Here are the Chords to Donovan's "Season of the Witch"

A7     D9
e|-0-----2---
B|-2-----0---
G|-0-----2---
D|-2-----0---
A|-0-----0---
E|-x-----2---

The first guitar you hear in the song, mostly clean
electric, plays the lower notes of each
chord. use palm muting liberally

e|-------------------------------------
B|-------------------------------------
G|----2-x-----x-2----------------------
D|----2-x-----x-x-------x------0-x-----
A|-0~~------0-----------x------0-x-----
E|------------------2~~~-----2---------

the little riff that accompanies the chords goes like
so:

e|--------------------
B|--3p1p0h1-3/5-------
G|---------------2~~--
D|--------------------
A|--------------------
E|--------------------

And now: some lyrics,

When I look at the White House
What do you think I see?
So many treasonous leaks
People are Lying to me

It's strange
Oh so strange
You got to pick up every tip
You got to hear those flapping lips
Press the charge and make it stick

Oh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh
Must be the season of the Fiiiiiiiiiitz

It occurs to me that one of the main planks of the Democratic '08 platform should be that we will put the best qualified people in places where they are needed, starting with the president. We don't need a CEO president, because the country is not a corporation, the revenue streams and goals are utterly different. It's my belief that we need somebody who can point to an actual PLACE where they were the chief executive, and how they turned that place around. To me, this means mayors and governors. So here's a thought: if you have somebody in charge of where you are, are they any good? Have they turned the city or state around? [at the suggestion of WisVoter, updated to feature democratic governors only]

Odd smells are appearing all over!
The ever-fascinating site

http://home.att.net/~thehessians/disasterwatch.html

reports that rotten-eggy, nasty smells are popping up in various locations around the world now. If these bad smells are actually being caused by methane release from the seabeds, there could actually be very serious consequences. Check out the site, and click the links.

If you are in Galveston, or in the surrounding areas, please get yourself, your friends and family, and your pets out now, or get ready to leave very soon if Rita doesn't change her ways. This is the lesson from Katrina. There is one thing different here: your town has a BSL4 facility in it.

In the interest if full disclosure, I should start off mentioning that I support this kind of research, and fully believe in the necessity of maintaining the ability to study the world's most dangerous pathogens. I probably wouldn't have chosen Galveston as the place to put one of these facilities, though.

Please read on...

There is somewhat of a debate going on about what the disease risks are now, and what they will be from here on out, in the Katrina-affected areas, in particular New Orleans.

I thought I'd send an update from that the ProMed people are saying. I've put the whole post below the fold because it's meant for distribution. Note that there is still quite a bit of discussion going on by tropical disease experts, but based on experience it looks like much of the larval mosquito population is likely to have been wiped out by the hurricane, although ongoing risks are likely. Update: 1:45 pm PDT: Vibrio vulnificus

I have an anonymous source, who has an anonymous source who is saying that Cheney is the guy in '08. I know I know, he has said over and over that he's NOT running, etc. Still, my source is extremely well connected and usually turns out to be right (and lately, i.e. for the past 5 years, that has been nothing but bad news). So this is a rumor right now but it brings up a point:

So what if it's true? How do you have a debate with a liar? My opinion: just work night and day to expose corruption. We can work on our platform, discuss values, and filibuster until we're blue in the face, but the only thing that makes a difference  is when the other side gets caught with their fingers in the cookie jar. That goes double for the house races in '06.

I for one find this far more threatening than the CNN (oops I mean US government) terror threat level.

Terrorist bombings have the ability to kill thousands of people. Worst case, tens of thousands.
The bird flu is probably coming. Maybe this year or next. If it escapes into the global ecosystem it could kill hundreds of thousands of people and we are not prepared.

More after the jump.

From the AP, just a timely reminder of how f*cked up it is that Bush justifies his war in the name of fighting opression, when we have more people in jail than any other country (per capita).

"The terrorists who attacked us -- and the terrorists we face -- murder in the name of a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance, and despises all dissent. "
Boy George Bush 6/28/2005

This morning's edition of "Nature", one of the top tier scientific hournals, published an editorial about why the EU constitution would be better for science than the current situation.

The free abstract is below

OK, since people here are very good at pointing out how someone who claims "fraud" had better have a damned good case before they do it, how about we get all of the Seattle and WA people to jump all over Chris Vance, WA state GOP chair for doing it?

Link below the fold

Holy crap!

You know, I'm just as jaded as can be about the unholy alliance between corporate money and right wing christians, but to read in New York Times this morning that Gates & Co. hired Ralph Reed (i.e. the Cristian Coalition)'s lobbying company makes me want to go around smashing things.

As usual, the Bloggers got the story, but NY times has a lot of circulation.

The USDA is considering relaxing their rules on slaughtering "Downer Cattle". There are a variety of hair-raising issues at stake here: the pathetic number of cattle that are tested for BSE, the power of the meat lobby over the government, and also the sheer brutality of the Meat Business.

Last time I made a diary on this subject, it was about bird flu transferring into pigs,
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/14/191550/531
and people seemed interested.

Food IS politics. Please people: vote with your fork.

The article is in the Extended...

The animal industry is going to kill us eventually. Now the "bird flu" is being found in Pigs. What'll you have this morning, bacon and eggs with a respiratory failure? Would you prefer SARS or H5N1 with that, sir?

 The cost-saving measures that drive people to keep large numbers of commercially raised animals in close quarters with unhealthy conditions are starting to result in real threats to people on a massive scale. Someday we'll look back on this time and say "Oh my god, why didn't we see all the red flags".

For those of us that do buy animal products, please if you can possibly afford it buy only ethically and environmentally sensitive products, preferably raised locally, on small farms, by real people. this is the fastest way to put factory farms out of business.

Well, I shook his hand anyway. But I did give him a hand-written letter, to thank him for taking on this challenge, and I included a printout from georgia10's diary here:
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2005/4/5/152153/2396/1#1
That's my portion of the thread, but I recommended he read the whole thing in my letter,
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/5/152153/2396
and to post something on here, and to follow up on it for 48 hours. (kinda like an online whistle stop)

Now, that was at 8:00 am. If Susie Turnbull's diary
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/13/113857/852 was a quick turnaround already by 8:37 a.m., I gotta say: right on, you people get it!

Talking point #1: Dean is re-branding (with our help) the Republicans as being the party of:

Deficits, Divisiveness, and Deceit
www.democrats.org comes up when you google "Divisiveness"!

More on what the Dr. said in the extended...

From the BBC website, cheers to Jamie Oliver, who has shamed the UK government into doing something about the crap they feed kids in school. Does anyone suppose Emeril couldn't get the US to "kick it up a notch" here?

Y'know how it's funny to add "in bed" to the end of fortune cookies?

Well, a caller on the Ed Schulz show figured out that you can add "if you're rich" to the end of Bush's policy statements for an equally Hi-larious result!

Well well well,
remember a few weeks back when Boston was in the middle of a warning about a dirty bomb?

In a surprise non-coincidence, it turns out that a halliburton shipment of radioactive material was lost in Boston, as reported today by the AP.

As reported on AP via truthout

Halliburton's Lost Radioactive Material Found

The Bush administration has become extraordinarily successful in keeping the sh*t rolling downhill. I suggest as a general tactic with any scandalous news story that we spend a little effort repeatedly asking the question: "How far up did this go?". This should be a talking point every day.

Here are some well known examples where they had plenty of time to concoct a story that the bad decisions came from lower than they probably really did.

Again: "How far up did this go?"