Category: family fun

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Insulating Bush (03/30/2006):

As the 2004 election loomed, the White House was determined to keep the wraps on a potentially damaging memo about Iraq.
[ . . . ]
“Presidential knowledge was the ball game,” says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. “The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn’t in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn’t do that with the tubes.” A Republican political appointee involved in the process, who thought the Bush administration had a constitutional obligation to be more open with Congress, said: “This was about getting past the election.”
[ . . . ]
In the end, the White House’s damage control was largely successful, because the public did not learn until after the 2004 elections the full extent of the president’s knowledge that the assessment linking the aluminum tubes to a nuclear weapons program might not be true. The most crucial information was kept under wraps until long after Bush’s re-election.
[ . . . ]
Aboard Air Force One, en route to Entebbe, Uganda, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice gave a background briefing for reporters. A reporter pointed out that when Secretary Powell had addressed the United Nations on February 5, 2003, he — unlike others in the Bush administration — had noted that some in the U.S. government did not believe that Iraq’s procurement of high-strength aluminum tubes was for nuclear weapons.
[ . . . ]
Responding, Rice said: “I’m saying that when we put [Powell’s speech] together … the secretary decided that he would caveat the aluminum tubes, which he did…. The secretary also has an intelligence arm that happened to hold that view.” Rice added, “Now, if there were any doubts about the underlying intelligence to that NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president, or me.”
[ . . . ]
In fact, contrary to Rice’s statement, the president was indeed informed of such doubts when he received the October 2002 President’s Summary of the NIE. Both Cheney and Rice also got copies of the summary, as well as a number of other intelligence reports about the State and Energy departments’ doubts that the tubes were meant for a nuclear weapons program.
[ . . . ]
Because the Bush administration was able to control what information would remain classified, however, reporters did not know that Bush had received the President’s Summary that informed him that both State’s INR and the Energy Department doubted that the aluminum tubes were to be used for a nuclear-related purpose.

(Ironically, at one point, before he had reviewed the one-page summary, Hadley considered declassifying it because it said nothing about the Niger intelligence information being untrue. However, after reviewing the summary and realizing that it would have disclosed presidential knowledge that INR and DOE had doubts about the tubes, senior Bush administration officials became preoccupied with ensuring that the text of the document remained classified, according to an account provided by an administration official.)

The snippets are from a longer article, worth reading in full. The bottomline is that the pretext for the war was bogus, and the military establishment of the world’s only superpower has been misused to both further the business agenda of a coterie of this president’s cronies and to settle a personal score over the attempted assassination of Bush 41.

First, esteemed “media critic” gets handed his ass by a correspondent.

Crooks and Liars:

KURTZ: But critics would say, well, no wonder people back home think things are falling apart because we get this steady drumbeat of negativity from the correspondents there.
LOGAN: Well, who says things aren’t falling apart in Iraq? I mean, what you didn’t see on your screens this week was all the unidentified bodies that have been turning up, all the allegations here of militias that are really controlling the security forces.
What about all the American soldiers that died this week that you didn’t see on our screens? I mean, we’ve reported on reconstruction stories over and over again…I mean, I really resent the fact that people say that we’re not reflecting the true picture here. That’s totally unfair and it’s really unfounded.
…Our own editors back in New York are asking us the same things. They read the same comments. You know, are there positive stories? Can’t you find them? You don’t think that I haven’t been to the U.S. military and the State Department and the embassy and asked them over and over again, let’s see the good stories, show us some of the good things that are going on? Oh, sorry, we can’t take to you that school project, because if you put that on TV, they’re going to be attacked about, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack.

Oh, sorry, we can’t show this reconstruction project because then that’s going to expose it to sabotage. And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked. I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country….So how it is that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?

