Jim

Glazers rents lens, likely other shops in Seattle as well.

Sat - ski with friends at Chinook Sun - hike w/spouse on east side, catch rattlesnakes, bird watch. Monday Garden work, BBQ w/friends

That and who blatently lied about the reasons to go to war. Now that shows a moral/christian backbone.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. intelligence agencies warned the Bush administration in early 2003 that invading Iraq could create internal conflict that would give Iran and al Qaeda new opportunities to expand their influence, according to an upcoming Senate report. Officials familiar with the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation also say analysts warned against U.S. domination in the region, which could increase extremist recruiting. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the report's declassification is not finished. It could be made public as soon as this week. The committee also found that the warnings predicting what would happen after the U.S.-led invasion were circulated widely in government, including to the Defense Department and the Office of the Vice President. It wasn't clear whether President Bush was briefed. Asked to comment on Wednesday evening, the White House's National Security Council did not directly respond to the report's findings that intelligence analysts predicted many of the troubles ahead in Iraq before the invasion. The committee's findings are the latest chapter in its four-year investigation into the prewar intelligence assessments on Iraq. An earlier volume, completed and released in 2004, was highly critical of the intelligence community and then-CIA Director George Tenet. That 511-page document found widespread problems throughout U.S. spy agencies and said the intelligence community engaged in "group think" by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Senators also found that analysts failed to explain their uncertainties to policymakers. Yet, in predicting the effects of the U.S. invasion, the committee now finds that U.S. analysts appear to have largely been on the mark. A former intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the decision to go to war had been made months before the 2003 papers were drafted and analysts had no delusions that they were going to head off military action. Rather, the official said, they hoped their warnings would be considered in the planning

Another slimeball shown the door.

I don't know how anyone can play politics with this administration any longer. Repulbican or Democrat, you have to be outraged at the conduct, the lying, and the lack of accountability until recently. It would have been business as usual if the Republicans still held the House and Senate. The President swears to defend and uphold the Constitution above all. These guys are consistently attempting end-runs around it. This is what happens when you get idealoges, and one dumb-shit president, in charge. Investigative reporting by the media, particularly television is lacking. Watch CNN for a bit and it's all car crashes, Brittney, and reporting on American Idol winners. It would be great if more programs like Frontline and Bill Moyers were available on commercial TV, but don't hold your breath. And, Americans are, what?, I don't know. Fat and happy and who the hell cares? Certainly not well versed in how checks and balances of the Constitution should work.

People who jog-in-place at stop lights.

http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/ficap/forum/docs/sept04lemaire.pdf Another interesting comparision: A tale of two cities: Seattle and Vancouver Sloan (1988) compares Seattle and Vancouver, two cities with similar population, climate, income per capita, poverty rate, unemployment rate Different approaches to gun regulation Gun ownership rate: 41% (S), 12% (V) Seattle handgun homicide rate 4.8 x higher, assault with gun rate 7 x higher But nearly identical rates of burglary, robbery, assault, and homicides without guns

US population: 275 million US firearm homicides: 10,801 EU population: 376 million EU firearm homicides: 1,260 Japan population: 127 million Japan firearm homicides: 22

Beats a borrow-and-spend necon in my book.

About that golden rice, some cursory research shows some problems: The Council for Biotech Information has an advertisement on Canadian's TV, suggesting that, "Golden rice could help prevent blindness and infection in millions of children". Recent scientific evidence shows that this is not the case. Greenpeace is filing a complaint with Advertising Standards Canada demanding that this misleading ad be withdrawn from the airways. Biotech industries are trying to lead consumers into believing that this food source is a safe and beneficial one. GE rice provides so little vitamin A that it would take 10 pounds (dry weight) of rice per day, to meet the recommended requirements. A two year old would need to eat 7 pounds a day. "It is shameful that the biotech industry is using starving children to promote a duboius product," said Michael Khoo of Greenpeace. "This isn't about solving childhood blindness, it's about solving biotech's public relations problem." Even the Swiss scientist who developed the 'golden rice', Dr. Ingo Potrykus, has admitted that there is not a single published study showing that the human body can convert the beta-carotene in GE rice to vitamin A. Childhood blindness resulting in vitamin A deficiency could be cheaply distributed in a supplement, which would be more effective than golden rice. But better yet, why not implementing diversity crop farming practices that are naturally rich in vitamin A. They need to grow more fruits and vegetables with vitamin A content. The under class can not afford a healthy diet and can't afford to buy more expensive and untested seeds from the West. They need to give back more land to the people to increase self reliance, locally and internationally. This is the way to help the Third World nations fight against poverty and hunger.

