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President Wuss

Earlier today, our fearless leader and the self-proclaimed overlord in the war on terror hid in a bunker on fears that an unidentified aircraft had entered restricted space near the White House. Turns out the whole thing was a false alarm.

What a nancy boy. Maybe if we actually felt we were safe from terrorists, our leaders wouldn't cower in fear whenever an airplane flies overhead. Of course, since worldwide terror attacks more than tripled in 2004, nobody feels safe. But thank goodness Dubya is working on that bogus social security problem that doesn't exist. That sure does the trick when you're trying to keep Americans from hearing about how your private little war on terror has actually tripled the number of terrorist attacks throughout the world.

In an amazing coincidence, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced last week that her department would no longer release statistics on terror attacks to the American public. I guess Rice thinks if she doesn't acknowledge terror, terror isn't happening. It's an interesting strategy. It sure has worked for the mainstream media regarding Iraq.

I'm hoping to apply the Rice Rationale to the Bush administration at large. If I fail to acknowledge them, maybe they will cease to exist. A guy can always hope.

Filibusters and radio bluster

A few minutes ago while enjoying some culinary shrapnel from Taco Bell, I caught a snippet of the nationally syndicated Ed Schultz radio show. If you haven't heard of Ed, you aren't alone. Ed, who obnoxiously refers to himself as "Big Eddie" every chance he gets, is trying to be something of a left-wing version of Rush Limbaugh. In other words, he's a dim-witted blowhard -- only he's our dim-witted blowhard.

A man claiming to be from San Francisco called in to the program and started reading the neo-con cult’s talking points, which he obviously ate like corn straight from Karl Rove's rectum. The conversation started with a discussion of upcoming military base closings (our caller simply would not accept the fact that the Bush administration would consider closing bases in states where Democrats are running weak incumbent senators in 2006, which proves he's lost all capacity to think for himself), but it inevitably turned to the Reverend Doctor Senator William Jesus H. Frist and his threats to go all nuclear on the filibuster if Democrats don't issue a rubber-stamp approval for the only 10 (out of 215) Bush buddies they've refused to confirm to the federal bench. Today, Senator Jesus turned down a compromise offer from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (which is one of the great Beavis and Butthead names of all time -- "heh heh, he said 'hairy reed'") that would have given the Bush babies 208 of their 215 appointees. Nope, said Senator Jesus, it's 215 or bust. Apparently, religious zealots don't like to compromise.

In any event, the caller shouted at Schultz, "Can you name one instance where Republicans filibustered judicial nominees from a Democrat? Can you?" The question was such a softball that you'd almost think it was planted.

Except Big Eddie, self-proclaimed champion of the working man and almighty king of the shameless self-promotion, was stumped. He started rambling on instead about how the caller didn't want black people to have any rights in our society, which is a particularly idiotic argument considering at least one of the embargoed nominees -- Janice Rogers Brown -- is black and since they weren't talking about that in the first place.

Way to go, Big Eddie. We're all so happy that you have such a firm grasp of the issues. Of course, we shouldn't be surprised. Schultz was a conservative until, well, right around the time he realized being one of nation's few liberal radio hosts would serve him better than trying to fight Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy, Neal Boortz, Mike Gallagher, and Glenn Beck for recognition in their practically anonymous pool of neo-conservative bottom-of-the-barrel filth.

Well, Big Eddie, since you're not about to do any research on your own, let me help you out. I used the same tool that Justice Anthony Kennedy uses -- the Internet. You should try it sometime.

In 1968, Senate Republicans filibustered President Johnson's nomination of Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas to replace the retiring Earl Warren as Chief Justice. Fortas had been on the big bench for only three years and was widely known as a personal friend of Johnson's, and that left the Republicans skeptical. They filibustered for several days, and Johnson withdrew the Fortas nomination upon being informed that Senate Republicans had no intention of ending the filibuster. It really happened. There's even archival video that proves it happened, even though it's from the left-wing media.

