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unraveling
31.Mar.07
April Fools
Matthew Dowd jumped parties to ride the Bush train to the top, and then
realized it was on the wrong track. While he was chief campaign
strategist, getting Bush re-elected. He waited until after that
was done to admit it publicly.
His faith in Mr. Bush was misplaced.
"He said, his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s presidency is so great that
he feels a sense of duty to go public given his role in helping Mr. Bush
gain and keep power."
We feel your pain, to be sure.
He says he has an op-ed in the drawer, all ready to go, "Kerry Was
Right" to call for a withdrawal from Iraq last year.
Will Bush Sneak Troops Out In The Night?
It's not a great essay, but this
Opinion piece in the Chattanoogan.com poses an interesting question,
and has some essential components. Most of us have no direct experience
of war (thank goodness), and no doubt there are many who might say
something like "the only war I was alive for prior to March 2003 was the
Gulf War, so in my mind, I imagined a similar experience for the Iraq
War. Swift victory, quick results."
Let's just say he wasn't paying very close attention, given how many
wars were started or
continued in the 1990s. Remember the war in Bosnia, for example?
Kosovo?
But the question about withdrawal equaling defeat is well-taken.
"Does Bush plan on leaving the troops over in Iraq forever?" He has
told us he does plan on keeping troops there through the end
of his term, on numerous occasions, and unlike many of the things he
tells us, this one seems to be true.
Jenkins writes: "The real enemy here is a mindset, the mindset of
radical Islamic extremists who hate the West and Israel." Whatever
we said we were fighting for, or whoever we said was the
enemy, we're doing an incomparable job of ensuring that a mindset of
hatred will be with us for generations to come.
It isn't just radical Islamic extremists who have a problem. Bush's
mind is set, too. In spite of having no clear mission now that his
vendetta has been satisfied and Hussein is dead, he's decided we can't
leave until "the job" is done. That means we can't leave until we
decided what the hell the job is, as well.
Last October,
Bush said "our goals are unchanging," and that "our mission is to
help the elected government in Iraq defeat common enemies, to bring
peace and stability to Iraq, and make our nation more secure."
There's ample evidence that our continued presence in Iraq is working
directly against the last two of those three, and the first goal can't
help but be confused, given how many enemies we've made in the region,
and how many mutual enemies are crowded together there.
This, by the way, was the press conference where he announced the Iraq
Study Group, whose recommendations he has since
studiously
refused to consider.
The Doors of Perception
Or at least a portal into Web 2.0, in case you're wondering what (all)
that is: 23 things to
do in 9 weeks (or whatever), and call it
Learning 2.0. Thanks
to the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (the "plcmc"
in the proliferating domain names) for the idea, execution, and
invitation. And
Wired for bringing it to our attention.
30.Mar.07
Living Your Own Life, Finding Your Own Voice
Oddly enough,
this speech by
Steve Jobs is the worst performance of his I've seen, but it's the
best and most heartfelt message I've seen him deliver. Funny to suppose
it, but I'm guessing the venue was a little intimidating for him.
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other
people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drownd out
your own inner voice."
End-of-March is a bit early for the Commencement form, but some
reminders are always timely.
29.Mar.07
Outsourcing Democracy
The mass protests are no longer to be found on the streets; Tom
Engelhardt observes that
they're still in
the opinion polls, whether you look in this country or in Iraq.
And strangely enough, a majority of us in both places are pretty well
agreed on the situation.
"If a single conclusion can be drawn about the U.S. presence in Iraq,
it's this: The longer we have been there, the worse it's gotten. We've
now reached the point where, with Americans "protecting" Iraqis from
themselves, nearly one in five of them have nonetheless either fled
their country, been forced into internal exile, or died in the
mayhem."
What was the mission again?
Lies, Damn Lies, and Coordinates
John Pike, regular talking head from GlobalSecurity.org ("Reliable
Security Information"),
on the Newshour, explaining the problem with producing
incontrovertible evidence of position in the matter of the British
sailors and marines taken prisoner by Iran:
"And the problem with all of this, of course, is that they weren't
recording all of this in real time. And even if they had been recording
it in real time, it can all be faked. You're not going to have something
that's going to be foolproof like, say, a voting machine."
Ironic humor would not have been appropriate in the discussion, had Pike
been feeling puckish, but there was no evidence he was trying to be
funny. GPS devices are quite capable of "recording all this in real
time," and it's reasonable to assume that it was. His point that
"it can all be faked" is true enough, but Iran's pathetic attempt at
that ("ah no, we meant over here") shows the deception might well
not hold up to scrutiny.
Apart from the non sequitur humor, I have to say anything coming out of
Pike (at least) and GlobalSecurity.org gets a little less benefit of the
doubt than it used to.
Is it Malfeasance, or Just Incompetence?
Alberto Gonzales can't fully recall his involvement in firing those U.S.
Attorneys, but
his former chief of staff has good notes. For his part, Kyle Sampson
can't distinguish political maneuvers and "performance reasons." It's
all the same, eh?
Gonzales says if
anything was impropoer, people would be fired. Yeah, we've heard that
sort of thing before; is he going to fire himself? Karl Rove?
He wasn't under oath when talking to Pete Williams of NBC, but the facts
in evidence make him seem a little confused, at least. He wasn't
involved in specific deliberations. Ok, ah, why the hell not? He
was more focused on keeping the White House "appropriately advised of
the progress of our review." That is, the role of the Attorney General
in this matter was to keep the White House informed?!
