unraveling
Memorial Day
It's a day to fly the flag, proudly and
well, and to
honor the memory of all those who have given their lives in service to
the country. For those who continue to serve, may we use their talents
wisely, justly, honorably. It is no small thing to ask a man or woman
to commit themselves to a cause so thoroughly that they will obey lawful
orders without question, with a willingness to put themselves in harm's
way.
We should never take it lightly.
To the extent that our military's mission (that word used advisedly)
has been taken over by
religious fanaticism, we should be very afraid of the consequences,
and demand change. Separation of church and state is more important
than questions of whose monument goes where, and how much funding
government should be supplying to secular charities. Fanaticism claims
that its ends justify unlawful orders and the sacrifice of innocent
lives. It does not answer to reason.
God is not only not on our side, we humans are setting ourselves
up for a collective smiting such as the world has never seen, and as
John Prine said, your flag decal won't get you into heaven any more.
I've been waking up at 4-something for the past three days, mostly
thinking about a silly
tennis tournament. We're at that broad middle of the year when dawn
and birdsong comes not long after 5am, and twilight fades past 10
o'clock, less than a month from the solstice. It still feels like
spring, though, the rain finishing on Friday, the clouds thinning out on
Saturday and the high not quite making it to 70°F yesterday.
Beautiful spring weather, suffused with the smell of Russian olive
flowers.
I'm into "the second week," as it were, playing for the men's 3.0 singles
championship at 10, then doubles at noon. It's a long, long way from
Roland Garros, but I'm
having every bit as much fun as the big boys and girls. (It doesn't pay
nearly as well for me, though.)
The cute commercial with Damon Wayans advertising Pepsi's Billion Dollar
dingaling caught my attention, mostly because the fine print flashes by
way too fast to be read and it made me wonder "can they really be giving
away a billion dollars?" I mean, carbonated sugar-water is good
business, but it can't be that good, can it?
Of course it can't. Deep, deep down in
the rules, you can read "Exhibit A" and discover that 200 lucky
winners (no purchase necessary, get those 3x5 cards ready) will each
get to pick five 6-digit numbers. The numbers will have to be unique,
giving 1,000 numbers. A "Billion Dollar Number" will be drawn from the
same million number pool (i.e. 6-digit numbers), and if there's a
match... we'll have a One Billion Dollar Prize winner. Said prize
isn't actually a billion dollars, of course, as paragraph B describes.
It's the "assignment of Sponsor's rights under a prize indemnity policy
issued to Sponsor by an insurance subsidiary of Berkshire
Hathaway, Inc." Said prize indemnity insurance policy is figured to be
worth $250 million as a lump sum (still nothing to sneeze at!), and
becomes the advertised, four-times-that-big amount only with a 40-year
payment plan, starting with "only" $5M/yr. for 20 years. The lump-sum
payout of the remaining $710M at year 40 is designed to get supposed
winner to take one-fourth the money and run.
The winner is "supposed" because there's a 999:1 chance there won't be
one, as the actuaries at Berkshire Hathaway (and everyone who can divide
a million by a thousand) know quite well. They have a quarter billion
to risk (or "invest") on an almost certain deal for which Pepsi should
be paying no more than $275,000 -- the expected payout, plus a 10%
service fee.
There is a bigger prize at stake - the One Million Dollar prize, which
will be paid, and will be paid as a lump sum, so it really is a million
bucks (unlike any of the "million bucks" you buy chances for with
state-run lotteries). With contestants' airfare and expenses, the whole
prize shebang comes to well less than $2M, which I imagine is a lot less
than than the ad spend to promote the contest. (In case you're
wondering, none of Pepsi's ad spend is coming to me for blogging
this.)
The joke-behind-a-joke irony is that Damon's supposed error in saying
"billion" when he meant to say "million" is that the only real prize
actually is a million dollars.
30.May.04
What do Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Rwandans and Sudanese have in
common? They have been (or are) victims of genocide.
Nicholas
Kristof has been writing about the current atrocities in Sudan, and
asking difficult questions: "Where are Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac?
Where are African leaders, like Nelson Mandela? Why isn't John Kerry
speaking out forcefully? And why are ordinary Americans silent? Islamic
leaders abroad have been particularly shameful in standing with the
Sudanese government oppressors rather than with the Muslim victims in
Darfur. Do they care about dead Muslims only when the killers are
Israelis or Americans?" Part of the answer is compassion fatigue, part
of the answer is that Sudan is a world away and our attention is
occupied with the war in Iraq, threats of terror and the high price of
gasoline.
One hopeful sign is the lede for Kristof's column: "Bush administration
diplomacy that led to an accord to end a 20-year civil war between
Sudan's north and south after two million deaths."
But there is no good news coming from
Dafur.
29.May.04
It's been a cool, rainy month in Boise; not so much that people are
talking about the end of the drought, but enough to
fill up some of
the reservoirs. (On the way to school yesterday, Kayla said "we
might as well live in Portland!" with annoyance.) Last year's May 28th
had lows in the upper 60s in town, just below 60 at the lake, and a
midday high over 100°F. Yesterday's high was below last year's
low.
Some of last night's games in the local tennis tournament finished
outdoors, but many did not. I was watching an indoor game when the
day's third wave of showers and thundershowers came through and
afterwards, rode home on a slightly soggy bike. Coming past the church
next to Albertson's at Cole and Fairview where the sky opens up to the
east, there was this BIG, BRIGHT rainbow arcing up from the middle of
the city halfway into the sky, its colors as sharp and clear as I have
ever seen. I let out an inadvertent wow, and struggled to pay
enough attention to Cole Rd. to stay out of traffic. A second rainbow
framed the gray understory to the north as the setting sun had found a
patch of blue sky to shine through.
London's International Institute of Strategic Studies figures that
the occupation of Iraq has made the world less safe.
Over here, we're all supposed to salute when we hear how much better the
world is now that the evil dictator has been removed from power.
I'm hearing
The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" playing in my head at the
moment... but oh yes we will. (And so will they -- the IISS WMD dossier
was fodder for the Brits to join the fray.)
I'm not sure what's motivating Al Gore these days, but after reading an
article or two about his speech, I heard a soundbite from it on the
radio. Yowzer! It might have been this part:
"How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney
administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the
world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us
to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the
United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture
prison."
It's a lot different hearing it than reading it, I'll say that.
I don't know
whose
strategy this plays into, but popular sentiment is heading that
direction if you believe the polls. The RNC's response that ObL was
ascendant during Gore's tenure is a bit too academic to pull much
weight, I'm afraid. Maybe if the front page news had been about the war
on terror instead of the war on Iraq... The confounding of those two
very different undertakings has been worked hard by the right, but
the fabric is unraveling at this point.
