Posts from — May 2006

First of all, this is totally worthless for espionage cases. This is not about terrorists and never was, if you think it through. The companies involved are the big telcos, with the exception of Qwest, and they are the “wired” world.

Logically, does a terrorist move into an apartment and call the local telco to have a telephone line installed, or does s/he stop by Target and buy a pre-paid cell phone with cash? Does a terrorist call the local cable company to have broadband installed, or does s/he go to the local library or use free WiFi at a coffee shop?

Muslims believe that interest on money is immoral [a reasonable response to Capital One credit card offers] and don’t use the banking system the way a Westerner would. A lot of money is saved in the form of gold jewelry rather than savings accounts, CD, or bonds. They don’t leave the trail of financial records that Westerners do.

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Via Holden at First Draft, Rumsfeld is doing so well maintaining force strength that the Washington Post reports: Army Using Policy to Deny Reserve Officer Resignations.

That’s right, you go in and finish your contract, the whole 8 years, and they can still pull you back anytime they want: you can’t escape, they own you forever.

This is why I can’t recommend the military to anyone, ever again, unless the laws are changed to end these practices.

Robert at Interstate 4 Jamming reports that JEB may have found a sacrifice for the Republican primary against Cruella de Harris, State Representative Dennis Ross.

Cruella and Ross are both from Polk County, so the boy should know better. He’s got until tomorrow to come up with $10K and file his paper work.

There has been almost no rain over on the peninsula this year, which has resulted in wild fires. Currently CBS reports: Falling Trees Shut I-95 In Florida. What has happened is that the fires have destroyed the root systems on many large trees and they are falling over onto the roadway. The road had been closed intermittently lately because of the smoke and there have been a number of fatal crashes.

Holden at First Draft has a piece on that odd Ann Coulter person.

She is an attorney, but she seems confused as to where she lives and should be voting. The end result of this screw up could be a felony conviction on voter fraud which would not only remove her from the Palm Beach County voters rolls, but cost her the right to vote in a large chunk of the nation and normally results in disbarment. She has ignored notification by the election board.

It would be neighborly if Rush called to explain to her that the Florida state’s attorneys don’t really have a sense of humor.

The Associated Press reports that Domestic spying inquiry killed:

The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers security clearance.

The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax Wednesday to Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey of New York saying it was closing its inquiry because without clearance it could not examine department lawyers’ role in the program.

“We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,” OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey’s office shared the letter with The Associated Press.

The OPR investigation was only concerned with the conduct of the lawyers, not the program itself, but secret stuff has to remain secret.

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There’s no need to worry because: Insurers in great shape before hurricane season.

Wait, you say, what about all of those payouts for the hurricanes? Simple, they are stalling or refusing to pay out on a large number of policies, so they could rack up over $40 billion in profits.

To avoid the expenses associated turning down claims they are canceling policies for people who live near the coast, including all of Long Island.

They certainly don’t want to insure people who might make a claim after paying premiums for 20 years.

In his continuing paranoia about “brown people”, Lou Dobbs finds a little reality: Dobbs to President: Do you take us for fools?.

Well, yes he does, Lou, and you’ve imbibed enough Koolaid over the years for him to believe you’ll accept anything he says. For example, Lou, when you state” “Only a fool, Mr. President, Senator Kennedy, Senator McCain, would believe you when you speak of new legislation. You don’t enforce the laws now.”

Lou, Senator Kennedy is a Democrat and has no power in the current government. The Executive is charged with enforcement, so if enforcement is your issue, it’s the Shrubbery alone that you should be haranguing. You are so well trained that even when what you hate is obviously a Republican problem, you have to haul in a Democrat for “balance”.

No, not the song by The Box Tops or the cover by Joe Cocker, the letter by Iranian President, Mahmoud Amadinejad, is finally being read by someone other than the government and the media.

James Wolcott calls his take on the letter, Stirring the Crackpot, and highlights many of the points that occurred to me, but his writing is far superior to mine, using a scalpel where I would wield an axe.

You really should read the letter and I’m converting it to straight text, rather than PDF, with American rather than British spelling.

In general the letter has a great deal in common with the recent performance by Stephen Colbert, covering many of the same points. Actually it read like something you would hear from the pulpit of an old-time, fire & brimstone Baptist church. Amadinejad has the pacing down and the requisite quotes from the Book.

Unfortunately, Amadinejad overestimates the historical knowledge of the Shrubbery and his cronies when he makes references to anything that occurred more than two weeks ago.

The Central Intelligence Agency was formed from the Office of Strategic Services, which was originally parceled out to the Defense Department and the State Department. While the Agency itself wasn’t formally created until the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency came into existence in 1946.

The first four men to hold the office were active duty military officers, reflecting the nature of those who were recruited to create the agency, veterans of World War II and they were all appointed and served under President Truman. Since the appointment of Allen Dulles in February of 1953, no active duty officer has been the Director.

