Jenna and Barbara Bush - porn spammers?

A subscriber to SPAM-L, an anti-spam mailing list, reported receiving spam supposedly from the Bush daughters. Well, it's really from the George W. Bush re-election campaign, but it's signed in the Bush daughters' names.

Here're the relevant mail headers:

Received: from mailer1.georgewbush.com (mailer1.georgewbush.com
[65.172.163.151])
From: Jenna and Barbara Bush <bushcheney04.com>
Subject: Behind-the-Scenes with Jenna and Barbara

Behind the scenes with Jenna and Barbara? I take it that the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign didn't quite think this completely through. I wonder what that subject line looks like in between the other kinds of spam people receive. Let's see, shall we:

Pertty Woman Dvd Quality Movies!
Big and horny sluts - Real Big Women
Please her everytime
Behind-the-Scenes with Jenna and Barbara
Young Celebrity sex pics

Which one of the bunch is the non-porn spam?

-TPP

Florida 2000 - child's play, 2004 will be worse

If you thought the 2000 presidential elections in Florida were bad, just wait till November.

Greg Palast, the American born reporter now living in UK who also broke the story about the voting list irregularities in the 2000 Florida elections, is reporting the Republicans are planning on disrupting voting in the state's African-American voting districts in Florida.

There are reports from several states of similar tactics by the Republicans:

Voter registration forms change party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in Pennsylvania
Mass voter challenges in primarily Democrat communities of Ohio

Obviously forged or false registrations are an issue, but it looks like the Republicans are going out all barrels blazing trying to block as many Democrats from voting as possible.

Instead of trying to encourage people to vote, the Republicans appear to be doing their best to get people NOT to vote. What is wrong with these people?

-TPP

Once a dick, always a dick

Looks like Bill O'Reilly is in some serious trouble now. Sexually harassing a coworker, who had the presence of mind to record some of the conversations is not a particularly bright idea, but then when was Bill ever the bright one to being with?

Fair? I don't think so. Balanced? Yeah right.

-TPP

All men are created equal, unless you're an alien

No, not the ET kind of an alien, but an immigrant in the United States.

The life of an immigrant, legal or illegal, in this country is filled with fear, uncertainty and confusion. If you've ever had the pleasure of dealing with The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), nowadays called The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a department of Homeland Security (DHS), you will know exactly what I am talking about. Since my immigration process is still ongoing, I will not discuss specifics about my personal experiences in public using my own name.

The article I am linking to describes a DHS crackdown on "alien criminals" (sounds like a scene from Men in Black, doesn't it?). The immigration laws in the US have restrictions on who can apply and retain immigrant status in the United States, and rightly so. One of those restrictions is immigrants can not commit crimes involving moral turpitude (conduct that shocks the public conscience) and if they do, they can be deported at any time. That's all good and well, if it wasn't for the "effectiveness" of how DHS applies it.

Since immigrants are not US citizens, they generally have little or no rights when they find themselves in the opposite side with the law. Abusing this fact, DHS regularly holds immigrants for months with no legal presentation while they are "processing their deportation documents". In fact, immigrants have less rights than serial killers, war prisoners, and, yes, enemy combatants.

Like many detainees, Mr. Venant had passed through the New Jersey jail without being seen by Mr. Lonegan, the lone Legal Aid lawyer whose weekly legal clinics function as a kind of triage. Because immigration proceedings are officially civil, not criminal, those who cannot afford counsel have no right to a public defender, and legal volunteers are scarce.

"Everybody loves asylum cases, everybody loves to defend the Buddhist monk," Mr. Lonegan said. "But the guy who's got the green card, with a wife and child, here for 30 years, and is being deported for a nonviolent offense, and the punishment does not fit the crime, he does not get a lawyer."

You wonder what sort of crimes are we talking about here. Well, the 20-year legal permanent resident (green card holder) whose situation was described in the article was using and selling fake metro cards in New York City. Might as well crack down on all NYU students, and jail them for months with no legal representation. For this horrible crime, he was sent to a Federal Detention Center in Lousiana generally used to house violent criminals to wait for his deportation, indefinitely, if needed.

For a nation built by immigrants that sure is an interesting way of treating immigrants.

-TPP - you are a descendant of an immigrant family, unless you are of native american heritage

Bush makes no mistakes. Really?

The second presidential debate is over, and while I think Bush did a better job than in the first one, he still lost. He looked visibly angry most of the time, and was almost yelling his responses to the audience. Very unprofessional.

But the most amazing moment of the debate came with his response to the last question of the night. A member of the audience asked him to name three decisions he has made during his presidency that he, in hindsight, thinks were mistakes and how did he try to correct them.

Bush couldn't name one, other than joking about making mistakes in appointing people. That is truly amazing. Instead he appeared to know the true motivation of the question, and jumped into defending his decision to go to war against Iraq. Seems like the question hit a sore spot to me.

Nevertheless his answer reminds me of something I said a few months back about interviewing job candidates, and let's face it, Bush is interviewing for a job.

Having been interviewing job candidates for a position with my current company, for what feels like forever, questions about mistakes or challenging situations in the past, and what was learned from them, is one of the best questions to use to disqualify candidates.

We had one hero answer the question something along the lines of:

"I look at other people's work, and I see a lot of faults. I've yet to see anything wrong with my work."

He will not be hired. Pity the employer who does.

I pity the US, if Bush is hired.

-TPP

The INDUCE Act is dead, for now

According to the Newsday article, Orrin Hatch, Hollywood's best buddy, has withdrawn the INDUCE Act after failed negotiations between consumer groups, technology companies, which both oppose the bill, and the proponents of the bill (RIAA, MPAA).

Let's see what will Mr. Hatch cook up next. Hopefully he will not be re-elected and gets his promised post as an entertainment industry lobbyist. Funny how bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contributions work...

-TPP