Posts from — April 2007

We are not going to know what happened for days or weeks. A single murder causes widespread shock in a small town, and something of this magnitude, will really amplify that effect.

Don’t make any assumptions about anything until we really know what happened. Eyewitness reports are not reliable – they are generally what people think happened. The brain has a nasty habit of blocking things people don’t want to remember and adding things to make a “better” story. You have to sift through and gather facts from multiple witnesses to get an approximation of the truth.

Evidence testing takes time. There isn’t a crime lab in the country that has all of the equipment that is displayed on television shows. No jurisdiction could afford it or the people needed to operate it.

Politicians will feel required to pass laws almost immediately. This always leads to bad laws. [Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act in a state of shock.]

People feel helpless and want to do something – I’m sorry but there’s nothing we can do until we understand what happened, and, even then, there may be nothing we can do except show empathy for those who lost their loved ones.

Karen has Questions and More QUESTIONS… at Peripetia, but unfortunately Blogger doesn’t know me at the moment, so here’s the comment I was trying to make on sexism and racism:

It may be a defensive mechanism to explain personal deficiencies, real or imagined. It’s easy to blame “others” for your problems, a lot easier than taking a realistic look at yourself.

There are a lot of possible reasons why: you didn’t get the job or promotion; you aren’t making a lot of money; you didn’t get the date you wanted. Some of them may be the result of discrimination, but it could just be you.

These people just need to start their own version of the NAACP – the NAAFMJ. Let’s face it, there is a lot of membership potential for a National Association for the Advancement of Foul-Mouthed Jerks, and they already have media access.

[The article, Examining the alpha male at work, available via CNN, also sheds some light on the problem. I would note that many of the worst are “alpha males” in their own minds, not in reality. The phrase, “with all due respect,” covers the situation where none is due.]

Neil the Ethical Werewolf at Ezra Klein came across the Edwards Tax Plan, which makes a lot of sense, is very easy to implement, would save the government and individuals money, and obviously can never be allowed. Edwards calls the plan Form 1.

Basically the IRS as all of the information needed to complete a Form 1040 for millions of people. It gets copies of W-2s, 1099s, etc., which is all most people use to fill out their tax return. Edwards wants the IRS to fill it out and send the completed form to people for them to review. If they agree the form is correct, they sign it and return it. The IRS form would be generated by a computer, and be both human and machine readable.

It wouldn’t help me, as not all of my clients are required to fill out a 1099, and my expenses vary a lot, but for millions of wage earners it makes a lot of sense.

The problem is that it will cut into profits of tax preparers, the “tax refund loan” business, and other hangers on in the income tax business.

Aside: People might be more aware of this proposal if two ladies hadn’t been chased out of their jobs by a rabid mob.

From my hosting company:

There appears to be a major routing issue on one of the backbone networks (Global Crossing) that services our location. It is affecting many people trying to reach our network.

Although this is not a problem located on or related to our network, we will monitor it carefully and post more information if we obtain it.

Fortunately, such outages tend to be very short, and very rare.

A Taxing Time

Are you sure we’re related?

[Editor: Since I had nothing else scheduled for 3:30AM, Ringo decided to get it over with and introduced Income, Property, Sales, and Excise to the world. Excise is the pale one. Actually I can plot world domination now that I have a white cat, it’s a requirement. It’s hard to tell but there are three “blues” and Excise.]

From YouTube:

• The original
• The original with some extra bits
• George and Eric

Enjoy the music, if not the day.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

He’s being insufferable about it. Michael of Musing’s musings has once again conned university and government officials to allow him to do “research” in France.

CBS reports that Karl Rove’s attorney is spreading the talking point: E-Mail Deletion Unintentional

Karl Rove’s lawyer on Friday dismissed the notion that President Bush’s chief political adviser intentionally deleted his own e-mails from a Republican-sponsored computer system.

The attorney said Rove believed the communications were being preserved in accordance with the law.

“His understanding starting very, very early in the administration was that those e-mails were being archived,” Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, said.

Bovine excrement, Mr. Luskin. Don’t try to sell that at trial because it just won’t fly…actually it won’t even get to leave the terminal.

[Read more →]

Don’t respond to those e-mails, the Culture Ghost makes it easy. His dieting assistance plan starts here and then you scroll up. It will definitely “put you off your feed.”

Aside: when the e-mails about hoodia started, I thought they were for sweatshirts, given that spelling is not a strong suit among spammers. This is the downside of not watching TV.

