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BLOGS + MISC LINKS
RECENT COMMENTS
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Fox's Rove-ing Putz
NYT:
That Pundit on Fox News? An Upstart Named Rove
By JIM RUTENBERG and JACQUES STEINBERG
Published: May 12, 2008
WASHINGTON — Late Thursday night, Karl Rove, the architect of the last two Republican presidential victories,
was on his new television perch at Fox News, offering free advice to Senator Barack Obama as he closed in on the
Democratic nomination.
Any move by Mr. Obama to declare victory before the last of the Democratic primaries in June, Mr. Rove said,
would alienate Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s wing of the party. “That’s a mistake,” he said. “That just is
rubbing the loser’s nose in it. And a lot of those supporters will remember it by November.”
In the Obama campaign war room in Chicago, where Mr. Rove’s talking head was just one of several across six
television screens, his counsel was taken with a heavy dose of salt.
“Wouldn’t taking his advice be a little like getting health tips from a funeral home director?” said Mr. Obama’s
press secretary, Bill Burton.
The bęte noire of the Democrats has turned pundit, and his old nemeses — along with those who used to cover him
in the news media — do not always know what to make of it.
...
First of all, Rove is also arguably the architect of the embarrassing Republican loss in the 2006 congressional
elections. If he is a bęte noire, he is sometimes a dumbfucking bęte noire.
Then there's his advice to Democrats. Bill Burton has assessed it for what it is: raw GOP propaganda and
monkeywrenching. I am one of those so-called liberal white elites (heh) who voted for and caucused for
Hillary... and I and all the LWEs I personally know in the Democratic Party intend to be there for Obama, with
bells on as the saying goes, in the general election. Does Rove think we are all suicidally stupid?
Somebody please explain to me how this man came to be known as a political genius. The process must have been
similar to the process by which Fox News talking heads came to be mistaken for journalists.
Steve
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Happy Mother's Day!
The lady you see on the left was my mother. Last year, I wrote a more elaborate biographical post about her,
which you can read
here.
Stella's cats Tabitha and Samantha have a great day planned for their Mom-substitute, including a lot of
lap-sitting, chasing around the apartment, and at the end of the day, their presents, which are... their
presence. I hope all of you have a splendid day, with your mothers if possible, and with your children if you're
the mother.
Steve
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FDA On Heparin: Protecting Americans?
In a confrontation that involves the peoples of two countries, the executives of two governments, an American
drug company, our Congress and the FDA, the Wall Street Journal is certain of just one thing:
It's the Democrats' fault...
FDA Withholds List of Chinese Heparin Suppliers From Probe
By ALICIA MUNDY
May 10, 2008; Page A4
WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration is withholding a list of Chinese heparin suppliers requested by
congressional investigators looking into problems with tainted supplies of the blood thinner, saying
confidentiality agreements prevent release of the companies' names.
Members of Congress also are concerned that Chinese heparin manufacturers and their raw-material suppliers
didn't fully cooperate with an FDA inspection team in February, after the heparin crisis erupted
internationally, and barred the FDA from complete access to some workshops, records and workers.
An FDA compliance official testified to a congressional subcommittee April 29 that the FDA could try to revisit
facilities in China, but said, "I cannot say whether they will admit us or not, or whether they will allow us
to do a full inspection."
...
A spokeswoman for the FDA said the agency is looking at finding a way to give the committee the information it
requested 10 days ago without violating confidentiality agreements involving proprietary information.
...
The Chinese government, meanwhile, has insisted that its products didn't cause American deaths and said this
week that Baxter wasn't cooperating in China's investigation. Ms. Gardiner said, "We disagree. We hosted the
Chinese in April at our plant in New Jersey and have agreed to provide them with heparin samples."
The FDA is relying on voluntary testing agreements with some companies to check their heparin ingredients
for contamination before they distribute their supplies in the U.S., said a spokeswoman for the FDA, citing
congressional testimony by FDA officials.
The tainted-heparin scare has become one of several cases congressional Democrats have used to criticize the
Bush administration.
...
