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October 28, 2007
No there there.
Matt Taibbi, right on the mark again:
Mitt Romney: The Huckster : Rolling Stone
... Once you've heard this kind of drivel enough times, it's not hard to see how this flag-waving conservative actually won the governorship in Ted Kennedy's home state, or propelled his Mormon magic-underwear-wearing self to near-front-runner status in a party that is overwhelmingly, intolerantly Christian. Mitt Romney is the A-Rod of campaigning; he makes it look easy. But like A-Rod, Romney has that nagging problem of how to finish. What he is finding is that after seven years of George Bush, there may not be any winning territory left to steal on the GOP side. In fact, the cupboard is so bare for Republicans these days that when Romney and Rudy Giuliani held a mudslinging contest at the October 9th debate, they picked a fight over the line-item veto an issue about as relevant in the age of Iraq as women's suffrage, or free silver. In that sense, watching this campaign genius grope around in the wreckage of modern Republicanism for a viable electoral platform is not only highly entertaining - it says a lot about how completely the Karl Roves and the Dick Cheneys of the world have intellectually bankrupted a party that just ten years ago looked poised to become America's permanent majority.
October 26, 2007
Soup Spoons for Sag Harbor!
There seems to be a critical shortage of cutlery on Long Island:
On the morning of September 17 2006, a woman boarded a plane at MacArthur Airport in Islip, New York, with two steak knives in her purse. She walked undetected through security, took her seat, and disembarked in Raleigh, North Carolina. The very next morning, she reported herself.
"I did not realise that I had 2 steak knives in my pocketbook when it went through the scanner," she wrote in an email to security officials. "I had been out to a party the night before and everyone had to bring their own silverware."
[Above at left: TSA employee teaches nervous first-time flier how to glide properly.]
Potemkin presser
FEMA Meets the Press, Which Happens to Be . . . FEMA
It's so hard to keep up with this stuff, and then there's the outrage fatigue and all, but I do have a little question: Why are we using FEMA employees to pretend to be reporters and ask softball questions when Jeff Gannon is almost certainly still on the White House payroll?
smoke signals
Fire Burns Away the Fog of Ideology: Can Humane Health Care Reform Rise from the Ashes?
by Michael MillensonAs wildfires sweep Southern California, I have been surprised that homeowners in some of the most affluent and staunchly Republican enclaves in the state have not protested the widespread deployment of government workers bearing fire hoses and driving ambulances. The pain of watching one's life possessions burn to a crisp must almost be matched by the pain of watching tax dollars wasted on a task that private, for-profit firefighters could surely perform more cheaply and more effectively. Yet not even the richest of the fire-torn refugees has expressed regret over government intervention in their rescue.
It's important to remember that wildfires in California are a foreseeable event, just like hurricanes in the Southeast, blizzards in the Upper Midwest or - to switch from the cosmic to the quotidian - illness or accidents befalling individuals. In bumper sticker terms, stuff happens. If one believes in the marketplace, then it should be up to individuals knowingly facing risk, not the government, to either take prudent steps to protect themselves or face the consequences.
If, after all, one believes that Medicare should be privatized, then one also implicitly believes that the old, frail and infirm should be left to their fate if they chose a health plan adequate to finance the flu but with coverage too meager for multiple myeloma. Economists call this a "market signal," meaning that it's supposed to scare everyone else into acting like Rational Economic Man rather than like actual human beings. Similarly, if your health savings account is exhausted before your medical needs, that should teach the guy in the next cubicle to quit wasting money on a big mortgage and sock away something for a possible stroke.
Given the Republican allegiance to the marketplace, should not California taxpayers send fire engines to rescue only those whose home insurance covers full replacement cost - Rational Economic Man -- and the "deserving poor" who, clutching tax returns in hand, can prove they couldn't afford the premiums? The question answers itself.
Firmly held convictions about the importance of individual responsibility seem to melt away when the flames approach our house, the winds howl outside our window, the snow drifts trap our car or disease strikes our family. The marketplace does some things very well, but responding swiftly to rescue those who cannot rescue themselves is not one of them.Fire, wind, rain, snow and illness can strike any of us, regardless of political beliefs. Paying taxes to protect the vulnerable from devastation is not a step down the slippery slope of socialism but a reaffirmation of a basic human commitment. As our nation tries to build a consensus for sweeping health care reform, perhaps the California fires can reignite a recognition that Rational Economic Man is a straw figure and that community and compassion are the values that truly define us.
