Too Funny; Too Sad

Considering that this was once a nation about which I could cheerfully sing the original song, it grieves me that I find this parody so apt. It's... nah. I won't describe it. Just go listen to it.

(HT to Jane Hamsher.)

Steve
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Russian Bread, Irish Butter

That's my snack as I write this post. Stella, who stopped by Houston's Russian General Store on her way home, was kind enough to bring me some dark, dense Russian rye bread, two loaves, one with a picture of Peter the Great on the wrapper (hey, it's the bread, not the historical figure, that she was buying) and the other called Borodinsky bread. I happened to have some KerryGold genuine Irish butter on hand, something I treat myself to once in a rare while. The combination of the Russian bread and the Irish butter is a very satisfying bit of comfort food.

Given my part-Irish ancestry, my love of Russian food (or at least bread), and my mildly left-wing politics, does that make me a (ahem) sput-mick?

(Parts of HaloScan, but not all of it, are fried as I write this. If it's still cooked when you get here, my apologies.)

Steve
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Democrats Who Support The Iraq War

... read Riverbend's post yesterday, and then tell me how you sleep at night. This nightmare will not cease when we bring our troops home, but it most certainly will not cease before we do so.

Steve
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Another Use For Duct Tape

Well, not strictly speaking "duct tape," but pretty close:

July 11, 2006, 9:38AM
Shuttle crew to improvise with duct-like tape
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Even in space, a little duct tape may work wonders.

Astronaut Piers Sellers suggested using some multipurpose sticky material to fix a safety-jet backpack used during spacewalks after it almost came loose from him while he repaired the international space station.

"Right now, is there some kind of tape fix that you guys could think about that would be helpful?" Sellers asked Mission Control this morning, a day after the propulsive backpack started to come loose during his spacewalk with astronaut Mike Fossum.

     ...

The spacewalkers hope they can use Kapton tape to hold the backpack latches in place when they make their next spacewalk on Wednesday. The tape is like duct tape but slippery and able to withstand both frigid cold and fiery hot temperatures.

"We're not called upon to get into any tight quarters, as far as we know yet, so I think with a little bit of tape, and the fact that we're doing it out in the open most of the time, means we're good to go," Sellers told The Associated Press via satellite today.

     ...

Back in 1998, a study showed that duct tape was useful for just about everything... except taping ducts, a lamentable fact which anyone who has ever tried could have told them. Around 2003 or so, in pursuit of the War on Terra, our government suggested other uses for duct tape. Of course, I wrote doggerel about the duct tape study in 1998, and extended it in 2003 to show the best use of duct tape in securing ourselves from terra-ists:

My thanks to the anonymous Photoshopper. Read the doggerel; it suggests a lot of uses for duct tape. The closest I came to Shuttle astronaut backpack repair was "tape wings onto planes..." maybe I'll have to add another verse. I'll just duct-tape a few lines to the end of the poem. Oops, I can't locate my roll...

Steve
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They Fought The Law

... and it's not yet clear if Mr. Law won:

IF their children repeatedly play hooky from school, residents of Norwalk's public housing complexes could be evicted under regulations proposed by the Norwalk Housing Authority.

The authority, saying that it wants to improve school attendance and the academic performance of children who live in public housing, made the proposal at a meeting in April and discussed it again last month. Under the plan, families would be evicted after a child had 10 unexcused absences.

Curtis O. Law, the executive director of the authority, said it would first try to have the child return to school. The purpose is not to punish parents, Mr. Law said, but to motivate them to make sure their children go to school.

     ...

"To be successful in school, one needs to be in school," Mr. Law said. "Education leads to other options. If we only get one child to go to school and not be truant, it's worth it."

     ...

"We think it is both unwise and illegal," said Richard Tenenbaum, a lawyer and the director of the housing task force of Connecticut Legal Services. "If the goal is to keep these children in school, making them homeless is not going to foster that goal."

     ...

No kidding. Mr. Law has a lot of support for the proposal, from people who make arguments similar to his. Some of them may be under political pressure to (dramatic gasp) do something! But otherwise, I wonder how people can get behind an idea that is so bad on its face. Let's see... after 10 absences, once all the procedures run their course, Mom (probably) and all the kids (probably) get kicked out on the street. How, exactly, is that supposed to help anyone... the truant student, the family or the school?

People who call themselves conservative seem anxious to show that they believe in discipline. Put aside for the moment that the discipline they advocate is usually for someone else and seldom for themselves, and ask a simple question: where does discipline come from? There are many answers, but all of them involve discipline as a virtue one learns. Which is a better environment for learning discipline, the schools or the streets? You cannot persuade me that there are any schools that are that bad. Kids learn how to learn, at home and at school. They learn very little that is positive if they are homeless, or shuttled among relatives, shelters, etc. If a kid has a truancy problem, the last thing they need... the last thing their entire family needs... is ejection from their residence.