Oh, those evil Democrats... insisting on information, prepared to violate proprietary secrets for no better
reason than that China may be knowingly supplying tainted medicine to be fed to Americans. Apparently, Bush's
FDA would prefer to join the conspiracy of silence. Remember, they "cannot say whether they will admit us or
not, or whether they will allow us to do a full inspection."
Um... why not?
As one who is about to be consuming a lot of prescription meds (not including Heparin, as far as I know), I
have a personal interest in the matter. I wouldn't be surprised if you do as well. The notion that an Executive
agency can stiff-arm a congressional investigation into matters of life and death is becoming all too prevalent
these days. It's time to get rid of these people in November.
I know many of you out there feel the Democrats are compromised, and some of you have said they are no better
than Republicans. When one of your relatives dies as a result of taking tainted medicine inadequately
scrutinized by Bush's FDA, will you still feel the same way? Face it: voluntary "compliance" ... Republican
policy in matters ranging from testing of medicine to reducing environmental pollution... just doesn't cut it.
And voluntary "compliance" is all we'll get, until we oust the Bushists and defeat McSame in November.
Steve
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Conason On Hillary
Joe Conason, long-time supporter and frequent defender of the Clintons (please read, for example, the by now
ancient and venerable
The Hunting of the President
by Conason and Lyons),
explains Hillary's serious missteps,
first on Iran, then (and most seriously) on race as a campaign issue.
I voted and caucused for Hillary (before she made her statements about "totally obliterating" Iran and about
"hard-working Americans, white Americans"), but endorsed neither Democratic candidate. I claim no prescience in
that non-endorsement, but it does seem to me that Hillary, who is very likely not going to make it as the
Democratic candidate, has some damage control to do if she does not wish to inflict serious harm upon the
Democratic Party.
As noted before, I am committed to vote for the Democratic nominee in November. Whoever that may be, I
sincerely hope Hillary stops alienating core Democrats in her quest for the presidency. We need an intact party
far more than we need either one of the current likely nominees; the sooner Hillary realizes that, the better it
will be for all Democrats.
(Note: I am not saying Obama is blameless, but at this point, Hillary is clearly the one issuing statements that
go beyond the lines of acceptable Democratic assertions about a primary opponent. And don't get me started about
her working of the so-called superdelegates...)
Steve
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Saturday Signs
Again, it's not really a sign; it's an interior stained glass (or perhaps painted?) window used as a partition
in Hunan Village Restaurant on S. Shepherd in Houston:
Hunan Village has one of the best vegetarian menus of any Chinese restaurant in Houston.
(Confession: I tweaked this picture quite a bit to compensate for the dim interior lighting.)
Steve
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Friday Guest Cat Blogging
Catherine's cat Lotus, an Egyptian Mau, poses for us...
Catherine is recovering from eye surgery. Stella came home from work early today, feeling quite ill. And I've
been to the dentist once and the doctor once this week... so far. Keep your fingers crossed for all of us.
(Posted early. I need sleep!)
Steve
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It's Not Funny, Senator McCain
McCain turns
standup comic
on us about his reported frequent temper tantrums:
May 7, 2008, 2:04 PM
McCain Talks About His Temper
Posted by Andante Higgins| ...
...
ROCHESTER, MICH. – An energetic crowd at Oakland University here grilled John McCain on his temper and on the
war in Iraq.
A young man told McCain his temper was of concern to him, to which McCain joked, “How dare you ask that
question?”
“Take that microphone away from him,” McCain continued, to laughter from the audience. The questioner began to
read a quote from Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., who said that McCain “worries” him because of his temper.
“I’m familiar with the quote,” McCain said. “But if you’d like to repeat it again, please do so.”
The man kept reading, which prompted another audience member on the other side of the room to call out, “He’s
passionate!”
“Look, I will confess to you that I get angry,” McCain said. “I get angry when I saw a guy named Abramoff that
ripped off Native Americans for millions and millions and millions of dollars and people ended up, including
him, in federal prison. I get angry when I see 233 million of your tax dollars going to a bridge to an island
with 50 people on it. And that’s your dollars.”
