unraveling
31.Oct.04
I missed posting a birthday notice on Friday: fortboise.org came in to
being 4 years and two days ago,
while I was on temporary assignment in Palo Alto, oddly enough.
The
rumors are true: GO PACK! "In the previous 15 elections, if the
Washington Redskins have lost their last home game prior to the
election, the incumbent party has lost the White House. When they have
won, the incumbent has stayed in power."
The
Dow Jones Industrial Average tea leaves, off 0.52% this month
(according the The Weekend Australian) point to Kerry
victory as well. Here's the really good news about it:
"When a Republican is ejected from office the Dow delivers 73 per cent
from election day through to the end of the four-year term."
George, GO PACK!
Our local Fox affiliate is selling waffle irons this morning, instead of
broadcasting the football game. That sent me off to the NFL's
game
day interface, which is about the strangest way yet to follow a
football game (but better than no way!). "Waiting to refresh" makes
American football's long periods of inactivity seem even longer. It's
great for stat hogs, though; 9 categories for each team (passing,
rushing, receiving, etc.), updated as the game goes along, as well as
a nice gridiron graphic and play-by-play text narrative. Midway through
the 2nd quarter, for example, we see Favre has hit 7 receivers with 11
passes, and the top 3, with 2 passes each, have gained 48 yards
apiece.
It's estimated at only
about a thousand gallons, but a little bit of oil goes a long way,
and if it's coming around your island, it looks pretty ugly. Two weeks
afterwards, they're still
trying
to figure out who did it.
Remember how exciting professional golf used to be? (No, seriously.)
When Tiger was playing, he always seemed to be winning, and everyone
loves a winner, sort of. But now it's
Vijay ("I won't play
with girls!") Singh's turn, and there doesn't seem to be any reason
to find the Green channel.
Maureen
Dowd rips into the Safe and Secure® team for her last try before
the election: "Though it's clear the treasures and terrors of Iraq -
from viruses to ammunition to artifacts - were being looted and loaded
into donkey carts and pickups because we had insufficient troops to
secure the country, Bush officials devoted the vast resources of the
government to trying to undermine the facts to protect the
president."
Oh and in that quiet rush to tie up loose ends in the Congress,
the Sept. 11 Commission's recommendations got pushed aside. Do you
suppose George Bush's active leadership on the issue could have made a
difference?
Friedman likes Bush for President. George H.W. Bush. He makes a
good case.
James Fallows branches out from The Atlantic Monthly to fill
today's
Techno Files at the NYT, singing the praises of Google. Sure
the market cap
has gone nuts, $52 billion and "more than Ford and General Motors
combined" with the P/E north of 400, but it's all about the technology.
This, for example, gave me a nostalgic feeling for when you used to be
able to call "directory assistance" and actually get assistance for no
added charge: "You send a brief text message to the number 46645 - GOOGL
on a phone keypad - and it returns an answer in a few seconds....
Sending a name and ZIP code or city will look up that person's home
address and phone number."
I did try GDS—Google Desktop Search— but quit the beta early
(after it damaged my Outlook installation) before the disappointing
qualifier that its web indexing is IE-only. I'm looking forward to a
more mature edition of that, and whatever they figure out what to do
with
their latest acquisition, Keyhole
Corp. AOL bought Time Warner with their bubblicious market cap,
Google's inevitable shopping spree will be even more interesting.
(I wish I could give you my potential self-interest full-disclosure about
being a GOOG stockholder, but alas, I didn't have the temerity to ride
the wave.)
30.Oct.04
Greenland always seems to get short shrift on maps; either it's
ridiculously bloated in the
Mercator
projection, or shoved to the side or out of the picture as not
interesting. This
map by William McNulty and Hannah Fairfield that ran in The New
York Times this June is a wonderful exception. The subject is
the retreat of Greenland's ice cap, a subject which may catch the
attention of a lot more of the world's people soon.
The June feature has
some nice video segments still available, too.
What brings it to the fore today is
the preview news of a comprehensive, 4-year study of warming in the
Arctic, describing "profound environmental changes, including sharp
retreats of glaciers and sea ice, thawing of permafrost and shifts in
the weather, the oceans and the atmosphere," and forecasting the impacts
on human and other communities.
The Arctic "is now experiencing some of the most rapid and severe
climate change on Earth.... Over the next 100 years, climate change is
expected to accelerate, contributing to major physical, ecological,
social and economic changes, many of which have already begun."
29.Oct.04
Laura Bush called me today. It was nice to hear from her, but she was
kind of rude on the phone; she wouldn't let me get a word in, just kept
talking right over the top of my trying to engage her in conversation.
I was trying to tell her I already had voted, but she went right
ahead telling me about how she wanted me to get out on Tuesday. I
wonder if maybe she dialed the wrong number or something.
He ain't askin' for much, just a
second
chance. For once in his life. (And who says he can't acknowledge
his mistakes?)
More remarkable
images
from Saturn's moon, Titan, and tales of methane lakes, icy winds,
"a giant atmosphere," glaciation and a lot of hydrocarbons.
If something else doesn't happen pretty quick, we'll have to settle on
Al Qaqaa as our October surprise this year. The Administration script
writers got scooped on this one, by some
Minneapolis reporters who happened to tag along to the right place
at the right time: after the US controlled the cache, and
before the cache was looted. It's a convenient campaign ploy to
blame the guy at the top, but realistically, it's hard to see this as
Bush's mistakes. While we support our troops, we recognize they make
mistakes, and need to correct those mistakes ASAP. Some several people
in the chain of command made a huge mistake by not dealing with
the explosives at Al Qaqaa. Good gracious, as SecDef might say, here
were the I.A.E.A. seals that just about screamed WEAPONS OF MASS
DESTRUCTION. And yes, you can do a lot of mass destruction with tens of
POUNDS of this stuff, let alone hundreds of THOUSANDS OF
TONS.
Unfortunately, the munitions cache at Al Qaqaa is not the only story of
stunning incompetence in managing post-invasion Iraq. Peter Galbraith
was one of the people making a case for the war, and he spells out how
it's the US that's now worse off.
28.Oct.04
When the Curse reverses, look out! Holy Cow, Boston wins in 4.
Eight straight games after they got the Yankees chortling about how easy
it was going to be to make 'em wait 'till next year.
It's next year this year, and no need to watch three more
baseball games.
One of the benefits of having an almost famous domain name is that you
might accidentally get some interesting email. I haven't received any
inquires about fortboise.com's onions, but
georgewbush.org
has been getting
some interesting
stuff running up to the election, including the Republican
"caging list" of 1800+ Jacksonville, Florida voters that figures in
Greg Palast's story,
New
Florida vote scandal feared.
My favorite found poetry in the collection is
"can't we say something intelligent?"
We voted early (if not often) today, joining the queue snaking out of
the Ada County office into the rainy courtyard. There was about a 20
minute wait, but the line was moved steadily, and inside, the work
proceeded without a hitch. It's really an enhanced infrastructure for
"absentee" voting, and hearing on the radio on the way home that
absentee votes wouldn't be counted for 5 to 7 days, we wondered if that
were so in our county.
They had two computers set up for new registrations, processing people
while they waited in the main line, 4 or 5 computers inside to look
people up and hand out ballots, another table to dispense the right
cardpunching framework by legislative district, and the usual line-up of
voting booths. At the end of the process by the exit, the gal taking
votes announced who had voted, but there were no poll-watchers to take
note. When I pointed that out, she shrugged and said "it's the
law!"
Now we can spend our "live" Election Day poll-watching...
27.Oct.04
There's a new DUMMER® on the way for next year, shorter, slimmer and
cheaper, so all those aspirational 20- and 30-somethings can get into
the brand. GM doesn't mind that the brand is "polarizing," they just
need to manage it and milk it as long as possible. That means maybe a
pickup truck someday, but "we're never going to have a minivan or a
small car." The profit stream has to flow hard enough to finance
glass and steel Quonset huts to sell them in, building a "standalone
franchise" before the fad is spent. (Maybe we can turn them into
greenhouses after that?)
They're not after anyone concerned about fuel efficiency of course,
although the D3 improves to 16/20mpg (still a bigger drinker than the
average suburban assault vehicle). They are looking to the
future, using Ahnold to promote the
H2H koncept kar, extending idiocy to a new medium with a
pseudo-environmental twist. 50 miles between fill-ups, just
imagine.
GWB to OPEC:
"Open your spigots!"
Here's a blow to the original, $100,000+ DUMMERER, though: the
$100,000 "small business" deduction for the largest and least
fuel-efficient vehicles that made a big splash in 2003 has been trimmed
to a mere $25,000 in
Sec.910 of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004.
If you're at the other end of the aspirational spectrum, the IRS has
some good news, however: the
2005
Prius still comes with a $2,000 Form 1040 deduction for the original
owner, for vehicles put in service this year or next. Toyota is
going to increase production, too—from 130,000 to 180,000
annually.
Bill Sali, Christian candidate for
District 21 state representative has
an idea for reducing Idaho's Medicaid outlay. He wants to
stop advertising the Children's Health Insurance Program. As the
Statesman reporter Greg Hahn puts it, "often, families who come to the
state for health insurance for their children find out they're poor
enough to get Medicaid health coverage themselves." Sali wants to nip
that sort of thing in the bud.
A series of articles in this Sunday's
Week in
Review section included this gem of a contrast
drawn by Roger Cohen:
"The bottom line is this: Mr. Kerry's universe has faith in common
sense, believes questions may sometimes be as important as answers,
mistrusts conviction so absolute it can never be questioned, distrusts
destiny, distinguishes between power and leadership and rocks to Bruce
Springsteen.
"Mr. Bush's universe has faith in faith, believes questioning empowers
enemies, equates conviction with the strength that will spread freedom,
is convinced there is no leadership without the projection of American
power, holds that American destiny is manifest and grooves to country
music."