While I wish they were working on the Northgate line at the same time, the airport link is a good start. There is a ton of daily business traffic between the airport and downtown. I know when I fly to Portland for work it's so easy to hop on the light rail and get downtown, where there are other line links or buses. We're a little late but I'm hoping we can push this out to the 'burbs north and east soon.

Cost of my commute = $0 Of course if you can't ride there is always: http://www.smartcarofamerica.com/news/models/

There was a great 1.5 hr examination of the Selling of the War by Bill Moyers on last night, only on PBS of course. The lack of any objectivity of the press in the war buildup and the total pass the administration got on their lack of evidence for their claims was stunning. Knight-Ridder seemed to be the only new service that was asking questions. So much for a liberal press. Within half and hour of Powell's UN speech they were able to find out the extend of lies and half-truths he put forth. And the pundits who marched through the Sunday talk shows spouting off a list of facts, WMDs, aluminum tubes, biological weapons, mobile labs, based on leaks from the White House and picked up by a complicit press were easily proved false with only a cursory examination. Now these same pundits, who lied and were dead wrong, are still to be found on the news shows as "experts" on the middle east. Amazing.

I'd suggest a more comprehensive source than Wikipedia on this (or any) topic. I also notice that you somehow missed the sections of that article regarding the problems of pesticides, salt in water supply, loss of genetic diversity in food crops, increased energy input, and mixed results of the Green Revolution. There are a number of good books out there on the subject. The emphasis on western variety of crops that require a high input of fertilizer (energy), pesticides (energy), and introduction of monocultures and ignorance of locally adapted crop varieties that are resistent to local weather conditions and pests. Then there's the profit motive of large agri-industries pushing their varieties that just so happen to need the fertilizers and pesticides they can provide. As the new seeds spread, petrochemicals become part of farming. In India, adoption of the new seeds has been accompanied by a sixfold rise in fertilizer use per acre. Yet the quantity of agricultural production per ton of fertilizer used in India dropped by two-thirds during the Green Revolution years. In fact, over the past thirty years the annual growth of fertilizer use on Asian rice has been from three to forty times faster than the growth of rice yields. While there have been impressive yield increases, particulary in Asia, these have not been linked with a corresponding decrease in world hunger. Excluding China, there has been little progress on reducing world hunger. The experts have lately been arguing that the significant decrease in hunger in China (400 million to 189 million past 20 yrs) is the result of the large investment in road building and distribution improvements.

At 20.5 light years away don't hold your breath for the results.

In Virgina this was blocked by the gun ownership rights folks aligned with the keep-mental-health-records-secret folks. I don't see the intrusion to either.