He just gave his blessing to the final list after the decision(s) were
made. By someone else, not him.
He may be a little slow, but he is learning the ropes. "I know
that—with respect to this particular topic, people parse carefully
the words that I use. (LAUGHTER) And—and I wanna be careful
about what I say."
Ha ha. Good thinking. Do be advised that after we "parse carefully," we
assess the truth, too. You want to be real careful about that the
next time you raise your right hand for Congress.
The bad news is that the guy who seems to have taken this most seriously
and who has the most integrity in this affair—Kyle
Sampson—has jumped ship. Those left behind seem considerably less
deserving. Just going by
the public communication.
28.Mar.07
Karl Rove, in the White House, with a Blackberry
It's obviously been a political hatchet job, but the Bush team has a
license for that sort of thing, after all. Why all the
excitement? On the eve of Congressional testimony from the Attorney
General's deposed Chief of Staff (and prospect for one of those US
Attorney spots; just a coincidence, I'm sure), and one AG staffer
already announcing she'd take the Fifth, the plot is still
thickening.
Dan Froomkin's column,
The Rovian Theory, has this juicy tidbit about halfway down,
quoted from Alexis Simendinger in the National Journal:
"Do you want Karl Rove on TV, or do you want the truth?"
–Tony Snow
"White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove may have forfeited
potential claims of executive privilege over the dismissals of eight
U.S. attorneys—if he communicated about the latter outside the
White House e-mail system, using his Republican National Committee
e-mail account or RNC equipment," which he probably did, since
"one former White House official familiar with Rove's work habits"
says he does "about 95%" of his email on his RNC-provided
BlackBerry.
Then Froomkin quotes Joe Conason from Salon, not putting too fine
a point on the "no oath or transcript" chat concept: "Rove is a proven
liar who cannot be trusted to tell the truth even when he is under oath,
unless and until he is directly threatened with the prospect of prison
time."
SawStop
This is unsolicited (and unremunerated), but I have to say, this is a
brilliant
idea: a sensor on a table saw that detects the electrical properties
of the human body (a finger, say), and trips a fast actuator
to—KA CHANG!—stop the blade.
A Point of Personal Privilege
Former Governor Phil Batt served up a sizeable
smackdown
for our Speaker of the House in the Statesman's Reader View
column today. He had some experience with the state House of
Representatives before his term as Governor, and lauded Pete Cenarrusa
in particular (who he'd voted against for Speaker), and three other
previous office holders who played fair in serving the people of Idaho.
As compared to the current right-wing Lawrence Denney, who is keen on
using the considerable power of his office to implement
payback
time. You didn't support me? Forget about having your legislation go
anywhere.
As Batt put it, "This is outrageous. The people of Idaho are entitled to
have their representatives base their votes on the merits of a bill, not
on who backed the loser in a speaker's contest."
He's the Dictator
"It makes no sense for politicians in Washington DC to be dictating
arbitrary timelines for our military commanders in a war zone 6,000
miles away,"
says George Bush. By that dirty word "politicians," he
means "Congress" of course, not his Commander-in-Chiefness.
The narrow, nearly party-line votes in the House and Senate to start
thinking about an end to our military adventure has sparked a new round
of wailing about "support the troops," and talk of the second-ever veto
by this President. Let's see, if the Congress sends him a funding bill
and he vetoes it, knowing they don't have the votes to override... why,
the President would have failed to support the troops!
That's without raising the matter of the bogus intelligence and
machinations that went into sending the troops on this misbegotten
mission, draining our military capacity, getting 3,000 and then some
killed, many more thousands wounded, and so on.
Stop loss orders, calling up the "National" Guard for international
missions, bringing Reserves into service... such is the Bush/Cheney
"support" for our troops.
27.Mar.07
Blog Whores
Oh here's a tidy business: slide in a little solicted testimonial
about random products in your blog and collect a little under-the-table
payoff for it. I guess the more difficult question is what took it so
long to get started?
At least PayForPost has an honest name, even if the business isn't.
Gotta love the CEO's defense: he's "helped bloggers become more
successful." Another slimey "stakeholder" thinks it's just like product
placement in the movies: "You put an ad inside the text and it's more of
a subtle way of advertising. It doesn't take away from the blogger."
Doesn't take away?!
Compensation from marketers "may influence" what one writes and
integrity "may no longer be available."
26.Mar.07
Clean and Articulate
John Yoo's explanation for why we set up Gitmo is a frightening glimpse
inside his mind: "You're never going to have a war that's so clean that
you're not going to capture members of the enemy."
A "clean" war would be one where you simply kill all the enemy,
presumably.
The counterpoint to Yoo on
tonight's Newshour segment with Judy Woodruff was Georgetown
University professor Neal Katyal, who successfully argued the 2006
Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Katyal pointed out that it was a
bit more nuanced than "we need a military detention facility," but
rather, "let's put them somewhere that the Constitution doesn't apply."
Yoo casually dismissed that complaint, said the law does too apply, and
indeed the Supreme Court has taken some steps to ensure that, against
the work of Yoo to rewrite executive prerogative by memorandum.
25.Mar.07
More Storytelling, Anyone?
It's all the rage these days, and George W. Bush wants to do his part
for its promotion: "private interviews" (please turn off cellphones and
alarm watches, and no recording devices of any kind) will be fine, but
testifying under oath is right out. "Executive prerogative," don't
you know.
When the hell did we vote for that?
