Month: October 2004

dangerous bluff

Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that Hussein had the desire but not the means to produce unconventional weapons that could threaten his neighbors or the West. President Bush has continued to assert in his campaign stump speech that Iraq had posed “a gathering threat.”The officials said Duelfer, an experienced former United Nations weapons inspector, found that the state of Hussein’s weapons-development programs and knowledge base was less advanced in 2003, when the war began, than it was in 1998, when international inspectors left Iraq.”They have not found anything yet,” said one U.S. official who had been briefed on the report.

So it appears that Saddam Hussein bluffed and lost. (But then who won?) He didn’t have anything but intentions to build weapons he could use against his neighbors, and for that, 1000+ US servicemen and women are dead, thousands wounded, with tens of thousands of Iraqis . . . . washingtonpost.com: Report Discounts Iraqi Arms Threat:

[T]he 1,000-page report by Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that Hussein had the desire but not the means to produce unconventional weapons that could threaten his neighbors or the West. President Bush has continued to assert in his campaign stump speech that Iraq had posed “a gathering threat.”

The officials said Duelfer, an experienced former United Nations weapons inspector, found that the state of Hussein’s weapons-development programs and knowledge base was less advanced in 2003, when the war began, than it was in 1998, when international inspectors left Iraq.

“They have not found anything yet,” said one U.S. official who had been briefed on the report.

Are we so sure the world is safer with Saddam in prison instead of in Iraq? I expect we’ll hear more about this in Friday’s debate.

Now playing:Stick Up Kid by Lyfe Jennings from the album “Lyfe 268-192” Images Badgeitunes61X15Dark

Continue reading “dangerous bluff”

now with del.icio.us

I realize that, along with a lot of other people, I have fallen prey to the peculiar American frailty which has given us so many bad presidents. I refer to our national tendency to treat presidential elections as though we were all high-schoolers choosing a Prom King.Thus, when it comes to qualifying for the American Presidency, a grating accent can be a bigger political liability than a record of homicidally misguided policies.

I have added a del.icio.us list as a sidebar or linklog to keep track of noteworthy items that don’t need commentary but deserve some attention.

You can even subscribe to the feed.

political Geiger counter

The phone then connects to the internet to send that information to the Gravity Monkey servers.A special thanks to Mike Frumin and FundRace for the geocoded FEC data and the inspiration — indeed, red | blue is merely a mobile extension of Mike and Eyebeam’s innovative web site.

…Then, like a magical greenback Geiger counter, red | blue will tell you if you’re in Republican or Democratic territory, and will also show you the total amount of contributions for Republicans or Democrats in your area.A simple algorithm calculates the optimal radius around your location to assess, then generates an index of red or blue that is weighted by proximity — that is, if you’re standing in a Republican town, but at the doorstep of a huge Democratic contributor, the index will lean towards blue.

Gravity Monkey:

First, once you fire up red | blue, the phone either connects to the GPS on your phone and gets your latitude and longitude, or asks you to input your U.S. address (depending on your version of the application). The phone then connects to the internet to send that information to the Gravity Monkey servers.

A special thanks to Mike Frumin and FundRace for the geocoded FEC data and the inspiration — indeed, red | blue is merely a mobile extension of Mike and Eyebeam’s innovative web site. If you haven’t checked FundRace out yet, you really should.

Gravity Monkey Redblue Images Gauge

Then, like a magical greenback Geiger counter, red | blue will tell you if you’re in Republican or Democratic territory, and will also show you the total amount of contributions for Republicans or Democrats in your area.

A simple algorithm calculates the optimal radius around your location to assess, then generates an index of red or blue that is weighted by proximity — that is, if you’re standing in a Republican town, but at the doorstep of a huge Democratic contributor, the index will lean towards blue.

[via]

from tomorrow’s Seattle Times editorial page

This will be in tomorrow’s paper, I’m told.

Editor:

The GOP/RNC and its various surrogates keep claiming that Senator Kerry is indecisive and the president is resolute: this is another way of saying the incumbent can’t or won’t change his mind, even when the circumstances dictate it.

