The basic idea of the story is that Sarbanes-Oxley legislation imposes a crushing financial burden on all publicly-owned companies. Which is true. I was one of the thousands of people employed to deal with it. (Not that I’m complaining.)

SOX legislation, specifically section 404, says that corporate reporting needs to be validated by internal and external auditors. This is good in many ways, and I’ve personally seen a lot of good practices instituted, but you have to remember something. Auditing is just another business. The auditors are there to make money. They’re going to turn your company upside-down to find tiny problems that aren’t really against the spirit of honest capitalism. That’s why it’s a crushing financial burden.

I said it then, and I’ll say it again now – there’s no need to overhaul corporations on account of a few bad eggs. It’s really about common sense. You don’t make up financial numbers, and you don’t lie to the public. Is that really so hard?

Interestingly enough, according to recent studies done by various non-profit organizations whose focuses and goals are to support the Bill of Rights (or particular amendments) and create awareness, only 40% of Americans can list even one right granted by the first amendment. Even more frightening is that only approximately 2% of Americans can list the first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights). In case you are one of these people, the first amendment right that I am referring to in this case is the First Amendment, and more specifically the freedom of speech. I wish that I had one amazing link for you to click so you could grasp the first amendment in its entirety, but the first amendment covers so many different things that its meaning and how it specifically applies is still being argued today.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
- The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

It’s a beautiful thing. Here are a couple of links you may or may not care to check out regarding this:
University of Missouri Kansas City, page on First Amendment Law
FirstAmendmentCenter.Org.

A list of all amendments:
House of Representatives

But let’s get back to the original argument. I am amazed that with the recent scandals of name dropping (Valerie Plame CIA Leak) and anonymous sources with false information (Newsweek), another finger is being pointed at the blogging community. I find this personally offensive. To me, this does not infer that bloggers are irresponsible with what they say, instead it suggests that anyone who reads these kinds of websites do not have enough common sense to detect sarcasm, satire and opinion, and separate it from fact. My guess is this is because paid news sources are concerned about (#1) the almighty dollar, and (#2) the common reader is too stupid to sift through material and decide on what is fact, because obviously the common man and woman blindly believes everything that is reported.

Since I began sifting through various news articles and websites for my news report, I have become more selective and critical about the articles I read. In many ways, I have begun to appreciate blogs more and more, not just for the humor value, but because it’s nice to read something plainly, instead of having to sift through a lot of insinuation and wordy fluff. For example, take a look at the recent attacks on President Bush from Dems and the Press regarding whether or not the Bush Administration intentionally misled the American people on Iraq.

Most of you know of the criticism regarding the Iraqi war. Bill Clinton and John Kerry have been a couple of people repeatedly seen in the press, criticizing the war in Iraq and President Bush. The jist of it is, the Bush Administration intentionally misled the American people and Congress regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, twisting the facts of the intelligence documents and lying outright about it, and that President Bush is a big wanker.

After local elections saw many Democrats voted in, it was taken as a sign that voters were against Bush and that the entire GOP party was paying for it. Here’s one of many articles supporting this: Has Bush become election liability?

“‘The thinking of it is that if the president comes he can activate the Republican base and those people who perhaps wouldn’t have gone to the polls in fact would go to the polls because they would be animated by what he had to say… As it turns out it appears that his appearance activated the Democratic base…’ Dr Halper told the BBC.”

FIGHT! FIGHT! Now the Bush Administration has to respond. It is being widely reported that Bush’s ratings are lower than ever, everyone hates the GOP and that Bush sucks big hairy balls.

In the past week or so, the press has been all aflutter with a rebuttal from Bush. This CNN article called “Greenfield: Bush Trying to Turn the Table on Dems” reports:

“In an address Monday at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, President Bush accused war critics of ‘playing politics with this issue and … sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy.’”

Bush Administration’s rebuttal to all of this criticism is the intelligence provided to them on Iraq was the exact intelligence shown to the Clinton Administration, and even though we did not go to war during his presidency, Clinton’s assessment had been pretty much the same as Bush’s had been, and that Bush is rubber, Democrats are glue, whatever you say bounces off of him and sticks to you.

You guessed it, here comes the shouting match. Democrats and the press alike have stepped up their verbal attacks on the Bush Administration, accusing them of twisting the intelligence information on Iraq, manipulating Congress, the UN, and your momma. Richard Cohen of the Washington Post sums up his dislike of the President’s speech in his article “Ignoring the Facts”:

“We can endlessly debate the facts of the Iraq war — and we will. More important, though, is the mind-set of those in the administration, from the president on down, who had those facts — or, as we shall see, none at all — and mangled them in the cause of going to war with Iraq. For example, the insistence that Hussein was somehow linked to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — a leitmotif of Bush administration geopolitical fantasy — tells you much more than whether this or that fact was right. It tells you that to Bush and his people, the facts did not matter.”