Frank Rich details all the other stuff we got, but didn't vote for
in
his column this week (on Times Select): "Mr. Gonzales may be a
nonentity, but he’s a nonentity like Zelig. He’s been present at every
dubious legal crossroads in Mr. Bush’s career."
Or try
Maria Cocco's point of view: "(L)oyalty to George W. Bush was really
the only credential Gonzales' public record offered," and good ol'
George is doing his best to return the favor. And keep a lot of their
shared history on the Q.T.
23.Mar.07
Congress Reining Bush
It sounded like the President said "Damnocrats" in the video bit on
Washington Week
as he accused them of "political theater." Who was that guy with the
red hat in the background, I wondered, as his own theatrical staging
made me laugh so hard I didn't hear what else he said.
The topic is no laughing matter, however. Four years on, will the
Congress agree to continue funding the Bush/Cheney war of adventure in
Iraq? It's starting to get iffy.
Downtown Marshmallow Roast
The good
news is that that's the way the bus is designed to burn, and nobody
got hurt. The bad news is another totaled bus, and flames shooting three
stories in the air might—just might—discourage
ridership.
A spokesperson for the local transit authority says "ValleyRide intends
to keep that model in service for several more years," but I'm thinking
we'll wait to see if it keeps up the 5 month fire cycle before that
decision is final.
Take as Much Time as You Need
Now here's a vacation policy you could learn to love, brought to you
by
Netflix: as long as you get your work done, you can take as much as
you want.
Heather McIlhany, "online marketing manager" with all of a year's
service (and a three-week vacation to South Africa last fall) comes up
with a cute contrarian sentiment: "There's an inverse relationship
between how often a company talks about its values and how much those
values are actually reflected in the workplace."
Like so much of marketing, it may or may not be true, it's not easily
testable, it catches your attention and makes you think it's
information.
But still. We like the policy.
The worst thing is for a manager to come in and tell me: "Let's give
Susie a huge raise because she's always in the office." What do I care?
I want managers to come to me and say: "Let's give a really big raise
to Sally because she's getting a lot done" - not because she's chained
to her desk.
In the olden days, that was known as "management by objective" and
"flextime," but marketing is all about rotating terminology, too.
Equinox
Star Wars Reprise
Ok, probably just a coincidence that HBO was showing Star Wars Episode
VI at the same time that I was reading
the story of Al Gore's return to Capitol Hill. That would put James
Inhofe in the role of Darth Vader, as near as I can tell. (But who's
the Emperor?) How bad does it have to get before Inhofe comes around?
Stomping on Something
Junior College Republicans President
Jonathan Sawmiller is whining that the (University) administration
is "stomping all over the First Amendment and the freedom of speech" of
his lovely little group, after they put up signs for their
anti-immigration event, advertising a jolly contest in which you can
"climb through the hole in the fence and enter your false ID documents
into the food stamp drawing!"
BSU President Bob Kustra's appeal to the decency didn't get anywhere.
Go figure.
The Microsoft guy's keynote
He looks kind of like Ballmer, can he do the monkey dance? And the suit
and no tie, what's up with that look? The Gartner Group guy this
morning had a dress shirt and tie, still more than pretty much any of
the 1,200 gurus here at the ESRI Developers Summit, but a logical step
up for being on stage, videotaped and all that. The suit and no tie is
just wrong.
"I'm excited about where this space is going," he said at the start, and
it quickly became clear that he was talking a little bit faster than he
was thinking. Understandable, because he was talking really fast.
And not connecting with his slides, which were action (and icon)
packed, buzzword bingo kind of thing. Is he saying anything?
I couldn't tell. I got to wondering how many other people in the crowd
were repulsed by the vocal barrage. These are mostly coding geeks,
people who prefer the company of a couple big monitors to large groups
of people. I'm thinking I would not want to work with, for, or near
this person. I don't want whatever he's selling.
"I'm going to say up front, I'm a marketing moron." He says he's a
developer? He's gotta be kidding.
Stop! Shut up! What do your slides mean? What are you talking about?
Do you know anything about this audience? Like the fact that a
third of them had something other than English as their first
language? He asks (rhetorically, natch) how many of us work with
people "offshore," and he should have been asking how many of us
came from offshore.
"We're going to focus maniacally on the user experience at Microsoft
going forward."
It's just like the company, they can talk your ears off, BUT THEY DON'T
LISTEN WELL. (He did give us his email address at the end; I can't wait
to give it a try...) He was trying to remember the name of ESRI's
dev blog (Geography
Matters), couldn't, got help from the front row, rolled on without
mentioning to everyone else in the room what that name was.
Classic.
The last 5 minutes, after the ESRI-developed demo (using Microsoft
tools, and amusingly starting with an "application error" screen in a
browser window. Whoopsie!), he had to just blast through the buzzwords
he hadn't hit in the first 55 min. If we hadn't been so tired at the
end of a day of tech sessions, I'm sure there would have been shouts of
BINGO! from all over the big hall.
First Light
Morning break chat with a gal who came here (I'm in Palm Springs,
California, did I mention? Of course I didn't) from Florida, early, so
she could stay over the weekend. It was hot before I got here,
well into the 90s in the afternoon. But she was looking forward to the
nighttime, a new moon, and... "I saw the Milky Way for the first
time."
I savored her statement, and the goosebumps it gave me. It reminded me
of Isaac Asimov's short story, Nightfall, which I highly, highly
recommend.