...
Let me get this straight: uncontrolled anger is a virtue, and McCain intends to campaign on it, mocking his
questioners who have a legitimate problem with an historically angry man with his finger on the metaphorical
nuclear button? How desperate must the GOP be, to run such a man for president? And yet, with the effectiveness
of the GOP election theft apparatus, and the media's preoccupation with the angry man, he may well take the
office.
Steve
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Romp! Squeak!
Great headline from TPM on their
news front
(not on the
article itself):
Obama Romps in NC; Hillary Squeaks By in Indiana
... except that Obama doesn't so much romp as lumber in a dignified fashion, and Hillary doesn't squeak, but
rather rasps assertively in a manner demanding attention. Let's be accurate about this, now...
If anyone thinks tonight's primaries caused any real change in the balance, please let me know.
Steve
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Do You Believe In Magic?
Well of course you do... Florida substitute teacher Jim Piculas
just received a lovin' spoonful of it
as he watched his contract substitute teaching work disappear:
Magic trick costs teacher job
By Janie Porter
...
The charge from the school district — Wizardry!
Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.
But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land 'O Lakes, Piculas said his job
did a disappearing act of its own.
"I get a call the middle of the day from head of supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, 'Jim, we have a
huge issue, you can't take any more assignments you need to come in right away,'" he said.
When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell and went much farther than he'd hoped.
"I said, 'Well Pat, can you explain this to me?' 'You've been accused of wizardry,' [he said]. Wizardry?" he
asked.
Tampa Bay's 10 talked to the assistant superintendent with the Pasco County School District who said it wasn't
just the wizardry and that Picular had other performance issues, including "not following lesson plans" and
allowing students to play on unapproved computers."
Piculas said he knew nothing about the accusations.
"That... I think was embellished after the fact to try to cover what initially what they were saying to me," he
said.
...
This is sick... but so is much of America in matters of religious extremism. It is a sign of the advanced state
of our decay as a society that this kind of incident, though it may offend us, no longer surprises us.
My inclination is to take these people by the shoulders and shout in their faces, "Look, you stupid fucks:
however much you hate Gandalf and Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter, wizardry is fiction! Got it?
Fiction! Made up! Doesn't exist in the real world!" But doing that would not change their minds (if I may use
the term "mind" loosely), and I would probably just lose my job as Mr. Piculas did. Oh, wait; I don't have a
job...
(H/T Echidne.)
Steve
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A Few Things I Missed
Miscellaneous items of interest I missed over the past week or two:
- Congress passes anti-genetic discrimination bill:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress sent President Bush a bill Thursday forbidding employers and insurance companies from
using genetic tests showing people are at risk of developing cancer, heart disease or other ailments to reject
their job applications, promotions or health care coverage, or in setting premiums.
Bush was expected soon to sign the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which lawmakers and advocates
called "the first major civil rights act of the 21st century." Federal law already bans discrimination by race
and gender.
"Your skin color, your gender, all of those are part of your DNA," said Francis Collins, head of the National
Human Genome Research Institute. "Shouldn't the rest of your DNA also fall under that protective umbrella?"
Researchers supported the bill because Americans have been refusing to take genetic tests or have been using
false names and paying cash because they didn't want the information used against them by their employer or
insurance company, Collins said.
...
And Bush is/was expected to sign it. Crossing his fingers behind his back? Insurance companies and large
employers won't like this bill at all.
- Krugman: Party of Denial
Did Obama give away a significant Democratic issue to the GOP?
- McCain blames Minnesota bridge collapse on wasted money
By LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press Writer Wed Apr 30, 7:34 PM ET
ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Republican John McCain said Wednesday that the bridge collapse in Minnesota that killed 13
people last year would not have happened if Congress had not wasted so much money on pork-barrel spending.
Federal investigators cite undersize steel plates as the "critical factor" in the collapse of the bridge. Heavy
loads of construction materials on the bridge also contributed to the disaster that injured 145 people on Aug.