The article explains where Bush supplied false information and gives further criticism to his actions surrounding the war, if you care to give it a read… and if you can stand the many hyphens and commas. It’s only about a page long.

The sound of the shouting between Dems and the Bush Administration is deafening. No better time than the present for Vice President Dick Cheney to emerge, mysteriously unscathed from the indictments in the CIA Leak. The San Francisco Chronicle reports in their article, “Cheney: War critics are opportunists, he says senators of both parties saw Hussein as a threat”:

“Speaking at a Wednesday night dinner of the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, a conservative research organization, Cheney said Democrats who say they were misled by the administration are ‘making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war.’ “‘The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone,’ Cheney said. ‘But we’re not going to sit back and let them rewrite history.’”

Now, that took me a really long time to sift through so many different articles in order to be able to decide on the facts for myself. There are times that I would really prefer to be able to just read one article that sums things up nicely so I don’t have to read twenty different articles on one subject. Wouldn’t it have been better if I could have just read:

Criticism of the Bush Administration and the War in Iraq:
Press: You lied!
Dems: Everyone hates you!
Bush: Kiss my ass!
Dems: Impeachment!
Press: Hooray!
Cheney: Uh, Mission Accomplished?
Everyone: Shut up!

See? Wasn’t that better? And you didn’t have to cut through twenty different articles just to figure all that out.

Yeah, I’m stalling on this week’s news report. I think I’m going to need another cup of coffee before I start sifting through the almighty mountain of news articles again.

That deserved a line of its own. Go read about how Sony hates you. Admittedly the story is a bit biased, but it has a right to be. Shame on you, Sony.

Oh right, we’re in haiku mode…

Utter, utter crap Utter, utter, utter crap Utter, utter crap

When we last left off, the Senate Judiciary Committee threw a big hissy fit at the questionnaire Miers returned, and asked for more information. The revised questionnaire was due yesterday. In the meantime, Miers was continuing to meet with various Senators, and the media was reporting on Senators who had begun to change their minds in support of the President’s candidate, as well as those who were still clearly unconvinced. Commercials were appearing from conservatives who support Bush but feel the nomination was a mistake, asking for conservatives who feel likewise to sign an online petition against Miers. And the Senate waited for the revised questionnaire. And waited some more. Speculation was pouring in that the President could not rescind the nomination himself, because it would make him look even worse in this scenario.

Finally Miers’ revised questionnaire arrived at 11:40 pm last night, adding to further criticism. Personally, I thought it was hilarious. If you’re going to wait that long to turn it in, then obviously you’re trying to make some kind of statement, and you may as well turn it in right at 11:59 pm just to show those stupid Senators that you don’t take them seriously and do not fear them whatsoever. But this morning, a letter was sent from Miers to the President, withdrawing her nomination, becoming the thirtieth Supreme Court Justice nominee to be withdrawn.

All I can really gather from this is, her revised questionnaire was probably returned to the Senate late last night because yesterday they didn’t know if they were going to yank her nomination or not and probably didn’t know until this morning. Unfortunately, this whole debacle makes Bush and his Administration look like they really don’t know what they’re doing.

George Bush is having a star-touched presidency, like him or not. Not every president can claim that they put their choices forward for replacement Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Chief Justice and a Justice – and these are extremely important positions that will direct the course of this country forever. Personally, I am afraid of what nominee we are going to get next – not because I fear another Miers debacle, but because I think Bush will want to avoid another controversy and give us a watered-down, lukewarm candidate instead of someone stellar. That someone will sit on the bench, governing this country for the next 30 years. Or, I could be completely wrong.

Let’s hope I’m wrong.

Learned helplessness is a theory in psychology that states when an organism is exposed to repeated aversive conditions from which it cannot escape, the organism eventually stops trying to escape. To apply it to this problem, if a person learns though repeated experience that he cannot escape poverty, that whatever job he can get will pay minimum wage, and that he can’t survive on that, he may stop trying to escape poverty and begin living hand to hand, without saving money, because he has come to believe that his actions have no effect on his world and that everything around him is out of his control.

A friend of mine worked in a free reproductive health clinic that served mostly patients without insurance or other access to healthcare. One of her patients was a 13-year-old girl, already sexually active. My friend explained the need for the patient to protect herself against disease and unwanted pregnancy, explained the birth control options, and then asked which of the options the girl would like to choose. The girl said, whatever happens to me is going to happen — I have no control over it. At 13, she had already decided that she had no control over her life, even over what happened directly to her body.