"That was worth the whole trip right there."
Vulnerable to Incompetence
Nicholas Kristof's latest column,
Iran's Operative in the White House lays out the "humorous" theory
that Dick Cheney is working for Iran, before admitting that "O.K., O.K.
Of course, all this is absurd."
His take-away lesson is: "Our national interests are as vulnerable to
incompetence as to malicious damage."
Last weekend, we were in the theater, and a captive audience for the
conversation of a guy about my age and a college-age woman, his niece,
maybe? She asked him if he'd followed any of the Scooter Libby trial,
and he said no, he hadn't. He knew enough to be dismayed at "the way
the whole Bush administration seems to be unravelling," but there was
one person at least who he thought was sincere and capable.
You guessed it, Dick "No Doubt" Cheney. That's what happens when you
don't follow the news too closely. You walk around with a head full of
crazy ideas.
We'll Be Happy to Keep Lying to You
How else can we interpret the "unprecedented" cooperation of the Bush
administration, offering to send Karl Rove and other aides up for
"private interviews," but none of that oath taking stuff.
"I hope they don't choose confrontation," W. says. Yet another tactic he
wants to reserve to himself?
I can understand that they wouldn't want to provide ammunition for
another special prosecutor and a perjury conviction. Rove barely
finished dodging the last one of those.
♣.May.07
Sucking Blood from the Earth
The average American uses about three gallons of gasoline a day.
Our food comes from the grocery store, and our gas comes from the
pump. (And of course, the ubiquitous Gas n Groc combines the marketing
of these essentials.) Lisa Margonelli's book,
Oil on the Brain digs deeper into the worldwide intrigue.
Ted Conover's review lists some problems, but mostly makes it sound
interesting, "kaleidoscopic, accessible and focused on our
present quandary."
Stories of riches, corruption, environmental disaster, political
instability, strongmen, extremism, trading in national sovereignty, and
of course, war; what's not to like?
16.Mar.07
Of Madmen and Empowerment
Luisa Valenzuela offers
an explanation for what those people down south see in Hugo
Chávez. For one thing, "the dream of a single-currency Latin
American Union, modeled on the European Union, to create, insofar as
possible, a buffer against the hegemony of the United States no longer
seems so impossible."
Ides.Mar.07
Bleeding Republicans
News coverage of Mitt Romney's visit to Boise this week put the guy on
my radar, and while resetting the VCR after some house electrical work,
I happened to find Hugh Hewitt stumping his book,
A Mormon in the White House? on
C-Span's Washington Journal today.
I've heard from various sources that Romney is "very clean," and
"articulate," which I guess is OK to say about a white guy.
Hewitt says he's not ready to endorse one of the three front-runners
Romney, Guiliani, McCain, even as he's very happy to flog his book.
Hewitt sees McCain as tarnished goods, and that pro-choice stance of
Guiliani really seems to make him a non-starter for the Angry Right,
so the non-endorsement isn't terribly convincing.
Hewitt styles himself a "journalist," as well as a staunch conservative,
and because he's so happy to state his own biases, that seems to give
him license to paint the mainstream media as obviously liberal. Bit of
logical problem there, since neutral journalism would by definition be
left of him. "More liberal than me" isn't the same as "liberal," eh?
But the interesting part of his schtick is that the MSM "bleeds
Republicans" as a matter of course (and promotes Democrats). That
perception explains a lot about the reaction Jill Kuraitis got for
her opinion of the way Romney and his team presented themselves here
in town.
14.Mar.07
Support the Troops; Bring them Home
How much longer can
Dick Cheney use our troops as his stooges for failed and dishonest
policies? Well, in an official capacity,
677 days and a few hours.
In the meantime, I guess he'll make his speeches and work the
clichés as shamelessly as he ever has.
Democracy Stops at the Wellhead
As Iraq's "government" prepares to hand over control of its oil for the
next 20 to 35 years, Antonia Juhasz offers a bit of history regarding
Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?
Iraq’s five trade union federations, representing hundreds of thousands
of workers, released a statement opposing the law and rejecting "the
handing of control over oil to foreign companies, which would undermine
the sovereignty of the state and the dignity of the Iraqi people." They
ask for more time, less pressure and a chance at the democracy they have
been promised.
Something tells me the Bush administration isn't backing that sort of
democratic action on the part of the Iraqis.
Juhasz has been following the issue for a while...
Voluntary Noncompliance
Christopher (not his real name, we'd guess) from Gainesville, Fla.
(maybe), calling in to
Talk of the Nation to confess how much he cheats.
Hey, how ya doin'? Uh yeah, uh, I was just, uh, curious if I'm among the
small minority of citizens of the United States that's aware that the
income tax isn't even legal?
David Cay Johnston, reporter for the NYT on the subject of taxes,
notes that "not a single tax denier has been successful, ever, in the
courts" at challenging the law. (Some have been acquitted by juries,
however.) "The batting average after almost a hundred years is
.000."
Makes for amusing radio, though!
Non-negotiable Popistry
Back when JFK ran for President, the issue of his Catholicism was a big
enough deal to make an impression on my 5-year-old awareness. He was on
our team, so a stroke in his favor. He was better looking than Nixon,
too, and seemed more normal; TV probably made more of an impression than
religious affiliation. For non-Catholics, the big question was whether
the Pope would be secretly running the country through his minion.
Enough people found that implausible that we could, in fact, (just
barely) elect a Catholic.