Michael Millenson (mm@healthqualityadvisors.com) is the President of Health Quality Advisors LLC in Highland Park, IL.
October 25, 2007
more of this, please
Protester with blood-colored hands confronts RiceWASHINGTON (Reuters) - An anti-war protester waved blood-colored hands in U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's face at a congressional hearing on Wednesday and shouted "war criminal!", but was pushed away and detained by police.
"The blood of millions of Iraqis is on your hands!" yelled the protester, Desiree Anita Ali-Fairooz of the Code Pink organization which often disrupts hearings on Capitol Hill with protests against the Iraq war.
Clippy's revenge
More gnashing of teeth after Microsoft update brings PCs to a standstill | The Register
Something seems to have gone horribly wrong in an untold number of IT departments on Wednesday after Microsoft installed a resource-hogging search application on machines company-wide, even though administrators had configured systems not to use the program.
Welcome to Hell, here's your new harmonica. Dude, it ain't your computer. You accepted the EULA, and MS can do whatever they please. Now quit whining and search for something.
move over, sliced bread
Via Ask MetaFilter, a nifty solution for websites with type too tiny to read. Bravo!
October 24, 2007
I love The New Yorker
Cover of the current issue.
bullseye
Salon.com | Rain of terror in the U.S. air war in Iraq
... The military tactic of close air support in a firefight is not the issue here. The issue is why the U.S. military is engaged in this Iraqi urban warfare, with its inevitable killing of civilians, in the first place. And the reason is that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their cohorts have made the deliberate, conscious decision to engage in state terrorism in order to advance foreign policy and energy objectives they held long before 9/11 "changed the world."That is the true context, and content, of the war. Anyone who supports its continuation -- under any auspices, in any form, for any amount of time longer than it takes to remove all the troops quickly and safely -- is advocating the perpetuation of state terror in the name of the American people.
portrait of the artist as ... wtf?
October 23, 2007
It's not easy being a crypto-fascist parasite
Looking for a perfect little weekend vacation this fall? Here's a travel tip you don't hear very often: Head to Pittsburgh. Right away.Seriously, get in the car and read this story later, because when you're done reading, you'll wish you'd left 10 minutes ago. There are towns with better vistas, sure, and there are getaways with more sunshine. But only Pittsburgh is the scene of the fabulously tawdry and surpassingly vicious spectacle that is the divorce of Richard Mellon Scaife.
Remember him? The cantankerous, reclusive 75-year-old billionaire who's spent a sizable chunk of his inherited fortune bankrolling conservative causes and trying to kneecap Democrats? He's best known for funding efforts to smear then-President Bill Clinton, but more quietly he's given in excess of $300 million to right-leaning activists, watchdogs and think tanks. Atop his list of favorite donees: the family-values-focused Heritage Foundation, which has published papers with titles such as "Restoring a Culture of Marriage."
The culture of his own marriage is apparently past restoring. With the legal fight still in the weigh-in phase, the story of Scaife v. Scaife already includes a dog-snatching, an assault, a night in jail and that divorce court perennial, allegations of adultery.
Oh, and there's the money. Three words, people.
No. Pre. Nup.
Lots of primo billionaire degeneracy on view, but here's the kicker:
Income from the trusts of [the Mellon] estate yields roughly $45 million a year for Scaife, according to a filing by his wife. That's a gross disposable income of nearly $4 million a month, apparently just for having been born. As the lawyer of his soon-to-be-ex-wife noted, "These massive streams of income are attributable to no employment, business enterprise or other effort -- intellectual, physical, creative or ministerial -- past or present."
... nearly $4 million a month, apparently just for having been born.
Like most of the super-wealthy in this Land O' Opportunity we got going here, Scaife "earned" his money by winning the genetic lottery. And he almost certainly pays only a fraction of the taxes you do.
October 22, 2007
You could try Tuesday. That's not got much rain in it.
REST OF TONIGHT
RAIN LIKELY LATE THIS EVENING
THEN RAIN.
LOWS IN THE MID 50S. SOUTH WINDS AROUND 5 MPH.