So if learned helplessness is happening in poverty-stricken areas of the US, what can be done? Welfare won’t help, because it’s a benefit that happens to someone, not a benefit that someone causes to happen. Handouts, however well-intentioned, won’t help either. What needs to happen is a sense of ownership and a sense of control being given back to people, starting at an early age — people need to learn that what they do has an effect on their world and that they can make changes, for better or for worse, in their lives.

Roe v. Wade, for example, is based upon one’s right to privacy. A law was struck down in Texas that barred consensual sodomy on the basis of the right to privacy. The concept of privacy, if expanded, could include matters like the right to die, the right to participate in armed service, and other issues. So John Roberts believes the Constitution protects the right to privacy. What’s he going to do with that belief?

He also, in response to questioning this week, stated that he does believe in respecting judicial precedent — a concept known as stare decisis. Under stare decisis, law continues to be shaped by previous court cases. However, stare decisis does not mean a court case once decided will stand forever — Plessy v. Ferguson, which allowed for “separate but equal” public schools and other facilities, was later struck down by Brown v. Board of Education, which made segregation illegal. Prohibition was repealed in a consitutional amendment. So Roberts’ saying he does respect judicial precedent isn’t telling us terribly much.

So where does he stand, and where will he stand, on the issues that will shape the rest of our lives in this country? He ain’t telling. To which I say, damn, that’s slick. And a little scary.

Well, someone other than Jon Stewart. In the “Who Can Make More Fun of George Bush” contest, he definitely wins first prize. There isn’t anything wrong with this if you’re a huge liberal and you hate Republicans. But if you’re a conservative like me, the Republican jokes get a little old. According to a statistic I heard during the last election, a large percentage of the 18 – 24 voting demographic gets most of their newsworthy information from satirical sources, the largest one being Jon Stewart. This frightens me, as he generally adds his liberal slant on all things. But I’ve got to hand it to him, he’s giving our young people something that they want to watch – he’s keeping them up on the news (sort of), and he’s giving them a good time while watching. When I was in that demographic, I didn’t pay attention to what was happening, and I found the news rather dull, boring, and extremely repetitive. Actually I still do, but it’s important to me that I know generally what is happening in the world. I hate to say it, but Jon Stewart is sort of on the right track – we need people informing the general public in an entertaining way.

There is a general feeling of apathy that also irritates me. In the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy, people have said to me, “I really don’t care about the 9/11 thing. I mean, it doesn’t affect me. I live on the other side of the country so why should I care?” This may sound pretty extreme, but this is a general feeling held by a lot of people that when things do not directly affect them, they don’t care. And I don’t mind saying that if you’re one of these people, you’re an ignorant, selfish ass. Sorry. Wake up and take a little more notice of what’s happening in your world, even if it just means going to Google News and scanning down the headlines – that can tell you more than an entire day of watching CNN or Fox News.

It is my expectation that all Halffull readers vote at least in the Presidential Elections and have a general idea about what’s happening on planet Earth. If you don’t, I will help you. Here is the recap of what’s currently going on:

The MTV Video Awards was held last night in Miami, Florida. Once again, everyone who sucks won. Prior to the event, as the celebrities walked the red carpet, I happened to be flipping channels when they interviewed Jessica Alba briefly. The interviewer said, “We really lucked out with the weather here in Miami,” to which Jessica Alba replied, “Yeah, no rain. It allows us to wear less than normal clothing.” The interviewer blinked and said, “Uh, yeah…” Obviously no one clued Jessica in to the fact that a HUGE FOOKING HURRICANE is bearing down on the area. Hurricane Katrina has weakened to a category 3 (125-mph winds), but it’s still very dangerous and is moving inland. All of New Orleans has been evacuated at this point so Trent Reznor may show up on your doorstep with a satchel tied to a stick, looking for a place to stay. Anyway, I’m guessing Jessica Alba’s publicist decided not to inform her about the hurricane because she might have worn something a little more appropriate for the weather, such as a life preserver or perhaps even the state of Nebraska, as it is nowhere near the hurricane. CNN and Fox News feel that there is nothing else newsworthy happening, as they reported on this all day yesterday, non-stop. In other news, hundreds of reporters die in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina.

Richard Butler, former leader of the Aryan Nation group, has died of a massive heart attack. In honor of this event, here at Halffull.org we’re going to party like it’s 1999. Have fun burning in Hell, Mr. Butler. By the way, I hope your heart attack hurt like a bitch.