Only two retired officers have been the Director, both Navy Admirals. William Raborn was Director for 14 months under President Johnson, and Stansfield Turner was the Director for his Naval Academy classmate, President Carter.

No Republican has ever appointed a military officer to head the CIA, and no President since Truman has appointed an active duty military officer. That’s why this is a big deal.

I would note that Stansfield Turner really screwed up the CIA by shifting the emphasis away from gathering “human intelligence” towards a heavier reliance on technology, as was the military custom. This was caused in some part by the Church Commission, but it was also a military bias for technology.

As a former Director of NSA, Hayden would obviously have the same bias, which is not a good idea when dealing with terrorists who do not use technology, but are more apt to use human messengers.

Charlie Savage, the Boston Globe reporter who wrote the article on the Shrubbery’s 750 signing statements, was on Fresh Air from WHYY tonight. Worth hearing a reporter who still reports.

There are links to his article and to a searchable database of signing statements.

He stood up well to the relentless probing of Terry Gross, the hard-hitting interviewer that scared Bill O’Reilly off her program by asking direct questions. [If you’ve never listened to Ms. Gross, Halloween costumes for babies are scarier than she is. She asks good questions and gets good interviews, but it certainly isn’t by intimidating her guests.]

Atrios proposes a list of issues on which he believes most people on the Left can agree:

• Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration
• Repeal the estate tax repeal
• Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI
• Universal health care (obviously the devil is in the details on this one)
• Increase CAFE standards. Some other environment-related regulation
• Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice. On the last one there’s probably some disagreement around the edges (parental notification, for example), but otherwise.
• Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code
• Kill faith-based funding. Certainly kill federal funding of anything that engages in religious discrimination.
• Reduce corporate giveaways
• Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan
• Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions.
• Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Generally move towards “more decriminalization” of drugs, though the details complicated there too.
• Imprison Jeff Goldstein for crimes against humanity for his never ending stupidity
• Paper ballots
• Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies. Obviously details matter.
• Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes.
• Torture is bad
• Imprisoning citizens without charges is bad
• Playing Calvinball with the Geneva Conventions and treaties generally is bad
• Imprisoning anyone indefinitely without charges is bad
• Stating that the president can break any law he wants any time “just because” is bad
• Marriage rights for all, which includes “gay marriage” and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens.

Other than the Goldstein comment I can live with it. I have no desire to find out who Goldstein is, and see no reason to single him out from among the mass of stupid people on the planet.

The President of Iran, Mahmoud Amadinejad, sends a long letter to the President of the United States, breaking 27 years of silence between the two governments and the price of crude drops about $1.50 a barrel before anyone knows what’s in the letter, but Shrubbery and Company dismiss the letter, apparently because it isn’t an unconditional surrender.

So now, Iran looks like a responsible country trying to resolve a dispute through diplomatic means and the US is a rude bully. That’s how it is going to look to the rest of the world and the US can kiss the UN resolution good-bye.

I doubt there was anything worthwhile in the letter, but after 27 years you don’t reject a diplomatic opening out of hand. Refusal to talk to other countries does not work.

The other problem is that Brazil has just officially started its first uranium enrichment facility, and Iran will use that to highlight the difference in treatment. Brazil has had atomic weapons aspirations in the past, and the Brazilian Navy helped to construct the new facility. Brazil has also limited the access of IAEA inspectors, without being hauled before the Security Council to face possible sanctions.

I view the current leaders of Iran as dangerous zealots who oppress their people, but the Shrubbery is making them appear reasonable by comparison to the US government.

BTW, nice play by “Darth” Cheney. The Russians might have been convinced to abstain on the Iran vote, but Cheney has pretty much guaranteed a veto to any resolution the US wants. Smooth, really smooth.

Update: Here’s an English translation of Amadinejad’s letter. The French newspaper Le Monde provided the translation because apparently no one in the US media took the trouble, or had the resources to do it.

When I read this BBC article, Wal-Mart seeks smiley face rights, I had a hard time believing it was true. It has been sloshing around in the US public domain for decades; you can’t just claim it belongs to you when everyone knows you didn’t create it.

The arrogance of some knows no bounds.

A great catch from The Sailor at Vidiot Speak via skippy: The National Security Act of 1947 states that only one of the three top officials at the Central Intelligence Agency may be either an active duty or retired military officer.

The current number two at the agency is Vice Admiral Albert M. Calland, III, an active duty Naval officer.

The applicable portion of the act is incorporated as Title 50, Section 403 of the United States Code.

Oh, Steve Gilliard has a piece on the Hayden connection to Wade of MZM, one of the people connected to the “Duke” Cunningham scandal, and Cruella de Harris’s campaign contribution problem.

The CIA’s number one, Goss, left Friday. Number three, Dusty Foggo, left today. If he wants Hayden, the Shrubbery has to fire number two, Admiral Calland.

An optical mouse acts extremely erratically in the presence of cat hair. Attempting to use an optical mouse on a cloth covered mouse pad with cat hair present may lead to the loss of large amounts of data as the cursor skips about the screen.