1, according to preliminary findings by the National Transportation Safety Board.
"The bridge in Minneapolis didn't collapse because there wasn't enough money," McCain told reporters while
campaigning in Pennsylvania. "The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was spent on wasteful,
unnecessary pork-barrel projects."
...
Oh, and how did that happen? Here's a mirror, Sen. McCain; you know how to find the culprit. Of course, your
projects are not pork; you're building a bridge to the 19th century.
- Republicans Crossing Over to Vote in Democratic Contests
Amazingly, some are not monkeywrenching; instead, they're disgusted with the Bushists. Worth a read.
- Happy 100th Birthday, Brother Edward!
Peterr of Firedoglake reminds us of the recent 100th birthday of one of the greatest broadcast
journalists America ever produced.
- Gen Dems: The Party's Advantage Among Young Voters Widens
So says the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Who am I to say otherwise!
- Medical marijuana user who was denied liver transplant dies
SEATTLE (AP) — A man who was denied a liver transplant largely because he used marijuana with medical approval
to ease the symptoms of hepatitis C has died.
Timothy Garon, 56, died Thursday at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive care nursing center, said his lawyer,
Douglas Hiatt, and Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.
His death came a week after a doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again
denied him a spot on the liver transplant list. The team had previously told him it would not consider placing
him on the list until he completed a 60-day drug-treatment class.
The case highlights an ethical consideration for those allocating organs for transplant: whether using dope with
a doctor's blessing should be held against a dying patient in need of a transplant.
...
Hey, guys... play God much?
Steve
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Busy Weekend, Busy Monday
The weekend was spent helping various people with various computer-related issues, and taking a friend who is
unable to drive at the moment grocery shopping. Monday (tomorrow) begins with a visit to the dentist, continues
with another errand for/with the nondriving friend, and may involve more computer help-desk kinds of work. If
I've been a bit scarce around the blog, that's why. I'll be back soon, I think.
Steve
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Saturday Signs
Indoors at the local Amy's Ice Creams & Coffees, in Houston, on Farnham near Shepherd...
... hangout of the extremely cool late-teens, early-twenties set, as well as the occasional couple of "ancient"
citizens who like the exceptionally good hand-worked ice cream. As far as I know, there are no tricks in this
sign; I just like the visual effect. I suppose it's a pretty good representation of the jangled nerves you
inevitably experience after you eat even their smallest portion, even if you're careful about the number of
fixin's you have them add.
Steve
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Yo Mama So Fat...
... Wal-Mart thinks you should get her a Wii Fit for Mother's Day:
May 2, 2008 2:32 PM PDT
'Wii Fit' for Mother's Day gift? You shouldn't have
Posted by Mike Yamamoto
If this report is true, then some marketing executives are even more out of touch with reality than we thought.
And that's saying a lot.
According to Reuters, Wal-Mart is planning to make a huge push for the Wii Fit as "a perfect gift" for Mother's
Day, splashing promotions for the game across its Web site this weekend. We won't even get into the fact that
the holiday falls on May 11 this year, more than a week before the game is even available on the U.S. market.
Rather, as always, it's the thought that counts--and in this case, it might be one that's gone badly awry.
Do you sign the card, "Dear Mom: Hope you lose weight"? You might as well go all out and get her a scale to go
with it. If you really must go there, at least consider including a "Wii Party Station" to soften the blow.
Somehow, I think that if you give her that, Mom will throw a wee fit [sic].
Steve
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Further Furry Friday Family Blogging
I know the cat-blogging posts have become rather routine lately, but I've felt a real need in these challenging
times to post pictures of family...
Stella is not yet completely recovered, but is feeling considerably better most of the time. The ladies are,
as always, happy to contribute to her good health, by their mere proximity.
Steve
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Enforcing Moore's Law
Moore's Law
is not a law either in the judicial sense or the scientific sense of the term. Rather, it is an observation,
first offered by Intel's co-founder Gordon E. Moore in 1965, of a trend: that the number of transistors (a
fundamental active element of most electronic circuits... memory, things that do arithmetic, gates in computer
processors, etc.) that can be placed on a given size of chip doubles about every two years. This has been an
observable fact for about a half century; it was proposed before my college days, and it continues today.
