Another eye opening headline from ThinkProgress:
72% of U.S. Troops Want Out of Iraq Within One Year

The ports management deal furor had not really moved me—until now. There was always an ugly isolationist zenophobic angle to it. But this changes the picture:
Dubai Ports World Boycotts Israel

The utterly foolish project to seal up the south access to Bernal Hill Park and eliminate the heavily used parking there is just about to break ground in spite of the concerted efforts of neighbors. But the fight is not over, as this passionate post on BernalSF testifies:

Moment of truth

If you think this is the end, it is not. The moment the road gets blocked, pandemonium is going to set in. We don’t have to do anything, in fact I will be out of town. You will be setting the trap yourself. We have warned you. We have told you over and over this is a terrible idea and an unbelievable waste of tax payers money. You have stubbornly refused to listen and keep clinging to your flawed process as if this is the life raft that will save you when the project goes down. Which it will.

Are you listening, Tom Amiano? We will not forget your nasty, anti-neighborhood, anti-democratic effots on your cronies’ behalf. You had your chance, you’ve dug your grave, now you get to lie in it.

Did I mention how much I like ThinkProgress? Presentation matters to me, and they have their HTML and CSS chops down, folks. They also cover national politics very well. Check out their recap of Bush’s CBS poll woes:
The Second Term Free Fall

The latest CBS News poll puts President Bush’s job approval at 34 percent — an all-time low. Vice President Cheney is doing even worse. Only 18 percent of the public approves of the way he is doing his job.

The American public has a dismal assessment of Bush’s policies across the board:

– 30 percent approve of Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq — an all-time low.

– 27 percent approve of Bush’s energy policy.

– 32 percent approve of Bush’s handling of the economy.

– 5 percent of Americans are pleased with the way the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast is going.

Today, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, “Our focus is on the important priorities of the American people.” Looks like the American people disagree.

Nice to see a heavy hitter blog like Political Animal getting behind the Diebold e-vote scam issue. But really — why isn’t this headline news everywhere?

California Approves Diebold E-Voting….:

The bugs pale next to another discovery by the panel. This is the presence of a cryptographic key written into the source code, or basic software, of every Diebold touch-screen machine in the country. The researchers called this blunder tantamount to ‘a bank using the same PIN code for every ATM card they issued; if this PIN code ever became known, the exposure could be tremendous.’

Here’s the punch line: The Diebold key became known in 2003, when it was published by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice universities. It can be found today via a Google search.

Yep. Despite the fact that the panel of experts concluded that Diebold could fix all the bugs in their machines in ‘only a few hours,’ the problem with the hardcoded key has been known since 1997 and the key itself has been known since 2003 — but Diebold has done nothing about it.

(Are you dying to know how to hack into a Diebold machine? Unless your local registrar has bothered to change it, here’s the key: F2654hD4. And the 8-byte password used for Diebold’s voter, administrator, and ender cards is ED 0A ED 0A ED 0A ED 0A. Aren’t you glad this stuff is so easily found on the internet?)

There’s simply no excuse for tolerating even the perception that the voting process is so easily open to abuse. I’m no conspiracy monger, but the fact that Diebold hasn’t corrected these problems despite the fact that they’re obvious, widely known, and easy to fix, does nothing except provoke suspicion — well deserved or not — that they’re stonewalling deliberately. I mean, why act so damn guilty unless they really are guilty?

Wayne, I’m beginning to see the light!

Atrios speaks the truth to the anybody-but-Bush crowd that is so willing to fawn over McCain

Right now Democrats are lining up to have their pictures taken with McCain instead of understanding that he’d be an even more dangerous president than Bush. They need to start understanding what is at stake.

Just when the news gets so damned depressing you want to put your head in the oven, Fafblog will save you, and provide the straight dope. Frequently Asked Question

Q. Why are we in Iraq?
A. Terror! By occupying Iraq we get Iraqis to fight us there so they won’t fight us at home.
Q. We’ve cleverly lured them to where they already were, only in terrorist form!
A. Now you’re catching on!
Q. What if we can’t kill all the terrorists in Iraq?
A. Then we’ll invade somewhere else and trick ‘em into attacking us there – only this time it’ll be someplace really far away where they’ll get stuck, like the ocean or the moon!
Q. I would totally watch Operation: Lunar Justice live on CNN!
A. Wolf Blitzer in a space helmet… it writes itself!
Q. There are more terrorists now than before the war. Is the occupation causing more terror?
A. Well, nobody can say for sure if that’s a man-made terror increase. It may just be a periodic shift in the natural terror cycle.
Q. Tell me more about this “not our fault” theory – I find it oddly compelling.
A. Like weather, terror is affected by seasonal fluctuations. The jet stream carries hijackers from continent to continent; El Niño causes suicide bombers to condense in the upper atmosphere. Is this affected by human activity or just part of a natural warming trend for terror? We just don’t know!
Q. Your ideas are boldly nonconformist, yet conveniently reaffirm my desire to do nothing. I like it!

Read the whole post. He has a lot of answers to this question, one better than the next. And while you’re there, enjoy The Challenge of Soup in a Post-9/11 World too.

OK, this isn’t earth-shatteringly cool, but it does give me an excuse to link to one of my new favorite blogs, LifeHacker: Shoe Goo super glue “The Cool Tools weblog points out Shoe Goo, what sounds like magical adhesive fit for repairing tennis shoes as well as your car.”

Kos is a big fan of this guy. And I like everything I read about him too: Montana’s Coal Cowboy:

While the president spent much of last week promoting energy alternatives of the future, like hybrid cars and fuels made from wood chips, the governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, says there’s something we can have up and running in the next five years.

What he has in mind is using the coal, billions of tons of it, under the high plains of his home state. The governor tells correspondent Lesley Stahl he wants to use an existing process to turn that coal into a synthetic liquid fuel, or synfuel.

The plan is controversial, but Gov. Schweitzer — half Renaissance man, half rodeo cowboy — seems ready for the challenge. In fact, he sounds like he’s ready to take on the world.

China isn’t sitting around, waiting for market conditions to force their hand. They’re sinking $15B into coal-to-liquids fuel technology now, with output coming on-line by 2007. Current investments will generate %5 of all demand, and %10 of imports from CTL projects that are in progress.

Schweitzer is a visionary. He is getting out in front of something we desperately need to be doing now. Look for him to be a player in Dean’s 50-state strategy for revitalizing the Democratic party.

This really strikes a chord with me. Daily Kos: Local races

One thing I hope to encourage everyone to do is to get involved in your local races. Just about everyone has a race of major import going on in their backyard. And while it’s great that we can nationalize and focus on races in places like southern Texas, it’s also important to realize that local involvement is the best thing you can do to help build a 50-state Democratic Party.

So think nationally, and even act nationally when the opportunity strikes. But don’t forget to act locally as well. Everyone, no matter how blue the area they live in, have a tough race somewhere nearby. Even here in ocean Blue Bay Area we have two corrupt Republican congressmen nearby (Pombo and Doolittle) as well as Ahnold to focus our local efforts.

Funny how from Koz’ perspective, Pombo is a local race. I was thinking more along the lines of the BOE elections.

Laura Rosen found this gem: Former White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater tells Joe Strupp

‘What [Dick Cheney] should have done was call his press secretary and tell her what happened and she then would have gotten a hold of the doctor and asked him what happened. Then interview [ranch owner] Katharine Armstrong to get her side of events and then put out a statement to inform the public. They could have done all of that in about two hours on Saturday. It is beyond me why it was not done this way.”