protein for animal consumption imported from China, which is contaminated with melamine.  Melamine is high in nitrogen, which makes it a useful component of fertilizer, but which also causes it to resemble protein when animal food contaminated with it is analyzed for protein content.  By powderizing melamine and mixing it with pet food, you get food that seems to be very rich in protein and which in turn means you can use lower-grade products that cost less to make the feed.

There are no regulations in China regarding melamine in pet food, and so, surprise surprise, most Chinese animal feed contains melamine.  Is it safe?  Or rather, how much is safe?  Don't know.  You'd have to pay for a study to determine that, and suppose the study found out that small amounts had deleterious effects over time?  Then you'd need to make regulations, and enforce them, and that would cost money (and impact your economy.)  Without any studies, people have been adding it to feed for the economic benefits, without any guidelines as to how much is too much.

From Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China (New York Times):
..."Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed," said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. "I don't know if there's a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says 'don't do it,' so everyone's doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren't they? If there's no accident, there won't be any regulation."...

When ingested, melamine (which is manufactured from coal) is apparently metabolized into various chemicals, one of which is ammonia.  It turns out that the symptoms of the American pets that became sick or died resemble ammonia poisoning.  If the person or persons responsible for the tainted rice protein had been a little less greedy and had used less melamine, maybe several pet owners wouldn't have lost their pets.

Melamine is NOT FOOD.  Therefore there is no nutritional reason for it to be there.  Your cat's renal system doesn't benefit from a feed manufacturer's bottom line.  But corporations are not motivated by civil responsibility, they are motivated by money.  Remember the infamous "Ford Pinto Memo"?  When Ford Motors decided that it would be cheaper to pay off lawsuits from families who's loved ones would die in exploding Pintos, than it would be to effect an eleven dollar repair to each Pinto?  Human or animal life is worth dick to some people (c.f. ULev article Human Wrongs from September of 2005, which also involved China).

This is why we need government oversight.  China has less food-safety oversight than we do, and the result is apparent:

From Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China (New York Times):
...The pet food case is also putting China’s agricultural exports under greater scrutiny because the country has had a terrible food safety record.

In recent years, for instance, China’s food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim...

New Hampshire legalizes civil unions!  I found this particular comment extremely amusing:

...Several senators described civil unions as unnatural and warned that the partnerships would harm heterosexual marriage. "We don't allow our cousins to marry, you can't marry your brother, you can't marry your sister," said Sen. Robert Letourneau, a Derry Republican. "We don't allow blind people to drive or felons to vote, all for good and obvious reasons."...

Thank you for comparing a healthy loving relationship between two people of the same gender to blind people driving, criminals voting, and incest.  What an ass.  What, pray tell, are the "good and obvious" reasons for disallowing gay marriage?  I've yet to hear any, and I've been listening for a long time.  Besides, these are civil unions we are talking about.  Oh yeah, and on that note, Letourneau has more to say...

...Despite the efforts of Democratic senators to distinguish civil unions from same-sex marriage, Republicans cast civil unions as marriage in all but name. "Let's call it what it really is," Letourneau said. "This creates same-sex marriage."...

I'm sorry I was laughing too hard to follow that.  Do you mean to tell me after all the tooth and nail fighting deny gay people marriage and the offering of civil unions as a substitute, now we're going to say that civil unions are the same as gay marriage?  Then what was the point of making the differentiation before we banned gay marriage?  You gays can't have X, why can't you settle for Y?  Okay now we passed a law saying you can't have X.  What you want Y now?  No way!  It's as bad as X!

Good for you New Hampshire.  I'd rather it was same-sex marriage, but at least this is a step in the right direction.

Over the weekend the Governor of Washington State, Chris Gregoire, signed into law a domestic-partners bill that gives gay couples some similar rights to married couples in the state of Washington.  While it doesn't address all the issues it does address a few of the most important ones, such as the right to visit a dying partner in the hospital, or to take part in a partner's funeral arrangements.  It also creates a domestic partnership registry.  Gregoire herself seems to be strongly on board with this bill, as quoted in the Guardian UK Unlimited article:

..."This is a very proud moment for me as governor, to make sure the rights of all of our citizens are equal," Gregoire said.