Steve
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Dubya Moons Space Station

Perhaps, if he were still an undergraduate, Bush would do exactly that. What he has done instead is to reorient U.S. participation in the International Space Station away from basic research and toward research that will support missions to the Moon and eventually to Mars. Here's Mark Kaufman of the WaPo:

When the international space station was initially proposed by President Ronald Reagan, its central mission was conceived as providing the most innovative and unusual research center that mankind had ever created. Orbiting 250 miles above Earth, the station would be a laboratory for developing new medicines, for learning how single cells, plants and animals adapt to life in space, and for discovering technologies for processing metals and other materials in a gravity-free environment.

Twenty-two years later, the space station is half-built and can carry out some experiments, but the U.S. view of its science mission has greatly changed. With the space shuttle Discovery now docked at the station, the primary U.S. goal is no longer basic research. Now it is to support President Bush's initiative of manned missions to the moon and to Mars by learning about how astronauts can live for long periods in space.

The morphing of the space station's role has not been without controversy. Some scientists fret that critical research in medicine and on atmospheric change is being de-emphasized in favor of splashy projects that will have little earthly benefit.

Much of U.S. research is focused on the rigors of living long-term in zero gravity and with constant bombardment from solar radiation -- some of the greatest hazards faced by crews traveling in deeper space.

"As it was originally planned, the space station would be a facility for all users," said Donald A. Thomas, NASA's space station program scientist. "Any scientist with an interesting experiment to do -- combustion and fluid scientists, plant and cell scientists, crystal growers -- they could all come to NASA, and we would try to accommodate them. But our cutbacks and refocusing have changed that."

     ...

This is not a new debate. I once had a private music student, a professor at U.H. Clear Lake whose specialty was the study of planets (sorry, I don't remember the details; that was 25 years ago), who lamented loud and long that the US space program was oriented toward expensive manned missions rather than less expensive robotic missions yielding, in his opinion, more valuable scientific information. Of course he had a dog in the race, and could scarcely have been expected to be objective. It seems to me that both manned and robotic missions have provided impressive results over the years.

Kaufman, whose article is well worth reading, takes a view similar to my former student's. It seems to me, though, that the last paragraph quoted above is the center of the matter. If the US were not attempting multiple useless wars that have only negative impact on our national security, wars that have been devastating to America's stature in the eyes of the world, wars that are draining our resources sorely needed for other purposes... if our government were not handing out obscene tax cuts to our wealthiest citizens and no-bid contracts to corporate cronies of the White House... in other words, if our government were behaving rationally about its use of available resources, we might well be able to afford several kinds of space missions at once (including the ever so critical climate change studies), and simultaneously address the vast problems of the economy, jobs, healthcare, poverty, and yes, even actual national security, as opposed to the endless wars we seem to be headed for now.

But noooo; frat boy Bush wants to Moon the Space Station...

Steve
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Bush Deplores Firefox Leaks

Actually, Bush probably doesn't know the Firefox browser exists; he's not much interested in those internets he talks about, except to the extent they make spying on people easier. But we all have learned from Bush that there are good leaks and bad leaks. For Bush, Plame's outing = good leak, NYT articles on domestic spying = bad leak; etc. etc.

The Firefox browser is known to have memory leaks. Whether or not Bush realizes it, trust me: those are bad leaks.

Geeks please forgive this digression and its simplifications; feel free to skip the italicized material.

Memory, sometimes called RAM, is the scratchpad in which your computer actually does work. All applications that run on your computer need memory in which to run. They use it to hold data currently being worked on (e.g., a working copy of a word processing document, or the spicy .jpg you're viewing in your browser) and parts of programs that are running or about to run. When an application (MS Word, Firefox, etc.) needs some memory, it requests it from the operating system or OS (Windows, Linux, etc.). The OS lends ("allocates") the needed amount of memory to the application. When the application no longer needs that piece of memory, it informs the OS, which may then lend the same memory to another application.

Sometimes, an application has a bug (do I need to define that?) and forgets to release memory it no longer needs back to the OS, or simply loses track of that memory altogether. Firefox has that problem. This is known as a "memory leak." Sometimes it is a serious bug, fatal to the application or worse. Sometimes it is a mere annoyance: the longer the application runs, the more memory it forgets about, so that over time, less memory is available to run applications... including the leaking application itself. Firefox has the latter problem.

Here ends the material geeks may skip.