President Bush addressed the nation concerning our future in Iraq. His message was clear: We’re sticking it out in Iraq, so all liberals should shut the hell up. And right on cue, Cindy Sheehan has come back into the media, heading up the war-protesting front. She was gone for a bit because her mother had a stroke, but after 10 days she’s back and bitching up a storm for your enjoyment. Hooray.

Speaking of Iraq, the new government has been hard at work coming up with the new constitution which the Sunnis are rejecting. In short, this is bad.

In other International Relations, relations are mild with a light chance of rain. North Korea was in the process of talking about its nuclear activities, but got pissy with the U.S. about some military exercises with South Korea and the not-so-subtle reminders that their human rights policy is pretty much non-existent and sucks ass. It is generally known among other nations that when you want to have a hissy fit, you should just blame the U.S. for breathing in the wrong direction and other nations will console you and tell you how horrible we are for existing.

Along that vein, French President Jacques Chirac tries to reason with Iran regarding its nuclear policies. Because, you know, France is a powerful force to be reckoned with and should be taken seriously. I’m not even sure who brought them to the conversation in the first place, since it’s well known that these guys actually support terrorists. If I were Iran, I’d probably mail Chirac a bomb and then laugh about it with all my little terrorist friends. Just kidding. I’d tell France that I would stop making bombs, but I wouldn’t really. Then I’d send President Chirac a bouquet of bottle rockets, just to keep him guessing.

Israel once again extends a major olive branch when it pulled Israeli settlements out of Gaza. This is a huge deal because over thirty years ago, the Israeli government took control of Gaza and moved settlements into the area. Now, the settlers are being forced to leave by the same people who told them to move there. At any rate, this is a monumental step towards peace, as the hope for a Palestinian state living peacefully, side by side with Israel, might actually come to fruition. Also, monkeys fly out of my ass and I have a bridge to sell.

The U.S. improves its relationships with other countries by allowing idiots to speak publically. Pat Robertson, a former president-wannabe and host of the Christian television program “The 700 Club” called for the assassination of the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. (We’re just making friends left and right here, folks.) After pissing off tons of people about it, he apologized, saying the statement came from frustration. Perhaps next time, Pat Robertson needs to check his little bracelet and ask himself, “What would Jesus do?” Because I don’t think Jesus is so hip on assassinating presidents. I bet Chavez is hoping he’ll be assassinated now, just so everyone will have one more thing to be pissed off at the U.S. about.

In entertainment, jailbird Martha Stewart is going free from house arrest this week. What really pisses me off about this is, for publicity, she’s been showing off her little ankle bracelet and making light of the situation so that everyone will forget that she is a convicted felon. Well, we won’t forget. You can make some kick ass cookies, but you’re still a liar.

For all you 24 fans like me, Sean Astin joins the cast of 24. RU-DY! RU-DY! RU-DY!

Last but not least: Train wreck or really cool? Warner launches an internet only label. The label lists many great reasons as to why artists should release their music on the internet and not as a CD, but I’m not fooled. I’m sure the price will be the same as a CD, but it will be a lot cheaper for the label. Someone’s making a lot more money and something tells me that it’s not the artist.

So there you have it, the news in short. Go forth and be informed.

In a viable multi-party system, one could say, “well, I’m anti-abortion, so I’m not a Democrat, but I’m anti-gun, so I’m not a Republican either. I like to support environmental initiatives, but I also support smaller government, and this makes me a [insert fourth or fifth party's name here]. I’m going to go vote now!” Northern Ireland, for example, has at least four major political parties. Most fall on one side or the other of the old British/Republic of Ireland line, but on each side of that line there are still multiple issues to have opinions on. A multi-party system allows people to match their candidate on more than just one or two issues.

But given the strength of third parties in this country (laughable at best), I doubt the dual-party system is gonna change soon. Nope, instead of having multiple choices, politically we’re still Coke or Pepsi, Democrat or Republican.

I am not in favor of teens having sex. However, as a realist, I recognize that many will be sexually active despite the wishes of adults. To prevent unwanted pregnancies and to prevent the spread of STDs, isn’t it best to let students know that there are a few contraceptive methods available that are effective? I’m not saying each school district should hand out condoms to each student, or that students should prove they can use a condom before being allowed into high school — I’m just suggesting that federally funded sex ed programs should not lie to teenagers about life and death facts. Telling kids that condoms are useless can only increase the prevalence of unprotected sex among teenagers, which can only increase the spread of disease and the number of unwanted pregnancies. And if the federal government is so committed to supporting “a culture of life,” as the President said in his State of the Union address, why can’t they support telling students the truth about safe practices that could save their lives and prevent abortions?