Recently, Hewlett Packard (HP) announced a new device that should allow the trend to continue for quite some
time to come: it's called a
memristor,
and if you have any interest in the internals of computers, you might want to practice pronouncing it. Why?
isn't there some new device or technique or approach invented and published just about every day, and don't
some of them contribute to faster, higher-capacity computer memory? Well, yes... but the memristor
is a newly discovered (invented? take your pick) fundamental device, something comparable with the traditional
three electronic devices... resistor, capacitor, inductor... that have been known and developed for well over
a century now, through discrete components soldered into circuits, on through printed circuits, integrated
circuits, computer processors on a single chip, etc. The existence of the memristor was surmised as early as
1971; now HP has created them in its lab. The Ars Technica article linked above has the best straightforward
explanation I've seen so far:
In the past, electronic circuit theory has revolved around three fundamental components: the resistor, the
capacitor, and the inductor. Now a fourth has been added to that list, the memristor. First postulated in 1971
by Leon Chua at the University of California at Berkeley, a working example was recently created by Dmitri
Strukov and colleagues at HP Labs. This advance could help shrink transistors even further.
Chua suspected that a memristor should exist based primarily on symmetry. There are four fundamental circuit
variables: electric current, voltage, charge, and magnetic flux. For these variables, we have resistors to
relate current to voltage, capacitors to relate voltage to charge, and inductors to relate current to magnetic
flux, but we were missing one to relate charge to magnetic flux. That is where the memristor comes in.
...
I'll spare you the details; read the article if you find this sort of stuff interesting. (For the record, I do.)
Just how good is this new fundamental device at allowing the creation of more transistors in a given space?
Currently the good folk at HP Labs have exploited this to create simple data storage devices. Using memristors,
they have been able to store 100 gigabits on a single die in one square centimeter. That is substantially more
than the 16 gigabits for a single flash chip, and a comparable storage density to modern hard drives. In the
future, HP thinks they can get that up to a terabit or more per centimeter... with the access speed of DRAM.
Clearly, this will vie with other technologies such as IBM's racetrack memory.
...
In other words, they've created more than five times the current density of storage, even in the
prototype... and they anticipate creating 10 times that much. And that's just the prospect for memory
applications.
There's also discussion of other possibilities inherent in the memristor that are simply not available in other
kinds of devices... analog processors, transistors that behave more like neurons in that they change their
behavior with increased use, etc. etc.
It is a truism among software developers that order-of-magnitude changes in hardware speed, storage capacity,
etc. result in whole new classes of software applications not previously conceived of. For example, the Web and
all sorts of applications based on browsers and web servers were literally inconceivable before a certain level
of hardware performance was available. I literally cannot begin to say what another leap forward in underlying
hardware capabilities will lead to, but I'm pretty sure it will blow us all away... and I do not say that, or
react to new developments, lightly. In other words, I think this may be big.
All we have to do is survive as a technologically advanced society long enough to accomplish the transition. I
may or may not live to see this new technology brought to fruition; many of you probably will... if
sociopolitical forces do not destroy the social fabric first. For now, I won't get all preachy: this is cool
stuff, and I look forward to seeing it happen.
Steve
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One Nation Under Surveillance
OK, it's not a very original post title, but what comes to your mind when you read
this?
D.C. Forging Surveillance Network
Privacy a Concern as 1st Phase Links 4,500 Cameras to Central Office
By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 1, 2008; Page A01
The D.C. government is launching a system today that would tie together thousands of city-owned video cameras,
but authorities don't yet have the money to complete the high-tech network or privacy rules in place to guide
it.
The system will feature round-the-clock monitoring of the closed-circuit video systems run by nine city
agencies. In the first phase, about 4,500 cameras trained on schools, public housing, traffic and government
buildings will feed into a central office at the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency.
Hundreds more will be added this year.