But you know, maybe that's not recent enough for Big Eddie. After all, Senator Jesus was still hatching plans to kill cats back in 1968 and was hardly worrying about filibusters. In March 2000, President Clinton nominated the Hon. Richard Paez, whom he'd appointed to the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California six years before, to a post on the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Republicans, led by Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.), went bonkers and filibustered the nomination of the presumably progressive Paez. Among the senators taking part in this filibuster? Senator Jesus himself. Yes, Sen. Bill Frist was one of 14 Republicans who took part in a filibuster to block Clinton's nomination of Paez. They were unsuccessful, by the way. Paez now sits on the Ninth Circuit bench.

Hey Eddie, are you reading any of this? How the hell could you, the host of a radio show that deals with this topic every weekday, not be aware of this when I (and a lot of others who care about this stuff) have it practically at my fingertips? Do your job, you lazy sloth. We on the left don't need radio hosts on our side who are ignorant of facts. If we wanted that, we'd recruit Bill O'Reilly.

I admit, I'm overly sensitive to this because of something that just happened here in local radio. San Francisco's "progressive talk" outlet, which is owned and operated by the not-progressive-whatsoever Clear Channel Death Star, just relegated its morning program to crack-whore-and-donut-shop hours in favor of a talk show hosted by Jerry Springer. The exiled show, called "Morning Sedition" and hosted by comedian Marc Maron and New York radio veteran Mark Riley, is an Air America production that had been broadcast during morning drive on tape delay here in the Bay Area. It's a funny, witty, well-written show that, if nothing else, has hosts who know that Senator Jesus has taken part in judicial filibusters himself.

Schultz, who is not part of the Air America camp, airs live in the Bay Area from noon to 3. Al Franken's show, an Air America production, is broadcast here live from 9 to noon but rarely takes calls. The Bay Area radio scene would have been much better off had this station thrown the ignorant, self-aggrandizing Schultz (whose lame Midwestern gun-owning liberal shtick simply can't be getting solid ratings in the Bay Area) to the wolves, moved Franken to noon (where he wouldn't have to compete with KGO's Ronn Owens, the Bay Area ratings champion since right around the time Marconi invented the radio), piped in Springer from 9 to noon, and left the consistently entertaining "Morning Edition" alone in morning drive. I can't say for certain that "Morning Sedition" was getting solid ratings, considering you have to be about 50 miles offshore in order to get that station's signal clearly, but there's no way Springer's three hours of whining, droning, and (if we're lucky) inbred arguing and chair throwing is going to do any better.

None of this matters to me, because I podcast "Morning Sedition" (along with Air America's Franken, Randi Rhodes, and Mike Malloy) anyway. But it sure is a shame that Bay Area listeners now need to wake up at 3 a.m. to hear Maron and Riley while some bonehead who has no idea about Senator Jesus's history of hypocrisy gets to clog the airwaves with his "live from the heartland" garbage from noon to 3.

Really stupid doves

I like animals. I really do. Most of the people I know also like animals, so there's a chance this post is going to irritate some of them. I do apologize in advance for this, but I just can't keep it inside any longer.

Every weekday, I encounter the two stupidest doves in all of dovedom.

I recently read a story that suggested birds were actually quite intelligent. I assure you that scientists never interviewed these two doves. Had they done so, they would have changed the title of their study to "Two Doves Counteract All Other Evidence of Avian Intelligence." It's that bad.

I park in one of those glorious concrete parking garages that so beautifully adorn the South San Francisco landscape. My chosen facility has a sprinkler system to combat any particular vehicular flambes that may occur randomly, which I think is a nice perk. Since concrete is not flammable, the system has obviously been installed to protect my car from bursting into flames because some other car, most likely a Ford, has decided to spontaneously combust.

This fire-protection system, however, is not necessarily aesthetically pleasing. It's really nothing more than a whole bunch of pipes mounted about three inches below the ceiling of each level of the parking garage. The pipes run every which way, intersecting at 90-degree angles every now and then. This is where our friends the doves come in.

One pair of doves has decided that one of these intersections is the perfect place to call home, and they've decided to build a nest there. I'm all for that. In theory, it's not the worst place in the world for a bird to build a nest. The odds of a cat being able to find them are awfully low. However, the surface area of their chosen home is approximately the size of a playing card -- a playing card that is cylindrical and hence slopes downward on two sides.