Update: The call for calm didn’t last long: Iraq reacts sharply to Turkish incursion threat. People still remember the Ottoman Empire.

Ellroon of Rants from the Rookery notes that Turkey’s Chief of Staff wants to invade northern Iraq.

Kevin Drum of Political Animal picked up on the problem of Kurdistan and includes a map.

The Wikipedia article on Kurdistan adds some numbers:

According to the Encyclopædia of Islam, Kurdistan covers around 190,000 km² in Turkey, 125,000 km² in Iran, 65,000 km² in Iraq, and 12,000 km² in Syria and the total area of Kurdistan is estimated at approximately 392,000 km².

There are an estimated 30-40 million Kurds in the region distributed proportionally with the land area, meaning about half in Turkey, then Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

In terms of concern, Turkey, Iran, and Syria are not happy about independence calls coming from the Iraqi Kurds. While the US is complaining about “foreign terrorists” infiltrating into Iraq from Iran and Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Syria are alarmed about the free movement of Kurdish terrorists into their countries.

The latest round of problems started over the plan for a referendum on the status of the city of Kirkuk, which, coincidentally, is sitting on oil.

[Read more →]

CBS News reports: Alarm Bells Ring Over China Food Imports

The list of Chinese food exports rejected at American ports reads like a chef’s nightmare: pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella.

Yet, it took a much more obscure item, contaminated wheat gluten, to focus U.S. public attention on a very real and frightening fact: China’s chronic food safety woes are now an international concern.

[snip]

While the public was focused on the danger to their pets, sources tell CBS News that the FDA had tracked at least one suspect batch of wheat gluten into the human food supply, quietly quarantined some products and notified the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention to watch for new patients admitted to hospitals with renal or kidney failure.

“This really shows the risks of food purity problems combining with international trade,” said Michiel Keyzer, director of the Center for World Food Studies at Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit.

Don’t worry; be happy; the government will protect you.

While China talks about privatization, many of their “enterprises” operate on the old model, which demands fulfillment of quotas at any cost. Cut any corners necessary, but don’t miss the target you were given. The lives of individuals are not valued very highly and the elite don’t eat the local food.

Bribery and corruption is endemic in the system, even more of a problem since the move to capitalization began. If Party membership was once the key to a comfortable life, now it is considered the path to wealth.

The question for Americans is how many deaths will it take before we start seeing an effort made at really inspecting what comes into the country?

Another Washington Post investigative report: Tons of food spoiled as FEMA ran out of space

As many as 6 million prepared meals stockpiled near potential victims of the 2006 hurricane season spoiled in the Gulf Coast heat last summer when the Federal Emergency Management Agency ran short of warehouse and refrigeration space, according to agency officials.

In all, hundreds of truckloads of food worth more than $40 million are being thrown away or scavenged for unspoiled contents to be offered to domestic hunger-relief groups, FEMA officials said. Most of the meals were commercial versions of the military’s Meals Ready to Eat, which were ruined despite being engineered to withstand the demands of desert and jungle climates.

[snip]

News of the latest problems at FEMA follows findings after Katrina that the agency awarded up to $1 billion in improper payments to individuals, spent $900 million on 25,000 trailers that could not be used in flood zones and paid $1.8 billion for hotel rooms and cruise ship cabins that were more expensive than apartments.

MREs aren’t designed to be stored for extended periods in deserts and jungles; they are designed to be stored in human compatible warehouses until needed. If you keep the stuff at 70° it lasts for years, but at 100° it’s months. The storage requirements are on the boxes if you bother to read.

These people don’t seem to have any relevant training or experience in any of the necessary areas. Why are they still employed?

[If the WaPo keeps this up, they might be mistaken for a newspaper.]

From Danger Room this bit of supposed levity: Army Chief Still Not Dead

“I understand that when Pete came out of retirement [to take over the Army post] his status was changed somehow from retired to deceased,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said. “It took General Schoomaker, the highest-ranking officer in the Army, a full six months to iron out the paperwork. Leave it to the Pentagon bureaucracy to prove that you can in fact be brought back from the dead.”

That’s not all, added Schoomaker as he took the podium. He said, “You know, on that letter that I received from finance … when I got called back, the interesting thing was they – it was a form letter, and they had my name in there three times, and each time it was misspelled.”

This was Rumfeld’s Defense Department, Schoomaker assumed the job in August of 2003. If they screw up the paperwork for one the top five generals in the military, what chance do enlisted people have?

Repeating a complaint – why do all of these generals get to retire while the lower rants keep getting hit by stop-loss orders and tour extensions?