Where my Money Went:

PETROCOMMERCE ATM WITHDRWL 02-21 #000242245 CUSTOMER 6587 99900507 NIZHNY NOVGOR RU

Because I shopped at OfficeMax with my debit card, the Russian mafia got my ATM number and made a fake card.

Here is the bank where the mafia guys took my money out:

Nizhni Novgorod9 Sergiyevskaya Street, Nizhni Novgorod 603109, Russia tel./fax: +7 (8312) 37-68-88www.nnov.pkb.ru

In case you want to visit, here is a Nizhni Novgorod website:

http://www.unn.runnet.ru/nn/

I like this gem:

"Visitors are astonished at the abundance of snow and low temperatures that are so common in Russia during the winter season. It usually doesn't thaw until March in Nizhni Novgorod, and only in April does spring really begin."

Technically, Cheney shot the man in the face...

so I guess my comment about no one getting shot in the back as a result of the Bush administration still holds true....

The Road to Whatever

I'm just finishing "The Road to Whatever" by Elliott Currie. His thesis is that adults don't take enough responsibility for teenagers. I think he's absolutely right. It seems so weird to me that a parents can send their kids to horrible boot camps in third world countries and that isn't considered child abuse. It seems doubly weird to me that these parents who preach "personal responsibility" to their children who are in trouble are the same ones who ship off their kids and take no responsibility for how they ended up that way.

Secrets and Lies

Secrets will naturally lead too lies. Lies create a chasm between those who know the truth and those who are merely guessing.

And of course incompetence is a third issue. When half of a presidential administration is staffed by idiot children of the rich and powerful, secrets and lies become a necessary evil to keep the public from getting freaked out.

Its hard to compare our current reality to a totalitarian state because nobody (to my knowledge) is being shot in the back or "disappearing" in this country. Of course it may very well be that in other countries this is happening. At the same time, the very brazenness of the secrets and lies of this White House has created something that is not quite democracy. (a secretocracy? a totalitarian democracy?)

Frankly, impeachment (however remote a possibility) is the only thing that will lance this boil.

Is Bush playing politics with 9/11?

Duh.