Here's an opinion from a pretty classy African American woman, rather than a bunch of hand wringing white folks. Trash Talk Radio By Gwen Ifill The New York Times Tuesday 10 April 2007 Washington - Let's say a word about the girls. The young women with the musical names. Kia and Epiphanny and Matee and Essence. Katie and Dee Dee and Rashidat and Myia and Brittany and Heather. The Scarlet Knights of Rutgers University had an improbable season, dropping four of their first seven games, yet ending up in the N.C.A.A. women's basketball championship game. None of them were seniors. Five were freshmen. In the end, they were stopped only by Tennessee's Lady Vols, who clinched their seventh national championship by ending Rutgers' Cinderella run last week, 59-46. That's the kind of story we love, right? A bunch of teenagers from Newark, Cincinnati, Brooklyn and, yes, Ogden, Utah, defying expectations. It's what explodes so many March Madness office pools. But not, apparently, for the girls. For all their grit, hard work and courage, the Rutgers girls got branded "nappy-headed ho's" - a shockingly concise sexual and racial insult, tossed out in a volley of male camaraderie by a group of amused, middle-aged white men. The "joke" - as delivered and later recanted - by the radio and television personality Don Imus failed one big test: it was not funny. The serial apologies of Mr. Imus, who was suspended yesterday by both NBC News and CBS Radio for his remarks, have failed another test. The sincerity seems forced and suspect because he's done some version of this several times before. I know, because he apparently did it to me. I was covering the White House for this newspaper in 1993, when Mr. Imus's producer began calling to invite me on his radio program. I didn't return his calls. I had my hands plenty full covering Bill Clinton. Soon enough, the phone calls stopped. Then quizzical colleagues began asking me why Don Imus seemed to have a problem with me. I had no idea what they were talking about because I never listened to the program. It was not until five years later, when Mr. Imus and I were both working under the NBC News umbrella - his show was being simulcast on MSNBC; I was a Capitol Hill correspondent for the network - that I discovered why people were asking those questions. It took Lars-Erik Nelson, a columnist for The New York Daily News, to finally explain what no one else had wanted to repeat. "Isn't The Times wonderful," Mr. Nelson quoted Mr. Imus as saying on the radio. "It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House." I was taken aback but not outraged. I'd certainly been called worse and indeed jumped at the chance to use the old insult to explain to my NBC bosses why I did not want to appear on the Imus show. I haven't talked about this much. I'm a big girl. I have a platform. I have a voice. I've been working in journalism long enough that there is little danger that a radio D.J.'s juvenile slap will define or scar me. Yesterday, he began telling people he never actually called me a cleaning lady. Whatever. This is not about me. It is about the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. That game had to be the biggest moment of their lives, and the outcome the biggest disappointment. They are not old enough, or established enough, to have built up the sort of carapace many women I know - black women in particular - develop to guard themselves against casual insult. Why do my journalistic colleagues appear on Mr. Imus's program? That's for them to defend, and others to argue about. I certainly don't know any black journalists who will. To his credit, Mr. Imus told the Rev. Al Sharpton yesterday he realizes that, this time, he went way too far. Yes, he did. Every time a young black girl shyly approaches me for an autograph or writes or calls or stops me on the street to ask how she can become a journalist, I feel an enormous responsibility. It's more than simply being a role model. I know I have to be a voice for them as well. So here's what this voice has to say for people who cannot grasp the notion of picking on people their own size: This country will only flourish once we consistently learn to applaud and encourage the young people who have to work harder just to achieve balance on the unequal playing field. Let's see if we can manage to build them up and reward them, rather than opting for the cheapest, easiest, most despicable shots. -------- Gwen Ifill is a senior correspondent for "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and the moderator of "Washington Week."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming. In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars. Greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the landmark environmental law, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion. The court's four conservative justices -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- dissented.

I have one pair of skis, BD Crossbows 171/115-83-105. I've used them for most everything, from 3 ft of pow in the Wallowas to spring skiing on Shuksan. Probably don't play as well as a big board in the powder but I like having one pair. Mounted with hammerheads.

Bought a size that fits my left foot but just kills my right big toe. Not going to work. Worn in the gym only 3 times

Rats! Is this the funky little campground where you used to be able to rent a fishing raft, the guy would trailer it and you to the upper reach, and then you had to just float and fish you're way back? This is a big drag. Construction is set to start this month at a fly-fishing-themed private get-away called Canyon River Ranch in the Yakima Canyon. The 68-acre site has been a campground and the home of Red's Fly Shop, a combination fishing store, boat rental business and guide service. When completed in 2008, the private resort will have nine cabins, a lodge with communal ownership, a vineyard, an outdoor hot tub and pool, and a new building for Red's Fly Shop with a deli and wine shop. The property is midway down the 31-mile canyon that meanders along the west side of U.S. 97 from Ellensburg to Yakima. It's 13 miles from Ellensburg and 18 miles from Yakima. Mithun is the architect for the $10 million project. MF Williams is the general contractor. Previous owners Red and Marlene Blackenship decided to sell the property to Richard Leider, Dr. Anthony Robins and Steve Joyce in 2002. Leider is a Bellevue-based real estate consultant. Robins is an orthopedic surgeon whose wife is a childhood friend of Leider's wife. That connection brought the two men together to fly fish with Joyce, Robins' nephew.

You can never discount the possibility, but given the latest stats and what I've seen what houses are going for there seems to be no slowdown lately.

I don't think the Bay area is ever going back to any reasonable definition of affordable. And up here in Seattle: Seattle's housing prices aren't falling like those in much of the country, but the supercharged increases of two years ago have definitely slowed. The latest figures, from Standard & Poor's S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, show Seattle-area house prices were up 11 percent in January from the same month in 2006. That was the largest increase among the indices' 20 cities -- 11 of which posted year-to-year declines http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/309149_housing28.html?source=mypi

Maybe deferred gratification is a thing of the past. I want, I want, and I want it now. I think if more folks budgeted as if they could loose their job next month things would be a bit different. Including the McMansion and McSUV syndrome.