26.Oct.04
The Smithsonian Magazine piece,
Exiting Vietnam, seems more timely now than it did when it came out
in March 2003, as would the book it's about,
Kissinger's
Ending the Vietnam War. Kissinger is eloquent for his own position
as you might imagine, but Elizabeth Drew is not swept away by his "case
for the defense," "written with some outrage and not a little
self-pity." The question of whether we could have ended the war 4 years
sooner lingers; Kissinger argues for, Drew against. When the memoirs of
the first decade of this century are written, we'll be asking the same
questions about Iraq.
The American Conservative magazine's executive editor makes the
case for
Kerry in the set of articles that "constitute TAC's endorsement" of
everyone and no one at the same time. He promises that "if Kerry wins,
this magazine will be in opposition from Inauguration Day forward," but
provides great detail of why Bush is "unworthy of any conservative
support."
"Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is
supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort
of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a
country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits
and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of
the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation’s
children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle
class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false
1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn
it into administration policy."
Patrick Buchanan is in the collection, too,
Coming Home
to hold his nose and vote for Bush in spite of all he knows.
TAC has been strongly against the Iraq war at least as long as I have:
"Iraq is the worst strategic blunder in our lifetime" says Buchanan.
But, "while Bush and Kerry are both wrong on Iraq, Sharon, NAFTA, the
WTO, open borders, affirmative action, amnesty, free trade, foreign aid,
and Big Government, Bush is right on taxes, judges, sovereignty, and
values. Kerry is right on nothing."
25.Oct.04
Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf? As if the real fears in today's
world weren't enough, the Bush campaign is recycling fairy tale imagery
to tap into the generic deep fear we all keep for our "fight or
flight" reserve. The rehabilitation of a predator's image is collateral
damage, too, as the animals were
tricked into
participating.
As usual, factcheck.org
parses the
deception for us, listing "old news," "exaggerated wording" and
"missing context" as this particular ad's methods. Not like that's
going to help those pulling the covers over their heads to deal with
the anxiety... or the
"security moms" targeted by the ad.
How much safer do you feel knowing that one of the largest stockpiles of
high explosives in Iraq—195 metric tons of HMX, 141 metric tons of
RDX, and 6 metric tons of PETN— has gone missing?
(While you're working on your answer, consider that it took less than
one pound of such stuff to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie,
Scotland.)
"Administration officials say they can't explain why the explosives were
not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was
overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the
country." However, these particular hundreds of tons of explosives were
not the ones stored in "mosques, schools, hospitals and countless other
locations," making them difficult to track down and control, but rather
in a large military installation, Al Qaqaa (pronounced "el ka ka," I
suppose) that inspectors knew about and had watched, that the IAEA had
warned us about, and that was supposed to be under our military control
after the invasion.
The NY Times reported that in May, an internal I.A.E.A. memorandum
warned that terrorists might be helping "themselves to the greatest
explosives bonanza in history." Al Qaqaa was only "medium priority" on
the CIA's list of more than 500 sites to search and secure after the
invasion.
"A special property of HMX and RDX lends them to smuggling and
terrorism, experts said. While violently energetic when detonated, they
are insensitive to shock and physical abuse during handling and
transport because of their chemical stability. A hammer blow does
nothing. It takes a detonator, like a blasting cap, to release the
stored energy."
The next time you see one of those cheery campaign stops where George
Bush is in command of the situation and all the crowd cheers in unison
and on cue, think about all the hard work it takes to set the scene.
Jacksonville, Oregon (pop. not quite 3,000) found out the hard way
that freedom of expression does not necessarily apply these days.
"We are a peaceful community. The prospect of an overnight presidential
visit was exciting, even to me, a lifelong Democrat. My excitement
turned to horror as I watched events unfold during President Bush’s
visit.... Police armed with high powered rifles perched upon our
rooftops as the presidential motorcade approached. Helicopters flew low,
overhead. A cadre of motorcycle police zoomed into town. Black SUVs
followed, sandwiching several black limousines carrying the president,
his wife and their entourage as they sped to the local inn where they
would eat and sleep."
Trish Bowcock's first-hand account of what happened just over a week ago
is powerfully chilling: "It is reputed that President Bush and his staff
will not allow any opposition activity to occur within his ear or eye
sight. I can confirm, that in tiny Jacksonville, Oregon, this was true.
Physically violent means were taken to protect the president from verbal
insults. Freedom of speech was stolen."
Among other forms of "discouraged speech" these days are t-shirts that say
"Protect Our
Civil Liberties." Naturally.
From the
2nd of two NY Times articles about rewriting military
law (to say nothing of our Constitution) for the War on Terror:
"It became obvious to us as we reviewed the evidence that, in many
cases, we had simply gotten the slowest guys on the battlefield," said
Lt. Col. Thomas S. Berg, a member of the original military legal team
set up to work on the prosecutions. "We literally found guys who had
been shot in the butt."
The reserve officer chosen... to lead the intelligence operation at
Guantánamo... was told after his arrival there in February 2002
that as many as half of the initial detainees were thought to be of
little or no intelligence value... He also found that the prisoners
included elderly and emotionally disturbed Afghan men, including one
tribal elder so wizened that interrogators nicknamed him "Al Qaeda
Claus."
It's not all that funny, though. "As soon as the process was set up, it
started to become something they never wanted it to be," said Commander
Sundel. "But it is astounding that a small group of people could create
an entirely new judicial process - without many of the due-process
guarantees we expect - and think it could survive real challenges."
Zbigniew Brzezinski's op-ed contribution today is titled
How to Make New Enemies and describes a complicated plan forward in
Iraq and the middle east. Like a lot of what happened during the Carter
administration, the timing and persuasive power seem a bit skewed. He's
writing about how to make friends in and for that part of the
world, but rolling out the sentiment that both candidates are misguided
in their stated approaches. Maybe the enemies in the title are the
domestic politicians who could be receptive after the election, but who
can only be annoyed and distracted at the moment.
24.Oct.04
It's not the latest political thriller hitting the big screen, but
rather what the Cheney administration did to the Constitution in response
the the terrorist attack:
a secret rewriting of military law. (The first of two articles
from the NYT.)
"The military could detain and prosecute any foreigner whom the
president or his representative determined to have 'engaged in, aided or
abetted, or conspired to commit' terrorism."
"There was no promise of public trials, no right to remain
silent, no presumption of innocence. (G)uilt did not
necessarily have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and a death
sentence could be imposed even with a divided verdict."
It was time to get tough on terror, for sure, but how successful has the
process been? "(T)hree years later, not a single terrorist has been
prosecuted. Of the roughly 560 men being held at the United States naval
base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, only 4 have been formally charged.
Preliminary hearings for those suspects brought such a barrage of
procedural challenges and public criticism that verdicts could still be
months away. And since a Supreme Court decision in June that gave the
detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal court,
the Pentagon has stepped up efforts to send home hundreds of men whom it
once branded as dangerous terrorists."
23.Oct.04
It's one thing to stay indoors on a chilly Saturday with a low, wet sky,
and another entirely to go hiking
in the Sierra Nevada a bit too late in the fall.
We've had snow on the Boise front this week, is that 4 to 5 inches
drifted on to the
Bogus
Basin snow marker? Woo hoo!
Juxtapose these: the sanguine response of the chairman of the Ohio
Republican Party on the issue, "I suspect there will be challenges. But
by and large, people will move through quickly. We want to make sure
every eligible voter votes. 99.9 percent will fly right by." And
the party paying (!) more than 3,000 recruits to be poll-watchers.
I've volunteered to be a poll-watcher, for the second time, but nobody's
offering me a hundred bucks. Just one more opportunity for swing-state
swingers that the rest of us can't have, I guess.
Michael Moss reports on the
GOP bid to challenge voters in swing states, in The NY
Times.
22.Oct.04
Googlemania! The
GOOG's first report as a
public company seen as a blockbuster, and the P/E clears 200.
I bought some early, but it turned into a (slightly profitable) day
trade when I got cold feet, thinking about bubbles. It may yet prove to
be one, but we're still in the inflationary stage of the Google
universe. $168 this morning, dang! At least I wasn't so pessimistic I
tried to go short; those people must be having a very bad feeling with
their morning coffee today.
As for making real money, how about Microsoft? $9+ Bill on the
quarter, of which almost three $Bills were profit, at least pro
formally. Those shares dropped after hours, go figure; a bigger
than expected drop in "subscription revenue" was blamed. Customers are
apparently not in a hurry to renew their commitment to sending a steady
stream of cash to the Pacific Northwest.
What's left to do in the Presidential election? Read the polls,
vote, and oh yeah, count the votes. At this point, just
about everyone can find a poll to his or her liking, from Bush by 8%,
to Kerry with 300 electoral votes. If you like Bush, you'll like the
poll coverage from CNN/Gallup and Fox"News," while you figure the
liberal media are biasing things to make it look like Kerry still
has a chance.
Then there's the hand-wringing about disenfranchisement and deliberate
fraud... Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to
get us.
My prediction? Kerry is going to win, but it's a toss-up whether
or not the Repugs will get away with stealing another election, even as
they ridicule the very idea that such a thing has happened or
could happen. Happens all the time, it just hasn't had to be
such a regular thing at the top in this country until now.
21.Oct.04
All of you whacko lefties already know where to find his column, and you
rabid righties who sneak a peek at fortboise when the boss isn't looking
wouldn't be caught dead reading the liberal NY Times, and the
title of the latest from Frank Rich is neither work-safe nor left-safe:
The O'Reilly Factor for Lesbians: "In the annals of election year
2004, Oct. 13 will be remembered as the day it rained lesbians in red
America."
"From all the outcry over Mr. Kerry's invocation of Ms. Cheney, with the
attendant rhetoric about the evil of exploiting a candidate's 'child' in
a campaign, you might never guess that the child in question is not
Chelsea Clinton at age 12 but a 35-year-old woman (two years older than
Andrea Mackris). Or that she lives openly with her partner, Heather Poe,
whom she brought onstage after the vice presidential debate. Or that she
is the paid director of vice presidential operations for the Bush
campaign, and that her mother is the author of a notorious potboiler
(Sisters, 1981) that drools over the prospect of lesbian coupling
with O'Reilly-like glee."