Some have noticed performance problems in Firefox that gradually slow their computer to a crawl, or result in a lot of disk activity. Many user configuration changes have been suggested as possible solutions for that problem. I haven't had those problems, but then again, I have a lot of physical RAM installed in my computers; even a fairly bad leak would take a while to chew it up. If you have those problems, and if you don't mind tinkering with your Firefox configuration, you may find this article helpful. The author has separated myth from reality about which changes actually appear to address the problem.

(HT to Dwight Silverman for the link.)

An aside: while I was viewing the current configuration, I noticed that among the Firefox plugins currently installed on this machine is one called Microsoft DRM. ("DRM" is "digital rights management.") It must have been installed by Microsoft's odious license police program, Windows Genuine Advantage (now there's Newspeak for you), which lately has been forcibly installed along with essential security patches by Windows Update.

Putting aside the offensiveness of Microsoft's forcible installation of license policing software, WTF business does Microsoft have inserting a plugin into my Firefox installation? That means that every time I use Firefox, a little bit of Microsoft code runs. WTF is that all about? What does it do? Is Microsoft inventorying all software on our computers, not merely its own products? And... does this plugin "phone home"? What would happen if I manually uninstalled it? This is really outside the pale, but what else does one expect from Microsoft.

UPDATE: Never mind. A little searching reveals that the Microsoft DRM plugin was installed when I installed Windows Media Player 10 on this three-year-old computer. I guess that means I "voluntarily" installed the plugin, right?

Steve
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Crime Close To Home -- UPDATED

About an hour ago, a neighbor across the pool from me was robbed and shot three times. He survived; in fact, he was sitting up and talking to the police when I saw him. There was a lot of blood on the sidewalk around the corner from me. The man appeared to have been shot in the leg. In the short period of time I listened, the victim said that the robbery took place in his apartment, that his computer was stolen, that he attempted to call police on his cell phone but the criminals took it from him, forced him to the ground and shot him, apparently (this part is hearsay from a neighbor) when he was unable to produce his wallet quickly enough. Another neighbor said the police had one man in the back of their squad car; I did not see that with my own eyes, but it was clear from the victim's statement that there were at least two men who robbed him. The poor victim had lived here less than a month; I have not even met him yet. He was taken away in an ambulance; another neighbor said she had heard the techs say he would be OK. I tend to believe this, based on his animation and clear-mindedness while giving his statement. But that was more blood than I've ever seen in one place outside an operating room.

Stella, whose apartment is only slightly farther away from the scene than mine, isn't going to like this one bit. I hope she doesn't insist on our moving; crime has been relatively low at this location, and I don't know where it would be any safer.

Please forgive any typos in this post. I'm still shaking a bit.

UPDATE about 3:20pm: Here's more hearsay, through a reliable neighbor who spoke with an HPD officer who lives here literally in the same building as the victim:

• The victim's wounds were not serious; they just bled a lot. The victim is a physician; that may account for his being able to give a statement calmly while blood was still all over the place and running down his leg. (That part is not hearsay; I saw him myself.)
  
  
• Three men perpetrated this home invasion. My reliable source says our policeman neighbor used the words "home invasion." According to him, the invaders came to the door and called the victim by name. He opened the door, and they assaulted him, robbed him and shot him.
  
  
• The best news so far: our HPD officer neighbor apprehended the alleged shooter, who is now in custody. For quick response, I suppose nothing beats having a cop for a neighbor. The other two men got away; helicopters were patrolling the area almost immediately. We live almost directly across the bayou from an HPD substation; it's a really stupid place for someone to commit a crime unless they plan to be apprehended quickly... especially if our HPD officer neighbor happens to be off duty and at home.
  
  
• Our HPD officer neighbor had been assigned to a robbery of the same apartment that took place last week. Apparently the victim is the son of a jeweler, and the robbers assumed... knew?... that there was something worth stealing there.
  
  

Thanks for your patience with my recounting all the gritty details.

If there's one lesson in all this, it's this: people, use your peephole; city-dwellers, don't open the door to people you don't know or expect. I know I've been pretty casual about this; I shall be a lot more careful now.

One other lesson for political volunteers: when you block-walk, be sure you wear something that clearly identifies you as a campaign worker, deputy volunteer voter registrar, etc. If you're registering voters, carry your official ID in a badge pouch on a string around your neck, and hold it up, along with your registration pad, in plain sight as you ring the doorbell. These criminals just made our efforts more difficult; do what you can to identify yourself to avoid having the homeowner or tenant greet you at the door with a gun.

Steve
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More Miss Spellings

She's at it again. This time, Margaret Spellings, possibly the most pitiful Secretary of Education since ED was created in 1980, yet another Bush political operative (from his campaign for governor of Texas) appointed to a post for which she shows no aptitude, one of the authors of the No Child's Left Behind Left Behind Act, wants to track students:

     ...