Then bloviating Bush sycophant suits up in his camoflage Depends and goes to New York — the front line in the war on terror:

Blogoland: Hugh Hewitt, Terror Warrior:

The third-tier talk show host strapped on his kevlar helmet and bravely reported from the front lines of the terror war while interviewing Michael Ware, a Time Baghdad correspondent:

MW: Let’s look at it this way. I mean, you’re sitting back in a comfortable radio studio, far from the realities of this war.

HH: Actually, Michael, let me interrupt you.

MW: If anyone has a right…

HH: Michael, one second.

MW: If anyone has a right to complain, that’s what…

HH: I’m sitting in the Empire State Building. Michael, I’m sitting in the Empire State Building, which has been in the past, and could be again, a target. Because in downtown Manhattan, it’s not comfortable, although it’s a lot safer than where you are, people always are three miles away from where the jihadis last spoke in America. So that’s…civilians have a stake in this. Although you are on the front line, this was the front line four and a half years ago.

How the hell do these people leave the house everyday?

And best of all, a GOP candidate for the US House tries to fob off a picture of a peaceful suburban street in Istanbul as one of a street in Baghdad. Follow the link and read on: it gets better. The picture he ends up using is some long-distance shot — no people, no details — as if he was hiding in the Green Zone, just as he accuses the liberal media of doing.

The inimitable TBogg takes note of this weekend’s immigration rally:

TBogg – “…a somewhat popular blogger” :

If this weekend’s organizers could get 500,000 people to turn out on Saturday for their march, imagine a one-day work stoppage. If all of my Hispanic employees and the Hispanics who make deliveries to us or provide other services didn’t come into work for a day, I’d be screwed. Now imagine if they all stayed home and didn’t buy anything for a day. They could bring California to its knees and you’d have business owners and factory owners and large contractors and the entire service industry screaming bloody murder. I still have fond memories of the stories of then Senator Pete Wilson getting a pissed-off phone call from a certain well-connected San Diego hotelier when one of her hotels was raided by la migra.

California? I think a few states would feel the pinch. I hope they do it. A colossal sickout: start in California and see if it gets any results. Then expand across the Southwest and Southeast.

This comment sums it up: Give it 50 years and the South American Union (or whatever they decide for a name) will be China’s biggest trading partner – they’re playing the long game.

Still looking for that Bush as Ché design . . . .

Social bugs and localities:

According to this blog post research has shown that people talking on IM treated users they considered to be geographically far away in a way different to those considered geographically near by: they trusted them less, were less likely to be persuaded by them, and were more likely to give deceptive portrayals of themselves.

So maybe we’re doing the wrong thing. Maybe the way to reduce trolling is not to display real locations, but to fake them – increasing the number of users who appear to be from the same town as you, in the hope that you’d take more care in your own backyard.

They (you know who I mean) have always claimed that the elimination of distance, where everyone was proximate to everyone else, would Make Things Better.

Turns out people can be jerks no matter what. Color me gobsmacked.

I expect it’s a case of “I’ll never see this person in the flesh, nor anyone they know, so I can act out as much as I like.” It’s probably below the level of consciousness, but no less indicative of the type of person they are. Conscience being defined as how you act when no one is watching, what do we call this kind of response?

So how overmatched is this laptop by the work I throw at it? I had to reboot to try and complete a task in iPhoto (uploading a book to Apple’s print services). Within 15 minutes of rebooting, it’s already had to create an additional swap file.

white:~ paul$ uptime
22:09  up 14 mins, 2 users, load averages: 1.16 1.69 1.22
white:~ paul$ ls -l /var/vm
total 262144
drwx--x--x   16 root  wheel       544 Mar 20 11:41 app_profile
-rw------T    1 root  wheel  67108864 Mar 22 21:55 swapfile0
-rw------T    1 root  wheel  67108864 Mar 22 22:04 swapfile1

Here’s hoping the new iBooks live up to my expectations.

