Month: September 2004

In Their Own Words

Someone on the IP list has collected some highlights of the two major party candidates’ acceptance speeches. I thought this one of Kerry’s was on target:
[IP] PSF: In Their Own Words:

We’ve heard a lot of talk about values.  But values spoken without action are just slogans.  Values are not just words. . . . It’s time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families.

You can read the rest at the link above. Now if only Kerry can put this one — “Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response.” — into action in his campaign.

By the numbers

Bush by numbers: Four years of double standards

A roundup of statistics and datapoints to consider, now that the convention(s) are over. The list is quite long: my selection is a good sample but the entire list is instructive.

from: Saviour of Iraq
92 Percentage of Iraq’s urban areas with access to potable water in late 2002.

60 Percentage of Iraq’s urban areas with access to potable water in late 2003.

55 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who were unemployed before the war.

80 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who are unemployed a Year after the war.

0 Number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender in May 1945.

37 Death toll of US soldiers in Iraq in May 2003, the month combat operations “officially” ended.

0 Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home that the Bush administration has permitted to be photographed.

0 Number of memorial services for the returned dead that Bush has attended since the beginning of the war.

A soldier’s best friend
40,000 Number of soldiers in Iraq seven months after start of the war still without Interceptor vests, designed to stop a round from an AK-47.

$60m Estimated cost of outfitting those 40,000 soldiers with Interceptor vests.

62 Percentage of gas masks that army investigators discovered did not work properly in autumn 2002.

90 Percentage of detectors which give early warning of a biological weapons attack found to be defective.

87 Percentage of Humvees in Iraq not equipped with armour capable of stopping AK-47 rounds and protecting against roadside bombs and landmines at the end of 2003.

This doesn’t sound like the resolute and decisive commander we hear so much about. Sounds more like someone without a plan or the decency to admit it.

Now playing: John Coltrane: Quartet: Acknowledgement (Part 1) from the album “A Love Supreme” | Buy it

metaphorically speaking

TWiki . Main . AdvancedSSHTipsAndTricks :

However, security tools such as SSH, like plumbing, can have a tendency to leak at the joints if poorly connected.

As little as I understand of this — I use ssh every day but nowhere near as elegantly or completely — I enjoyed reading it.

Now playing: Sigur Ros: Svefn G Englar from the album “Agaetis Byrjun” | Buy it

urban legends, spam, and talking points

I do hope Zell Miller got paid upfront for his speech the other night, now that his masters are treating him like a rabid skunk. He even got disinvited from the Imperial Box for the acceptance speech.

The good people at snopes have pre-emptively debunked the claims that John Kerry never met a weapons system he liked: as it happens, he was in accord with then-Secretary of Defense Cheney on the value of the same expensive weapons systems Kerry is accused of cutting.

This whole “weapons killer” idea came from a piece of spam that has been making the rounds. It seems Senator Miller fell victim to it: did he fall prey to one of the African banking scams, too? Is that what motivated his near-demonic performance at the RNC?

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Politics (Weapon Killer):

Claim:   Senator John Kerry “voted to kill every military appropriation for the development and deployment of every weapons systems since 1988.”

Status:   False.

And you can see how each senator voted on these bills, of which these weapons systems were but a line-item:
* S. 3189 (1990)
* H.R. 5803 (1990)
* H.R. 2126 (1995)

the quest for relevance

CJR Campaign Desk: Archives:

[T]he revealing part of Carter’s report came in two quotes — one from a Republican convention planner commenting on how the political parties have learned to play the networks like a trained dog, and one from a befuddled anchorman wondering how he and his colleagues had become trained dogs.

[ . . . ]
What might the nets do differently?

Hmmmmm. Pause. Insert furrowed brow.

Hey, here’s one idea ! What if the Times, CBS were to actually start fact-checking convention and campaign rhetoric, vetting every assertion, every number and every charge tossed out by speechifying politicians?

Gee, Dan, good idea. In our country, we call it “reporting.”

Hmm, sounds a lot like work . . . .