No,
this isn't humor, but it is kind of funny if you appreciate irony:
Richard Perle apoplectic as he marches into Condi Rice's office to
complain about "an outrageous abuse of power" by United States
government officials in Washington and Baghdad. He's talking about the
"smear campaign" to discredit good old Ahmad Chalabi. The news story
leaves us uncertain as to where Wolfie, Dick and Scooter are on this:
they're not talking at the moment.
Perle doesn't do righteous indignation nearly as well as Al Gore, I'm
afraid, but then I didn't get to hear any soundbites for comparison.
He did bring up the possibility that the Chalabi's apparent fall from
favor in the US would "burnish his anti-American credentials in Iraq"
(as Elisabeth Bumiller put it), or perhaps allow him to start his
collection of those.
28.May.04
Studying the rationale
for the war in Iraq: "(T)wenty-seven rationales for the war on Iraq
were used at one time or another, twenty-three of which can be
attributed to the administration. Five rationales were prominent in all
three phases: the war on terror, the desire to prevent the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction, the lack of inspections, the desire to
remove the Hussein regime, and the fact that Saddam Hussein was an evil
dictator. One rationale surfaced initially and gained favor over time:
the interest in liberating the people of Iraq. One other rationale
emerged later and became very important to official sources and the
media: the imminent threat that Iraq posed, though the words 'imminent
threat' did not appear in official statements of the administration but
became the catch-phrase in the media and the public...."
I'm guessing that you, dear reader, may fall short of the highest
echelon of the monied class, and you might stare in amazement at
a
news report that someone "discovered that he inadvertently owned
more than $10 million in debt issued by those government-sponsored
enterprises..." What do you think -- any $10.9M chunks in your portfolio
that you haven't dusted off and looked at lately?
It's especially embarassing if you find out that you're the US Secretary
of the Treasury at the same time. But it wasn't his fault -- his
investment advisor didn't know the difference between Treasury Bonds and
investments in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. D'OH!
27.May.04
How about this story:
kite-boarding in from the Farallon Islands, 28 miles west of the
Golden Gate. "Sharks were definitely a consideration. But sharks can't
fly, and kite-boarders can."
26.May.04
Let's clear up this "carrot-and-stick" thing, shall we?
You dangle the carrot at the end of the stick, and then mount the stick
over the horse's (or whatever's) head, so that the horse (or whatever)
is induced to move toward the carrot. The carrot, however, is not
reached, and the inducement remains, producing continued forward
movement. I have no idea how well this works in practice. Does the
horse (or whatever) get bored? Does it figure out that well-timed
accelerations can oscillate the dangling carrot into sufficient oral
proximity? Or that sufficient violence can dislodge the apparatus and
deliver the desired reward? Perhaps science can answer these questions
for us, or perhaps it already has, I don't know.
At any rate, please understand that the stick is not to be used
for beating the horse (or whatever), or otherwise threatening
corporal punishment. A different cliché and/or metaphor is
required to describe the motivational approach of presenting positive
inducements and negative threats simultaneously or in succession. Try
"good cop, bad cop," maybe.
You probably haven't heard much about "sailor-mongering" lately, unless
you saw the news about how
Ashcroft is going after Greenpeace. The law against it dates from
1872, and the Justice Department imagines that they can strike a
blow against "terrorism" by squelching pesky protestors. It's all about
"safety and security" in the marketing department, and perhaps to
distract us from the fact that port security remains a glaring hole in
our efforts toward domestic security.
Amnesty International sees the human rights climate as
the worst it's been in 50 years. "While governments have been
obsessed with Iraq they have allowed the real weapons of mass
destruction - injustice and impunity, poverty, discrimination and
racism, the uncontrolled trade in small arms, violence against women and
children - to go unaddressed."
Maybe the problem wasn't that it was insufficient, but rather that
the training was incorrect: how else could beating prisoners
to the point of permanent disability be described? Kentucky National
Guard Capt. David Page said "There was a training accident, after which
he was medically discharged."
Back at home, the
ACLU reminds us that the extent of prisoner abuse goes far beyond
military facilities. Having the highest incarceration rate in the world
is just the beginning of the injustice system.
Krugman's
latest
column encouraged me to go look at the BLS' data on employment, and
I found this graph, among other things. It shows 12 mo. net change in
employment over the last 20 years. The 2 black bars cover the years of
the Bush I and Bush II administrations. There's an uptick at the end
(which looks better if you look at 1 month or 3 month net change), but
is it good enough to guess that Bush III is the charm? Follow the
hyperlink under the graph to get your own views from
the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Fewer than 1 in 3 (closer to 1 in 4) Idaho voters bothered to
go to the polls yesterday. Can you imagine? In some countries people
are fighting to the death over democracy, and here we mostly can't be
bothered with the entry-level act of citizenship. The good news is that
for people such as the voters in our household, our votes count 3 or 4
times as much.
How the speech sounded
from Lebanon: "The US president's remarks, like those of Secretary
of State Colin Powell last week to the World Economic Forum in Jordan,
are not convincing to most people in the Middle East because they appear
to come from a different planet. Washington insists on convincing us
over and over again that it wants to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq
and the Arabs, and that it will punish those American individuals who
committed crimes at Abu Ghraib prison to emphasize how American justice
and democracy work. Those are fine words and noble deeds - but they
appear to most Middle Easterners like a rainbow in the sky at the same
time that a thunderstorm is killing people a few kilometers away. We
want to get out from under the US-made thunderstorm so we can then find
our own way to the rainbow."
At least the Texas state comptroller was big enough to admit she was
wrong:
Carole
Strayhorn reversed her decision denying the tax-exempt status of the
Red River Unitarian Universalist Church. The first notion was that
because the church "does not have one system of belief," it must not be
Religious. It's a bigger universe than Ms. Strayhorn initially
understood.
25.May.04
Time to VOTE today, at least in Idaho.
Which makes a political topic timely... I hadn't seen one before
yesterday, but it turns out that the Republican National Committee uses
opinion surveys in their fundraising letters, just like the Democrats.
The one I saw is headed "REPUBLICAN PARTY CENSUS DOCUMENT" and has a
questionnaire with little circles to fill in, just like a real census.
I suppose technically it could be considered a census, as they're
interested in counting Republicans, and your contribution. If you like
getting this sort of thing and filling in the little circles, they note
that a contribution of $100 will pay to mail 250 more CENSUS DOCUMENTS
to registered Republicans. Misery loves company?