By making all those images available under one roof, officials hope to increase efficiency and improve public
safety and emergency response. But civil libertarians and D.C. Council members say the network is being rushed
into place without sufficient safeguards to protect privacy.
"The planning has been wholly lacking," said council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of
the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, who plans to hold a hearing on the project.
With its vast reach, the system underscores how security cameras have multiplied since the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks. By this fall, the District will have installed about 5,600 closed-circuit cameras,
about triple the number it had in 2001. Tens of thousands of other cameras have popped up at monuments, banks,
stores and other places.
...
Today's technology makes it easy for governments to do things that have no measurable benefits and really
should not be done at all. One can argue the merits of individual cameras in sensitive locations, but a system
linking 5,600 cameras into a single central monitoring location can really have only one purpose: running a
surveillance state.
DC residents: do you feel more secure now that your every move is watched? Oh, and... teens: no more places to
park; you might as well get a room.
Steve
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GOP: Enemy Of The Environment
Just a week ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists reported that half of 1600 EPA scientists reported that they
had been the target of political interference. Quoting
AP
through
Paul Kiel of TPMMuckraker:
The Union of Concerned Scientists said that more than half of the nearly 1,600 EPA staff scientists who
responded online to a detailed questionnaire reported they had experienced incidents of political interference
in their work....
Nearly 400 scientists said they had witnessed EPA officials misrepresenting scientific findings, 284 said they
had witness the "selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome" and 224
scientists said they had been directed to "inappropriately exclude or alter technical information" in an EPA
document.
Today, the Bushists made it worse. Again through TPM, here's a
Chicago Tribune article:
TRIBUNE EXCLUSIVE: EPA's top Midwest regulator forced out
Mary Gade, based in Chicago, says Bush administration made her quit over Dow Chemical case
...
By Michael Hawthorne | Tribune reporter
2:40 PM CDT, May 1, 2008
The Bush administration forced its top environmental regulator in the Midwest to quit Thursday after months of
internal bickering about dioxin contamination downstream from Dow Chemical's world headquarters in Michigan.
In an interview with the Tribune, Mary Gade said two top officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
headquarters in Washington stripped her of her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired
by June 1.
...
Please read the sorry, disgusting details. Ms. Gade was clearly effectively fired for attempting to use her
authority to force Dow to comply with the law in regard to some "dioxin-saturated soil and sediment" ...
a clean-up that had been delayed for years. It appears that Dow called in a favor, and Gade was
de facto fired.
Have I mentioned lately how much I loathe, detest and despise the GOP approach to things?
Steve
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Book Blogging: Paretsky
Many of you who love detective fiction know
Sara Paretsky
through her fictional detective, V I Warshawski, a female private detective. V I (Paretsky usually
writes her character's initials without periods) is as hardboiled as anyone Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett
ever cooked up, but with a complexity and a variety of internal contradictions that give her a different kind of
appeal. If you haven't encountered Paretsky's work, the first in the V I series is Indemnity Only,
and your time spent reading any novel in the series will be well rewarded.
But that's not what brings Paretsky to my attention this time. The local library supplied me with her
short autobiographical essay Writing in an Age of Silence (see LibraryThing listing, right sidebar).
Paretsky not only lived a painful youth that is fascinating reading in its own right... in some ways, I think it
is fair to say she was abused, or that she grew up quickly, or at least that the stern authority figures of her
youth and her excess of responsibilities at an early age were formative of her own personality and ultimately
that of her primary character... but also has been involved in social activism and, most recently, since the
passage of the Patriot Act, civil liberties activism, a frequent topic of this blog, in case you hadn't
noticed. The entire book has much to recommend it... it is short and intense, two of my favorite
characteristics... and I hope you will read it all, as her memoirs set the context for the brief section about
civil liberties at the end. But as a product of my own demons, among which civil liberties, civil rights and
human rights haunt me the most, I suggest that if you don't have time to read the entire book, please at
least read the last chapter, "Truth, Lies, and Duct Tape." Every writer for public consumption, every
blogger most certainly included, needs to think about these matters.