Have 4 million Americans been left behind in hearing the news that a
fair number of their upstanding and patriotic citizens are gay?
In John Prine's Spanish Pipedream, the level-headed dancer on the
road to alcohol advised him to "blow up your TV." Now you don't have to
get quite that violent, you can just
turn any TV in your proximity off. The universal switch is
"just flying off the shelves" at $14.99. Some time after they catch up
with the sudden rush of orders, you may be able to get through to
the TV-B-Gone site.
The RedSox did it! Four straight's not so unusual, but nobody's done it
after losing the first 3. Like Yogi said, it ain't over till
it's over. I missed the middle innings and didn't get to see Johnny
Damon go long—twice, starting with the Big Dinger—but it
sure was nice to hear that he broke out of his slump just in time. It
was 8-1 in the top of the 6th when I tuned back in; sweet.
Now, the next step: Reverse the Curse.
One of the thousands of news stories on the Boston/NY series had this
little paragraph, explaining why we kept seeing bloody sock close-ups
during game 6: "Then Curt Schilling, his right ankle held together by
three sutures, beat the Yankees, 4-2, on Tuesday night to tie the series
3-all." I'd heard about the tendon problems, but not the stitches.
Ouch.
The blog's been a little spotty while I continue to work through the
myriad details of migrating to my new desktop. I held off trying to
move email a while, contemplating whether it was finally time to break
out of the M$ pit. For various reasons, I decided to go back to Outlook
(2000), which meant migrating old messages and addresses from Outlook
Express. It's not anywhere near as easy as it should be, although I did
get the impression there's some magic path that could make it all
hands-off. Perhaps if I'd copied the OE stuff intact? Or set up OE
afresh and then told it to import folders? It has a proprietary sense
of "this machine" that makes going over the home LAN to the old machine
not work quite the same, no doubt having to do with bits it has stuffed
into the registry instead of putting them out in config files the way it
ought to have.
One of those things is Message Rules, which OutlookExpress puts in the
registry. You can
back them up and recover them to OE, but if there's a way to migrate
them, I didn't find it before I manually recreated my dozen or so rules.
Glad I didn't use the feature more (and glad that Cableone does a pretty
good job at filtering spam).
After a couple of false starts testing the limitations of the wizards
that guard the temple, I figured out how to export all my messages
("automatically" going into the current Outlook .pst file on the same
machine) and then fetch them into the new instance of Outlook. I was
fat, dumb and happy thinking I'd moved a couple thousand messages
intact, until today, when I looked to see which of two addresses for
somebody was the latest. I discovered that OE (and/or Outlook) had
stripped out all the message headers in the process, everything
other than the text that shows in Outlook's email message window.
That's the plain text rendering of the From/To/Cc names, the Subject and
the Sent date/time. Maybe most people don't know or care about all that
stuff, but there's a TON of information I do care about,
thankyouverymuch, that was quietly, idiotically discarded.
Damn, they do some stupid things in Redmond.
20.Oct.04
Dick Cheney still wants us to
be very afraid, so that we follow the
Leader we have, rather than trying a new one.
"The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of
terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier
weapons than have ever before been used against us - biological agents
or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind to be able to
threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
You have to get your mind around that concept."
Along that way is the useful post hoc ergo propter hoc
fallacy: if one thing happened after another, the first must have caused
the second, right? Qaddafi giving up his nukes happened after we
invaded Iraq and captured Saddam Hussein, so the latter must have caused
the former. Right? Well, maybe, but the Brits' years of diplomacy had
something to do with it, too. Maybe the Colonel just wanted to take
care of a nagging toxic waste problem and saw the easy way out.
If you're looking to buy a new car and thinking about financing,
consider this: Ford just announced its losses widened on its car sales,
from $108 to $481 million compared to the quarter a year ago. But Ford
Credit reported net income of $734 million, versus $504 million last
year.
Follow the money.
"Even Ford's more public magic trick—Steve McQueen's
return from the dead—can't help the company these days. I don't
say this often, but investors would be better off spending their dough
on the product than the stock."
When you're the biggest business gorilla on the planet, your
vague plans make news: we read that Microsoft "introduced" a desktop
computer application, and then that it "plans to debut the product...
sometime in the first half of 2005." It sounds like something we all
want, though, to "seamlessly integrate e-mail, instant messaging, video
conferencing, traditional phone service and Internet-based calling." The
good news for competitors is that Microsoft's interest stamps the
category as legitimate. The bad news, of course, is that M$' interest
makes everyone wait to see what they come up with. Indefinitely.
19.Oct.04
The fix was almost in, how 'bout that A-Rod guy making gazillions
of bucks for playing a game and then showing us all that
indignation when he got caught for cheating?
Sheesh, bring out the militia, the NY fans might not be able to
stand it if their boys drop 4 in a row!
It's gettin UGLY now.
(Oh and did you hear that Curt S. did it with GOD'S help
this time? Where the hell has He been these last 86 years, anyway?)
Jeanette went in to the Social Security Office for her scheduled
appointment, on the eve of turning 65 and getting onto the receiving
end of the government's gravy train. When she was in the
office some weeks ago to set up the appointment, the agent said her
computer was down and she couldn't make a printed copy of the
appointment schedule. Rest assured, though. Well, today there was no
record of the scheduled appointment, and the (different) apologetic
clerk offered to set up a new one, or perhaps it would be more
convenient to do it by telephone?
Jeanette said "my understanding is that I have to bring a number of
documents to show you," passport, birth certificate, marriage license.
The clerk said "oh you could mail those to us, and then we'd mail them
back to you." Apparently without the faintest notion of irony.
J. opted for the additional delay and the in-person plan, rather than
a higher-stakes competence test.
18.Oct.04
Two baseball games every day is a bit much at some point. I was
hanging on the Yankees-Red Sox outcome, but drifted off in the top of
the 9th. I perked up for the last half, and then the extra innings were
exciting; I was rotating my rally cap by the half inning, but ended up
the wrong way when the top of the 12th put me to sleep again. I woke up
to the cheering for Ortiz' game-winning homer, went to bed happy.
One down, three to go! Might as well break the curse with panache.
Now clearing out the sysadmin backlog: burned a backup of the win95
machine's cute little 6GB disk last night, copying over the laptop's
files on the way to migrating my prime workspace. I always wonder how
much bandwidth is being wasted by that annoying animation of papers
flying from one folder to the other, while the "Minutes Remaining" estimate
flies between 87 and 175. Ok, it's multiple GB, but 2 hours to move
across our private wired LAN? Sheesh. I did the DVD burn fetching the
files over the network and it only took an hour to write AND verify.
Then SP2, I guess. And all the other software needed to make this
system useful, finally getting around to the raison d'être
for this machine (Visual Studio.NET) and the work that will help me pay
for it.
17.Oct.04
Gentle, cool rain in the night. Summer's over.
If you're in a swing state, I imagine your eyes must glaze over
at the opening strain of any campaign ads by now. You probably
can't imagine what it's like to be out here in the "solid"
territories and only hear about such things second-hand. Help is on
the way for us, though, thanks to the American Museum of the Moving
Image and its
exhibition of presidential campaign commercials, past and
present.
Frank
Rich: "The fundamental right of Americans, through our free press,
to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under
attack as never before," wrote William Safire last month. When an
alumnus of the Nixon White House says our free press is being attacked
as "never before," you listen.
"Like the Nixon administration before it, the Bush administration
arrived at the White House already obsessed with news management and
secrecy. Nixon gave fewer press conferences than any president since
Hoover; Mr. Bush has given fewer than any in history."
Not exactly a surprise that
The
NY Times editorial board endorses Kerry, and it isn't as if Bush
supporters are going to heed a call to reason, but still...
"...We have specific fears about what would happen in a second Bush
term, particularly regarding the Supreme Court. The record so far
gives us plenty of cause for worry. Thanks to Mr. Bush, Jay Bybee,
the author of an infamous Justice Department memo justifying the
use of torture as an interrogation technique, is now a federal
appeals court judge. Another Bush selection, J. Leon Holmes, a
federal judge in Arkansas, has written that wives must be
subordinate to their husbands and compared abortion rights
activists to Nazis....
"The Bush White House has always given us the worst aspects of the
American right without any of the advantages. We get the radical
goals but not the efficient management...." (except perhaps their
brutally effective management of the media?)
"Voting for president is a leap of faith. A candidate can explain
his positions in minute detail and wind up governing with a hostile
Congress that refuses to let him deliver. A disaster can upend the
best-laid plans. All citizens can do is mix guesswork and hope,
examining what the candidates have done in the past, their apparent
priorities and their general character. It's on those three grounds
that we enthusiastically endorse John Kerry for president."
While you're reading The NY Times (aren't you?), enjoy the
Public Editor opening his space to
guest pro&con considering the question of whether or not the
newspaper is systematically biased in its campaign coverage.
Todd Gitlin, "from the left," makes his case with a reasoned
argument:
"The Times is not pro-Bush in the way that The Washington Times is
pro-Bush, slamming John Kerry with Vietnam falsehoods week after
week. But The Times's decorous approach to the news has often
helped President Bush in three significant ways: by equating his
gross deceptions with Mr. Kerry's minor lapses; by omitting or
burying news of administration activities and their consequences;
and by missing the deep pattern of Mr. Bush's prejudices and
malfeasances."
Bob Kohn, "from the right," uses the timeless technique of simply
stating the obvious: "Of course it is." For evidence of how acute
"the bias against Bush on Iraq has become," he cites the indignation
of "two of the paper's own Op-Ed columnists," David Brooks and
William Safire, and finishes with a rhetorical flourish comparing
Frank Rich to Ann Coulter. Nice try, Bob.
And finally (which is to say, you can look for the rest on your
own, including the 2nd of the Magazine features on the
candidates,
"Without
a Doubt"), Hell hath no fury like a
Catholic scorned:
"Some of the bishops - the shepherds of a church whose hierarchy
bungled the molestation and rape of so many young boys by tolerating
it, covering it up, enabling it, excusing it and paying hush money -
are still debating whether John Kerry should be allowed to receive
communion."