What this means for the doves should be simple, even for doves to figure out. Every time they build a nest there, parts of the nest quickly fall to the ground. Every day, there's a little collection of twigs about 12 feet underneath their homestead. And every day, several times a day, one of the doves flies down to the ground, grabs one of the little twigs, flies up 12 feet, places the twig on the nest, watches the twig roll off the pipe and fall to the ground, flies back down to the ground, grabs one of the little twigs, flies back up to the intersection, puts the twig down, watches the twig fall, flies down to the ground, picks it up ...

You get the picture. Makes you tired almost thinking about it, doesn't it? It's like watching the Sisyphus of doves.

I wish these doves the best, but their attempt to avoid the high cost of Bay Area real estate isn't working.

Richard Morrison bows out

Sad news out of Texas, where environmental lawyer Richard Morrison has decided he won't run against bug-killing zombie cult king Tom DeLay in 2006.

Morrison, who ran against DeLay in 2004 and forced that little dung beetle to actually spend time in his district (Heaven forbid!), was able to generate nearly 45 percent of the vote through his grass-roots campaign against the ethically challenged incumbent. That may not sound like the most promising performance on its surface, but no other competitor had ever done as well against Larvae Boy and his wallet filled with lobbyist credit cards. Morrison is a tiger who never missed an opportunity to point out DeLay's indiscretions -- and, trust me, that alone is a full-time job.

Turns out that Morrison and his family need money to do things like pay their mortgage and raise their children. Guys like DeLay never have to worry about this stuff; they just have their friends at Enron and Focus on the Family pay them under the table. But Morrison has ethics -- and, unfortunately, debt. Further, he and his wife are expecting a fifth tiny Morrison, and Richard's mother was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. So it's back to the private sector for Richard.

"I think the biggest issue this county faces is our national debt," Morrison wrote to his supporters, "and for me and mine to be facing debt that could quickly become unmanageable is irresponsible and unwise."

Indeed. After all, it's not like the government has any plans on helping out Morrison. He's not the CEO or a board member of a major corporation.

Morrison was the first politician to whom I ever sent a contribution. I heard him one afternoon on the Ed Schultz show back in that program's infancy, and I remember saying aloud to myself that the House of Representatives needed not one but 435 Richard Morrisons. Just imagine -- an entire legislative house of intelligent, thoughtful, ethical individuals who care about this country and all the people who live in it. Well, I guess you have to imagine that, because we sure have nothing close to that right now.

Good luck, Richard.

The War on Everyone and Everything

Those zany neo-conservative death-cult zealots sure have a hard time playing nice with the other kids in the sandbox, don't they?

Needing a target for their truculence now that both Terri Schiavo and Pope John Paul II are dead, House majority leader Tom DeLay and his blind band of bilious automatons are angling their antennae towards two opponents: judges and gay people. If you so happen to be a gay judge, do yourself a favor -- log off and get the hell out of the country immediately. I hear Amsterdam is nice.

Crazy Tom the Bug-Killing King, who has recently drawn the ire of Republican party elders Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich for his divisive and borderline psychopathic behavior, is now angry with Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, for -- get this -- using the Internet to perform his own legal research, which DeLay said was "incredibly outrageous."

So, just to keep score, the neo-con zombie cult now has the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war in Iraq, the war on gays, the war on working families, the war in Afghanistan, the war against the media, the war against progressives and liberals, the war against the separation of church and state, the war on the middle class, the war on human rights, the war on social security, the war on judges, the war on free speech, the war on environmentalism, the war on religious freedom, the war against the United Nations (more on that one later), and now the war on Internet usage to keep themselves occupied when they aren't at church or home watching professional wrestling and car races.

Later this year, perhaps we can look forward to the war on puppies. It's high time we put a stop to all their cuteness and their unconditional love, or what some of us prefer to call "radical canine activism."

During his anti-Kennedy, anti-Supreme Court rant, DeLay referred to all of our country's federal courts as "the left's last legislative body" and threatened that the House may soon interpret judicial freedoms as a violation of the good behavior proviso to which all judges are sworn.