The controversial concept of a national student "unit" tracking system has been floating around for about two years. It was given a boost last month when Education Secretary Margaret Spellings's Commission on the Future of Higher Education released a draft report endorsing such a plan.

The idea, proponents say, is not to invade the privacy of students, but to force colleges to be more accountable to the public by revealing such information as accurate enrollment figures and financial aid percentages, as well as graduation, transfer and dropout rates. The data would come from individual students, but their identities would be protected, supporters say.

Right now, the plan has no legs. The House included in its higher education bill a prohibition on such a plan; the Senate bill ignored it; and some powerful legislators oppose it. Nonetheless, private institutions are fretting that the Department of Education will find a way around Congress to implement it.

     ...

Yes, with this administration, I'd "fret" that, too. They have a tracking record, um, a track record, after all.

Is there really a problem to be solved here?

     ...

Travis Reindl, director of policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said that a tracking system would "offer the opportunity to answer questions that we can't answer right now about the types of students we have and how they are learning."

"Right now, when a student leaves school, we have no way of knowing whether they went to another institution or several institutions," he said. "We lose them along the way and lose the ability to know whether they graduated. This not just about accountability. This about helping institutions help students."

     ...

I don't get it. Private and public universities keep track of their graduates; mine has followed me through a half dozen moves with no effort on my part. Most students are not hiding from their alma mater. If this were really about helping institutions help students, it would be a monumental waste of taxpayers' money, a problem already long since solved. And these questions Mr. Reindl says could be answered: what are they, who is posing them and what would be done with the answers?

The assurances that identities would be protected doesn't comfort me much: that sort of data mining is just too easy. Let me give you an example. Before the 2000 election, our local Democratic club needed to do some phone banking, and so as not to waste our time or annoy Republicans with phone calls, we wanted to target recent local known Democratic voters in the seven-precinct region spanned by our club. I took the Democratic primary canvass (the list of people who voted is a matter of public record, though of course not how they voted), the voter rolls (also public records, used to obtain home addresses for matching) and one of the online phone number lookup services, and wrote a little program that walked the lists and web sites, attempting to connect the names of Democratic voters with their phone numbers. The program was slow, but its success rate was astonishing. And nothing I did was rocket science. Anyone in my line of work could have done it.

Here's the message to take away from my tale: such a program needn't have been obtaining listed phone numbers from names and addresses; it could just as well have obtained names from three or four other pieces of information. Removing names from the records supplied under Miss Spellings's proposal would not mean that those names could not be fairly straightforwardly obtained from the data kept in her database, combined with other readily available data. Depending on what was stored, one might even be able to do it from public records alone. But of course the potentially interested parties would have more than mere public records at their disposal. If they really wanted to protect privacy, they would aggregate the data, publish only the numbers and sequester the original data. Even that doesn't absolutely prevent identification of individuals: what if one of their categories contains only one person? And of course nothing prevents those who collected the original data from going back to their unpublished database and using the original data for purposes not advertised when it was gathered.

This is a stupid idea. It would waste our money, serve no legitimate purpose and create yet another government database of one class of citizens for use... well, we don't know the "by whom" or the "for what," do we? I am glad there is considerable opposition in Congress, and that the practice may soon be illegal. But we know how far the illegality of a practice goes these days in checking this administration, don't we? Eyes open, everyone...

(For accuracy: Miss Spellings is really Mrs. Spellings. But this is a blog, and I am not a journalist, and it isn't difficult to see why I call her Miss Spellings, is it?)

Steve
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Friday 'The Kiss' Blogging

Not by Klimt...

... but it goes to prove ...

... there's more than one way to kiss a cat.

(By the way, despite the filenames, the cat in the pictures is Samantha. Sometimes I can't tell 'em apart in those tiny thumbnails displayed by the Scanner and Camera Wizard.)

Steve
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Bush Kicks Researchers In Teeth

Metaphorically, of course... he can't do it for real until after November:

EPA Library Closure Protested by 10,000 Staffers
— July 5, 2006

Some 10,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists, engineers, and other technical specialists have asked Congress to stop the Bush administration's 80 percent budget cut that would close the agency's network of technical research libraries. The signatories, who represent more than half of the agency's total workforce, sent a letter, released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), saying the cuts would put thousands of scientific studies out of reach and hinder emergency preparedness, anti-pollution enforcement, and long-term research.      ...

(Emphasis mine.)