1. Do you support President Bush's initiatives to promote the safety and
security of all Americans?
() Yes () No () Undecided
Count me "undecided" on that one, if it includes military expeditions to
countries that pose no meaningful threat to the US, and the unbridled
attack on the Bill of Rights that's underway. I am
in favor of safety, security, motherhood and apple pie, of course.
2. Do you support the use of air strikes against any country that offers
safe harbor or aid to individuals or organizations committed to further
attacks on America?
These guys don't beat around the bush, do they? Do you support the
military? Are you with us or against us? And so on.
Here's the "census" agenda:
- Safety/security over civil liberties;
- Free hand for military operations wherever, whenever;
- Repeal the "Death Tax";
- Go Bush on pro-growth, more jobs, improve economy;
- Go Bush on education policies;
- Increase government support of private religious charities;
- We're against partial-birth abortion, in case you forgot;
- We're for saving Social Security and the Medicare drug benefit,
too;
- No UN command over US troops;
- More money for "our defense needs";
- Let's build "President Reagan's SDI defense shield against nuclear
missile attack."
You can use your credit card to donate, but please note: Credit Cards
MUST be personal -- not corporate.
I can't help but wonder how much more interesting it would be to have
someone like Eliot Spitzer as the US Attorney General instead of John
Ashcroft. The Feds have been paying lip service to "getting tough on
corporate crime," while
Spitzer has actually been doing something about it. Here comes
a lawsuit to enforce the obvious: there are no services one could legally
perform as head of a non-profit corporation that would be commensurate
with $140 million in pay over 8 years.
In case such big numbers cause your eyes to roll, look at this way:
his pay works out to a nice middle-class annual salary of $50,000
every day, for eight years. (Don't feel too bad for
Dick, though -- Spitzer isn't asking for all of it back; Grasso would
still have $40M to tide him over.)
From
Dan Ackman's point of view, "Grasso is a very dangerous individual
because he has nothing to lose--except of course the $140 million. He
has already lost his job and there is no indication he is about to take
another. If SEC or the New York Attorney General does go after him, he
could wreak havoc--much like Oliver North threatened to do--by exposing
dirty laundry all over Wall Street." The SEC is issuing subpoenas
wholesale, to "as many as" 65 former NYSE directors. The Oliver North
reference is inspired by Grasso's choice of lawyer:
Brendan Sullivan, Ollie's one-time defender. Ackman looks for
"Spitzer, Donaldson and the Big Board to quietly back down." I can
believe it for the latter two, but I haven't seen the news report of
Spitzer backing down on something yet.
Kurt Vonnegut can still write up a storm, and he doesn't need to
go as far as a short story to do it. Check out his feature,
"Cold
Turkey," In These Times. He's had a bleak and cheerful
outlook -- simultaneously -- for as long as I've been
reading.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention
the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand
that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of
course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them
demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted
anywhere.
"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the
peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
Speaking of chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power, the other half of
the duo that busted the Watergate case open has something to say about
what Republicans in the Congress ought to do:
stop Bush.
"Today, the United States is confronted by another ill-considered
war, conceived in ideological zeal and pursued with contempt for
truth, disregard of history and an arrogant assertion of American
power that has stunned and alienated much of the world, including
traditional allies. At a juncture in history when the United
States needed a president to intelligently and forcefully lead a
real international campaign against terrorism and its causes,
Bush decided instead to unilaterally declare war on a
totalitarian state that never represented a terrorist threat; to
claim exemption from international law regarding the treatment of
prisoners; to suspend constitutional guarantees even to
non-combatants at home and abroad; and to ignore sound military
advice from the only member of his Cabinet – Powell –
with the most requisite experience. Instead of using America's
moral authority to lead a great global cause, Bush squandered
it."
Richard Blow deconstructs Andrew Sullivan's criticism
of Susan Sontag, et al. I recommend Susan Sontag's feature in
last Sunday's NY Times Magazine,
Regarding the Torture of Others. (5 days until it goes
behind the paywall.) Sullivan? Still waiting for a reason to
recommend something of his.
Apparently the "Camp Redemption" renaming didn't poll well enough, now
the plan is to "fund the construction of a modern, maximum security
prison" to replace Abu Ghraib, and to raze the memory of the recent
ignominy.
23.May.04
The Bush administration has made it clear that outsourcing is "ok"
and can make economic sense. Now that the economic recovery has finally
come to the point of adding jobs, it may be an easier sell convincing
the voters who are part of the labor force of that. Still, it seems
as if there's something wrong about
running
your fundraising call centers out of India, as the RNC has
apparently been doing.
The
outsourcing going on in the war in Iraq is
more than a nagging sense of something not quite right. Taking care of
meals and laundry sounds fine. Taking care of security, training,
protecting pipelines and interrogating prisoners does not sound so fine,
expecially given that contractors are "not subject to the code of
military justice, and their status under U.S. criminal law is
vague."
Jack Beatty looks on the bright side
in
The Atlantic:
"Paradoxically, the very scale of the debacle in Iraq may yield one
long-term good: the repudiation of neo-conservative 'democratic
imperialism.' The Americans killed in Iraq will not have died in vain if
their sacrifice keeps other Americans from dying in neo-con wars to
"remediate" Syria, Iran, or North Korea."
"[The necons] identified the wrong enemy (a state), attacked it for the
wrong reasons (WMD), and in a way that strengthened our real enemy, the
transnational terrorists of September 11. America has made mistakes in
foreign policy, but nothing compares to this."
22.May.04
News from the top of the world
never ceases to amaze me. With more than 5 dozen expeditions on Mt.
Everest, the numbers of dead and missing are mounting, along with the
records of personal accomplishment. 27-year-old Pemba Dorjee Sherpa
went from Base Camp to the top in 8 hours and 10 minutes, a feat which
can only be described as Superhuman. At least 113 others have been up
to the top as well, making the superlative seem almost routine, from our
comfortable seats down where we take breathing for granted.
Google takes another step toward bringing its technology to The People
and accepting their investment in return: they now have
31 underwriters set to sell shares in their IPO. I was hoping our
brokerage account would make the list, but it didn't; I'm now supposed
to open an account with somebody on the list if I want to get in on the
fun. If their Dutch auction makes good on preventing the opening day
pop, though, what's the point? I should be able to just buy on the open
market and save myself the trouble of reading all that IPO paperwork,
and jumping through special hoops. Opening another brokerage account is
too much trouble from my point of view, I know that.