Finally closed the "construction" chapter of building my own PC, after
my first attempt predictably hit a few snags. We'd bought "ready made"
in 1983, 1988, 1993, and 1998 while my work cycled me through machines a
little more often. A hand=me-down laptop carried us past the 5-year due
date last year, making the "upgrade" statistics even more striking:
CPU 233 MHz to 3.0 GHz;
RAM 192 MB to 1 GB;
HD 6 GB to 300 GB; and so on.
The big snag was working off a parts list a knowledgeable friend made up
for a video-editing capable machine, and finding out that not all
Intel D875PBZ motherboards and not all 3.0 GHz Pentium 4's are the
same. Or
play together. That added a week, an RMA and a 15% restocking fee
(at least) to the time and trouble. As noted it was oh so much more
satisfying when the first round of black screens gave way to a "Reboot
and Select Proper Boot device" message.
Other than their not protecting me from that mistake, I was happy with
dealing with ZipZoomFly for the
bulk of the components, though. And I can't say enough good things
about the fine
Antec case I put everything in.
If I'd really been on the ball, I would have used that extra week to get
going on the office remodel and building us a couple computer desks so
we can actually share our 12x10 space, but no, that's still to do.
Speaking of those CPUs, I did notice that there were two different kinds
of 3.0GHz P4s up front: "Prescott," and "Northwood." A very quick bit
of research showed me that the former was the newer version, and built
on the 90nm process, versus 130nm for the latter. 130nm is 0.13μm
if that means anything to you, or 5 millionths of an inch. 90
nanometers is that much smaller still. I figured "newer is better," and
it had twice the cache (1MB vs. 512kB) and was $10 cheaper to boot.
Newer is not better if your "older" mobo doesn't work with it,
though.
Case manufacturers end up with the responsibility for keeping things
cool, prompting
Antec to
opine about the different P4s. They explain that
"Initial 'Prescott' CPU's were introduced in February of 2004 as Socket
478 parts. These initial 'Prescotts' are pin compatible with the already
existing P4 CPU's (codenamed Northwood). However Intel later introduced
the LGA 775 part, which needs a new motherboard."
The new Prescotts run hotter, and hotter is n.g. When a 3rd party uses
6 variants of "confused" on an information page about your product, all
is not well.
In case you missed the right-wing pundits talking about how Duelfer's
report vindicated the decision to go to war in Iraq,
from
Christopher Dickey provides the summation of the justification:
"...because of what we thought he was thinking he might do with the
weapons we thought he had but didn’t."
16.Oct.04
If you flat out don't care, it wouldn't be at all interesting.
At some point though, enough is enough. Say 17 runs in 6½
innings, until a baseball playoff game has a football score: 17-6.
The Packers' last try at Monday Night Football was that way, too. I
couldn't watch the end. If I keep watching this, it'll be that car
wreck sort of thing, where you can't look away, but you hate yourself
for the impulse.
From whence do you argue sir? Cryptome
provides a list
(below the discussion) of the military service (or not) of prominent
pols. Just in case you don't fully get it, "did not serve" is in red.
Nice group of pro-war pundits to round things out: Sean Hannity, Rush
Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, George Will, Paul Gigot, Bill
Bennett, Bill Kristol, Michael Medved:
did not serve. (Thanks to Lee K. for the
link.)
Tom Josefiak, General Counsel for Bush-Cheney 04, Inc., is
inside the bubble by definition. His email with subject "Hope for the
Best, Prepare for the Recount" is fundraising to "defend the outcome of
this election," and includes this gem: "In 2000, I was in Florida for
the recount and remember the attacks we had to fend off in order to
protect the result of a fair election from the efforts to steal it."
"Frankly, I am very tired, and hope we will not have to fight off more
attacks on the people's will. The outcome of the election should be
decided by voters not lawyers! But I suspect we will see more efforts by
those who lost the election to change the rules so they can win."
Please send lots of money, so
we can have a better team of lawyers than they do.
(
Reports are that the Dems are ahead of the Reps in election lawyer
recruiting.)
I can think of a lot of adjectives to describe the Florida 2000
election, but "fair" is not one that comes to mind.
One of the factoids that I remember from watching
NOW last night: when the Social
Security program was started, there were 40 workers for every
retiree receiving benefits. Now there are 3.4. And falling
still. Where would the money to pay benefits come from if we allow
current workers to start paying into private accounts? It just doesn't
make sense, except as pandering: do you want to keep your money,
or give it to someone else? Do you want to keep your money, and
abolish the Social Security program?
Maybe an over-40 league would have kept me kicking a little longer, but
not against
these
guys: former stars of the Paraguayan national team. I'll have to
settle for the opportunities for private glory, going senior in next
year's league tennis.
"Both Mr. Cabañas and Romerito are retired and have lost a step or two
in the open field, but their legs are still taut and their skills remain
sharp. Though slightly past their prime, the men are hardly weekend
warriors. The play is rugged. There are daring diving headers and savage
sliding tackles. Passes are crisp, and the men execute plays with the
strategic cunning of a chess grandmaster."
15.Oct.04
If Google can search the web so well, the stuff on your computer should
be child's play, right? It's just in beta, but
Google Desktop Search
seems like an obvious "must have" to me. The half GB of HD space
required is a bit of strain on my current system, but the one I'm
building has tens of GB to spare.
Scott Ritter: "The ultimate condemnation of the failure and futility
of the US-UK effort in Iraq is that if Saddam were released from his
prison cell and participated in the elections scheduled for next
January, there is a good chance he would emerge as the popular
choice."
What's up with the
Cheneys bent out of shape about Kerry's comment in the last debate?
Dick hasn't hesitated to talk about his daughter's sexuality publicly,
but no one else is supposed to? The executive director of the Log Cabin
Republicans doesn't think that's right:
Patrick
Guerriero says "the reality is the type of outrage that is being
expressed by some Republicans should be expressed at themselves. They've
decided to use gay families as wedge issues across America in swing
states -- that is truly outrageous."
He encouraged Sens. Kerry and Edwards to "make their case for gay and
lesbian fairness" without mentioning Mary Cheney. And, he said, "the
president and Karl Rove should stop attacking gay families on the
campaign trail." Hear, hear.
Tennis is a game of psychology as much as physical prowess. There's a
Code of behavior that describes exactly how you're supposed to play
fair, but not to what extent you can or can't or should or shouldn't try
to psyche out the opposition. (That creates a
secondary market for books, naturally.)
One less-than-fair technique is called the "hook." In an unofficiated
match, players call balls in or out on their side of the court as best
they can, with the benefit of the doubt supposed to go to the
opposition. A hook is when a ball is seen in, but called out, in order
to aggravate the opponent. With the only recourse of asking "are you
sure?" (and accepting the answer), hooked opponents can get mad. And
when you get mad, your game usually goes downhill; no further cheating
will be required.
Being human means having many ways to decieve, however. Hence, the
"reverse hook," accusing your opponent of a deliberate bad call,
making a pre-emptive strike with the immediate negative psychological
edge, and widening the benefit of the doubt in your favor on future
points as the match goes on.
Less-than-scrupulous actors have been seen on both sides in previous
elections, and the coming one promises plenty of misbehavior. Following
yesterday's news of the "collect and shred half" voter registration drive
hook is today's news of the
Republicans screaming about a Democratic reverse hook, a manual
suggesting preemption of "expected" Republican tactics.
There is no indignation more red-hot than that of an accused malefactor
who isn't guilty this time.
It's not clear why a Texas Railroad Commissioner has broken onto the
national scene, but his outrage sets a standard, of sorts:
"Those kind of allegations are not new, however they are very untrue,
and have been untrue, and we've been saying so for some time."
Not just "untrue," but very untrue. And repeatedly said so.
"As an elected official, myself, who is obviously on the ballot every
year in Texas and every six years, it's outrageous number one to even
make the claim that someone would engage in voter intimidation, but it
is truly outrageous and callous and shameful to have operatives, to
suggest to operatives, that if you don't see intimidation just sort of
make it up and talk about it."
Remember the Bush campaign's mastermind? That would be
Karl "make it up and talk about it" Rove. Is it
still (truly) outrageous, callous and shameful to make the claim if
there is ample evidence to support it? At a minimum, the press release
provides a double reverse hook in the same news cycle as a genuine
scandal.
Something fishy in Foggy Bottom,
male bass producing eggs. Expect to see that in an episode of
The Simpsons next month.
"It might be chicken estrogen left over in poultry manure, or perhaps
human hormones dumped in the river with processed sewage. Chances are,
it is not something that federal and state inspectors regularly test for
in local waters."
No word of any same-sex coupling, but one has to be a little suspicious
about "intersex bass" under the circumstances.
Are there mainstream bloggers now? The Wonkette has
sort of basically live blogging of the 3rd debate, which I
personally would say more about if I'd stayed awake all the way through
watching the tape. I can say that if there were 6 more, I would not
watch them all. Or at least I would not stay awake while watching them
all.
9:43PM: NOTE TO READERS: We saw the foam, too. The voice in
Bush's ear told him to wipe it off.
(Her
2nd debate blog was good, too.)
Ok, this is awkward:
Bush plans pension raid to stay afloat. (Bush can hardly measure up
to those Aussie headline writers when it comes to plain spoken.)
It's Congress' fault of course, they're in charge of the budget, and the
deficit and the debt and everything. "Congress has raised the debt
ceiling three times in three years, raising it most recently by $984
billion in May 2003. On Thursday, Treasury Secretary John Snow said the
Federal Government was about to breach the limit again and would be able
to keep operating only if it started tapping money intended for the
civil service retirement fund, the pension system for federal
workers."
Nobody can be really shocked, shocked, though, as "White House officials
and congressional leaders knew for at least two months that federal
borrowing would soon exceed the legal limit." They knew for even longer
that FY2005 starts on October 1st, but also that they don't
really have to get the budget done on time. There are
workarounds, and hey, it's a busy election year.