While DeLay continues his rage against the judicial machine, let's hope he remembers to include radical judicial activist -- and Dick Cheney hunting buddy -- Justice Antonin Scalia in his criticisms. As Adam Cohen writes in a recent New York Times editorial:

The idea that liberal judges are advocates and partisans while judges like Scalia are not is being touted everywhere these days, and it is pure myth. Scalia has been more than willing to ignore the Constitution's plain language, and he has a knack for coming out on the conservative side in cases with an ideological bent. The conservative partisans leading the war on activist judges are just as inconsistent: They like judicial activism just fine when it advances their own agendas.

Scalia's views on federalism -- which now generally command a majority on the Supreme Court -- are perhaps the clearest example of the problem with the conservative attack on judicial activism. When conservatives complain about activist judges, they talk about gay marriage and defendants' rights. But they do not mention the 11th Amendment, which has been twisted beyond its own plain words into a states' rights weapon to throw minorities, women and the disabled out of federal court.

The 11th Amendment says federal courts cannot hear lawsuits against a state brought by "Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State." But it's been interpreted to block suits by a state's own citizens -- something it clearly does not say. How to get around the Constitution's express words? In a 1991 decision, Scalia wrote that "despite the narrowness of its terms," the 11th Amendment has been understood by the court "to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it confirms."

So while the House's most powerful crackpot continues on his quest to make sure that justice Delay'd is justice denied, let's all hope he remembers to include Antonin Scalia on his list of those who aren't worthy of being saved -- right between Hillary Clinton and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

Meanwhile, since Rush Limbaugh wasn't selected as the next pope, his confirmation hearings for chief justice are scheduled to begin next week.

IN THE MEANTIME, special kudos go out to the Texas state house for discovering one last right that gay people had -- and taking it away from them.

Legislators from the land of Dubya Bush and The Bug Killer have agreed to revise the policies followed by the state's Child Protective Services agency so that homosexuals and bisexuals will be prohibited from becoming foster parents. The bill is now on the way to the state senate.

"It is our responsibility to make sure that we protect our most vulnerable children, and I don't think we are doing that if we allow a foster parent that is homosexual or bisexual," said ignorant homophobe Robert Talton, the (wait for it ...) Republican who introduced the revision, presumably from a pew somewhere.

In a world where a cardinal forced to resign in shame because of his role in a conspiracy to cover up the pedophilic actions of many of his priests is allowed to say a memorial mass for a dead pope in St. Peter's Basilica, thank goodness Texas has its priorities straight. Keeping our kids away from those dangerous gays is the most important agenda item in our society today. Not because gays are necessarily dangerous to our children, but because I can't think of a single gay group that has $130 million to give to victims of sexual abuse.

Fortunately for the Catholic Church, it has that sort of money and can continue to compensate victims financially for its vile and sexually deviant crimes.

SOMEWHERE IN THE COUNTRY RIGHT NOW, Michael Bolton is happy because he's no longer America's most hated Bolton. That honor now belongs to John Bolton, Dubya's hand-picked choice to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

During his confirmation hearings, Bolton has been characterized as a serial abuser with a history of "genuinely behaving like a madman," according to a former worker with the U.S. Agency for International Development. Also working against Bolton's candidacy are the words of former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, who told the New York Times that Bolton "is incapable of listening to people and taking into account their views. He would be an abysmal ambassador."

Because of its own experience working with individuals who are incapable of listening to people and taking into account their views, the White House continues in its whole-hog support of Revoltin' Bolton, blaming the Democrats for their own candidate's shortcomings, which seems strange considering Republicans outnumber Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 10-8.

"I think what you have are some Democratic members of the committee who continue to bring up unsubstantiated accusations," said White House spokesman and chief Bush stooge Scott McClellan. "They are unfounded."

A vote on Bolton's nomination has been delayed not by Democrats but by three Republicans -- Sen. George Voinovich (Ohio), Sen. Lincoln Chafee (Rhode Island), and Sen. Chuck Hagel (Nebraska) -- who have reservations about Bolton because of his lengthy history of misconduct. "I don't feel comfortable about voting for Mr. Bolton," Voinovich told the other members of the committee.