Brooks and Shields did their weekly dog and pony routine on the
Newshour last night, and the first topic was the prison abuse
scandal. David wasn't ready to go as far as Jim Inhofe and get outraged
at the outrage, but he did wonder if maybe we hadn't had enough now
after three weeks. I watched Shields' reaction and thought about
someone with 10 or 15 years' more experience limited by the few minutes
of pundit give and take, nothing to do but shake your head.
Brooks has found time to get a new book out,
On Paradise Drive, and it's delightfully dissected by Michael Kinsley
in The NY Times Book Review section.
"His latest pseudo-sociological treatise" (following
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There)
"starts by slicing and dicing the American population into categories
and subcategories, each with its own values and habits and sartorial
preferences." Kinsley ultimately confronts the core issue of Brooks:
"Is he serious?" Good question.
While you're in the Book Review, don't miss
John Dean's review of Joseph Wilson's book,
The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed
My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir.
"For those interested in the most vicious hatchet job inside the Beltway
since my colleague in Richard Nixon's White House, the dirty trickster
Charles W. Colson, copped a plea for defaming Daniel Ellsberg and his
lawyer, that headline-grabbing story unfolds in the second half of the
book."
The Times has
Chapter 17 excerpted, "A Strange Encounter with Robert Novak."
Amazingly, when confronted with his gossip about classified information,
Novak tried to get Wilson to confirm what he'd been told about Wilson's
wife. That's some chutzpah for a reporter, eh? Wilson may or
may not be an "asshole" as Novak apparently claimed, but we see that
Novak is definitely scum.
This particular scandal is old, old news, 10 months old. There's an
investigation going on (isn't there?), but somehow neither the mysterious
"senior government officials" nor Novak have yet to be prosecuted under
the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Imagine if roles were
reversed, and an enemy of this Administration had revealed something
they didn't want revealed. Can you say "enemy combatant held at an
undisclosed location without access to lawyers or the press"? Sure you
can.
And speaking of the prison scandal, the latest update from the ACLU says
that the Pentagon twice rejected the ACLU's call for "expedited
processing" of
their Freedom of Information Act request
filed in October 2003, for documents related to the abuse and possible
torture of U.S.-held detainees. The Pentagon claimed that the subject
matter of the request was not "breaking news" and that there was no
"compelling need" for the immediate release of information about the
mistreatment of detainees. The Defense Department also claimed that
expediting the request was unnecessary because failure to expedite
would not "endanger the life or safety of any individual."
Maybe it's time we start paying more attention to
the ACLU's recommendations than what passes for statements of fact
from the Pentagon.
The Canadian Supreme Court affirms Monsanto's patent-aided business
strategy to control the means of production without providing economic
benefit to those it controls, affirming the ability to patent genes
along the way. Read more...
21.May.04
My country used to be
sweet land of liberty...
Was the terrorist attack in 2001 really sufficient cause to
suspend our moral values in favor of creating a police state?
That's far too simple a description of what has happened, of
course, but the leverage that government provides gives us pause.
At
the root of the war prisoner abuses, we find one John C. Yoo,
University of California law professor and Justice Department
functionary coming up with legal cover for skipping those
inconvenient Geneva Conventions, with disingenuous bullshit such
as "Guantánamo isn't on US soil, it's in Cuba." (There's an
evangelical connection too, just in case this doesn't seem
bizarre enough to you yet.)
The objections from Colin Powell and the State Department were overridden.
It was a great idea to have a General serve as Secretary of
State. It was an astoundingly bad idea to let a bunch of chicken
hawks start and run wars for us.
The plot may be sicker still, when you consider that the legal
memos talked about the US avoiding taking "custody" of prisoners
in order to avoid culpability, and
then you read
that "The U.S.-led occupation authority says that the FBI visited
(Nicholas) Berg three times after Iraqi police arrested him but
that he was never in U.S. custody" just before his videotaped
beheading.
I flipped by the two CSPAN channels we get last night and
happened to see the House adjournment for the Memorial Day
recess. You know, that holiday that's a week from Monday?
They're out until Tuesday, June 1st. A lot of the people who pay
their salaries are happy to have a 3-day weekend, or maybe to
take a vacation day for a whopping 4-day break, but our
Representatives get a four day weekend and a week.
Nice work if you can get it.
On their way out, the House (but not the Senate) did manage to
finish work on a budget appropriation for the Pentagon, not quite
half a $trillion to keep the lights on, Humvees rolling and
bullets flying. $400 million for body armor is good to see in
that; our neighbor says his son is responsible for obtaining (or
is it just paying for?) his own body armor before shipping
out.
The United Methodists are bucking the corporate trend away from
pension plans and starting a new, defined-benefit plan for their
25,000 pastors and lay employees in the US.
The NY Times story reports that more than 17,000
employers in the United States have discontinued their
traditional pension plans in the last 10 years!
It also reports that the church "has about $12 billion in other
types of retirement plans, putting it on a par with big
pension-plan sponsors like Bank of America, Dow Chemical
and R.J. Reynolds." The new plan is intended to simplify the
administration process for everyone involved, and to solve the
problem of a few years ago when their defined contribution plan
did too well and encouraged employees to cash out and retire
rather than keep doing the work of the church.
20.May.04
The latest in the progression of clever
library tricks:
an email message telling me I have a couple books that are soon
to be due. It suggests I may want to call the automated phone
service to renew them (I do, in fact). Maybe the next time
I get one of these it will have a URL or identifier that
enables "simply reply to this message with 'renew' in the subject
line to renew the books."
More
shareholders in favor of expensing stock options, another Board that
says "thanks but no thanks for the advice." Intel's CFO says
they'll obey the law, but they don't think 54% of their shareholders
know what's best for the company.
Now you can follow the money in your own neighborhood:
Fundrace.org now has
city maps
and neighbor search
features. You may have to wait in line, though: with
the publicity from The NY Times, it looks like they're struggling
to keep up with demand.
"We are terribly sorry. So many people are coming to the site that our
database cannot handle it for the moment. Please try again soon (like
very soon. how about right now?)."
It's just
a
hint of the I word coming from the lefty Capitol Times,
but still, the point is coming into clearer focus. Not that the
Republican-controlled Congress is actually going to hold GWB to account
for his high crimes and misdemeanors, of course.
Today's
prayer meeting with Bush on the Hill included a roundup of the usual
suspect clichés: "strong leader," "decisive,"
"stay the course," "re-election" (sic). I doubt anyone said "don't
impeach," but we expect that was implied.