The Republican good news is that the deficit is lower! (than expected)
Instead of a record $522 billion, it's "only" a record $413
billion. More than $1,000 per capita. This year. Our teenager's
having trouble getting her car paid for even with dad covering the
insurance, I'm not sure how she's going to pony up her share of the
deficit, too. Maybe later.
Bush's favorite
Nolan Ryan baseball
moment:
"Ryan, on the mound at Arlington Stadium, with Bush not far away, in the
owner’s box, struck Robin Ventura, of the Chicago White Sox, with a
pitch. Ventura lost his temper and charged the mound. Ryan, who was then
forty-six years old, twenty years Ventura’s senior, caught Ventura in a
headlock and delivered six blows to his head and face, from a distance
of about six inches, really whaling the shit out of him. The scene
quickly became a canonical bit of sports video. It’s a wonderful example
of super-aggressive behavior presenting itself as a form of self-defense
when, strictly speaking, it isn’t—Ryan had started things by hitting
Ventura, after all. But Ryan got to be doubly the hero, slower to anger
but also unquestionably physically dominant. Bush, obviously, loved it.
'It was a fantastic experience for the Texas Rangers fans,' he
said."
Further down in his (long) article about Bush's self-reinvention,
Nicholas Lemann gives a fairly succinct statement of what's wrong in
Iraq: "Most of the available armed forces of the United States are
pinned down in a place that represents a threat chiefly because American
troops are there. That limits American options in places that pose much
more genuine threats. The reputation of American intelligence agencies
has been badly damaged—would anyone now heed warnings from them?
It is increasingly difficult to imagine other major powers joining the
United States in an international endeavor, even one that isn’t a war.
The government’s financial resources are depleted....
"It doesn’t seem that there will be, any time soon, a way to extract the
American forces without risking Iraq’s descent into chaos, of a kind
that would be both dangerous and humiliating to the United States and
would betray Bush’s repeated promises to bring the Iraqis a better
life."
Pat
Buchanan has a succinct statement about the state of Iraq, too:
"That the number of enemy and incidence of attacks have multiplied
fourfold in a year forces us to one conclusion: we are losing this war.
For the guerrilla wins if he does not lose, and the Iraqi insurgents are
not losing."
14.Oct.04
Joshua Green describes something you don't want to see in a dark
political alley:
Karl Rove in a
corner.
"If this year stays true to past form, the campaign will get nastier in
the closing weeks, and without anyone's quite registering it, Rove will
be right back in his element. He seems to understand—indeed, to count
on—the media's unwillingness or inability, whether from squeamishness,
laziness, or professional caution, ever to give a full estimate of him
or his work. It is ultimately not just Rove's skill but his character
that allows him to perform on an entirely different plane. Along with
remarkable strategic skills, he has both an understanding of the media's
unstated self-limitations and a willingness to fight in territory where
conscience forbids most others."
Speaking of underhanded political tactics, does
collecting voter registration forms from both sides and then shredding the
opposition's count?
11.Oct.04
Paul Hawken observes that "Socially Responsible Investing" has been
fully co-opted, and rendered meaningless. To keep investors happy, they
can get the same sort of return and a dose of warm, fuzzy with an SRI
fund that looks pretty much like any other fund.
But here's the problem: "Striving for the highest rate of financial
return is a cause of social injustice and environmental degradation
worldwide. It consistently leads to externalization of costs to workers,
people, the environment, and the future."
Bishop John Shelby Spong tries to understand
where his visceral negativity came from:
"Then Senator Zell Miller, his face contorted with anger, recited a
litany of weapons systems that he said Senator Kerry had opposed. What
he failed to say was that most of these military cuts were recommended
by a Secretary of Defense named Richard Cheney in the first Bush
Administration! The last time I looked, the Ten Commandments still
included an injunction against bearing false witness.
"Yes, other campaigns bend the truth but these tactics go beyond just
bending, they assassinate character and suggest traitorous behavior.
When that is combined with the fact that this party does this while
proclaiming itself the party of religion, cultural values and
faith-based initiatives is the final straw for me. I experience the
religious right as a deeply racist enterprise that seeks to hide its
intolerance under the rhetoric of super patriotism and 'family
values.'"
His conclusion:
"The combination of super patriotism with piety, used in the service of
fear to elicit votes while suppressing equality works, but it is lethal
for America and lethal for Christianity. It may be a winning formula but
it has no integrity and it feels dreadful to this particular
Christian."
The cold front wasn't as dramatic as the forecast made it sound,
although we did go from high 80s Friday evening to the 30s Sunday
morning, when I rode my bike to the club for our Big Match:
playing Pocatello, the team we had to beat to win a berth in Las Vegas
for the Sectionals. Our #3 team won their match, the human sacrifice we
sent up to #1 made a good showing but lost in straight sets, and Monica
and I split with our opponents, then played out a thrilling third
set in the quiet sanctum of indoor #2 while both teams cheered and
rattled the glass in the upstairs gallery after every point.
We were up a break at 4-1. Bryan held his serve with 3 aces and a
service winner. They broke back and then held under pressure at 3-4,
4-5, and finally 5-6, to force a tie-breaker. I served at 3-4 in the
tie-breaker, levelled it at 4, and then gave up a mini-break on an
unforced error after the return. I bricked the next two serves coming
from Bryan, and we were done,
5-7, 6-1, 7-6 (4) to Pocatello.
I plan to stop replaying that 3rd set and the tie-breaker in a day or
two.
It's not clear to me to what extent you get to speak your mind when
you're in the military, but The Washington Post has
interviews with Marines who aren't seeing the same rosy scenario as
the Bush/Cheney team needs to paint for the first Tuesday in
November.
"Every day you read the articles in the States where it's like, 'Oh,
it's getting better and better,' " said Lance Cpl. Jonathan Snyder, 22,
of Gettysburg, Pa. "But when you're here, you know it's worse every
day." Pfc. Kyle Maio, 19, of Bucks County, Pa., said he thought
government officials were reticent to speak candidly because of the
upcoming U.S. elections. "Stuff's going on here but they won't flat-out
say it," he said. "They can't get into it." Maio said that when he
arrived in Iraq, "I didn't think I was going to live this long, in all
honesty." He added, "it ain't that bad. It's just part of the job, I
guess."
"The reality right now is that the most dangerous opinion in the world
is the opinion of a U.S. serviceman," said Lance Cpl. Devin Kelly, 20,
of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Asked if he was concerned that the Marines would be punished for
speaking out, Autin responded: "We don't give a crap. What are they
going to do, send us to Iraq?"
Overheard passing a jewelry store at the mall yesterday:
"...and for every $300 you get your husbands to spend on you for
Christmas..."
I saw Novartis' Lamisil
ad on TV last night, during either the baseball game or the movie
I watched during commercials, I forget. It's cute (in a gross sort
of way), with the animated "Digger the Dermatophyte™"
who lives deep under your infected toenails. The friendly voiceover
makes the drug sound so helpful "travelling in your bloodstream" to
solve this unpleasant problem. Your doctor will want to know if you
have a history of liver or kidney problems, and may give you "a simple
blood test." That's to see if you're one of those people who will get
drug-induced hepatitis by putting
(E)-N-(6,6-dimethyl-2-hepten-4-ynyl)-N-methyl-1-naphthalenemethanamine
hydrochloride in your circulatory system.
Presumably the odds of no trouble are good, but Jeanette was one
of the unlucky ones, and I'm not about to run the experiment on
my liver. Toenails are just decorative anyway.
9.Oct.04
Ok, so the CPD locked any and all third party candidates out of the
debate. Whether you agree with that tactic or not, and whether you
think those third party candidates should have been refused entry to the
hall at Washington University in St. Louis, you don't think they should
have been
arrested for trying, do you? Ok, they were trying to serve
process papers on Commission on Presidential Debates officials, too,
relating to their suit in Arizona. But arrested
and being held in an undisclosed location?!
Friedman, on PMDs: "We need to think about this. There is some kind
of suicide-supply chain working in the Muslim world and in Iraq that is
able to draw recruits, connect them with bomb makers and deploy them
tactically against U.S. and Iraqi targets on an almost daily
basis."
You knew that there was another side to the scoring of last
night's debate, didn't you? None more likely to tell it like they
wanted it to be than georgewbush.com, whose email to me is dated 1:05am
today, but might as well have been written ahead of time:
"President Bush won a decisive victory last night. The President
dominated the debate with impassioned, thoughtful and concise arguments
that left Kerry looking petty and defensive as he sputtered out tired,
false political rhetoric and distortions that shattered his credibility
and contradicted the Senator's 20-year record of being on the wrong side
of history on national security and domestic policy."
Just in case you didn't get it in the first paragraph, Ken Mehlman added
the exact same claim in a "postscript." If he said it twice, it
must be true?
Maybe they were tuned into a different show? Bush seemed to be doing
all the sputtering from where I sat, on c-span's feed. Both men drew on
a share of tired rhetoric, but then stumping will do that to you sooner
or later. The format challenged them to think on their feet, and reading
the transcript shows a fair amount of that, but there were plenty of
the fall-back phrases, like this gem: "You can run, but you
can't hide."
I think the people of Missouri might relate to the point John Kerry made
about the strength of our "coalition" in Iraq: "If Missouri, just given
the number of people from Missouri who are in the military over there
today, were a country, it would be the third largest country in the
coalition, behind Great Britain and the United States."
This debate's real winner was the audience, who came up with
thoughtful, pointed questions for both candidates, and gave their
dodging around the issues an appropriately cool reception.
On the small business tax front,
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports "the Annenberg Public Policy
Center's FactCheck.org and other independent groups found that the Bush
campaign is counting every rich person who has even $1 of outside
business income as a small business owner, even if they have no
employees." That makes one small business in our household last year,
and two this year. Small business creation in our household is up
100% under the Bush administration! We're turning a corner!
Oh, and Mr. Bush, you do own part of a timber company, LSTF LLC,
although factcheck.org notes that they erred describing the source of
the $84; it was from oil and gas, before Lone Star Trust got into
growing trees. Lots more for both sides to correct in their piece,
"Distortions Galore at Second Presidential Debate."