People in the crowd cried as Gregoire relayed stories of couples who testified before lawmakers this year about how they have been denied hospital access to dying partners, or were not allowed to plan their funerals.

"It is time we put an end to these stories," she said. "This simply allows our seniors and our same sex partners to rely on each other and to care for each other when they are faced with life and death situations. These are the rights of all Washingtonians."...

Needless to say, the knuckledraggers aren't very happy with this turn of events.  Imagine!  Letting someone who has had a loving relationship with their partner for years visit their dying partner in a hospital!  The horror!

..."I think it's an unfortunate step backward, not knowing where it will lead us culturally," said Joseph Fuiten, a Bothell pastor who is the leader of Positive Christian Agenda, a state group of Christian organizations opposed to gay marriage. "Giving marriage-lite benefits without the benefit of marriage strikes me as not a good idea."

Well jeeze, chucklehead, maybe if you would freaking let them get married in the first place, we wouldn't be having to address their rights in this way would we?  Damn that burns me... working to make sure these folks can't get married and then saying that giving someone the benefits of marriage without marriage itself isn't right.  What a jerk.  The "step backward" remark recognizes the knuckledragger sponsored ban on same-sex marriages that was passed in Washington in 1998 (the inappropriately named "Defense of Marriage Act"), and was upheld in the state supreme court last year.

Today the Supreme Court upheld the federal ban on "intact dilation and extraction" abortion procedures, termed "partial birth abortions" by those given to inflammatory speech.  Yet another backward step to thank our President for. From the New York Times article Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Abortion Procedure:

...Today's decision gave the anti-abortion forces what they had hoped for with the more conservative makeup of the high court since Justice Alito replaced Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Abortion opponents are sure to be pleased by some of the language in Justice Kennedy's opinion, including his observation that "the government may use its voice and its regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman."...

..."I applaud the court for its ruling today," Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives, told The Associated Press. "My hope is that it sets the stage for further progress in the fight to ensure our nation's laws respect the sanctity of unborn human life."

But Eve Gartner of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America said the ruling "flies in the face of 30 years of Supreme Court precedent and the best interest of women's health and safety." The ruling sends the signal that "politicians, not doctors," will make health-care decisions for women...

...Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America, said: "With today's Supreme Court decision, it is just a matter of time before the infamous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 will also be struck down by the court."

Y'know I dismiss slippery slope arguments nearly all the time, but it's kind of hard to ignore the fact that these folks come flat out and say they want to end all abortion by taking away a woman's right to choose what happens inside her body.

It's also hard to ignore that the Supreme Court of the United States of America, after 34 years of upholding a woman's right to choose as more important than the right to life of an unborn fetus/embryo/zygote, has now done an about-face and approved a ban on certain types of abortion procedures, procedures that are considered necessary by many in the medical professions.

Late term abortions are pretty controversial in my book, and I have a lot of trouble accepting the practice, which is to say, I don't like it at all.  But I still feel the ultimate decision lies with the pregnant person herself, not the government, and certainly not a religious fanatic who is trying to enforce his or her morals on the pregnant person via the government.

I view today's court decision as a profoundly disturbing mistake.  I hope it does not become a wedge used to erode women's reproductive rights further in the future, as the anti-abortionists seem to hope it will.

I'm also fed up with the inflammatory anti-abortion/anti-stem cell research rhetoric.  I'm sick of hearing abortion opponents decry that young pregnant women are "lining up to kill their children" and other such bullshit.  If you sat down in a restaurant and ordered fried chicken, anti-abortionist or not, you'd complain if you received a plate of fried eggs because you know damn well that eggs aren't chickens.  Scrambling an egg is not the equivalent of killing a chicken, anymore than cracking open a chestnut is the equivalent of felling a tree.

Zygotes and embryos are not human beings.  They are a form of human life, yes, but they are not humans.  Through the fetal stage they become human beings, but it isn't clear exactly when.  This is why I have moral issues with late-term abortions.  If at the conclusion of a normal pregnancy, what emerges from the mother's birth canal is a person, then surely it was a person sixty minutes earlier.  The question of exactly when does a fetus become a person plagues me.

