Posts from — January 2005

Friday Cat Blogging [^TM Kevin Drum]

How would you like to eat that camera?

1967 – RIP
Virgil “Gus” Ivan Grissom, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF
Edward Higgins White, II, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF
Roger Bruce Chaffee, Lieutenant Commander, USN

This is the 60^th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz by the Soviet Army in World War II. While remembering the camps, don’t lose sight of the fact that in addition to the Jews of Europe, the Roma [Gypsies], homosexuals, the disabled, and Slavs were sent to die in the camps. It is a reality that those who hate rarely confine their spite to a single group. Once hate is accepted as “normal” by a society, it spreads to include almost everyone who is in any way different from the haters.

This is also the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, so all was not dark on this January day.

So now it’s columnist Maggie Gallagher who got paid by the government, just like Armstrong Williams before her. OK, so this is just another brick in the wall between truth and the people being built by the Busheviks and their toadies. Nothing really new, except: is Gallagher going to sue over receiving less then 10% of the payoff made to Williams?

Gallagher claims significant expertise in her field, marriage, when compared to Williams and education, so the disparity is beginning to look a lot like it’s based on the sex of the commentator. If the reporting is to be believed Ms. Gallagher had to create the policy, teach the bureaucrats what it meant, and then to shill for it has a columnist. Williams was only required to be a shill.

I think Ms. Gallagher should push for legislation requiring equal opportunity bribes, or at least sue for the $200K she was shorted.

Today Dubya said the executive branch really should stop bribing pundits, and promised to tell his cabinet officers not to do it.

Update: Tresy at Corrente adds a name to the Paid Pundit roster.

Royal Australian Air Force Ensign

Do not go drinking with those who fly this flag.

Thanks to Elayne’s Journal for reminding me.

The CNN link: Doh! Too many Does spark scouts probe

The AP story: FBI probing Alabama Boy Scout organization

A Scout is: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean & Reverent

You don’t see Clever in that list.

Apparently some people associated with the Boy Scouts in Alabama are being investigated because of seemingly inflated membership numbers.

I don’t want to prejudge the case. Just because there are Boy Scout troops that no one can locate, or activities where all of the scouts seem to be named Doe, isn’t proof. I mean the troops could be on an extended camp out for a year or two, and some families are extended, often by marrying cousins, this is Alabama after all.

The reason the FBI is involved is because of the way the Boy Scouts are funded, with some of the funding coming from the government. Much of the funding is based on the number of people an organization serves.

On the other hand, you can be sure that no gays or atheists were involved in the problem, just straight, G-d fearing Republican supporters of Judge Roy Moore and the Ten Commandments [well, most of them].

Disclaimer: I was a Cub Scout, Boy Scout, and Explorer. I had a lot of fun because the leaders I had taught skills and accepted that most of us were savages.

All Things Considered on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 actually had a couple of worthwhile segments.

In a Study Plumbs Brain Responses to Anger:

Robert Siegel talks with David Sander, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Geneva and one of the lead authors of an article in Nature Neuroscience about the brain’s anger response mechanism.

Professor Sander was looking at the possible benefits this study may hold for understanding autistic and schizophrenic patients, a worthy goal.

What occurred to me is that the study also explains the success of Rightwing Radio. The human brain pays attention to angry words, whether or not the individual wants to listen. This is probably a survival trait: “anger = threat” so it gets attention.

Seniors Weigh In on Social Security Reform by John Ydstie

Kent Smetters, an Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who worked on President Bush’s Social Security commission, says “private accounts won’t deliver higher total earnings for participants, but they will raise benefits for the lowest-income workers.”

What I found interesting was Professor Smetters’ thinking concerning the reason there is a problem: the President and Congress have spent the Social Security trust fund on tax cuts and spending, and will have to raise taxes and cut spending to pay it back when the bill comes due. He thinks that Private/Personal Accounts are necessary to keep the money away from Congress and the President.

So, according to a Republican economist the problem with Social Security is President Bush and the Republicans in control of Congress.

I seem to remember someone talking about a Social Security “lockbox” during the 2000 election. Too bad not enough voters paid attention.

Both Moi at Bloggg and Amy at Blog Amy have pictures of the snow in their areas.

Brrrr, just brrrr. It was below freezing on the Gulf Coast last night, but we don’t have to shovel anything.

Around this time every year we get an influx of robins coming in to gorge on the berries of the camphor trees [cinnamomum camphora – an invasive non-native species]. The result is a bunch of noisy, obnoxious birds, slightly intoxicated, leaving dark purple splashes all over everything as the berries rapidly pass through their digestive tracks.

The first time people of a certain age see this annual ritual they think of the Alfred Hitchcock film, The Birds.

An umbrella or easily cleaned wide brimmed hat is recommend, as well as a car cover.

Update: Mustang Bobby points out in comments that the American robin’s scientific name is turdus migratorius. And people think scientists don’t have a sense of humor.

Australian Broadcasting has a post on the capture of a reputed al Zarqawi lieutenant.

Sami Mohammed al-Jafi, known as Abu Omar al-Kurdi, is accused of being behind around 32 car bombings since the US-led invasion of Iraq, it said.

Kurdi has been in Iraqi custody for over a month, but his capture was announced just a week before Iraq’s landmark elections in which Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is running on a list that promises to bring security to beleaguered Iraqis.