The article goes on to say that the total annual budget for those libraries is $2.5 million. That's million, not billion. According to PEER, internal EPA studies show that having their own research libraries saves about three times that much. So it costs more to eliminate them than to keep them. That is no surprise to anyone who does scientific, technical or medical research. It's not out of the goodness of their institutional hearts that the two dozen or so hospitals, schools and research organizations that make up the Texas Medical Center field a world-class research and medical library right in their midst; it's because it is cheaper to own and staff such a library than to waste the time of highly paid specialists as they chase the information they need using outside sources. Believe it or not, not everything a researcher needs is published on the web, nor are the needed resources typically free of charge to use. Believe this, too, or not: a professional librarian can work wonders searching obscure sources for still more obscure but nonetheless essential items.

I am sorry, but you cannot persuade me the Bush administration is attempting this cut out of ignorance or a desire to protect the taxpayers' pocketbooks. Along with the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror," we now have the "war on science, technology and the environment."

And on the environmental front, I believe the Bushies are winning.

(HT to Constance Reader.)

Steve
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Judge: DeLay Or No One For GOP

Federal District Judge Sam Sparks has ruled in the matter of the GOP candidate in Texas CD 22: the GOP can run DeLay, but they cannot replace him on the ballot. It's DeLay or no one.

DeLay pulled a stunt in which he won the GOP primary in the 22nd congressional district, then "moved" to Virginia, anticipating that the local GOP chair could then declare DeLay ineligible and replace him on the ballot.

Not so fast, said Judge Sparks. Here's the short version:

     ...

DeLay had sought to have state Republican Chair Tina Benkiser declare him ineligible by moving from Sugar Land to his condominium in Virginia. But Sparks said that would not make him ineligible because the requirement under the Constitution is whether DeLay is an inhabitant of Texas on election day.

Sparks said contradicting evidence raised questions about whether DeLay planned to remain a resident of Virginia, but he said that did not matter because DeLay could not say where he would be on election day.

"The court holds that allowing Benkiser to declare DeLay ineligible at this time would amount to a de facto residency requirement in violation of the United States Constitution," Sparks said in his opinion.

     ...

Remember that DeLay has already resigned his seat in Congress in preparation for his "move," so if he were to run, he would not be the incumbent. I don't know the situation well, but I've heard that the people in CD 22 are getting tired of the shenanigans, the alleged criminal acts, etc., and that DeLay no longer holds the advantage he did in years past.

Remember, too, that Nick Lampson was a fine congressman before he was ousted in the DeLay-driven re-redistricting. I'm guessing Nick will have another opportunity to do a fine job.

Of course, DeLay is appealing. The ruling... he's appealing the ruling. Surely you didn't think I meant...

Steve
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Mexican Standoff

In traditional harmony as taught in university classrooms, including the one I used to occupy almost 30 years ago, there are three flavors of augmented 6^th chords. By convention, they are known as Italian 6^th, French 6^th and German 6^th; the chords have nothing that associates them in real life with the nationalities... composers of all three countries used all three flavors in the common practice period... but saying the country names is easier than uttering other more elaborate descriptions of the chords, and every little bit helps in a field already saturated with notation and nomenclature.

Then there's the version that functions in context exactly like a German 6^th but is spelled like a dominant 7^th. Practically speaking, it's the same chord, spelled with a minor 7^th in place of the augmented 6^th. Back in the day, when my graduate advisor and his two colleagues on the music theory faculty at UH wrote the first edition of what would become one of the most widely sold introductory music theory texts... it's in its sixth edition now... they tried to persuade the publisher to allow them to call that respelled chord a Mexican 6^th. Remember, the text was written at a university in a city brimming with Mexican culture and music; the intent was most definitely complimentary. But the publisher didn't see it that way; they feared that with the 6^th-7^th dichotomy, someone would misread it as an insult to Mexicans' ability to count. So the Mexican 6^th never formally saw the light of day, though the term was used in casual discussions locally.

Now we have a Mexican presidential election so close that we're about to find out whether Mexicans can count better than Americans managed in 2000. As I write this, the count is within 0.01 percent. López Obrador, the more left-leaning candidate, led most of the night, but around 4:00am, the count turned, putting the more conservative Felipe Calderón in the lead by the tiniest of margins. Accusations of inconsistencies are flying; Obrador has called a rally of his supporters, and social unrest is not out of the question. Can they get it right? Can they count better than America, when push comes to shove? From what I've read, my bet is yes, they'll do it as well as it can be done under adverse circumstances, better than we did in 2000 (and possibly 2004). Of course, they don't have highfalutin' e-voting systems getting in the way.

Here's your question for this post: why are so many major Western democracies lately experiencing such closely divided votes for executive positions? And what can America do to avoid future elections that are "close enough to steal"?

(Minor correction made after initial posting: changed lowered 7^th to minor 7^th. I told you it was a minor correction...)

UPDATE: Calderón wins. Obrador refuses to concede. This could be interesting; pass the nachos compuestos...