But Benedict XVI is no John XXIII, and the current Pope wants to make it
clear that
Catholic
politicians are expected to follow orders.
Introducing "laws inspired by values grounded in human nature" is a
curious turn of phrase however, something lost in translation?
Stood next to the renewed affirmation of priestly celibacy being
"obligatory," we wonder if we're all talking about the same humans, and
the same nature.
Ok, another question: given how seldom legislators actually read the
text of legislation, are Catholics also required to actually read the
Sacramentum Caritatis, as opposed to taking it on faith from the
reworked press releases that make it to the MSM?
A look at some insider
detail has disappointments as well, such as further emphasis on the
centrality of the Eucharist, even as the class distinctions about who
can and can't receive it are underscored. The divorced need not apply,
for example.
Warts and All
Roger Cohen sees
the warts, but cheers for capitalism all the same.
He likes the invisible, but predictable, hand as described by a
novelist, for which "our system works because it's based on the truth
about people's selfishness."
So we tsk, tsk over (and may get around to prosecuting)
executives printing money by backdating stock options to the depth of
catastrophe, but carry on because it's better than the alternative.
When Cohen jumps ahead to inferring the mind of world leaders, however,
he gets all make-believe on us. He supposes it was Brazil's President
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's judgement of character that would lead him
to choose George W. Bush over Hugo Chávez, "because life has led
this self-taught man to know a coup plotter, an absolutist with
militarist instincts and a facile deliverer of dangerous slogans when he
sees one in the false-egalitarian."
That's how Cohen imagines da Silva imagines Chávez, in case
it was confusing. Bush certainly is no "coup plotter," preferring to use
the greatest military the world has ever known in more direct fashion,
but the precision of "facile deliverer of dangerous slogans" and
"false-egalitarian" couldn't possibly be more apt to describe George W.
Bush.
13.Mar.07
Time to Start Packing
Alberto Gonzales
stepped up to the mic and said "I acknowledge that mistakes were
made here; I accept that responsibility," even though he imagines that
responsibility doesn't come with consequences for mistakes.
His "pledge" to "find out what went wrong" is ludicrous. The clear and
obvious improvement to be made so that these same mistakes "do not occur
again in the future" is for him to resign, or be fired. His chief of
staff has already done the honorable thing; now it's Gonzales' turn.
Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy: "I want those
answers, not in an informal briefing; I want those answers in public, in
sworn testimony, under oath before my committee. As chairman, that's
what I insist."
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of the House Judiciary Committee looks to
be taking a harder line than the Democrats!
"The House and the Senate were lied to, not by the people that were sent
to the Hill, but by the people who sent them there. And every one of
those people owes us a resignation. And that's the difference, perhaps,
between what the Democrats are walking around. If someone led us astray,
they should resign. And I don't care how high it is: Anyone involved
with this cover-up of giving us the truth needs to step down."
Dishonorable Mention
The Pottersville collection of snapshots showing
Fox "News" at its finest.
It Takes A Village
Nicholas Wade's lede is as artful a description of the symbiosis
we're steeped in as any sentence I've come across:
"A human body is not the individual organism its proud owner may suppose
but rather a walking zoo of microbes and parasites, each exploiting a
special ecological niche in its comfortable, temperature-controlled
conveyance."
Be kind to your pseudopod-footed friends.
Pace: Don't Even Think About It
The comments following
The Lede's blog entry about General Peter Pace's opposition to gays
in the military are a fascinating cross-section of opinion on the
subject. None that I saw addressed the fundamental moral issue of
condemning someone for their thoughts: Pace feels homosexual acts
are immoral, so this means the military shouldn't tolerate openly gay
members.
The General's expression is more nuanced than the officer trainee who
comments that "homosexuality is a sin and an immorality," but it amounts
to the same thing.
The costs of the policy are considerable: in
"human dignity, self-respect, and in the image of the military held by
the American public, the world community and itself," as retired Rear
Adm. John D. Hutson put it, and also a cost to our security.
The GAO reports that among those discharged were more than 322
linguists, including 54 Arabic specialists.
Comment #50 provides greater moral clarity than the good General's:
"Isn’t it interesting that the Central Intellilgence Agency has gay and
lesbian staff. NATO forces have gay soldiers? If they engage in
inappropriate and illegal sexual behavior they are prosecuted for the
behavior and not their sexual orientation."
Oh yeah. Our
allies. And our Vice-president's daughter. Bully, General.
A Call for Leadership
Boise had a suitable commemoration for the 4th anniversary of the US
starting the latest war in Iraq:
Hans
Blix, here for
the BSU
Distinguished Lecture Series. I was struck by the calm,
straightforward presentation from a civil servant, and lawyer,
describing the obvious truths of the situation we've put ourselves in.
Diplomacy is difficult, unreliable, tiring, frustrating, slow...
but far preferable to war, which is all those things, and deadly
besides.
Blix spoke for about an hour to 1500 people at the Morrison
Center, and spent 15 minutes answering just three questions. His
punchline was provided by George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger
and Sam Nunn, in their Wall Street Journal opinion piece from January,
A World
Free of Nuclear Weapons, with detailed, specific recommendations for
action to make our world safer.
Blix called for leadership from the United States of America,
and God knows we could use some of that. He said the world needs us to
go back to being lead wolf, rather than lone wolf. (His
metaphor made me think of Robert Hunter's Dire Wolf lyric,
that chorus of "Please don't murder me.")