I bet this wouldn't be a problem if we got rid of some of those activist judges and pesky gays.

FINALLY TONIGHT, most of the readers here know that I gleefully quit my thankless job at BEA Systems back in February. I'd been there for three years, and the first two were quite good. The third year, however ... not so much.

Some of my friends have asked that I post the story of my departure here in this space. A couple of them were there with me at BEA during much of my tenure there, and they're fully aware at how badly we all were treated. It's something I've thought long and hard about (and I've even written a long entry about the whole ordeal), but I've decided to refrain from airing these soiled undergarments in this space. All it really does is hurt a couple of people who, in all honesty, probably deserve to be hurt for the way they treat others. But since I don't much care about either of them, sharing stories of their unethical conduct and of how they've cost BEA dozens of good employees while generating about a million bucks or so of damage in bad publicity seems pointless.

There is one story I feel needs to be told, however. Shortly before I left the company, I was informed by Scott Regan, who apparently was my manager (it was unclear at the very end who actually was my boss, which underscores the absolute lack of communication that goes on at BEA), that he was not happy with the blog I wrote for BEA dev2dev. This was really nothing new, since Scott -- unlike the actual dev2dev audience -- liked very little of what I did. Fair enough. His lack of editorial expertise does not prevent him from having his own opinion of my writing, and the fact that he didn't like my writing never really bothered me; I simply considered the source.

However, I visited the dev2dev blog after my resignation and noticed that he went in there, removed my name from each of the somewhere around 100 postings I'd written over the past nine months or so, and replaced my name with his on each one of them! Not liking my work is one thing. Saying you don't like my work and then stealing it and calling it your own is quite another. In fact, the whole stealing-my-work thing is plagiarism.

While I don't doubt the fact that BEA legally owns the work I produced while I was employed there, I'm rather certain that Scott Regan is not the rightful owner. He could have just as easily deleted the blog, or he could have just as easily changed the name of the author of each post from "Jason Jackson" to "dev2dev" or something along those lines. But not our pal, Scott Regan. He has to take the time to go in there entry by entry and take credit for work that is not his. To Scott, the ideal solution was simply to pester me until I'd leave and then steal credit for my work once I was gone.

What a dick.

I've been writing professionally now for 16 years, and I've never seen anything as deceitful, as flagrant, as vile, as dishonest, and as unpalatable as this. If nothing else, I suppose it does a great job of underscoring why BEA is such a terrible place to work. These are the people they hire to manage others.

They apparently caught wind that I was pretty pissed off about it -- I mentioned it at a party a couple of weeks ago that was attended by some people who are still at BEA. I guess someone at that company finally decided it might be a good idea to remove Scott's name from my work after letting him take credit for it for a couple of months. (I'll post some screencaps of his taking credit for my work a little later today, just to prove that I'm not delusional -- at least regarding this issue.) I guess displaying professional ethics two months late is better than never displaying professional ethics at all. Way to go, BEA.

In case you're concerned, I'm beyond fine. If I had to make a list of the 20 happiest days of my life, the day I quit that company would either be on there somewhere or would be hanging out in honorable mention. I've had no problem finding work; I'm back at Genentech for my second stint contracting there (I was hired on the spot as soon as they learned I was available again), I'm doing some fun freelance work for a former BEA colleague's startup in addition to a couple of ongoing projects that I've been working on for the past several months, and I have a couple of additional job leads about which I'm relatively excited. Not surprisingly, Tiersa has noted that my mood has improved dramatically since getting away from that horrible environment, and I can't say I'm surprised. As much as you like to think you're not impacted by all the politics and all the crap, you're only fooling yourself. It impacts you in ways you can't even comprehend.

To the friends I still have at BEA, I know what you're going through. Hang in there. There are better days ahead. I just wouldn't expect those better days to include working at that company. You all deserve much better.

UPDATE [04-21-2005 12:16 AM]: Here's a PDF screen shot of the dev2dev blog on March 4, which was roughly two weeks after I left BEA. Notice who has suddenly given himself credit for the work I'd done. See for yourself (requires Adobe Acrobat).

What a team player, eh?