Steve
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Mission Demolished
Paul Reynolds, world affairs correspondent for BBC News online, says it just right in his op-ed,
Still no 'mission accomplished':
President Bush did not say "Mission Accomplished" on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln off San Diego on 1 May
five years ago. But the banner above him did.
And the picture of those two words said more than the 1,829 words of his speech.
...
But the message from the banner said it simpler - mission accomplished. It was all over.
It wasn't. Guerrilla war followed, and this has produced more US casualties than the "major combat operations"
did.
...
Mr Bush explained this in October 2003 and was supported by Navy spokesman Commander Conrad Chun, who told CNN:
"The banner was a Navy idea, the ship's idea. The banner signified the successful completion of the ship's
deployment."
However, it was not quite that simple. It also turned out, according to news reports, that the banner was made,
by a private contractor, with the help of White House staff.
And there can be little doubt that those White House staff ensured that the banner was correctly placed for the
cameras.
...
So much about that visit was planned for effect - the location, the president dressed in combat gear, landing in
the co-pilot's seat of a Navy S-3 when he could have used a helicopter, the television cameras.
...
I leave it to others to look up the cost of this stunt in dollars. The cost in lives ended and ruined in the
mission that Bush's staff declared accomplished is clear for all to see.
Bush's official spokesweasel is
trying to pretend
the sign didn't mean what it says:
Today [4/30], reporter Helen Thomas asked White House Press Secretary Dana Perino how the president would
“commemorate” the date tomorrow. Perino said the White House had “certainly paid a price for not being more
specific on that banner”:
PERINO: President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific, and said, Mission
Accomplished For These Sailors Who Are On This Ship On Their Mission. And we have certainly paid a price for
not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again
tomorrow, as they do every single year.
Sorry, no. The banner was clearly intentionally worded and placed in the photo-op, probably to say something
Bush couldn't credibly say aloud himself. How stupid does Perino think we are? Don't answer that; I think we
all know the answer.
Five years and
4,064 American troop deaths
into this chaos (not to mention an estimated
83000 to 91000 civilian deaths),
Bush is willing to concede that the sign was not such a good idea, while simultaneously disclaiming personal
responsibility for the sign and the troops killed. And McCain backed him and still backs him, for a hundred, a
thousand, a million years of chaos to come.
It is time to begin redeployment of the troops remaining in Iraq... immediately. No excuses, George. No excuses,
John. End this horror right now. Well, OK, I'll allow you a few minutes to remove your crushed 'nads
from the codpieces of your flight suits...
Steve
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Does It Matter?
AP on NYT:
National Briefing | Washington
Record on Warrants for Spying Court
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 1, 2008
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved a record number of requests to search or eavesdrop on
terrorism and spying suspects last year, the Justice Department said. The court approved 2,370 warrants last
year against people in the United States believed to be linked to international terror organizations. That
figure is a 9 percent increase over 2006. The court denied three warrant applications in full and partly denied
one, the Justice Department said.
Hmph. If the NSA has under surveillance every phone call, every email, every blog post we write and commit to
the 'net... if the FBI simply omits requesting a FISA warrant much of the time that one would legally be
required... does it really matter how many FISA requests are granted? If (and it's a big "if") every FISA
request granted constitutes a legal warrant for surveillance, as opposed to no warrant at all, we should all
celebrate the increase in this number. But I have a feeling that, compared to the number of warrantless
searches undertaken, this number is miniscule.
All of you have a nice day!
Steve
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Some Good News
At least I think
this
is good news; if you genuinely believe there is no substantive difference between having a Democratic president
and having a Republican president, you may not give a damn. I don't believe that, and I think it makes a great
deal of difference. From the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:
Gen Dems: The Party's Advantage Among Young Voters Widens
by Scott Keeter, Director Survey Research, Juliana Horowitz, Reasearch Associate and Alec Tyson, Research Assistant, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
April 28, 2008
Trends in the opinions of America's youngest voters are often a barometer of shifting political winds. And that
appears to be the case in 2008. The current generation of young voters, who came of age during the George W.