CHANCE OF RAIN NEAR 100 PERCENT.
October 21, 2007
it's my blog and I don't need no stinking reason
October 18, 2007
fun fact
time for some good news
A Critic at Large: The Well-tempered Web: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
Some recent articles have asked whether the Internet can save classical music. Classical music is, in fact, saving itself; Internet activity is merely the most immediately visible evidence of its refusal to fade away. Younger musicians, in particular, are using every available means to reach a potential public that is far larger than the one that already exists. They are not haunted, as older musicians often are, by nostalgia for a time when Bernstein appeared on the cover of Time and Toscanini was a star of NBC radio. Instead, they see the labyrinth of long-tail culture as an open field of opportunity; they measure success in small leaps.
especially if you mean by "usability" that it actually works
Review: Ubuntu's New 'Gutsy Gibbon' Brings Linux Out of the Jungle
The familiar old script that Linux is only for geeks has been largely rewritten recently with the arrival of Ubuntu, a version of Linux for the average user. In its three years on the scene, Ubuntu has quickly gained a reputation for being easy to configure and use.On Thursday, Canonical, the London-based company which acts as Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, released version 7.10 of the software. This latest release, dubbed "Gutsy Gibbon," proves that Ubuntu Linux can compete with and, in some cases, trump Windows as an everyday desktop system when it comes to pure usability.
p.s. -- It is, of course, absolutely free.
October 14, 2007
John Hiatt with Sonny Landreth and the Goners
In Munich, 1987:
Twenty (?) years later:
Kathy found these. Hiatt is wonderful and Landreth is amazing. We saw them at The Bottom Line (NYC) in the early 90s.
Or maybe Nancy Reagan's psychic is still on the White House payroll.
Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm
A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal.Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week.
Details about the alleged NSA program have been redacted from the documents, but Nacchio's lawyer said last year that the NSA had approached the company about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone records.
In the court filings disclosed this week, Nacchio suggests that Qwest's refusal to take part in that program led the government to cancel a separate, lucrative contract with the NSA in retribution. He is using the allegation to try to show why his stock sale should not have been considered improper.
Nacchio was convicted for selling shares of Qwest stock in early 2001, just before financial problems caused the company's share price to tumble. He has claimed in court papers that he had been optimistic that Qwest would overcome weak sales because of the expected top-secret contract with the government. Nacchio said he was forbidden to mention the specifics during the trial because of secrecy restrictions, but the judge ruled that the issue was irrelevant to the charges against him.
Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts.
The allegations could affect the debate on Capitol Hill over whether telecoms sued for disclosing customers' phone records and other data to the government after the Sept. 11 attacks should be given legal immunity, even if they did not have court authorization to do so.
In other words, September 11 didn't "change everything."
The election (sic) of George Bush did.
See also Scott Horton's lucid (as usual) explanation of the case.
October 13, 2007
New apps put the hate in online networking - The Boston Globe
Enemybook, Snubster allow Facebook users to link up with their nemeses
By Jenn Abelson, Globe Staff | October 10, 2007Now that Internet users have forged online relationships with the people they like, they can turn their attention to shaming the folks they hate.
With Enemybook, a new program that runs on the social networking site Facebook, you can connect to people you loathe, display their photos and evil deeds, and give them the virtual finger.
Enemybook is one of several new online applications developed by computer-savvy twentysomethings who say they are tired of bogus online friendships. In a dig at the notion of virtual networking, they hope to encourage people to undermine, or at least mock, the online social communities sites such as Facebook were designed to create.
Over the summer, Kevin Matulef, who is doing a doctoral thesis on algorithms at MIT, designed Enemybook, a software application that lets people list enemies below friends on their personal Facebook page. He describes the program as "an antisocial utility that disconnects you to the so-called friends around you."
Uh, somebody just popped up on 400 grammar nazis' Enemies Lists.
just what it looks like
Iraq is 'unwinnable', a 'quagmire', a 'fiasco': so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be 'stuck' precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no 'exit strategy'.
A compelling case for the view that the US has already "won" in Iraq.
October 12, 2007
tip of the rotten iceberg
Prosecutors expected to file charges against Bernard Kerik
Rudy, his former chauffeur (and his nominee for Homeland Security director), and the Gambino crime family, oh my!
meanwhile...