8.Oct.04
Well, 2&frac; debates down, one to go. One of the pundits said he
wished there were 10 or 11 of them rather than only three; judging by
how grim the audience was for tonight's event, I don't think I'd want to
be watching 4 or 5 shows on.
Didn't you wonder what sort of bona fides the audience had to
provide tonight to demonstrate that they really were undecided? I was
suspicious beforehand, but not after watching them. That was a tough,
tough crowd, and other than a couple of one-issue members, they all
looked like they were a long way from wanting to vote for either
candidate.
I thought Bush failed, utterly, to look like he is President, much less
that he is just what the country needs for the coming 4 years. He was
petulant, argumentative, still beset with quirky facial expressions and
tics while he waited his turn. If I were Linda Grabel and asked him to
enumerate three mistakes he'd made in thousands of decisions, and he
said to me "don't you think the war in Iraq was a mistake, that's
what these people mean when they ask that question..." I would have been
really annoyed and insulted. There's no "these people," Mr. President,
I'm right here, asking you a reasonable question that you refused to
answer. She charitably said
to The NY Times that it appeared that Mr. Bush misunderstood
her question. Either way, he is loathe to admit a mistake, and if you
don't do that, there's no correcting your mistakes.
The NY
Times' editorial board is not so sanguine about Bush's performance
as David Brooks was when he supposed that Bush had won, talking on PBS.
We saw that before we watched our tape of the debate, and I had to
wonder if Brooks saw the same debate we did.
"(T)he president was utterly incoherent when asked about whom he might
name to the Supreme Court in a second term. His comment about how he
didn't want to offend any judges because he wanted "them all voting for
me" was a joke - but an unfortunate one, given the fact that the
president owes his job to a Supreme Court vote." It didn't sound to me
as if many in the audience got (or appreciated?) the joke; if I'd been
there, you would have heard my big guffah. "The president seemed to
fall back frequently on name-calling, denouncing his opponent as a
liberal and a tool of the trial lawyers."
I thought Bush was most unpresidential, once again petulant and
bullying, without a solid command of facts or argument. That may not
matter, and I find that sad.
This is it, our last day of what we'll know as "summer." Sunny and
highs in the mid-80s, just before a big fall cold front and low
pressure system clobber us for the weekend. Wouldn't you know we're
having our District tennis playoffs in it... the 8:30am Sunday match
is going to be a chilly mutha! Maybe some snow in the mountains and
lows down into the 30s here in town.
The SE breeze is on today, and the rain of acorns is well underway.
I cleaned out full gutters yesterday, and I expect they'll be full
again by Sunday, after the front blasts through tomorrow.
John Brown tried writing to the President a year ago when he was
looking for the 5,000 small businesses in Iraq that Rumsfeld said
had started up since May Day 2003. In legal terms, we would have to say
the reply is "non-responsive."
If you are interested in doing business in Iraq, help is available.
The Commerce Department has a
Business
Climate guide (speaking of cold fronts), and the
Bureau of Consular
Affairs' information sheet is must-reading before you go. (The
Doing Business
in Iraq FAQs are under revision at the moment.)
"TERRORISM: The risk of terrorism directed against U.S. citizens
and interests in Iraq remains extremely high.
"AREAS OF INSTABILITY/SAFETY AND SECURITY: Remnants of the former
Baath regime, transnational terrorists, and criminal elements remain
active throughout Iraq. Multinational Force-Iraq (MNF-I)-led military
operations continue, and there continue to be attacks against MNF-I
throughout the country. While a number of attacks have been concentrated
in Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi, Tikrit, Bayji, Baqubah, Mosul and Kirkuk,
the security environment across Iraq is dangerous, volatile and
unpredictable. Attacks on military as well as civilian targets,
including hotels, UN facilities, non-governmental organizations, police
stations, checkpoints, individuals doing humanitarian work and several
foreign Embassies, can occur at any time, especially during nighttime
hours. There has been an increase in the use of Improvised Explosive
Devices and/or mines on roads, particularly in plastic bags, soda cans,
and animal carcasses. Grenades and explosives have been thrown into
vehicles from overpasses, particularly in crowded areas. Rockets and
mortars have been fired at hotels, and vehicle-borne improvised
explosive devices have been used against targets throughout the
country."
That is to say, the problems are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad
and east, west, south and north somewhat.
"Large demonstrations have occurred in Baghdad and other areas of the
country, some of which have turned violent." For this July 16, 2004
update, they add hopefully that "security conditions are improving"
but I'm not too sure that's happened yet.
That's small picture stuff, though. Brown, who
resigned his
post in the foreign service in March 2003 is thinking about the
return of the World Warriors now. He includes a rundown of the
leading lights of the WWIV camp:
Norman
Podhoretz; David Brooks; William Safire; Clifford D. May, president
of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; commentator Lawrence
Kudlow; Peter Huessy, a member of the newly reactivated Committee on the
Present Danger; and Ed Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation;
Eliot A. Cohen; R. James Woolsey; Robert Kagan; William Kristol; Inigo
Thomas; Jeff Jacoby; Larry Haas; Harold Bloom; Bill O’Reilly.
"The World Warriors’ grandiose plans for perpetual war (what else can
one call it, since they don’t tell us how or when it will end) could
lead to the ultimate, and tragic, irony: America posing a greater danger
to itself than its enemies do."
7.Oct.04
Frank Rich says debate #1 might be as pivotal as the famous
Nixon-Kennedy debate in 1960.
The
piece is datelined October 10th, for this Sunday's paper, running
the risk that tomorrow's 2nd round might scoop him. He's a pretty sharp
guy, though... and the look behind the scenes is fascinating:
"...the thoroughness with which Mr. Baker's offstage maneuvers set his guy
up for disaster on Sept. 30 may tell us more about the state of play in
the campaign than the much-dissected style and substance of the
debaters' onstage performance.
"It was Mr. Baker's job to negotiate the 32-page debate agreement with
Vernon Jordan, representing the Kerry camp, and by all accounts, the
Bush campaign got almost everything it wanted. Yet as we now know, every
Bush stipulation backfired, from the identically sized podiums that made
the 5-foot-11 president look as if he needed a booster stool, to the
flashing "Time's up!" lights that emphasized Mr. Kerry's
uncharacteristic brevity and Mr. Bush's need to run out the clock by
repeating stock phrases ad infinitum and ad absurdum."
This image mishandling stands in stark contrast to what has gone before:
"Mr. Bush has been posed by his imagineers to appear to be the fifth
head on Mount Rushmore; he has kept the coffins of the American war dead
off-screen; he has been seen in shirtsleeves at faux-folksy Town Hall
meetings that, until his second debate with Mr. Kerry, were so firmly
policed in content and attendees that they would make a Skull and Bones
soiree look like a paragon of democracy in action...."
Newsweek
getting
into the debate fact check business and finding the Veep well short
of a Happy Meal. As John Edwards put it, you're still not being
straight with the American people, Mr. Vice President. The sands of
justification for the war continue to shift into the twilight.
About the only one left standing is "it's better to fight somewhere else
than here at home," in which case we could have saved a bundle on
transportation costs by just going after Cuba or Haiti.
Their title, "Rewriting History," is so overloaded from the Bush/Cheney
administration that it needs to be a weekly section rather than a single
article.
It's nice to be getting email every day from the President and the
Democratic nominee running against him. It really makes me feel like
part of the process. Today, George W. Bush writes this to me:
"My opponent continues his pattern of confusing contradictions. After
voting for the war, after saying my decision to remove Saddam Hussein
from power was the right decision, he now says it was all a mistake.
But asked, does that mean our troops are dying for a mistake? He said,
no. You can't have it both ways. He can't say it's a mistake and not a
mistake."
The only problem, really, is that I want to write back to them. Sadly,
I doubt they'd get around to reading my email. Here's what I'd write to
the President:
Dear George:
You must feel really clever putting John Kerry in this paradox of trying
to criticize your actions in the Iraq war while not criticizing the
military in any way. I bet your strongest supporters really like that,
too. Stick it to 'em, George! they must be thinking.
But it only angers me. My idea of "supporting the troops" is very
different than yours. I wouldn't send them into a misbegotten war, for
starters. A thousand dead, thousands wounded and tens of thousands
innocent Iraqi people are suffering for your mistakes, and you seem to
care only about getting re-elected. Your inability to admit your
mistakes concerns me a great deal. If you really can't see that you've
made some whoppers, you need to find a new line of work, as does your
Vice-president, who says he would do everything exactly the same if he
had to do it over.
And so on...
6.Oct.04
We watched the debate on C-Span last night, which had a fixed,
split-screen view of both candidates pretty much the whole time,
allowing us to keep an eye on the other guy while one was talking.
They both splendidly at avoiding serious misbehavior. I saw one
eyeroll from Dick, and a couple odd things from John, but mostly
I'm sorry I didn't see that view of the Bush/Kerry debate, which
would have been a lot more fun.
Both sides are declaring total victory, and I'm in no position to judge,
given my feelings for Cheney and my desire for Edwards to do well.
I was impressed by the way Edwards went on the attack; it took Cheney a
while to get his digs in (but dig he must). By the end he'd come around
to the core message of the Bush/Cheney campaign:
be afraid, and trust us. They've certainly given us plenty of
reason to be fearful, but they seem to come up a little short on the
second half of that deal.
"...what we know from this administration is that a long
résumé does not equal good judgment."
"The vice president and president like to talk about their experience on
the campaign trail. Millions of people have lost their jobs. Millions
have fallen into poverty. Family incomes are down while the cost of
everything is going up. Medical costs up the highest they’ve ever been
over the last four years. We have this mess in Iraq. Mr. Vice President,
I don’t think the country can take four more years of this kind of
experience."
Say what you like about Dick Cheney, he appears to have his
ducks fully
aligned on reaping his just desserts from Halliburton: the
compensation he got while Vice President was "deferred" (helps with
taxes donchaknow), the profit he might get from his options is assigned
to charity, and he even went so far as to take out an insurance policy
to make sure he gets paid even if Halliburton tanks, thanks to the
asbestos liability he had them take on while CEO.