It would be great if ultimately there were no abortions (which is why birth control should be readily available in this country, and taught in school), but at some point a medical professional may decide that a woman's life is in serious danger unless she receives an abortion.  I don't think that the law should be tying his hands or hers, no matter when during the pregnancy that conclusion is reached.

Ron of Ron's Blog notes that we are going to be paying for the Bush court for a generation.  No lie, say I.

During the presidency of George H. Bush, the UN requested US troops be deployed in Somalia.  Shortly after he lost for re-election, in December 1992, Mr. Bush agreed and sent the troops to Somalia.  Then during the Clinton administration, Republicans kept up a fairly constant refrain that American troops should not be deployed in Somalia (I guess stabilizing Somalia isn't important.)  The interesting thing is while these Republicans were complaining, it never occurred to them that they were "encouraging the enemy" or "demoralizing the troops".

Atlantic Free Press put out a great opinion piece this morning (Statesmanship or Hypocrisy?) comparing Republican statements made in 1993 to statements made in 2007, and it's hard to believe from the statements alone that the same person is speaking.  Featured are Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Arizona Senator John McCain, and Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell (Minority Leader).

Here's a sample...

Mitch McConnell 1993:
The only issue here tonight is how we leave and, in my judgment, the Byrd amendment better defines the proper exit for the United States in this most unfortunate experience in Somalia...

Mitch McConnell 2007:
I think it is inappropriate for the Congress to try to micromanage, in effect, the tactics in a military conflict. I don't think Congress has the authority to do it.

Following the hyprocisy thread, the article reminds the the reader that three days before Nancy Pelosi visited Syria, no less than three Republican representatives (Frank Wolf of Virginia, Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, and Robert Aderholt of Alabama) were in Syria meeting with the Syrian President. In response to Ms. Pelosi's visit, Mr. Bush said that sending delegations to Syria didn't work, while his party had sent a delegation just a few days before.  No mention of that delegation while Mr. Bush was busy denigrating Ms. Pelosi.  Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is noted as observing that Ms. Pelosi's trip is evidence of the "dysfunction" in Washington.  Unsurprisingly, he also makes no mention of the Republican delegation.

The article ends on the sad note that as long as this politicking continues, American soldiers and Iraqi citizens continue to die.  The closing paragraph makes clear that Democrats are not off the hook, and the job of resolving the situation in Iraq belongs to all parties, not just the Republicans:

...While politicians of both parties volley high-sounding words back and forth across the political net, American soldiers and Iraqi citizens are dying. Non-binding resolutions will not prevent these tragedies; only acts by Congress that require nothing close to the courage of American soldiers and Iraqi freedom fighters will stop this war. Yet there is little to indicate that many members of Congress have the strength of conviction to accomplish this life-saving task. And so the tragedy continues.

It's a great (if depressing) read. Check it out.

With Democrats finally packing some power, I wonder if the Bushies can feel the tighting of the net closing in around them.  For this administration, the time of easy sleaze would seem to be rapidly ending.  Future sleaze will have to be far less brazen I think.  The investigation into the firings of the federal prosecutors is heating up, Gonzales looks to be on his last legs, and now Rove is once again catching flack.  From a Guardian Unlimited article:

...In the latest twist to a high-voltage confrontation between congressional Democrats and the White House, the administration yesterday admitted that missing emails sent on Republican Party accounts may include some connected to the firings.

Democrats have accused Karl Rove, a top adviser to the president George Bush, and other senior aides of using the email accounts maintained by the Republican national committee to circumvent government disclosure requirements.

Following a meeting between Republican party lawyers and congressional investigators, Henry Waxman, a fierce Democratic critic of the White House, said he learned that Mr Rove might have deliberately deleted them himself - an accusation rejected by Republican party officials.

Mr Rove and 21 other White House officials maintained separate email accounts for government business and work on political campaigns. Democrats suspect they used these political accounts for official work to avoid leaving a paper trail...

Boy, all this scrutiny must be incredibly unpleasant to the administration.

Good.

Remember that guy?  Patron of the "topple Saddam, democratize Iraq, (magic happens), democracy spreads across the Middle East" creed?  Handed the presidency of the world bank when the ill-fated Iraq policy imploded?  Yeah, that guy.  Not sure why this would come as any surprise, but the World Bank isn't too happy with him right now either.