Bush years, is leading the way in giving the Democrats a wide advantage in party identification, just as the
previous generation of young people who grew up in the Reagan years -- Generation X -- fueled the Republican
surge of the mid-1990's.
In surveys conducted between October 2007 and March 2008, 58% of voters under age 30 identified or leaned toward
the Democratic Party, compared with 33% who identified or leaned toward the GOP. The Democratic Party's current
lead in party identification among young voters has more than doubled since the 2004 campaign, from 11 points to
25 points.
In fact, the Democrats' advantage among the young is now so broad-based that younger men as well as younger
women favor the Democrats over the GOP -- making their age category the only one in the electorate in which men
are significantly more inclined to self-identify as Democrats rather than as Republicans. Use the interactive
tool to track generational differences in party affiliation over time.
While more women voters in every age group affiliate with the Democratic Party rather than the GOP, the gap is
particularly striking among young women voters; more than twice as many women voters under age 30 identify with
or lean toward the Democratic Party as favor the Republican Party (63% vs. 28%).
This analysis is part of a series of reports on changes in the balance of party identification in the
electorate. On March 20, the Center released breakdown of trends in party identification in Republican "red"
states, Democratic "blue" states, and politically contested swing states.1
...
Please view the Pew chart before you proceed. Those concerned with proper visual representation of numeric
data will note that the Y-axis begins at 0, so what you see is what you get.
In my opinion, this is good news. Those of you who follow this blog... all both of you... know of my
frustrations with the leadership of the Democratic Party in the past year or so. I do not expect that to change
immediately. But voters, especially young voters, are presumably not registering with or switching to the
Democratic Party because of their deep analysis of leadership issues, but rather because they perceive...
correctly... that the values that have driven our nation for much of the past century under Democratic and
Republican administrations alike have been completely abandoned by Bush, Cheney, McCain and company.
I am under no illusions about this party shift: it is a sign of desperation, or perhaps of allegiance to a
candidate, not a sign of partisan fervor. Well and good; I'll take it. I look for two hopeful behaviors in the
electorate: a return to liberal thought of the sort common in the administrations of FDR and JFK, and an
understanding that one must vote strategically. I'll settle for one, but I'd really prefer both.
Steve
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Selected Links To Recent Posts
Click any permalink below to go to the original article on a previous page.
Click a comment link below to add a comment to the original article.
Your comment will be noticed, by the YDD at least:
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Some very recent posts may be included in their entirety.
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Million-Year McCain
Yes, he said it, in January on ABC News: "Could be a thousand. Could be a thousand years or a million years
[in Iraq]."
TPM has the video.
Yes, this man will be a war president. Indeed, if he gets his way, every president from now to the end of the
republic will be a war president. Maybe McCain will push for a new name for the United States of America:
Wars-R-US.
Steve
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Drilling ANWR Will Not Help
Steve
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Tancredo: Paranoid Xenophobe
Steve
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Pogo Was Right
Steve
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Can't Win Legit? Sue 'Em!
Steve
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Sittin' In The Dock
Steve
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Antisocial Darwinism
Steve
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It's A Cow-Eat-Cow World
Steve
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McCain Campaign Stays Mainly In The Plane
Steve
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Saturday Signs
Steve
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McCain Hearts Huckabee
Steve
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Friday Mirror Cat Blogging
Steve
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Scalia: 'Get Over It'
Steve
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McCain's History Of Hate
Steve
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Insanity, Or Maybe Just Inanity
Steve
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Hillary's Beach Boys Imitation
Steve
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Scarier Than Politics
Steve
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M$N Giveth Selleth, M$N Taketh Away
Steve
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Customs Laptop Search: No Warrant Needed
Steve
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McCain Goes Nuclear
Steve
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Gathering Moss
Steve
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Baby-Faced Georgie -- DOGGEREL!
Steve
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Saturday Signs
Steve
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Friday Family Blogging
Steve
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Was Mark Twain Prescient?
Steve
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States Unpack Their Needles
Steve
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ABC Sucks
Steve
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