We're just sure that his stint as corporate chief had nothing to do with
the years of connections he accumulated while serving in government, and
that Halliburton's happy fortunes (such as they are) in the war business
have nothing to do with their generous compensation. No connection
whatsoever. Sometimes "the facts" don't smell so good.
As for
FactCheck.org's take on the debate, they have sauce enough for
both ganders, noting they both "mangled" the facts:
"Cheney wrongly implied that FactCheck had defended his tenure as CEO of
Halliburton Co., and the vice president even got our name wrong. He
overstated matters when he said Edwards voted 'for the war' and 'to
commit the troops, to send them to war.' He exaggerated the number of
times Kerry has voted to raise taxes, and puffed up the number of small
business owners who would see a tax increase under Kerry's
proposals.
"Edwards falsely claimed the administration 'lobbied the Congress' to
cut the combat pay of troops in Iraq, something the White House never
supported, and he used misleading numbers about jobs."
They said "in fact, Edwards was mostly right" about "Cheney's
responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles," and gave Edwards
partial credit.
The jobs issue is interesting, in spite of the limited responsibility
and power Presidents have to make or lose any besides their own.
Bush/Cheney are going to preside over a net loss of jobs (and an even
larger failure to keep up with the growth of the labor force over the
last 4 years). Losses in the private sector and (especially)
manufacturing have been huge, but have been balanced by a growth in
local, state and federal government jobs. Some irony from the party
that thinks the less government the better (unless it's benefiting
them directly, of course).
And FactCheck didn't bring it out, but in the business of counting
casualties, neither candidate pointed out the tens of thousands
of Iraqis who have died, a great number of whom were not "bad guys"
(or bad women, or bad children). We've suffered in the war, to be sure,
but then we started it, didn't we? And the suffering in this country
is nothing at all like the suffering we've visited upon theirs.
The best we can hope for is that it's for a very good cause, and that
someday it will net positive for them. The day is far from at hand,
a fact that Bush/Cheney must at the very least distract us from,
in their election bid.
The script at this point is to show no hesitation, admit no error.
"What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to
recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the right same
course of action.... We did exactly the right thing."
For a completely erroneous reason? The
comprehensive report to the DCI is in, and its 200MB of PDF files
don't add up to a reason to go to war.
Among its important findings: "Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program
in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest
concerted efforts to restart the program. Although Saddam clearly
assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been
developed up to the 1991 war, the program ended and the intellectual
capital decayed in the succeeding years."
"While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been
discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared
chemical weapons stockpile in 1991."
"In practical terms, with the destruction of the Al Hakam facility, Iraq
abandoned its ambition to obtain advanced BW weapons quickly. ISG found
no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program
or was conducting BW-specifi c work for military purposes."
Most unintendedly revealing line from last night's debate:
"I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first
time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight."
The Senate's only in session on Tuesdays?!
Anyway, Cheney has met Edwards publicly on at least two occasions,
maybe his memory is starting to get muddled? In February 2001, he
called him by name and said he was honored to be with "you all" before
a National Prayer Breakfast.
If only we still had tails, this would be so much more obvious, wouldn't
it? But our evolutionary wiring still functions without fuzzy wagging and
tucking, as
Stephen
Dinan spells out in detail: there's a new lead dog in this race.
"Now that Bush has been revealed as the beta in a head-to-head match,
reporters will likely swoop in and start hitting Bush much, much harder.
Pent-up resentment of the alpha can rush in now that it is safe."
Dinan
reviews the veep debate too, sniffing out the real alpha male in
the Republican ticket.
Bush and Kerry duke it out
in the
pages of Science magazine. I'm not sure everyone did his own
work on this one, but then it should be a team effort after all. The
Bush record on science is not all that good, from my point of view.
5.Oct.04
I (still!) don't have a cellphone, so this is purely academic interest
for me, but the idea of creating a
hackers
reward program with contributions toward working around crippleware
seems quite elegant. I suppose the people fearful of losing their
ringtone franchise don't see it that way and are dusting off their
DMCA lawyers?
Speaking of ringtones, I haven't heard anyone with
Under My Wheels, done by Alice Cooper; that's the one I'd want.
(For 3 or 4 calls at least, then I'd be tired of it. Which explains a
lot about why there's so much money to be made in selling insipid
electronic versions of familiar tunes to mobile phone users.)
Veep debate prep:
John Nichols in The Capitol Times,
Cheney owes us explanation on crucial issues. He offers ten
questions to facilitate the explanation.
"Considering the fact that your predictions about the ease of the Iraq
invasion and occupation turned out to be so dramatically off the mark,
and the fact that you were in charge of the White House task force on
terrorism that failed, despite repeated and explicit warnings, to
anticipate the terrorist threats to the World Trade Center, what is it
about your analytical skills that should lead Americans to believe your
claims that America will be more vulnerable to attack if John Kerry and
John Edwards are elected?"
Now that Dan Rather has pushed anyone in the neighborhood on his own
sword and the Karl Rove spin-machine has turned the Bush Guard story
into a component of a left-wing conspiracy theory, it's time to move on,
right? Greg Palast isn't so
sure, and he offers insight from
The Real
Lt. Col. Burkett, in his own words to BBC television.
It's all about staying on the offensive, don't you know? Bush's cush
stint more than 30 years ago should be so old news (as his Press
Secretary keeps insisting it is), but there's this nagging sense that
we never have got the whole story. Could it be... Shredded?
Palast has a
complete transcript of his interview with the Lieutenant
Colonel.
"Are you saying he jumped the queue?" Well, DUH!
"...is there one set of rules for the Bushes and one set of rules for
the rest of us?" Double duh, and the fact that Bush's National
Guard records have been carefully redacted to remove anything
embarrassing to the Governor is prima facie evidence of criminal
acts. For which the physical evidence needed to prosecute has gone
missing. Very conveniently.
I don't know about you, but I don't really want to hear
voices coming from the urinal, even if it is an unbeatable way to
advertise Country Music Television. But who better to bring it to
market than AllOver Media
("Targeting captive audiences since 1987")?
In the humorous/collectible email subject line category, today's
exhortation from Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman:
"Fight the Spin--Spread the Truth!" Amen, brother. Fight the power.
I asked earlier for any Republican fact check page on debate #1, but
haven't heard any responses. The campaign site does have a
Debate Facts
page, but my head spins a bit when I try to see where the fact check
part is. There's a parody "Kerry briefing book," under the stamp "Just
the Facts." There's the ludicrous Big Lie statement of how it turned
out from Racicot ("Tonight, President George W. Bush stood in stark
contrast to a vacillating Senator John Kerry") and here, this
long list,
with video bites and cute flip-flop graphic.
4.Oct.4
George Soros spells it out:
Why We Must Not
Re-elect President Bush. "How could President Bush convince people
that he is good for our security, better than John Kerry? By building on
the fears generated by the collapse of the twin towers and fostering a
sense of danger. At a time of peril, people rally around the flag and
President Bush has exploited this. His campaign is based on the
assumption that people do not really care about the truth and they will
believe practically anything if it is repeated often enough,
particularly by a President at a time of war. There must be something
wrong with us if we fall for it. For instance, some 40% of the people
still believe that Saddam Hussein was connected with 9/11 - although it
is now definitely established by the 9/11 Commission, set up by the
President and chaired by a Republican, that there was no
connection."
Space Ship One
bagged the X prize with a 2nd flight well over the "sub-orbital" bar
(they went 12 extra km to 112, beating the X-15's 41-year-old record)
and well within the 2-week time limit (5 days!). The 10 million bucks
well help defray expenses. Nice work!
It all depends on your point of view: George Bush was "very honest,"
irritated "at his opponent's misrepresentations," "a little
incredulous," "appropriately on the offense," "careful" and
"straightforward." Or maybe he was "downright perturbed," "droopy,"
"beset," "irritated and confused," "confused and worried." John Tierney
strolls through
Spin Alley after debate #1.
Zeitshabba looks at it from a different angle (hey, C-SPAN showed
both candidates the whole time! Let's go over there!) and wonders if
maybe Bush was sending and receiving signals. He'd have to go to
Detention for that, wouldn't he?
I can hardly imagine what it's like to be
a reporter in Baghdad right now.
Farnaz
Fassihi gives us a sample:
"I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a
scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in
the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in
restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for
stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to
scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak
English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American,
can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are
saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't."
3.Oct.04
It's been so many years ago, I'm not quite sure when I started...
1993? 1994? but today will be my last performance directing the
choir at the
Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. I'll be back in the tenor
section, happily following our new music director's lead, and probably
struggling to resist kibitzing too much.
The cover of
the Aug. 25, 2004 Science News has a map of the
continental US, redrawn so that each state is sized proportionally to
its population. It explains why most people aren't quite sure where
Idaho is, and why they might get it confused with Iowa.
I watched a little bit of the Dodgers-Giants game yesterday, hoping the
Giants could win and find a way to get into the playoffs. I saw them
take an early 3-0 lead and then did other stuff for a couple hours,
tuned back in at the bottom of the ninth. The Giants still led, and I
had somewhere to go, so I didn't bother staying for the ending.
Good thing I'm not a Dodgers fan, I would have hated to miss
what happened next.
In The NY Times' story,
Before
Applying, Check Out the Blogs, this quote from the executive
director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard
Law School sounded like a one-phrase distillation of
the Cluetrain Manifesto:
"corporate marketing and branding is often an exercise in hypercontrol
of a message, and that doesn't work well in a blogging context." I want
to say "we're all bloggers now," but of course we aren't, quite.
If the world were a village of 100
people, no one would be blogging. If it were a small town of
10,000 people, 3 people would be chronicaling their lives and opinions
online. But your life
is
being chronicalled one way or the other. Don't you want control of
the message?