I took the old folder out for an airing this weekend. I found out (duh) that it takes 6 x 9 images, meaning I only get 9 on a roll. I guess if I was at all clueful about these cameras I woulda realized the innards were not set up for square images. Since I managed to overwind at the start and waste one, I only got 8 images. But even with:

1. a small light leak in one corner of each frame
2. a slightly fudged development process (I don’t have any graduates that hold enough developer, so I ended with a strip of under-developed film: next time, I’ll use two with half the right amount in each); I didn’t realize the tank was not the same size but I guess the graduates are big enough to cover two rolls of 35mm.
3. a double exposure

I’m pretty pleased. The exposures seemed OK — starting at 6 seconds in full daylight to 20 in overcast — and the negatives are enormous when you are used to 35mm.

I have a roll of Fuji RVP in there now so I can see what color images will look like. If I can find a way to scan these, I’ll share them. I also want to find a local shop that sells B&W film cheap (even dated film).

Now playing: Burnin’ and Lootin’ by The Wailers from the album “Burnin'”

Been spending money like a drunken sailor, it seems.

1. I bought a set of Shure E2c headphones for my iPod. So far, so much better. I can hear more at lower volumes than I could with the standard earbuds. They are heavier and somewhat hard to manage, cable-wise, so I am still getting used to them.

   More important, they come with 9 — count ’em — different sets of ear inserts. You get three different sizes of three different inserts: clear plastic ones (kind of firm and too slick/inflexible for me), some squeezable foam ones (look like earplugs for use in a machine shop, but with a hole through them), and soft black rubbery ones. My ears being small, I found the smallest one of this last type to work best so far. They sound good and as noted at lower volumes.

   I need to try the soft foam ones, just to see if they fit just that little bit better. The best thing about these is that they fit in the ear and block most of the ambient din. So cycling with them might be a bad idea, but walking or sitting up late reading/writing is OK.

2. At the urging of the family, I am taking exercise more seriously. To that end, I bought a pair of horrifyingly expensive cross-training shoes. Thoreau said it best, perhaps, but I may have to differ with him on this.

   I did a circuit of Green Lake today and felt more comfortable, with less pain than usual (I guess Merrell Mocs don’t offer as much support), and now I feel some evidence of exertion in various parts of my legs. Slipping on the Merrells afterwards — it’s Merrells in the winter, Tevas in the summer — I felt like I was wearing slippers.

3. I have bought but not yet received a Linksys WRT54G access point to replace my aging Airport base station. I use the network here a lot — my iTunes music lives on a different system and is mounted over the network, I backup over the wireless network, etc. — and 11 Mbits is just not cutting it anymore. Also looking into Power over Ethernet, though I want to use the built in switch: all my stuff is connected with hubs and I expect that’s not helping all that much. Putting in some inaccessible place will make that difficult. There are kits to add PoE to various access points, carrying the power over some of unused pairs in CAT5 cable, but there are ways to build your own if you’re so inclined. I could see doing that with the Airport if I wanted to contribute it to the SeattleWireless cloud.
4. Also got a Mighty Mouse via eBay, my first optical mouse. We have some others here (both iMacs have ’em) but I have never had one. And my old ones with actual rolling ball thingies are too crufted up to work apparently.

Three and Nine / Roxy Music / Country Life
30 Frames a Second / Simple Minds / Themes for Great Cities
What Is The Light? / The Flaming Lips / The Soft Bulletin
Daffodil Lament / The Cranberries / No Need To Argue
My Back Pages / The Byrds / 20 Essential Tracks From the Boxed Set: 1965-1990
O Death / Camper Van Beethoven / Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart
So. Central Rain / R.E.M. / Reckoning
The Nothing Song / Sigur Rós / Edinburgh 22.08.00
Deep Dark Truthful Mirror (Demo) / Elvis Costello / Spike Bonus Disc
Where I End And You Begin (The Sky Is Falling In) / Radiohead / Hail To The Thief

One of the iTMS free downloads this week is the Spark Notes for Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Kids today: they have it so good . . . .