Steve
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Would Thoreau Have Blogged?

Stella and I found ourselves leafing through a beautiful book of photos of Walden Pond and surroundings, interspersed with quotations from Thoreau's Walden, which we read aloud to each other. Among them was a passage from the essay "Reading," a comparison of the spoken word with the written:

However much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may read them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

And the bloggers... all five to 30 million of us, depending on whose numbers you believe... sit between two chairs, as the Germans might say: our topics are usually transient, but we "speak[] to the intellect and health of mankind" as surely as any dead-tree writers who ever lived. For your contemplation, here's one of those questions not straightforwardly answerable: if Thoreau had lived in our era, and managed to keep his butt out of jail, and not been a serious technophobe, would he have kept a blog?

Steve
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Lay Dead

Wow. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this one.

Conspiracy theories keep flitting about my ears, buzzing, "is it really Ken Lay? is he really dead? was it really of natural causes (a "massive coronary")? who gets all that ill-gotten money now?" Lay was 64, and surely few people have led more stressful lives. His death is probably exactly as it seems on the surface; no conspiracy theory is necessary.

A lot of people who would have preferred to see Lay experience some punishment on this side of the veil... and I include myself in that category... will simply have to get used to the idea that he is beyond our ability to punish or reward. On the other hand, he is also beyond Bush's authority to pardon...

Steve
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Jefferson's Last Declaration

John Nichols of The Nation gives us a good essay reminding us that the founders were revolutionaries, not conservatives, and offering as evidence the final statement of an aging and ailing Thomas Jefferson on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I'm taking the liberty (and I choose that word consciously) of reproducing Jefferson's statement from Nichols's essay, editorial clarifications and all:

May (July 4) be to the world, what I believe it will be -- to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all -- the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form (of government) which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

"Reason and freedom of opinion." "The general spread of the light of science." A rejection of the notion that monarchy is somehow God's plan. Remember your rights, wrote Jefferson in his final declaration; "refresh our recollections of these rights." We must heed his words, not because he is some icon on the wall, an object of prayer, but because he said something timeless in its implication: if we want those rights and freedoms, we must secure them for ourselves, anew, in every generation.

We live in another age, and are afflicted with another King George of sorts, a man as crazy in his own way as the one whose rule we cast off centuries ago. If we are lucky, we will not need another violent revolution to escape the oppressive behaviors of our rulers: the mechanisms are in place in our current form of government to allow us to check those rulers, to free ourselves from the worst they can do and are doing. But we must employ those mechanisms: we must find, as a people, the political will to say "enough!" and "no further!" to those attempting to control us.

And we must find that political will soon: the world is much smaller, the rulers much closer and the technologies of control much more effective than in Jefferson's day. It isn't going to get any easier if we wait. I am not such a partisan, nor so blind to the flaws of the Democratic Party, as to believe that a change of government will, by itself, yield a perfect America... but a good, solid, overwhelming Democratic victory in November could at least rein in the ravages of the latest King George. And it may be our last chance. It's crunch time, good people.

Steve
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After 7/4, Everything Changed

There are those who say the GOP is stuck in a pre-7/4/1776 mentality, and I wouldn't contradict them. But I'm not here to talk politics at the moment. We had a very pleasant July 4, and I'd rather talk about that.

First, we picked up one of Stella's friends who is from Minnesota, and went to see A Prairie Home Companion (the movie). Who could be more American than Garrison Keillor; what could be more American than the radio show. OK, so the movie was just plain weird... that's American, too. As a nation, we like weird. Even the American Taliban likes weird; how else could they tolerate Ricky Santorum. The right to be passing strange may not be written into the Bill of Rights, but it is most certainly one of those unenumerated rights they talk about. Stella's friend says she wishes she could marry Garrison Keillor. Now that's weird... and it's her right as an American to feel that way, and to express her feelings. God bless America, and Keillor, and Stella's friend, and general weirdness.

Then we had a quick meal at a fast food place. If there's anything more American than fast food, I don't know what it could be. God bless American fast food; vegetarian that I am, I still eat my share.

After that, we went to a used book store. Loving a real bargain may not be uniquely American, but it is certainly one of our traits. I love a bargain, and I found one, a Mark Twain book I didn't have already... there aren't many of those; I probably have half his total output in my collection. Mark Twain... now there was an American one can love.

I went in search of information about the Shuttle launch, which took place while we were in the movie. Discovery is on its way, shedding foam, as have all recent Shuttle launches. God preserve Discovery and her crew. Bryan mentioned that one obstacle to the launch was vultures circling; I refuse to take that as a sign. Foam and vultures notwithstanding, they'll surely make it home safely.