Click graphic for larger pop-up.
This is what a leader looks like.
October 11, 2007
Seymour M. Hersh: Online Only Video: The New Yorker
The New Yorker staff writer talks with the magazine's editor-in-chief, David Remnick.
October 10, 2007
excellent -- now fix the health care system
October 9, 2007
bottom of the barrel
Matt Taibbi, the best political journalist working today:
McCain's Last Stand : Rolling Stone
... One by one, McCain's GOP opponents had lunged toward the cameras pledging, by means of innuendo both thinly veiled and not veiled at all, boundless enthusiasm for the abuse and torture of America's terror-war detainees. Rudy Giuliani, baldly seeking to overcome his rep as a two-faced Yankee liberal who kills the unborn and dresses in women's clothes, grinned into the cameras and said he would tell his people to "use every method they could think of" to get information. The other suspect Northerner, the Mormon queer-coddler Mitt Romney, took in Giuliani's response like a frat pledge who had just been issued a beer-pong challenge, preposterously promising to one-up the field and "double Guantanamo."Both answers elicited approving roars from the blood-lusting South Carolina crowd, and it seemed only a matter of time before Tom Tancredo or Duncan Hunter pulled a car battery out from behind the podium and pledged himself ready to torture someone, anyone, right now, if it would win him red-state votes. But just then, McCain, who spent five and a half years in a POW camp in Vietnam, decided to rain on the parade. "If we torture people," he said sadly, "what happens to our military people when they're captured?" After the debate, he went even further, offering a history lesson on one of America's choicest "enhanced" interrogation techniques, water-boarding. "Do you know where that was invented?" McCain asked. "In the Spanish Inquisition. Do we want to do things that were done in the Spanish Inquisition?"
In the diffident silence you could almost feel McCain's poll numbers dropping toward the low single digits. I, for one, was impressed. It seems amazing to say, but in the Bush era, distancing oneself from the Spanish Inquisition actually qualifies as political courage.
October 8, 2007
capital crimes
Andrew Sullivan: Bush's torturers follow where the Nazis led
... George Orwell would have been impressed by the phrase "enhanced interrogation technique". By relying on it, the White House spokesman last week was able to say with a straight face that the administration strongly opposed torture and that "any procedures they use are tough, safe, necessary and lawful".So is "enhanced interrogation" torture? One way to answer this question is to examine history. The phrase has a lineage. Verschärfte Verneh-mung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the "third degree". It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.
The United States prosecuted it as a war crime in Norway in 1948. The victims were not in uniform - they were part of the Norwegian insurgency against the German occupation - and the Nazis argued, just as Cheney has done, that this put them outside base-line protections (subsequently formalised by the Geneva conventions).
The Nazis even argued that "the acts of torture in no case resulted in death. Most of the injuries inflicted were slight and did not result in permanent disablement". This argument is almost verbatim that made by John Yoo, the Bush administration's house lawyer, who now sits comfortably at the Washington think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.
The US-run court at the time clearly rejected Cheney's arguments. Base-line protections against torture applied, the court argued, to all detainees, including those out of uniform. They didn't qualify for full PoW status, but they couldn't be abused either. The court also relied on the plain meaning of torture as defined under US and international law: "The court found it decisive that the defendants had inflicted serious physical and mental suffering on their victims, and did not find sufficient reason for a mitigation of the punishment . . ."
The definition of torture remains the infliction of "severe mental or physical pain or suffering" with the intent of procuring intelligence. In 1948, in other words, America rejected the semantics of the current president and his aides. The penalty for those who were found guilty was death. This is how far we've come. ...
October 6, 2007
Dennis Kucinich
October 2, 2007
password, please
UK can now demand data decryption on penalty of jail time
New laws going into effect today in the United Kingdom make it a crime to refuse to decrypt almost any encrypted data requested by authorities as part of a criminal or terror investigation. Individuals who are believed to have the cryptographic keys necessary for such decryption will face up to 5 years in prison for failing to comply with police or military orders to hand over either the cryptographic keys, or the data in a decrypted form.
And you're not allowed to tell anyone it's happening. But the law, ironically, may provide an escape from appropriate punishment for the truly guilty.
October 1, 2007
Jonathan Swift lives.
Stephen Colbert is a genius.