Isn’t it the current president who has said time and time again how he won’t let foreign governments have veto power over US policy? How does that square with his insistence on some complex 6-way talks over N Korea? Why are we ceding leadership of this issue — a direct threat to the US, in the president’s own view — to China? I’m not saying the 6 way talks aren’t a better way to go — I have no idea — but this sounds a lot like “read my lips, no new taxes” or “no US troops on nation-building adventures.”

zero-conf in Unix [cont’d]

I found that the mDNSResponderPosix port does what I want by providing the notification and discovery layer for zeroconf-enabled clients and publishing client services with the addition of a config file: with that running, I can make daap work on FreeBSD and play with other services (Terminal.app will look for and connect to ssh, sftp, and telnet servers through zeroconf)…. none 22 red:ftp _ftp._tcp none 21 Rendezvous Browser tells the tale: The shell script below seems to work: improvements welcome.

As often happens when one reboots a system infrequently, services that were started by hand don’t always come up automatically. In my case, my rendezvous/zeroconf configuration didn’t come back and I had to revisit how I had set up some months back. I found that the mDNSResponderPosix port does what I want by providing the notification and discovery layer for zeroconf-enabled clients and publishing client services with the addition of a config file: with that running, I can make daap work on FreeBSD and play with other services (Terminal.app will look for and connect to ssh, sftp, and telnet servers through zeroconf). The config file syntax is simple:
red:www
_http._tcp
path=/
80

Celestial Jukebox
_daap._tcp.
/opt/music
3689

red:ssh
_ssh._tcp.
none 22

red:ftp
_ftp._tcp
none
21

Rendezvous Browser tells the tale: Rendezvous The shell script below seems to work: improvements welcome.

Continue reading “zero-conf in Unix [cont’d]”

Axis of [potential] evil

Who’s ripe for invasion next? Iraq was hampered by the sanctions and their effect on it’s readiness, so the next candidate might put up more of a fight.

Despite the acknowledgment that the uranium claim was dubious, Rice said the rest of the president’s case for going to war was solid. It was based on assessments by intelligence agencies that Iraq was actively procuring nuclear scientists and designs for a weapon, and might be able to have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade, she said.

By this standard, the list of targets is pretty long: in our own hemisphere, I can see Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil all being able to design and build a bomb by 2010. Venezuela has oil, too. And when you see how tantalizingly close the Ariane spaceport (“Any mass, any orbit, anytime”) is, gosh, they are much more a threat than Iraq was.

Of course, there’s North Korea, but we can’t do anything there without China’s approval: wouldn’t be prudent.

Where else is a threat, based on those terms? We missed our chance to nip India and Pakistan in the bud and they don’t have oil anyway. Anywhere near the Spratly Islands we could take a look at? Oil and gas potential, says the Factbook, undoubtedly why these uninhabited rocks are claimed by six countries.

Continue reading “Axis of [potential] evil”

the new journalism

One more case of “never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity” or in this case a mix of stupidity and laziness: a college Republican club gave a fake endorsement to John Kerry on behalf of “Communists for Kerry.”

All Fox had to do was click on the “About” link:

“Communists for Kerry” is a campaign of the Hellgate Republican Club, a tax exempt non-partisan public advocacy “527” organization that exists for the purpose of;

“Informing voters with satire and irony, how political candidates make decisions based on the failed social economic principles of socialism that punish the individual by preventing them from becoming their dream through proven ideas of entrepreneurship and freedom.”

Our members help elect candidates who support economic growth through Entrepreneurship, limited government and lower taxes. Communists For Kerry is separate and distinct from the Communist party of America and any of its organization. None of it’s members are members of any communist organizations.

Another:

After the debate undecided voter Ted Lyons said Kerry sounded like “an idiot” in his response to several questions.

Then you look down into the article and see that Ted Lyons is a Republican political consultant. (Here he is hanging out with fellow members of the North Dade Republican Club.)

What I don’t see being mentioned anywhere in the discussion of weblogging and it’s impact is that very few people are getting paid to to publish a weblog: the reporters who seem to routinely miss the story, fail to check facts, or garble someone’s message are getting paid. They’re probably graduates of universities you may have heard of, and I suspect think of themselves as credible, responsible professionals.

I wish I knew why they seem to do such a lousy job.

someone tell Josh Marshall his mailbox is full

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 554 This mailbox is full. Please try again later. for joshtpm@xxxxxx.xxx
Giving up on xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.

Isn’t it the current president who has said time and time again how he won’t let foreign governments have veto power over US policy? How does that square with his insistence on some complex 6-way talks over N Korea to mollify China? I’m not saying the 6 way talks aren’t a better way to go — I have no idea — but this sounds a lot like “read my lips, no new taxes” or “no US troops on nation-building adventures.”