Back home, after a nap, I played and sang the Star-Spangled Banner, as I do most years on July 4. I hope the neighbors did not file a complaint about the singing (I have a truly awful voice); my piano rendition, though, was pretty traditional. Then we watched the downtown concert and fireworks on TV this year, because the weather was uncertain and because we were lazy. Los Lonely Boys were anything but lazy, and put on a show of good old-fashioned rock that did credit to their home town... San Angelo, TX. I fixed the annual guacamole feast (about which I wrote a couple of years ago); we stuffed ourselves, and I drank American beer. If you don't think guacamole is a traditional American food, you're ignoring approximately half the citizenry of Texas. Afterward, we deviated from the American theme long enough to watch an old John Lennon video, but we made up for it by watching part of Jay Leno afterward.

Liberal that I unabashedly am, why do I hate America so much? I must hate its freedoms, huh? Or its music, or its food, or its pop culture, or its traditions, or its diversity... yeah, right, I really hate those, don't you? No? Well, neither do I, you GOP (Nixonian expletive deleted)s. You have no monopoly on the American ideal, or on American traditions, and you can just STFU when you pretend that you do. God bless America, land that I love... chew on that, Karl and Dick and Shrub and Rummy.

(I guess I was here to talk politics after all. Tough. Deal with it.)

Steve
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We've Got Issues -- DOGGEREL!

Two nights ago, I read a short story by Harry Turtledove called "The Last Article," an alternate history in which Turtledove pits the Third Reich against Gandhi's India. (Warning! spoiler!) In the short term, at least in the span covered by the story, Gandhi loses, and dies, because as Gandhi himself pointed out more than once in his real life, his methods work only against a government that can be shamed before the world. (Yes, I realize that's a simplification.) The story got me to thinking about the fragility of everything Americans claim to hold dear, and how easily we have been manipulated into abandoning or at least setting aside "temporarily" the values the framers of our Constitution thought essential from their firsthand experience. That led me in turn to think of the false issues and fears fed to us by our leaders to distract us while they ignore the real issues and destroy more than two centuries' worth of struggle by our forebears to improve the kind of government we live under. Flag-burning? give me a friggin' break. Don't talk to me about flag-burning while you're taking notes about my bank records and phone calls, calling me a traitor for dissenting from the policies of an originally unelected president, starting wars based on lies, torturing people... f'chrissake, torturing people... etc. etc.

And so, inevitably, I was compelled to write doggerel. It's dogawful doggerel, but I had to do it. It's very deliberately not set to the metric structure of our National Anthem, notwithstanding the occasional references...

It's July Fourth,
And We've Got Issues

Steve Bates

Steve
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Joe Leaver-Man

Credit for the post subject goes to regular firedoglake commenter BobbyG, who remarks, "Leaver-man is pathetic." I think that's too kind to Boltin' Joe, but it's a start, and among many catchy labels, "Leaver-Man" seems most apt to me given the circumstances.

NTodd, who is no fan of political parties, rightly excoriates Joe's action in announcing his intention to collect signatures to allow him to appear on the November ballot as an "independent Democrat" (WTF?) even if he loses the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont. Well and good: I, too, deplore that action.

But I think it's important to clarify why Joe's actions are deplorable. This has to do with partisanship only incidentally: it is first and foremost an issue of honesty. Lieberman has accepted the financial and organizational support of the Democratic Party for over two decades. Now he makes it clear that he feels entitled, that he intends to continue enlisting that support even if Connecticut Democrats choose someone else as their candidate for Senate.

That's bad enough, and makes me regret ever having voted for Lieberman, but even worse is DSCC head Charles Schumer's refusal (to this point, to the best of my knowledge) to state unequivocally that the DSCC will direct its funds to the winner of the primary, rather than wasting them either by propping up the anointed candidate in the primary or by possibly supporting the primary loser in November. I think it is likely that Lieberman, as little as I personally like him, will defeat Lamont in the primary, but his intent to have it both ways is fundamentally dishonest... a boot in the face of the Democratic democratic process.

What will I do about it, given that I do not live there and do not have a dog in this race? Lets make this short and, um, not sweet: if Lieberman is not the candidate for U.S. Senate duly elected by the Democratic citizens of Connecticut, and if the DSCC gives money to him anyway, then the DxC, where x equals SC or CC or N or any other such damned acronym, can forget about contributions from me this year.

Got that, Chuck? Your rank-and-file is rankled... and could easily "misbehave" in pursuit of honesty. Do the right thing if you want our help.

Steve
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Waas: Bush Ordered Wilson Slam

Murray Waas, in National Journal:

President Bush told the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case that he directed Vice President Dick Cheney to personally lead an effort to counter allegations made by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV that his administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq, according to people familiar with the president's statement.