Nancy Pelosi's response used both barrels: "I believe that the
president's leadership in the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an
incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment, and experience in making
the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the
mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers."
"The emperor has no clothes. When are people going to face the reality?
Pull this curtain back."
The chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee
suggested Pelosi "should just go back to her pastel-colored condo in San
Francisco and keep her views to herself," because she wasn't properly
supporting our troops.
Troops, yes, mission, no. Is that too complicated for you, Mr.
Reynolds? With a friends like George Bush and Don Rumsfeld "supporting"
our troops, why the hell would we need enemies?
The interesting part about the US military and Iraqi police action to
raid Ahmad Chalabi's home in Baghdad is not that they were working
together, and not that he's fallen out of favor (although a military
raid makes the point more forcefully than just cutting off your $335,000
a month stipend), but that his place is furnished with the same cheesy
plastic furniture as our corporate-sponsored apartment in Palo
Alto, California, a couple years ago. It was porch furniture there,
and when the clean-up crews would come by, they would throw the old
stuff in the dumpster rather than bothering to clean it.
19.May.04
I don't know exactly how the rules go, and of course being President
(etc.) is more than a full-time job, but it doesn't seem right that the
taxpayers fund travel for campaigning incumbents. The sidebar in
this NY Times story describes the recent "official" travel of
half a dozen Secretaries, conveniently providing time for a little
fundraising in Alaska, Florida, Michigan and Minnesota. The story
itself, though, is about the White House bragging about programs that it
has tried to cut: Community Oriented Policing Services (proposed cut of
87%), coverage for people without health insurance, rural health
care (proposed cut of 72%), a program to buy defibrillators (proposed
cut of 82%).
We're assured that they're following the rules, and that we can trust
them 100%. Reminds me of
George Tirebiter's campaign
for dog killer: "You can believe me, because I'm always right, and I
never lie."
On the prison front, the day's big developments: the first of the accused
pleads guilty, takes a year in prison and a bad conduct discharge; the
generals testify to the Senate that the civilian leadership of the DOD
is fault-free; Abu Ghraib's population to be downsized and the place
renamed "Camp Redemption." That ought to fix things.
18.May.04
In one of those free-wheeling conversations between waking and rising,
an undisclosed source and I discussed how we might encourage members of
the Bush administration to be more forthcoming for the next Senate
hearing on whatever. Have the witness drop his pants, put on a black
hood and a few electrodes here and there before the cameras start
rolling. Senator Clinton could be drafted to give the thumbs-up.
Colin Powell might want to hold the leash when it's Rummy's turn to
testify.
But seriously, while the Pentagon is trying to deny, deny, deny the
claims in Seymour Hersh's New Yorker piece,
The
NY Times reports this morning that a Colonel testified to Taguba
that yes, the MPs were given orders to do what they did, although
with "no formal system" to monitor the exact instructions given.
Colonel Pappas: "To my knowledge, instructions given to the M.P.'s,
other than what I have mentioned, such as shackling, making detainees
strip down or other measures used on detainees before interrogations,
are not typically made unless there is some good reason." Yeah, there's
always a good reason, isn't there?
David Brooks continues to astonish and amaze with
his
opinions. In our current "moment of disappointment" in Iraq, "the
emerging responsible faction" (reassuring to hear there is such a
thing!) "has no time now for the witless applause lines the jeering
jackdaws on left and right repeat to themselves to their own perpetual
self-admiration and delight. Even in a political year, most politicians
do not want this country to fail."
Hey, I hope his indefatigable optimism about this adventure turns out to
be accurate; I just don't think it's all that likely.
One positive sign is that in spite of the administration continuing to
send blank checks up to the hill for Congress to sign, we are going to
save $335,000 a month by cutting off Ahmad Chalabi and his
Iraqi National Congress. Hopefully they've invested the $27 million
we've paid for "useless, misleading or even fabricated" intelligence
(aka "intelligence") so they won't have to use extortion or something to
keep the bills paid.
Thanks to my friend Alison for a pointer to
the
Diebold Variations. "Life's a crapshoot. Elections don't have to
be."
17.May.04
Yup, all Americans have a right to be heard in this debate,
even George Bush. He thinks we need a Constitutional ban on gay
marriage, and I think we don't, and our two votes count exactly the
same for getting the issue decided: zero. Will two-thirds of the House
and Senate agree with him, and will 38 states go along? My bet is no.
In the meantime,
let those Massachusetts wedding bells ring! How wonderful to widen the
constituency that's enthusiastic about the sacred institution of
marriage.
T. Boone Pickens
thinks there's nowhere to go but up: he says we'll see $50 a barrel
oil before we see it for $30 again.
16.May.04
Seymour
Hersh drops the other shoe at The New Yorker:
"The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal
inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last
year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret
operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the
interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the
American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite
combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror."
This while the courts martial unfold, and we learn that at least some
of the soliders in the photographs thought they weren't at all over the
line, just doing their duty to soften up the prisoners. Experiments
long past tell us how little context it takes to overcome inhibitions
against sadism, but we don't want to believe them. Out of sight, out of
mind.
That's what the Rumsfeld team was counting on for its covert action in
the war on terror: as long as we're safe, and we don't know what's being
done in our names, we'll be OK with that. At least one "senior C.I.A.
official" talking to Hersh is breaking ranks, however, as the strategy
seems to have long since passed the threshold of counterproductivity.
And yet I still have the feeling that one more prominent terrorist
attack in this country will mute all the second-guessing and cause the
majority to support whatever authoritarian measures the Bush regime
thinks are needed.
15.May.04
After watching
NOW's
analysis of all the lies in political ads last night, the
latest missive from GeorgeWBush.com in my inbox seems to drip with
irony. The message deprecates Kerry for fundraising:
"Yesterday, John Kerry sent an e-mail to supporters telling them it's
'time to get local.' Their idea of getting local? Asking for more of
your hard-earned money. Our idea of getting local is asking you to open
your home, invite in some friends and neighbors, and tell them why you
support the President."
It's "national party for the President day," July 15th. I expect an
invitation from some nice Republicans, with good drinks, hors
d'oeuvres on tap and no fundraising. I'd have a party at my
place, but really, it's a little too humble to have you all over.
This may help explain why this particular mailing played down the
fundraising angle: on his way to speaking at a commencement in Mequon,
Wisconsin yesterday, "Mr. Bush raised $2.2 million for the Republican
Party at a lunch in Bridgeton, Mo., just outside St. Louis, that was
held in a small car museum at the Hunter Engineering Company, a maker of
automotive service equipment." 90 boosters showed up and forked over
the $25,000 cover charge. I bet they got some nice hors
d'oeuvres!