Now playing:Jeff Beck: Hot House Of Omagarashid from the album “Beckology (Disc 1)” | Buy it

context? what’s that?

washingtonpost.com: GOP Prism Distorts Some Kerry Positions:

Speakers at this week’s Republican convention have relentlessly attacked John F. Kerry for statements he has made and votes he has taken in his long political career, but a number of their specific claims — such as his votes on military programs — are at best selective and in many cases stripped of their context, according to a review of the documentation provided by the Bush campaign.

Not that this is news . . . do people who get to vote for anything more important than what they want on their pizza really believe that individual weapons systems and programs are voted on, piecemeal?

Now playing: When You Come by Crowded House from the album “Recurring Dream” | Buy it

monetizing

As noted a day or so ago, I found out the the iTunes Music Store has an affiliate program: I dutifully applied and am now presenting some ads for new stuff they’re flogging. I’m not sure linksynergy is the most robust of partners to work with: their ad rotation code seems not to work and I’m trying to keep an eye on how slow the site loads as a result of them being in the loop.

Since I can’t rely on them to rotate in new ads, I’ll have to remember to check and swap in new stuff periodically. It remains to be seen how much of a hassle that becomes.

Now playing: Into Temptation from the album “Recurring Dream” | Buy it

spread that meme

The challenge for the internet community, and especially anyone who wants to make money online, is to make the internet a less evil place. Not in content, but in the struggle to get anywhere at all. Meanwhile, people who can’t filter spam, or block pop-ups, or prevent viruses from spreading, are themselves responsible for these things. There are two cultures growing – those who can filter, and those who can’t – and it may well be up to us who can to help those who can’t to join the modern world, lest they drag everyone back with them.

[Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent]

drug lords

“The new thinking is that bin Laden’s fortune didn’t really enter into al Qaeda that much, or wasn’t the driving force in al Qaeda.”

The report from the September 11 commission concluded that al Qaeda has many financing avenues and could easily find new sources, particularly given the attack’s price tag of just $400,000 to $500,000 over two years.

While the report said the government has been unable to determine the source of the attack’s financing, the commission said it appears al Qaeda’s financial support doesn’t come from bin Laden personally.

“The CIA now estimates that it costs al Qaeda about $30 million per year to sustain its activities before 9/11 and that this money was raised almost entirely through donations,” the report said.
[ . . . ]
By February 2002, Katzman had updated the estimate, indicating that bin Laden may be worth anywhere from $50 million to $300 million, but that the group had apparently become self-sustaining. The change got little notice.
[ . . . ]
“When bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan, he relied on the Taliban until he was able to reinvigorate his fund-raising efforts by drawing on ties to wealthy Saudi individuals that he had established during the Afghan war in the 1980s.”

Responding to an inquiry from a Senate panel late last year, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said the overstated estimates about bin Laden’s wealth and his financial backing of al Qaeda actually trivialized the threat posed by his group.

Perhaps even more dangerous, bin Laden’s benefit to radical Islam is that he — “coming from a wealthy and influential family” — was considered a trusted person and had the ability to receive and dispose of charitable money, the office wrote in a memo, obtained by The Associated Press in April.

So not only is he on the loose, he’s just as or more dangerous than before, and his principal source of income is wealthy Saudis. And not only is Saudi Arabia a US client state (though I’m not sure the relationship really works out that way) but the Bush family has ties to the House of Saud going back three generations. I wonder if Dennis Hastert is going to show the same intensity about others who profit from the sale of addictive substances.

Dear John

Dear John:

1. Bush is incompetent.

2. Bush is the biggest threat to core American principles of liberty in a century.

3. Bush and the Republican leadership are the most filthily dishonorable and hypocritical politicians of the last 25 years.

4. Bush and his men have no respect for evidence, for truth, for honest process.

5. Bush and his men are the most fiscally irresponsible administration in the past 25 years.

6. They’re pushing a moral crusade where it ought not, cannot be allowed to go.

McCain gets his walking papers from at least one conservative who’s had enough.