12.Mar.07
Newt for President
Right after he turns around the
64% of the voters who wouldn't vote for him
under any circumstance. I forget what I was looking for, but
this transcript from a month-ago Fox News Sunday has a real
collection of gems in it. The Gingrich plan is to let the other
candidates duke it out, and then when we're all tired and disgusted with
them, he'll come in, fresh as a daisy. I can hardly wait.
But in mid-February, Congress' signs of showing some backbone on the war
was the hotter topic, and one bon mot from Billy Kristol got me
chuckling. Contradicting John Murtha's point of view, Kristol says he
thinks Democrats "just think we can't win," and are "exhausted by the
war, and they just want us to acknowledge defeat and get out."
Exhausted.
Does he really believe in the caricatures he paints of the opposition,
one wonders? The universe he inhabits, where we aren't already
in the middle of a brutal civil war, Iran's influence isn't yet playing
out in Iraq, Al Qaida isn't emboldened "et cetera, et cetera," is fairly
hallucinatory all on its own.
Maybe it's the same universe where Newt Gingrich makes a stunning
comeback in the summer of '07 and sheds his cap and gown for another try
at the power suit.
Ok You Guys, Get in Line
Paul Krugman offers up a new name among candidates for impeachment:
Alberto Gonzales, compliments of that
overblown personnel
matter involving U.S. Attorneys and their "performance."
Chalk it up to unintended irony that it was
reportedly the now less
supportive Arlen Specter who "slipped a clause" into the USA Patriot
Act that enabled Gonzo to appoint replacements without Senate
confirmation, presumably lowering the bar to firing the insufficiently
compliant of current employees.
I guess the legislative theory was that making miscreant Republicans
safer makes us all safer.
One Big Easter Basket
Looks like IACI and the Idaho Legislature are going to deliver yet again
to Idaho businesses, with the biggest tax shift in state history:
$100 million out of the "personal property tax" assessed on
businesses. In 1990, residences accounted for 47% of property tax paid;
now the tally is 64% and will be set to top 70% if H.245 goes through as
passed by the House. In the last 10 years, total residential property
taxes are up 79%, while total commercial property taxes are up 23%.
Our Next Conservative Leader?
Bruce Reed runs our freshman class president up the flagpole as
The Great Right Hope
to restore what the conservative movement "used to do best: losing."
We see that with another five week's experience under his belt, Sali's
thoughts on Legislative
Issues are still blank. Coming Soon!!
In the meantime, we appreciate that
Newt has cleared the air and put a finer point on an important moral
question of the day: it's not the adultery, stupid, it's the
lying about adultery. Under oath, anyway. Which I guess means
that Gingrich will not be in favor of the Scooter pardon? Question for
our favorite history prof: does George Bush's studious avoidance of
taking oaths (other than that
"protect and defend the Constitution" thing anyway) make him
unimpeachable, do you think?
10.Mar.07
Look Who's Talking
Bacteria can communicate. Who knew? According to the story, there's
been gossip about them for 4 decades, but it hadn't been taken seriously
until the last one. New kinds of anti- (and pro-) biotics may
result.
Why Libby's Pardon is a Slam Dunk
Frank
Rich (Times Select), on the pointlessness of speculation:
"Of course he will."
A president who tries to void laws he doesn't like by
encumbering them with "signing statements" and who regards the Geneva
Conventions as a nonbinding technicality isn't going to start playing by
the rules now. His assertion last week that he is "pretty much going to
stay out of" the Libby case is as credible as his pre-election vote of
confidence in Donald Rumsfeld. The only real question about the pardon
is whether Mr. Bush cares enough about his fellow Republicans' political
fortunes to delay it until after Election Day 2008.
9.Mar.07
Where Have I Heard This Before?
I thought the latest email from RNC Chairman Mike Duncan's subject of
"Master and Commander" was possibly megalomania run wild(er), but then I
saw that it was sarcasm directed at John Murtha and Nancy Pelosi, who
Duncan supposes "waited until the President was out of the country
before announcing their next attempt to take over the duties of the
commander in chief."
"Micromanaging" is the epithet of the current cycle. Blast those
unpatriotic Democrats, anyway! How dare they?
Used to be, the Republicans complained that the Democrats didn't have a
specific plan. Now they're complaining that the plan usurps Beloved
Leader's rightful powers. Whatever; someone needs to be steering the
ship of state as we negotiate a sea full of icebergs.
Duncan's letter ends with a call to action: write a letter to your
editor, and call in to talk radio. Might want to disguise your letter
just an itty bit though, lest
the editor be
paying attention, since essentially the same "clear plan for
victory" text has been available for half a year, or is it since June
2005 when
Condi Rice was talking about the clear plan?
Clint Beacom of Victorville, CA got the letter to run in the
Victorville Daily Press.
Marylou Chapman of Huntsville, AL got it
in The Decatur Daily. Technical Sgt. Joseph Sweet of Burke,
NY got it
in The Press Republican. And on and on.
Back in October, Jack Sammon sent an early version of the "clear plan,"
with his re-write for ease of comparison, to
The Times-Tribune of Scranton, PA.
Hooked on Phonics
Perhaps because I'm not a reading teacher (although I am married to a
former one), and how I learned to read is lost in the mists of Things I
Cannot Know, this business about the
Federal dictation of reading instruction methods strikes me as flat-out
bizarre. Bravo to Madison, Wisconsin, for choosing the welfare of their
students over federal money tied to ideology.