Just like old-fashioned analog churches, the virtual church has some
house rules,
but unlike those for the former, the rules for the latter are written
down. "Don't become a distraction," and "don't put on a floor show."
(I guess it's not leaning toward the Pentacostal; in fact, the tagline
says it's sponsored by the Methodists.) The number 1 rule works
in so many situations around the world:
Treat others with respect.
My computer is not yet worthy, lacking the Shockwave version 8.5.1+
plug-in.
Among the other things I learned at today's
Funeral Consumers Alliance of
Idaho annual meeting is the fact that a cardboard coffin can be
legal. At the other extreme, if you need to
supersize your final ride, you can do that, too.
14.May.04
Interesting
speculation about who leaked the photos, and why
on spiked. The argument is that some in the military are not at
all happy with the way SecDef is running things. I have no idea how
likely it is to be true, but there are definitely many layers to this
unfolding story.
Did my second shift at BAM this morning, "acting bored" for
What Does a Human Do When There's Nothing To Be Done?
The inflatables were more lively today, the roomfull of big silver
Mylar pillows debouching them over toward the air return with
regularity. I used the quiet moments to herd them back into their home
space with the tall ceiling, played footsie with the ladybug balloon in
"my" exhibit.
I arrived a bit after the 10:00 opening, and when I went to my venue,
found a class of schoolkids there ahead of me. The teacher was giving
them turns at being "the actor," and modeling a variety of emotions for
the rest of the class. As they got ready to leave, she realized
I was the talent, and brought them back after I'd settled in, for
another look. I think my favorite comment on the day was one kid asking
"can he see us?" as if I were inhabiting an alternate universe. I did
have my listless gaze directed over their heads, to avoid the
distraction of eye contact...
At the tail end of one group leaving Gallery Five, one of the teachers
was imagining that I had a rather nice job, turned back and offered to
trade with me, letting me teach a bunch of 2nd graders. She probably
wouldn't be happy with the trade, actually, given that I was doing it
for free. The 2nd graders would be more fun for me than her, at least
to start! She was the first person to get me to break character,
though, as her comment made me chuckle.
And then one teacher took a wild flyer with the work, apparently not
bothering to read the wall placard, or not caring what it said.
"What if he's thinking about a movie he's making, and he's wondering who
should be the star?" She then polled the class, asking "who do you
think it would be?" while they picked Bugs Bunny, or the flamingo (which
one?) or whatever. Then she said, "now he's thinking about a magazine
cover, and one of these characters will be on the cover. Which one do
you think it will be?" Mercifully, she didn't proceed to prod
every kid to say something the way she did for the first round.
Her accent was really thick, too; I had to struggle to understand her,
and it made me wonder if the kids knew what she was saying half the
time.
13.May.04
![First salsify [Tragopogon dubius] opening up, under the fir](/images/FirstSalsify-sm.jpg)
I can't vouch for the accuracy of his statistics, but they are
provocative, at the very least; in his essay,
Mel Gibson's
Passion and Fascism's Piety of Pain, Matthew Fox writes:
"The income of the three richest people in the world is equal to the
collective national incomes of the poorest forty-nine countries! It
would take no more than 5 per cent of the overall annual sales of arms
in the world to feed all the starving children, to protect them from
dying of preventable diseases, and to make basic education accessible to
all."
Last Friday night, I slept with earplugs in to mask certain teenaged
comings and goings. In the quiet middle of the night, I woke up and
took them out, after noting that I wasn't hearing the ubiquitous
background hum with them in. The hum remained
absent when I took them out, too! Our electrical power was on, windows
open, traffic light to non-existent. Ok, so it's not a permanent
condition of my hearing, and verified unrelated to household appliances.
I think I noticed it "off" the next night as well. A couple days later,
it was back, and this morning, is loud enough to notice even with my
laptop's fan going. I'm guessing it's all about traffic, and I probably
sleep through whatever waning tends to happen late at night and early
in the morning.
Today's NY Times had a feature about
the payphone project,
merging the new with the old. Sort of like having surveillance cameras
on buggy whip factories, but there are plenty of interesting situations
and questions left to be resolved before the once essential fixtures
go away.
I liked the gallery
of phones from around the world. Is this
photo of a phone in the middle of Lake Victoria a spoof, or for real?
Either way, it's an act of imagination.
It doesn't say much for the quality of an argument if it can't tolerate
opposing views. Here's our federal government using transportation
funding to
censor
messages against current drug policy, for example. Here's the
headline so scary it must be hidden from users of public transit:
"Marijuana Laws Waste Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Lock Up
Non-Violent Americans."
"Ads promoting the government’s position on marijuana are all over the
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and other public transit
systems around the country," said Steve Fox, Director of Government
Relations for the Marijuana Policy Project. "For the government to
advertise one view while banning ads expressing differing opinions in
the same forum is viewpoint discrimination and a clear violation of the
First Amendment."
12.May.04
Gloomy, cool and a chance of rain today, the last wave put fresh snow
on the Boise front above 5,000 feet. Seems quite spring-like, after
doses of 70s and 80s made us think we were going to ease into an early
summer. We can use all the water we can get, of course.
We ended up having "April weather," with thunderstorms, hail, heavy
rain, mixed with moments of sunshine.
Bound to be in next Sunday's
copyrighted
feature of "Apologies of the
Week": CEO of Diebold, Walden O'Dell, acknowledged that it was a "huge
mistake" to make a public announcement that he was "committed to helping
Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Gee, you
think? Being a Bush Booster is one thing, "delivering votes" when your
company makes voting machines is another.
I stopped in at the
Mudville Gazette
to see how the hard-core military boosters were taking the growing
scandal. I actually expected a bit of circumspection, but execution of
messengers seems to be the order of the day. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma
speaks for this group, apparently, outraged at the outrage of abuse of
insurgents. "Many of them probably have American blood on their
hands," he said in the Senate, with the implication that if prisoners
had been brought to cell block 1A or 1B, we can be sure they're
guilty.
I started to add a comment that disagreed with the chorus, but decided
I don't need to spend time on something that pointless.
Just in case you weren't sure, the military does have
rules for this
business and they aren't hard to understand.
"The use of physical or mental torture or any coercion to compel
prisoners to provide information is prohibited.... Prisoners may not be
threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disparate treatment
of any kind because of their refusal to answer questions."
The Hive Group calls itself "the world leader in treemap technology,"
said technology being "space-constrained visualizations of information."