Apparently it has something to do with him making arrangements to get ridiculously huge salary for his girlfriend at the World Bank.  Hard to blame him.  His time of ascendancy came with the Bush administration, and so cronyism probably sounds like the right way to do things to Mr. Wolfowitz.  He himself has basically said that he didn't realize it was wrong at the time.

Okay, I'm kidding, it's very easy to blame him.  What a sleaze.

Having a girlfriend who receives her salary from the organization you are President of is probably fine as long as she is qualified, and she has worked for the World Bank for eight years, so there's no doubt she is qualified for the work.  But her salary is wayyy out of scale with the salary awarded to other employees working in similar positions at the World Bank.  From a BBC article:

...When Mr Wolfowitz took over at the bank in mid-2005, Ms Riza - then a World Bank employee for eight years - was transferred to work for the US state department, to avoid any conflict of interest.

But rapid rises in her tax-free World Bank salary to about $193,000 - more than the $186,000 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice receives before tax - have aroused ire among other bank employees...

So we knew Wolfowitz was delusional because of the cockeyed Iraq policy, and now we know he's crooked as well.  One thing is certain, this guy needs to stop working in positions where he gets to give orders or advice.  He's clearly unfit to manage.  A manager has to have a firm grasp on the pragmatic--pipe dreams and money schemes do not a great manager make.

And the World Bank is considering just that as the board is meeting to decide what to do with him.  I don't think they'll ask him to step down, but certainly some sort of reprimand must be coming.  Stay tuned...

So Pelosi went to Syria to meet with President Bashar al-Assad and deliver a message from Israel signaling that Israel would like to resume peace talks with Syria.

... "Peace in the Middle East is a high priority ... We were very pleased with the reassurances we received from the president that he was ready to resume the peace process. He was ready to engage in negotiations (for) peace with Israel," Pelosi added...^[1]

Wouldn't it be nice if the peace talks resumed?  Needless to say, one person doesn't think so.

...At the White House, President Bush criticized Ms. Pelosi's visit, saying it sent mixed signals to the Middle East and to President Bashar's government.

"Sending delegations hasn't worked," Mr. Bush told reporters. "It's just simply been counterproductive."

The United States, which has accused the Syrian government of providing militants with safe passage into Iraq and of meddling in Lebanon's politics after its army was forced to leave there in 2005, has sought to isolate Syria economically and politically. Damascus denies the charges...^[2]

Once again Mr. Bush demonstrates that diplomacy is a weapon of last resort.  It takes all of two seconds to see that if Israel enters into peace talks with Syria, and gives Syria back the land taken from it during the war, then Syria loses an important excuse for aggression against Israel.  If Israel returns the Chebaa Farms to Lebanon, Syria loses another important excuse.  With each excuse lost the hardliners become more isolated.

Bush wants to isolate Syria as long as it is meddling in Lebanon's affairs and letting militants into Iraq.  In order to do this he needs to provide evidence, like we did during the Cuban Missile Crisis... photos George, not cartoon trucks.  Unfortunately for our foreign policy, the world doesn't assume we know what we are talking about anymore, wonder why that is?

Imagine if Syria entered into a peace agreement which Israel met fully, and then proceeded to engage in some aggressive action?  Wouldn't that isolate Syria?  When someone has decided to do an evil thing, usually it involves making excuses.  One effective way to make it more difficult for them is to take away those excuses.

I'm not naive enough to believe that this one visit by Pelosi is likely to amount to anything substantial, but I'm also not naive enough to believe that you can solve problems with others by not talking to them.  In the meantime, the Syrians are happy to see Pelosi.

..."Ms. Pelosi is going to be very happy in Syria," said Izzat Abdoulkarim, who runs an optical shop in downtown Damascus. "George Bush says we are bad, but she will see this is not true."

He added, emphatically: "She views the world through a different perspective than Bush. She's more open-minded."^[2]

There's your message to the average Syrian civilian, George.  You are bad people.  Way to go.  Counting down seconds before some wingnut compares Pelosi to "Hanoi Jane". 5, 4, 3, ...