“Kurdi has confessed to some 75 per cent of the car bombs that were used for attacks in Baghdad since March 2003 and to making the explosives used in the attack on the Jordanian embassy in August 2003,” spokesman Thair al-Naqib said.

“Kurdi also confirmed he was responsible for some of the bloody attacks on the police.”

Having been in the custody of Allawi for a month I wouldn’t be surprised if Kurdi also admitted to providing John Wilkes Booth with backstage passes, having been on the grassy knoll in Dallas, and taking part in the recent bank robbery in Northern Ireland.

If this guy was so vital to bomb making, why hasn’t the number of attacks been reduced in the last month, instead of increasing?

Back on January 9, I wondered what Rumsfeld was up to with all of the money Congress was giving him, but he didn’t seem to be spending. Many people guessed death squads and the new information that Steve Bates posts on the Strategic Support Branch tells me that this is the new and improved Pentagon euphemism for death squads.

Steve links to the Barton Gellman article in the Washington Post, explaining what has been leaked to him, probably by the annoyed CIA guys who are trying to stay alive in a very dangerous part of the world.

This mess has “Jerry Crusader for Christ” Boykin written all over it, as the cut-off for “plausible deniability”. General Boykin of “Delta Force” to the rescue, just like Somalia, the Iran hostage rescue, Waco – well I guess we aren’t allowed to hear about the successes. “Bonkers” was brought on board to lead the hunt for Osama “what’s his name”, who can’t be found because “he’s hiding”. I wonder if he’s tried broadcasting “alley, alley, in free” along the Pakistani-Afghani border yet?

There are several major and important differences between the military and the CIA. The military has a Code of Conduct, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, rules and regulations, and other restrictions on what a member of the military may do. The CIA doesn’t, but it’s supposed to let the President know before it does something egregiously stupid that might cause a war. The military is designed and trained to oppose other military forces and to minimize the effects on civilians. The CIA is supposed to let the President know before it does something egregiously stupid that might cause a war. The military is supposed to act in an honorable and ethical fashion, even towards the enemy. The CIA is supposed to let the President know before it does something egregiously stupid that might cause a war.

Feldmarschall Rumsfeld is apparently intent on creating a modern version of the Waffen SS under command of Generalleutnant Wilhelm Boykin. If someone would like to show me another historical parallel, I might relent, but no other comes to mind.

There is no justification for this action. This is designed to avoid Congressional oversight.

The rightfully outraged Tom Burka at Opinions You Should Have points to his Thanksgiving Parade post as an egregious example of Republicans stealing “their moral outrages” from liberal satirists.

There is no comment from SpongeDob Stickypants concerning this outrageous plagiarism of satirical outrage.

If this trend continues people will begin to believe that satirical comedy shows like The Daily Show are really the news…oh, that’s right, they already do.

Adam Felber at Fanatical Apathy has two posts that help to put the American political scene in perspective: it is insane.

Both the The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Intelligent Design and The Universal Lingerie Theory of American Presidents help people understand what is occurring, whether they want to know or not.

The marsupial master of miniscule, skippy, responds to a Wall Street Journal article but allowed this statement to go unchallenged: “… there is no exam to pass or society to join to become a blogger — anybody can set up a “web log” to publish his or her ideas…”.

There are among the “mighty handful” who drop by this corner of blogtopia^TM [skippy] some who provide technical support to computer users. I have done it long enough to have had to explain that copying a diskette does not involve a Xerox^TM machine, that it is a bad idea to use a magnet to hold a diskette in place on a document stand, and “I haven’t the faintest bloody idea why you have to click on Start to shut down the computer, but that’s what Windows requires.”

To state “anyone can set up a web log” is prima facie evidence of technical ignorance. There is a certain skill level required before one can master Blogger, arguably the simplest of the blogging tools. I dare say that after 15 minutes with the WSJ technical support staff I would be able to find a large group of people at the newspaper who would never get a blog up and running on their own. That is the “exam” you must pass and that is the reason the Dean campaign hired two experienced bloggers to set up their system.

To join the “society” of bloggers requires writing something that others make the effort to find and read.

If the editors of the Wall Street Journal are so upset about blogs, they should tell their readers not to outsource jobs. That would slow the pace. They could also do some fact checking and hire better writers, but that’s probably too hard.

Two articles caught my eye today and caused me to consider the place of context in the search for understanding.

Kevin Drum at Political Animal wrote about Lawrence Summers, Harvard president addressing the lack of women in the hard sciences and then Avedon Carol of the Sideshow wrote about rebirth of Bush.

The comments that Summers made have to be viewed in the context of being the head of an organization that has long been accused of discrimination against women. What he said would not be considered as bad if it didn’t resemble an attempt to weasel out of responsibility for the perceived problems at Harvard and to demonstrate the lack of attention he seems to have paid to it.

Bush, on the other hand, has been consciously removing the context of his entire life. He continuously claims that everything that happened before he was “reborn” as a Christian is now irrelevant, because everything he did before was washed away. It would appear Bush is attempting to claim the “resurrection” without ever suffering the required death. I doubt that Joseph Campbell would agree that this tact is sufficient for the classification as hero in a myth cycle. I would also note that Bush denied this exemption to Karla Faye Tucker, who was executed in spite of being reborn.