Tom
Friedman's been out writing a book, with a longer stretch of time to
think about where we stand in Iraq: "(E)ach time the Bush team had to
choose between doing the right thing in the war on terrorism or siding
with its political base and ideology, it chose its base and ideology.
More troops or radically lower taxes? Lower taxes. Fire an evangelical
Christian U.S. general who smears Islam in a speech while wearing the
uniform of the U.S. Army or not fire him so as not to anger the
Christian right? Don't fire him. Apologize to the U.N. for not finding
the W.M.D., and then make the case for why our allies should still join
us in Iraq to establish a decent government there? Don't apologize - for
anything - because Karl Rove says the "base" won't like it. Impose a
"Patriot Tax" of 50 cents a gallon on gasoline to help pay for the war,
shrink the deficit and reduce the amount of oil we consume so we send
less money to Saudi Arabia? Never. Just tell Americans to go on
guzzling. Fire the secretary of defense for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, to
show the world how seriously we take this outrage - or do nothing? Do
nothing. Firing Mr. Rumsfeld might upset conservatives. Listen to the
C.I.A.? Only when it can confirm your ideology. When it disagrees -
impugn it or ignore it."
His conclusion: "We're in trouble in Iraq. We have to immediately get
the Democratic and Republican politics out of this policy and start
honestly reassessing what is the maximum we can still achieve there and
what every American is going to have to do to make it happen. If we do
not, we'll end up not only with a fractured Iraq, but with a fractured
America, at war with itself and isolated from the world."
2.Oct.04
With one debate down (and 2½ to go),
the
campaign trail is suddenly more interesting. After the president
left the debate reeling and a little punch-drunk from Kerry's staying on
the offensive without wilting or wavering, Bush was a tiger in front of
his invited audience in Pennsylvania. All the bogus charges that
wouldn't work in the glare of the 1-on-1 matchup came back out of the
closet. "The use of troops to defend America must never be subject to a
veto by countries like France," Bush says. After failing to look more
presidential than Kerry in the debate on national security, he's all
about that on the stump: "Which candidate can best protect America's
families and our national security?"
According to
the report in The NY Times, Bush "ridiculed Mr. Kerry's
statement in the debate that he would only pre-emptively attack another
nation in a way that 'passes the global test where your countrymen, your
people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can
prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.'" No proving
to the world, for sure. No proving to your countrymen (and women)? No
need for the folks at home to understand? Well, not if the Congress
rolls over to Executive Power, anyway.
Here's the Bush mythos, embodied by 18-year-old college freshman Brandon
Glen: "President Bush isn't really great at debating. He's not the best at
thinking on his feet. But in theory and in practice, he's a great leader
and commander in chief, and that's what this country needs now."
Bush and his team are indeed masterful at depicting the past in a
positive light, as Karl Rove came out of the closet to explain: Bush's
appearance was "focused and pensive," even though
the cameras showed
him as peevish, annoyed, fidgety.
John McCain is in Bush's entourage (and camp, certainly), but still has
that dangerous habit of letting the truth slip out once in a while:
"He presented himself well, John did. Kerry came out slugging. In the
last six weeks, it was probably his brightest moment." In the warm
light of solo campaign rallies, Bush is a master of "never any doubt in
my mind" shadow boxing.
Factcheck.org double-checks the first debate, as did
the Democrats.
I looked for the Republicans' effort, but all I could turn up was their
flip-flop theme, endless parsing of Kerry's statements over the years to
find whatever inconsistencies they can. (If you find a Republican
fact-check page, let me know, and I'll post the link.)
Yeah, Kerry voted for and against the $87 billion for the military
and for reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. He voted for a bill
that would have paid for it by partial repeal of recent tax cuts;
Bush threatened to veto that bill, and it failed. He voted against the
"we'll figure out how to pay for it someday" version, which passed and
the President signed. Bush and Rove know how the Congress works and the
fact that legislation is more complex than "for" or "against." The
voters are supposed to know that, too, what with high school and its
civics class being compulsory and all. Sometimes we forget, though,
especially when politicians are shouting at us and marketeers are
manipulating us with commercial messages.
1.Oct.04
There was no such thing as a webcam when the Big One blasted off on May
18, 1980, but now we have
Volcano Cam.
I hope they're clever enough to make an archive of highlights from it,
including something good from today's eruption.
Nobody's "anti-digit" anymore, and nobody's dialing, either. The first
phone number I knew was in the
Woodruff exchange: Woodruff-2, 9685. My best friends down the
street were in Edgewood. And once upon a time there was an Anti-Digit-Dialing
League. Or so I hear.
Since our memory goes back far enough, our technology can, too: we have
a nice Princess® phone, made by Western Electric, with a dial.
I don't imagine many of my readers will mistake me for an entirely
objective analyst on the matter, but I though Kerry pretty much kicked
Bush's butt in
last night's debate.
My debate forecast wasn't all that
clever, it turns out. The "Iraq is essential to war on terror" subtext
from Bush was there, but "supporting the troops" didn't come out in his
favor. Aside from the most obvious issue of sending hundreds of
thousands of men and women into harm's way, Bush has a lot to answer for
in that regard, so it didn't work.
Making Kerry look indecisive? Didn't happen. Kerry knew the challenges
that would be thrown at him and he was prepared for each. The question
of "what do you think is the greatest threat to our security" was met
with trememdous clarity: "nuclear proliferation." After Kerry had
described the threat and the current administration's failings in its
regard, Bush used his 90 seconds to follow Kerry's lead, but also to
confuse the issue into the ill-defined "weapons of mass destruction." I
did wonder whether Bush would be able to say nuclear
proliferation without garbling it; he managed with his usual "nucular"
but got "proliferation" better than I expected.
Bush's left eybrow -- what's up with that? Another pretzel
incident?
"Look, I know how the world works" and "I know how these people think."
Does that really sound convincing to anyone out there? It sounds to me
like "I don't have a rational response, so I'll just argue from
authority and hope I can pull it off."
Lehrer gave Bush a chance to repudiate Dick Cheney's poisonous
suggestion that the terrorists were just waiting for a Kerry presidency
to make their next attack, and he ducked the issue completely:
he doesn't have to handicap the odds of terrorist attack if Kerry is
elected because "I don't believe it's going to happen. I believe I'm
going to win, because the American people know I know how to lead."
Mixed messages, mixed messages, wrong war at the wrong time at the right
-er- wrong place. "We saw the same intelligence." We didn't see the
mixed messages from Kerry, though. There was a lot of responding to
rhetoric not in evidence as they worked through the handlers' scripts
against the other's speeches. Again, the converted will appreciate the
preaching, but there must be a lot of people not quite sure what he was
talking about. (And all the unconverted will miss the secret passwords
in Bush's wrap-up, "We've climbed the mighty mountain. I see the valley
below, and it's a valley of peace.")
Did Bush start reading off his sparring partner's script when he
responded to Kerry's plan for improving Homeland Security?
"I don't think we want to get to how he's going to pay for all these
promises. It's like a huge tax gap and -- anyway, that's for another
debate."
Kerry used repetition in the description of our one-sided "coalition"
to go on the offense against Iraq (as if 10 years of daily bombing isn't
offensive enough?) and Bush tried to accuse him of denigrating our allies.
"You're forgetting about Poland!" No one mentioned El Salvador,
Eritrea, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia or Uzbekistan, either. The
Bush team is trying to make it a fine line between a legitimate issue
(Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Russia, China, etc. couldn't be
persuaded) and belittling the contribution and sacrifice of those who
did join the US, some of whom have done more than try to curry
favor. It isn't all that fine a line, of course. The US-appointed
leader of Iraq deserves our best support and respect for putting his
life on the line, but there is no getting around that he's a puppet,
especially after his performance echoing Bush campaign speech soundbites
during his visit here.
Kerry's contrast of the different approaches to Iraq from Bush and
Bush père was unanswered. Bush once again failed to make a
convincing argument that Iraq was a grave enough threat to justify
invasion, but I suspect there aren't many Undecideds left around that
issue. Either you've been hammered by the proofs by repeated assertion
and your pickup truck is plastered with yellow ribbons and flag stickers,
or you never will be. "The best way to protect you is to stay on the
offense" is far from an assured strategy. (At a minimum, you'd want to
point your offense at the right goal.) Check with the Israelis to
see how reliable that approach is.
Kerry looked Presidential, Bush looked outmanned, tired, especially
toward the end. His smile got more and more crooked as the debate wore
on. The brief moments when the camera caught him during Kerry's answers
made it clear why the Bush team didn't want the cameras to be able to
sneak such peeks. It's an intense task, to be sure, coming up with 2
minute answers (or padding a 10 second answer out to 2 minutes so that
you don't give up time to your opponent), but it doesn't seem like 90
minutes of debating should be all that taxing compared to what he's been
doing.
Jim Lehrer won the debate, I'd say. Great questions, great control of
the process (and audience -- how did they accomplish that?!), and
perfect extemporizing when the candidates' answers needed more time or
interaction. His description of the CPD-controlled format was precise
and succinct, and he did his job without getting in the way of the two
men saying what they wanted to say.
That leaves Kerry first among the contenders for office, and Bush third
in a two-man race. There was none of the energetic, focused and smart
sort of work that James Fallows saw in the Bush-Richards race. It's
been a long 4 years, and Bush has managed significant crises to the best
of his ability. I think his best years are behind him; no dishonor in
that. We should thank him for his service, and start paying him a
pension rather than a salary.
The strategy of casting Bush as underdog was a non-starter this time
around. Can't be "strong and steady" and fumble-tongued at the same
time. He mostly stayed away from the "jes folks" approach that works so
well on the stump with hand-picked audiences, but did not rise to the
level of careful thought and quick wit that we expect and deserve
for our country's executive. He could be low-balling the first debate
(but on his most important topic?) to work a come-from-behind strategy,
but that doesn't seem too likely. Kerry looked amply Presidential, and
I thought gave a masterful performance.
The Toronto Star readers gave the nod to
Kerry "by a landslide."
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
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Monday, 01-Nov-2004 09:26:42 MST
http://fortboise.org/blog/200410.html