They've got a
Newsmap of
Google's news aggregator which is pretty darn neat.
What do you do when it's time to exchange goods for money, but you don't
quite trust the other party to hand over his stuff when you give up
yours? You use an escrow process, with a 3rd party that both sides
trust. When the money is real, but the goods are virtual, it
gets a little more complicated, as
Robert
X. Cringely describes in the Case of the Missing Platinum.
10.May.04
Sorry I missed a few days there; I was
out playing tennis in the Icebreaker tournament. I won the men's
3.0 singles, enjoying my big frog in a little pond status while it
lasts. Chet and I didn't make good on our #1 seeding in the 3.0
doubles, though, and gave up the final in straight sets. The second one
contained a punctuation mark for me, as I ran into a fence pole after
chasing a tough angle further than was prudent. I've got a swollen
ear in a convenient spot to remind me to use my head next time.
The Alabama Supremes
said they didn't want Roy Moore back, thanks. He can probably
find a new career in talk radio or something, though.
The 2000 election scandal is still on low heat over here, where freedom
and democracy are supposed to be givens. Greg Palast writes about
the
travesty of the "Help America Vote Act," one of the many pieces of
legislation with Orwell-inspired names that we've seen during this
administration, in the May 17th issue of
The Nation.
«Help America Vote»
«Healthy Forests Restoration»
«Clear Skies»
«USA Patriot»
«Total Information Awareness»
"If you're black, voting in America is a game of chance. First, there's
the chance your registration card will simply be thrown out.... Second,
once registered, there's the chance you'll be named a felon....
At step three, the real gambling begins. The Voting Rights Act of 1965
guaranteed African-Americans the right to vote--but it did not guarantee
the right to have their ballots counted. And in one in seven cases, they
aren't."
7.May.04
I became part of the
current
exhibition at the Boise Art Museum for a couple hours today, the
"people" medium in Elin Wikström's What Does a Human Being Do
When There is Nothing to Be Done?, 1996. It was light work on a
Friday morning, happily enlivened by groups of school kids touring
through, between which I read. When asked to identify what I was
feeling, one or two in the first group guessed "he's depressed," causing
me to lighten up a bit on my portrayal of "extreme lassitude." My
instructions didn't say anything about having to sit still, but it seems
kind of fun to pretend to be a statue in that circumstance. While
another group was guessing whether or not I was a real person, I
repositioned myself a bit, drawing out enough surprise to gratify.
It would have been more fun if there'd been more visitors, as the
internal tension between "looking bored" and being intensely interested
in each and every moment is fascinating. I imagine that Wikström's
design is targeted at the participants more than the viewers, really.
Spending two hours "in" the art is a lot more involvement than a stroll
on by. I got up and looked at the placard at some point, was amused to
find that it was Swedish. Boredom played out in a spare setting with a
collection of cartoon character balloons looking on seems so inherently
Swedish, an Ibsen or Bergman treatment with not nearly enough plot and
the only constructive attribute being that you feel better by
comparison. Which I did. Plus, the sofa was comfortable, and I brought
plenty of interesting reading.
The emails that I get from BushCheney04@GeorgeWBush.com are mostly
forgettable and tiresome requests for donations, and today's was really
just the same thing, but I found its form remarkable. The plain text of
the return address was our former First Lady and now First Mother
and she didn't beat around the bush getting to the point:
"With Mother's Day coming up this weekend, I've been thinking about how
proud I am of our children.
"And it's with a mother's pride that I'm writing you today to ask you to
support our eldest, George W., and his re-election campaign with a
donation of $1000, $500, $250, $100 or $50."
www.GeorgeWBush.com/Million/
You couldn't make this stuff up as parody, I swear.
Oops, yesterday was proclaimed
a
national day of prayer, and I missed it.
We're in the market for a new Braun
10 cup carafe to replace a cracked one. I could buy it online easy
enough, but that won't take care of tomorrow morning. I bought the
coffeemaker at Fred Meyer, so I looked there first. No Braun stuff
there anymore. Their website's "where to buy" function is weak, but it
did have a long list of "National / Regional Accounts"... that included
Fred Meyer. I tried the nearby Rite-Aid, ShopKo and Walgreens and
they've all moved on to Mr. Coffee and Bunn and others. Maybe one of
their replacements will work, but none listed any Braun models on their
box's "will fit" side panel. I let my fingers do the driving to Target
and Wal-Mart, and neither of them carry it, either. Mr. Coffee, and
Black & Decker, Bunn. Braun is out. Bummer.
Krispy Kreme
got toasted today, after a profit warning that the anti-carb zealots
are going to ding their profits. They said they're working to develop a
lower-carb, lower-fat doughnut, but let's get real. Would you have
heard of this company or their product if it was low-carb,
low-fat? Fortunately, I'm not invested in KKD and didn't take the 30%
plunge today. I've just been watching since Carol said she thought it
would be a good investment. I counseled caution after checking the
fundamentals, turns out to have been damn good advice.
Which is not to say I didn't get dinged with today's red ink. The
economy is picking up, finally, the jobs picture is improving, and so
interest rates are going to climb out of their historic hole... time to
panic?! Something's not making sense here.
6.5.4
Thanks to my buddy Jim Browning for the deluxe guided fishing tour
of C.J. Strike, I pulled my first smallmouth bass out of the lake today.
It was a fun outing for us and the dog, a little bit more wear and tear
on the fish, though. We caught at least a couple dozen fish from
unmentionable size up to more than a pound and a half. I can see where
attention to keeping your line untangled is important -- he'd catch
two or three while I was trying to pull out loops and knots and getting
ready to cast again.
Friedman: "This administration needs to undertake a total overhaul
of its Iraq policy; otherwise, it is courting a total disaster for us
all. That overhaul needs to begin with President Bush firing Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- today, not tomorrow or next month,
today."
4.5.4
Hmm, forgot to mention another "triangular day" yesterday: 3.5.4.
I went looking for some help with extended SSI syntax today, and it
looks like
the little manual for them that I
wrote is still the best reference floating around. It's amazing how
many places you can find the "original" documentation presented with
nothing more than format tweaks. It wasn't that
good, for heaven's sake, it can stand rewriting, people.
Michael Ignatieff has an important book coming out later this month,
The Lesser Evil. This week's
feature piece in the NY Times Magazine
is adapted from it, and comes out with impeccable timing.
It does not answer the incredibly difficult questions we face, but it at
least poses them, identifies the issues that confront the core of
democracy as it battles against enemies who want to destroy it.