The disqualifiers were that their program "lacked uniformity," and
"relied too much on teacher judgement," pretty much guaranteed
for education "based on tailoring strategies individually."
This idea of responding to individual needs and using one's own
judgement is anathema to some. Three Rs! Drill it in! Must use
phonics! (And must buy these corporate packaged goods?)
8.Mar.07
A Tale of Two Phone Companies
Last month, I fat fingered (or maybe fumbled) a phone number, and found
myself trying to talk to someone in the Dominican Republic. I don't
think she could hear me, and if even if she could have, I don't think
we shared enough common language to communicate much. I didn't realize
I'd gone international at the time, but the next day, something prompted
me to check the area code and discover where I'd been. I called Qwest
to find out how much that (less than) one minute call would be.
$1.77? Aye carumba! I asked for a credit, but was told I'd have to wait
until the bill was printed.
Today, the printed bill arrived, and I gave 'em a jingle to recover my
spare change. After the credit was arranged, the agent asked if I'd like
to save some money on long distance? I encouraged her to tell me more,
and eventually switched to a plan that's going to cost us $10 or 15 less
per month, for as much service as we need (and have been using).
Nice!
I went to check the plan
on the web, and was a little concerned to not see the plan
she described ($9 flat fee, for up to 300 min., then $.07/min over
that), but then I couldn't see the current plan we're on ($5 fee,
.05/min up to a total of $20 max; not counting international calls!)
either.
Moments later, reading a page from the NYT Technology section that
mentioned Verizon's fiber optic service, my curiosity was piqued to see
if they would run a line to our house in Boise. After running around
their whizzy and uninformative Flash splash, and trying to vet my street
address (since we don't have a "Verizon home phone number"), I got
frustrated by their failure to provide a definitive answer. They
couldn't find my address in their database. (Duh, I'm not a Verizon
customer.) Did I need tips on how to enter my address?
Ah, no, do you need tips on how to build a web interface?
They do, in fact. After filling out their
contact us form and hitting the Submit button, I get a Javascript
alert:
Just one l'il problem: there is no place on the form for an Area Code,
correct, or otherwise. Nor is there any reason for me to give them my phone
number to ask a question.
Message received: we don't really want to talk to you. Please go
away.
7.Mar.7
Jump on Spring
Up to and past 60°F yesterday and today, and winter seems
a distant memory. The not-even-a-week-ago snow days, rolling
around in cold powder seem a distant memory. DST hits on
Sunday, and we'll forget all about that old season.
It's the Abuse of Power, not the Perjury
Former federal prosecutor
Elizabeth de
la Vega reminds us that "(t)he criminal justice system was never
intended by the framers of the Constitution to be the sole, or even
primary, means of investigating and redressing" the misconduct of the
administration. Congress is "obligated to oversee the conduct of the
Executive Branch."
She recommends starting with "a full-scale congressional hearing" by the
House Oversight Committee on Government Reform to seek out the answers
that the President and Vice-President are unwilling to provide.
We need to hear from Karl Rove, Richard Armitage, Colin Powell,
Stephen Hadley and many others.
Then when we finish with the CIA leak case, we can move on to
the more general charges of conspiracy to deceive.
In the meantime, the chorus of right-wing voices who feel the conviction
is a miscarriage are cataloged
by David Corn, one of the early actors drawin into the swirl of
the Plamegate scandal.
6.Mar.07
Time to Admit the Mistake
Khaled El-Masri is not the only one who doesn't "understand why the
strongest nation on Earth believes that acknowledging a mistake will
threaten its security. Isn't it more likely that showing the world that
America cannot give justice to an innocent victim of its anti-terror
policies will cause harm to America's image and security around the
world?"
Indeed, this uncorrected injustice, and the many others untold which it
represents have already harmed our image and security.
Guilty As Charged!
Ok, color me surprised: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. convicted on 4 of 5
counts, obstruction of justice, giving false statements to the F.B.I.
and perjury. Will Bush's signing statement on the pardon say "he was
just doing what Dick Cheney and I asked of him"?
Rather than "craziness," as the defense argued, the jury accepted
Patrick Fitzgerald's theory of the crime: deliberate obfuscation to
cover up the public relations push to discredit someone speaking truth
to power. No doubt Libby had some trouble keeping his recollections
straight; that's what happens when you're making things up instead of
telling the truth.
Coverage from
BBC News,
The New York Times, and
The Washington Post.
5.Mar.07
Must-Do List
The NYT Editorial Board offers
a non-exhaustive list "of things that need to be done to reverse the
unwise and lawless policies of President Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney":
- Restore Habeas Corpus
- Stop Illegal Spying
- Ban Torture, Really
- Close the C.I.A. Prisons
- Account for "Ghost Prisoners"
- Ban Extraordinary Rendition
- Tighten the Definition of Combatant
- Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively
- Ban Tainted Evidence
- Ban Secret Evidence
- Better Define "Classified" Evidence
- Respect the Right to Counsel
This Is Taking Too Long
Now the judge wants the jury to clarify its note before the weekend:
We would like clarification of the term "reasonable doubt".
Specifically, is it necessary for the government to present evidence
that it is not humanly possible for someone not to recall an event in
order to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
What's up with
passing notes, as
if the judge and jury were back in grammar school? Get 'em out of the
closet and into the courtroom and have the judge and jury communicate
directly so they can render the obvious verdict: Libby lied.
