Had much fun this year at the Allentown and Allen West festivals. My friend came up from Angola, he hasn't been since he was a kid. It was fun going with them, they bought a bunch of stuff, and I got Mmtornow a great birthday present :). The weather was perfect, not as hot as it was the past few years. We went both days, I saw most of the festival with my friend on saturday, he wanted to see all of it cause it was a rare occasion for him. We were all sore from walking when we got back home for that well deserved beer. On sunday my main goal was taking pictures, I wanted to capture the scene.

You can see the photos larger at my Flickr Account



Nickel City Co-Op Festivities, "more living less parking"

The pigs have flown, you wild and improbable dreams are about to come true!


Allen West








I can see why this extra festival sprung up. Millions of people come to the streets of Buffalo, but they come for the vendors, many of whom are from out of state. The businesses that usually occupy these streets aren't able to set up tents or compete with the festival. I know restaurants do well, but the businesses on Allen decided to start their own festival, it's a lot of fun. The festivals both have their own charm.

Allentown Art Festival








Louies after the festival saturday, Ambrosia before :)

The Supreme Court ruled today that everyone deserves a right to know why they are in prison. And if you are imprisoned, you get an opportunity to see a judge, have a trial, and if you are innocent get out of prison.

Sounds basic right, but..... it was a 5-4 vote, meaning the Supreme Court just barely saved the Constitution, by one vote.

And those other 4 Justices are Nuts! Don't believe me? Here's Justice Scalia... "America is at war with radical Islamists.. this ruling will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed." Stop, he's a judge, on the Supreme Court, judges are supposed to interpret the law, and preserve the Constitution right? Where does it say "Uphold the Constitution, unless America is at war with radical Islamists", Where is it? Where's the 'Islamic war exception clause' that allows you to throw out the constitution!?!?!

The main point of the Constitution and the Supreme Court, is to make sure that politicians don't overreact during a war or some other tragedy, and throw out the Bill of Rights in a panic.

Scalia also predicts more Americans will be killed. That's his job? Predicting the future? Those damned "activist judges".... oh, it's conservative activism, legislating from the bench.. that's different.

Some of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been held for 6 years without a trial. They are all declared Enemy Combatants by the president, and that's supposed to make it ok. They don't need a trial to prove they are a threat, the president said so, that's good enough.

America is supposed to be a nation of laws, not ruled by the passions of men. You usually have a trial to prove someone violated a law, then sentence them to prison. There are countries in the world that do it backwards, they declare people an enemy, skip the trial, and throw them in jail forever, those countries are called Dictatorships, and the leaders are called Tyrants. That's why we have a Constitution in This country, to prevent tyrants from seizing power and changing the laws to suit their self interest.

The Supreme Court did its job today, this is good news, that we saved habeas corpus for now, but it worries me that it was such a close decision. The fanatic opposition also worries me. I'm holding my breath for the November elections.


Read some

What is the goal in Iraq? I thought we wanted to turn over management of Iraq to the Iraqis, so we can come home and stop spending 720 million dollars per day in Iraq and start using it here where it is desperately needed. You know we could fix crumbling bridges and levees and stuff.

Right now the US is negotiating a 'status of forces' agreement with Iraq that would allow the US to maintain 58 military bases in Iraq. I'm not sure if that includes the US embassy next to Baghdad that is the size of a college campus.

Top Iraqi officials are calling for a radical reduction of the U.S. military's role here after the U.N. mandate authorizing its presence expires at the end of this year. Encouraged by recent Iraqi military successes, government officials have said that the United States should agree to confine American troops to military bases unless the Iraqis ask for their assistance, with some saying Iraq might be better off without them.

"The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization of Iraq," said Sami al-Askari, a senior Shiite politician ... "If we can't reach a fair agreement, many people think we should say, 'Goodbye, U.S. troops. We don't need you here anymore.' "

Read Iraqi reactions and some more details about the negotiations.




Another interesting article Bush Has a few regrets,

In the UK times online "President Bush regrets his legacy as man who wanted war"



Update, One more thing

War is an opportunity to make money, for some companies. And politicians sometimes like excuses to give handfuls of taxpayer money to rich corporations, they hope the corporations will finance their campaign, or maybe give them a high paid job when they get caught screwing the taxpayer and get thrown out of Washington. AKA the Military Industrial Complex.

the $300 Billion Betrayal - Video
Weapons programs at the defense department are one of the biggest sources of wasteful spending in the federal budget. Just to give you an idea of how much $300 billion is, you could run the entire state of Tennessee for 11 years on just $295 billion. That $300 billion number comes from the Government Accountability Office's new report on Defense Acquisitions. Watch the video and see examples.

Just a thought.

I'm one of those 20 something people who grew up in the 90s and I was taught that I live in the future. We learned about World Wars, slavery, unequal rights, lynching, Hitler, fascism, communism, bombing London, and all the other horrible stuff.

But that was history, America had made it to the future. Americans are living in a fair and just democracy now, the rest of the world was coming along too, because we were setting a noble example, and sticking to our high minded ideals. We knew there were problems in the world, but international cooperation, community, and a fair justice system could solve these problems.

The pride and confidence of our generation has been eroded after September 11. Partly because we were attacked, and we realized that not everyone had made it to the future with us. But mostly for me, it was the barbaric response of our government. We said we would eliminate Saddam Hussein whether the rest of the world liked it or not. It didn't matter that we had no real evidence against him, and that he had no connection to 911 whatsoever. The America I expected, was supposed to rally the world behind a common goal. I expected the criminals to be exposed an humiliated, because what they did was clearly wrong. I expected justice, I expected our nation to have faith in a system of laws without self interest. A legal system that seeks to expose the truth, and expects rational people to see a path to justice.

We got none of it. We went backward, instead of forward. We got infinite detention and kangaroo trials, we abandoned international law and cooperation, we decided might makes right, shoot first ask questions later, the public was misinformed and deceived on purpose, color coded alert systems, we couldn't keep citizens in New Orleans from drowning, or bridges in Minnesota from collapsing, we even got rid of one of those ancient Latin laws that was the foundation of our country, called Habeas Corpus. And the people of my generation, once they woke up, said holly shit, it CAN happen here.

Maybe it's just me but it seems like this election fits into that history. The younger generation voted less than the older generation, partly because we took our country for granted, we thought peace and prosperity was a given. In 2004 we were demoralized and fearful, we still didn't vote enough. But in 2008, seems like there is potential, possibilities. We can take our country back. And one of the things I like most about Obama, he keeps saying WE can change Washington. Saying that the American people must be involved if we want to fix this country. Nobody is going to do it for us, we are looking for leadership, but we can't do it without a committed public, it's up to the American people to take their country back. Maybe politics can become a national pastime again.

I don't recognize the America of the last 7 years, the is not the America I was supposed to inherit. I think my generation is ready to reclaim America.

This perked my interest. Now "outside the bubble" Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan coming to terms with the failure of Washington politics. The way he describes it really pinpoints some of the fundamental failures that have manifested in government.

Washington has become the home of the permanent campaign, a game of endless politicking based on the manipulation of shades of truth, partial truths, twisting of the truth, and spin. Governing has become an appendage of politics rather than the other way around, with electoral victory and the control of power as the sole measures of success. That means shaping the narrative before it shapes you. Candor and honesty are pushed to the side in the battle to win the latest news cycle...

That is key, that is the lens through which we can understand, and think critically about what the elected officials want us to believe. The manipulation of truth, to serve the permanent campaign, that is a fundamental problem in our system. We should be aware of this manipulation, and seek ways to overcome it. The press and the public need to be skeptical.

Read more about his new book