Bush also told federal prosecutors during his June 24, 2004, interview in the Oval Office that he had directed Cheney, as part of that broader effort, to disclose highly classified intelligence information that would not only defend his administration but also discredit Wilson, the sources said.

But Bush told investigators that he was unaware that Cheney had directed I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, to covertly leak the classified information to the media instead of releasing it to the public after undergoing the formal governmental declassification processes.

Bush also said during his interview with prosecutors that he had never directed anyone to disclose the identity of then-covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. Bush said he had no information that Cheney had disclosed Plame's identity or directed anyone else to do so.

     ...

Waas reveals many additional details obtained from his unidentified inside sources. The White House of course refused to comment; if the details are true, one can easily see why. It doesn't look good for them.

Let the finger-pointing among senior administration officials begin. And pass the popcorn.

(HT to Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Steve
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What Have They Been Smoking?

We don't have to ask that question about the Joint Chiefs, but considering what Sy Hersh informs us about the struggle over Iran policy within the Bush administration among some at State, the Pentagon's planners, intelligence agencies, much of the brass, etc. on the one hand, and Rumsfeld, Cheney and some bomb-everything types in the Air Force brass on the other, it's certainly a legitimate question regarding CheneyRumsfeldBush. Depending on how this goes, America could end up in even deeper doodoo than it already stands in. The good news: apparently a nuclear first strike is now off the table. The bad news: the pro-bombing forces in the administration are friggin' nuts, and possible outcomes don't seem to factor into their decision-making processes. Read the whole sorry thing.

I know it's fantasy on my part, but I'd like to live in an America in which the neocons' question, "Why have the ultimate world-class military if you're not going to use it?" is replaced with the much more sensible question, "Why have the ultimate world-class military if you repeatedly put yourself in a completely avoidable position of having to use it all the time?"

(Hersh link via noz.)

Steve
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Is Michael Griffin Out To Launch?

I don't know. Eric Berger, science reporter for the Houston Chronicle, finds him "slightly ornery" and takes exception to Griffin's lectures to reporters on risk management. Berger:

     ...

As he likes to do, Griffin also lectured the media on the inherent dangers of space travel, pointedly noting that the FRR discussions in which Discovery's safety was questioned were part of the standard engineering process. Not every decision will have a consensus, and that's OK, he said:

"We are playing the odds. When we say playing the odds, we're talking about risk management. As taxpayers, you pay us to play the odds. It's called risk management."

I know it's called risk management, Dr. Griffin. I also think you should forgive us ignorant and uninformed reporters when we have the temerity to question whether Discovery is safe to fly when some of your own engineers are asking the same questions.

It sounds as if the press conferences are getting testy as launch approaches. And rightly so: the decision to launch despite objections from the chief engineer and the top safety official is unprecedented. I have no way of knowing the reasoning Griffin followed to reach this decision, but Berger is right that a reporter has every right to question the decision publicly, no matter how the mission goes.

Finally, there's this tidbit:

Finally, Griffin said he has received no pressure from the White House to get the space shuttle flying again. NASA hopes to retire the space shuttle by 2010 after assembling the International Space Station.

Do you believe that? Quite frankly, I don't. The pressure to hurry up and launch, combined with Dick Cheney's attendance at the launch site, spells "political pressure" to me, in boldface caps. POLITICAL PRESSURE. But if the Bush administration is willing to play political games with over a hundred thousand American troops, is it any surprise if they are willing to take risks with our nation's most spectacular technological achievement, and with the lives of the highly skilled men and women who accomplish it?

Besides, you have to worry about an administration that would pressure NASA to name a Moon mission Ares ...

As I post this, around 10:30am, weather is looking good for a launch, and mission managers are addressing the thruster heater problem. Eric Berger is liveblogging the launch, which is currently scheduled for 2:49pm Houston time.

Godspeed, Discovery and crew.

Steve
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May Memories

I somehow never got around to posting a bunch of outdoor pictures back in May...

... and I didn't have anything new and of interest with which to begin July. When in doubt, take the easy route: post pics of flowers. There's lots of good stuff on the previous page which, judging by the comments, nobody read; if you want something heavier than a flower, you'll certainly find it there.

Holiday weekend blogging may be sparse, but I'll probably put up a post well before the Fourth.

Steve
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A Bright Cold Day In April

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Gitmo Business As Usual?

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Friday Sharing Blogging

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This Could Be Huge

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The Active Audience

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Tinfoil Helmet Time

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All Your Bank Are Belong To Us

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Seeking Inspiration: Harriet Tubman

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Limbaugh Caught With Viagra

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Zing!

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Playing Politics With Our Troops

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GOP: A Bunch Of Crooks

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Friday Caffeine/Cat-Fiend Blogging

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