Eternity in an Hour
My vague recollection of William Blake's poem,
"Auguries of
Innocence" led to the discovery of some of the other things you can
arrange in an hour: make complex CSS simple, or lasagna, get a
website up and running, or white teeth, or glasses, write your
résumé, earn $10,000 (ha!) or $13,000,
burn some calories and
on and on.
But today's
hour in question affords none of these opportunities. It's
Congress' premature April Fool's joke on the tech world, pulling the
start of Daylight Savings Time up by three weeks. If they'd been on the
ball, they would have pulled it up ONE week, from the first Sunday in
April to the last Sunday in March, and thereby synch up with most the
world that plays this game with their time of day. (We'll never line up
with most of Asia, Africa, South America and Arizona, so no point in
trying to please everyone.)
The billing of this event as a "mini Y2K" makes it a near-guaranteed
yawner, given how anti-climactic the first Y2K was. I challenged
the software gods by leaving the hp-ux workstation I used back then
running, in opposition to the corporate edict we'd been given to shut
everything down as a "precaution." And... nothing happened.
The risk this time is "subtler," like missing your automated wake-up
call in a hotel, or having your hourly electricity usage misrecorded,
or having someone who didn't really want to go to that meeting anyway
not show up.
4.Mar.07
Fighting for the Net's Future
I assumed Scott Cleland's
scare story about "net neutrality" was a bucket of hooey, since it's
in The Washington Times, but gosh, don't those corporate shills
make "regulation" sound terrible?
For this particular issue, the "good guys" seem to have won the naming
rights; who could be against something with "neutrality" in the name,
after all? Ok, the chairman of a "forum of broadband companies" maybe.
He translates
S.215
into a threat "to force one equal tier of Internet service," which
sort of sounds bad, but you'd have to explain it a little
further.
This scary future where net neutrality is enforced is the one
"where average Americans would pay more to subsidize a free ride for
online giants like Google." Like Google? Who would that be?
Nevertheless, while we reserve caution about relying on an online giant,
Google has done a lot more for me than NetCompetition.org has
lately.
3.Mar.07
Idaho Oversight: Last and Proud To Stay That Way
Idaho comes in last in the nation for
state standards
and oversight of child care centers.
Our legislature is doing its best to keep the state in that ideal state
that lives in the mind of eastern Idaho lawmakers.
Tom Loertscher (pronounced "lurcher"), who "cannot imagine" ever taking
a child to a daycare center, spends his time wondering
"What can we do to keep mom at home?" One thing he did this week was
to play a key role in killing stronger daycare licensing in the state,
according to Betsy
Russell of
The Spokesman-Review.
The original bill in this session would have set minimal health and
safety standards, training requirements and staffing levels and required
criminal history checks for daycares caring for as few as two
unrelated children, but offered amendments would have raised that to
six or more children. (Current law provides minimal licensing for 7-12
children, and more restrictions for 13 or more.)
While he acknowledges that we don't all live in the world of his
imagination, where Dad goes to work and Mom stays at home to raise the
family's six or eight children, Loertscher says "we need to work on it
being an ideal world, and not trying to replace home with government
programs, no matter what it might be. We need to work on those things
that strengthen the family, so that they can take care of that
responsibility in the traditional setting."
"All of the psychological studies and everything you see say 'home is
the best place for kids when they're little' and uh and you can't, it's
irrefutable, you just can't replace what parents can do for kids at
home."
Here's his big fear: "The deterioration of the family will ultimately
cause our demise as a society." So, it's irrefutable that we shouldn't
improve licensing standards for daycare or require basic first-aid
training for caregivers. Go figure.
Thanks to J. Robb Brady and Marty Trillhaase of the Idaho Falls Post
Register, we have
another indication of Tom Loertscher's family values: in the last 10
years, he has received more than $900,000 in farm subsidies, 85% of it
for idling his land in the conservation reserve program.
2.Mar.07
Lessons Learned
Maybe your take-away from Iran-Contra wasn't the same as
the "veterans" of the scandal, as recounted by
Seymour Hersh, in The New Yorker? Describing a discussion led
by Elliot Abrams (yes, the same one who's in his comeback-tour as
deputy national-security adviser), Hersh writes:
...in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: "One,
you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out
of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got
to be run out of the Vice-President’s office."
Go With the Flow
If you're at the edge of the ocean already, and thinking about sea level
rising, here's an alternative to heading for higher ground:
float your
home. Of course that would occur to someone in the Netherlands, but
"we have many deltas in the world which have problems with competing
land claims for economic activity." My mind jumps to Bangladesh, and one
very occasional, but very insurmountable problem: tsunami. Could get
tricky.
1.Mar.07
Break-even Day
Let's just say the weather is making up for a dry January. I put in my 4
hours at Bogus today, and have broken even on my season pass. (Sort of;
I only got up twice before the "rest of this year AND next year" passes
went on sale over President's Day weekend, so I could have done an
almost half-price twofer.) I'm sitting here recuperating and email
arrives, subject "ANOTHER Powder Alert from
Brundage!"
They got 8 inches of champagne powder today, on top of 3
feet in the past week.
Woo-hoo, that's a lot of light snow. I could've used a snorkel at times
today, and definitely could've used a longer board. There was swimming,
tunneling, floating, carving, rolling and tumbling, and time to eat
snow, with a big grin. I can't make it north of McCall tomorrow, but if
you can, lucky you! (And dress warm: 10°F and still snowing.)
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
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Wednesday, 04-Apr-2007 22:33:36 MDT
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