"When democracies fight terrorism, they are defending the proposition
that their political life should be free of violence. But defeating
terror requires violence. It may also require coercion, secrecy,
deception, even violation of rights. How can democracies resort to these
means without destroying the values for which they stand? How can they
resort to the lesser evil without succumbing to the greater?
"Putting the problem this way is not popular. Civil libertarians don't
want to think about lesser evils. Security is as much a right as
liberty, but civil libertarians haven't wanted to ask which freedoms we
might have to trade in order to keep secure."
Calpundit
connects the dots on one of the intelligence contractors in
Fallujah. How is it that a General can urge that you be fired
over there and have it not happen for more than two months?
It comes back to the observation that we've employed contractors in the
process to keep the dirty business out of the chain of command, military
courts, and light of day.
Doing that work and keeping an online diary that names names is another
not-too-smart move that's come to light in this scandal. Not quite as
bizarre as the "thumbs-up" photos, but still. "Please remove the site
now" doesn't quite cut it afterwards.
He's also got an
assessment of Bush's CEO caliber with a rather inflated grade of
"mediocre."
There were a lot of flags flying after 9/11, but the stickers and decals
are getting faded and the cloth tattered.
William
Broyles Jr.'s essay in the NY Times today makes the point that the
call to patriotism used to be more demanding than just "keep shopping,"
and that it's time to make participation more than voluntary.
"There are no immediate family members of any of the prime civilian
planners of this war serving in it -- beginning with President Bush and
extending deep into the Defense Department. Only one of the 535 members
of Congress, Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota, has a child in the war
-- and only half a dozen others have sons and daughters in the
military.... Our president's own family illustrates the loss of the
sense of responsibility that once went with privilege. In three
generations the Bushes have gone from war hero in World War II, to war
evader in Vietnam, to none of the extended family showing up in Iraq and
Afghanistan."
I got the pointer to the column from
the Mudville Gazette who saw fit to ridicule the notion, and
the horse it rode in on.
As events spin out of control, take a moment to consider to what extent
they
revolve around Ahmed Chalabi in a Salon exclusive from John
Dizard. The leading picture is worth a 1,000 words, but there are more
than 6,000 in the article, so don't stop there. Is he just being
neighborly with the folks in Iran, or...?
George Will examines
GWB's "extraneous thought" as a reflection of "the mind of this
administration."
"(I)f any Americans want to be governed by politicians who
short-circuit complex discussions by recklessly imputing racism to those
who differ with them, such Americans do not usually turn to the
Republican choice in our two-party system."
By which he means Republicans don't often make charges of racism, they
usually pretend it doesn't exist. But hey! What a surprise! When
candor outruns the handlers, out it pops.
I don't usually find myself on the same side of issues as Mr. Will, but
I have to agree with his conclusion: "This administration cannot be
trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having
thought, to have second thoughts." "Strong and steady" leadership isn't
a good thing to have if it's steadily driving the country off a
cliff.
3.May.04
What else is there to say about the misbegotten war in Iraq? If you
think George W. Bush and his administration are performing God's will,
criticism is out of the question, but for the rest of us, it's more
education in something we should have learned a long time ago.
War is hell.
A year after "Mission Accomplished" and "Bring 'em on," only black humor
is left, a pall over every path forward. The one bit of good news,
Thomas Hamill's escape, is framed by another dozen soldiers killed, and
the enormity of war crimes perpetrated on our prisoners coming to light.
Viewers of the Sunday talk shows learned that the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense had not yet got around to
reading the 53-page Army report from Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba.
That's the one that was completed February. Now that
The New
Yorker has a copy, it appears to be a higher priority for them.
Speaking of lessons we should have learned by now,
Joe Wilson has
one: "The government serves the people — not vice-versa."
Forecast
from Vir Sanghvi in India: "George W Bush will be remembered as the
President who began the process of fundamentalising the Muslim
mainstream."
May Day
Here's another tourist trip to China, with some of the same
features as ours
but with a significantly different purpose. Our friends Loren
and Kristin are on a
journey for
adoption.
We watched Frontline's
The Jesus
Factor last night, and gained some insight about George Bush's
success. I'd heard
Terry Gross' short interview with Dr. Richard Land, giving more
context to the short quote Frontline used about Bush believing
God wanted him to be President; if you're going to watch the PBS show,
it would be good to listen to both segments of the edition of Fresh
Air first.
Bush's answer to the question in the debate before the 2000 election,
about what philosopher/thinker that had most influenced him:
"Christ. Because he changed my heart."
(Moderator: Well, I think the viewer would like to know more about how
he's changed your heart.)
"Well, if they don't know, it's going to be hard to explain... when you
turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as
(your) Saviour, it changes your heart, it changes your life."
For a lot of people in this country, that answer is complete, sufficient,
and exactly what they wanted to hear. It makes Bush their candidate,
regardless of what mistakes he might have made: his heart's in the right
place, he's right with God, and he's the hope to expand evangelical
morality in this country.
There is no argument I can make that would persuade some away from this
point of view. The deception, lies, cronyism, taking the country into
a misguided war that exacerbated terrorism in the world, all those
notions are simply erroneous judgements on my part. George W. Bush is
carrying out God's plan here on earth.
That scares the hell out of me.
Dinosaur
Adventure Land offers an exciting vacation adventure mixed with
"Creation Science" Evangelism. Fun for all ages, endless hours of
activities and mind-blowing lessons are what they advertise.
(Thanks to
the NY
Times for the heads-up on that.)
With prescription discount cards getting rolled out to seniors,
PBS' NOW ran a segment on the
new Medicare drug
benefit last night. They focused in on the "benefit gap" (a.k.a.
"Doughnut hole") which didn't get my attention when
I wrote about the plan in November.
At $2500 worth of drugs in a year, it's about a 50-50 split between the
recipient and Medicare. For twice the much, the recipient will pay
80% of the cost of the drugs -- $4k for $5k worth. Folks in the
middle are essential to funding the program.
But all that's about the future
benefit, not the initial plan of discount cards from your choice of
multiple vendors, which come out on Monday. Apparently, that
decision-making is not straightforward, and to make matters worse,
the Medicare
website reportedly has a bunch of mistakes in its pricing
information.
Seems like it all could have been -- should have been -- simpler.
Having the web as primary repository for documentation makes history
mutable, to some extent. On the other hand, someone might notice if
things go away, such as
25 reports about issues such as pay equity and reproductive healthcare
on the Women's Bureau Web site.
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
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Monday, 07-Jun-2004 10:54:50 MDT
http://fortboise.org/blog/200405.html
