Posts from — June 2007

Why would they do this: Apple announces Windows browser

Apple has launched a version of its web browser Safari for Windows, competing head to head with Microsoft’s Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox.

Chief executive Steve Jobs said Apple “dream big” and wanted to expand the 4.9% market share Safari enjoys.

Does he want to go back to the future with browser wars? Does anyone need another propriety chunk of software? Being faster than IE is not exactly a technological tour de force. What’s next, a text editor?

Perhaps Whig at Cannablog saw this coming. [If you are not a geek, you won’t get it, so don’t worry.]

MSNBC reports: Court overrules Bush ‘enemy combatant’ policy

RICHMOND, Va. – The Bush administration cannot legally detain an immigrant it believes is an al-Qaida sleeper agent without charging him, a divided federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The case involves a Qatari national and suspected al-Qaida operative who is the only person being held in the United States as an “enemy combatant.”

In the 2-1 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel found that the federal Military Commissions Act does not strip Ali al-Marri of his constitutional rights to challenge his accusers in court. It ruled the government must allow him to be released from military detention.

The best news is that this comes from the Fourth Circuit, the appeals court of choice for neocons and others stuck in the timeline of the First Crusade. This court thinks Roger Taney was a liberal and Joe McCarthy had a pinkish tinge.

Via Suburban Guerrilla in The Times [the real newspaper in London, not the bird cage liner in New York]: Iran threatens Gulf blitz if US hits nuclear plants

IRAN has threatened to launch a missile blitz against the Gulf states and plunge the entire Middle East into war if America attacks its nuclear facilities.

Admiral Ali Shamkhani, a senior defence adviser to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned that Gulf states providing the US with military cooperation would be the key targets of a barrage of ballistic missiles.

This isn’t bombast from the ribbon cutting figurehead of Iran, Ahmadinejad, this is from the national security advisor to the real power in Iran, Khamenei, the man with actual control of Iran’s military. They can do it, and they will do it if attacked.

On Face The Nation – Lieberman: Bomb Iran If It Doesn’t Stop

(CBS) The United States should launch military strikes against Iran if the government in Tehran does not stop supplying anti-American forces in Iraq, Sen. Joe Lieberman said Sunday on Face The Nation.

“I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Lieberman told Bob Schieffer. “And to me, that would include a strike into… over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers.”

Where is the evidence, Senator LIEberman [Likud-CT]? It wasn’t in the munitions, obviously stenciled by an American, for that dog-and-pony show that Caldwell ran in Baghdad. Defense Secretary Gates doesn’t say it; the ground commanders will only say that some of the weapons are Iranian in origin; but there has been no proof of Iranian government involvement presented. Before you advocate starting another war, and let’s be clear, bombing another country is an act of war, you better be able to provide some proof. We are already in one war based on “sexed-up, dodgy dossiers” and “slam dunks” that belonged in a freshman creative writing class, we don’t need to expand it. If you want to save the lives of the troops, vote to cut off funds for the war.

The Iranians actually have a functioning air defense capability, and an air force. They cannot stop an American air assault, but they can make it “expensive.” If Iran retaliates, we will lose our current assets in Iraq, a regional war will be triggered, and oil from the Persian Gulf will stop flowing.

Someone needs to give Lieberman a wedgie and stick him in a locker for the rest of the semester, because this crap belongs in a middle school.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

Before the television show that is so enamored by James Wolcott, and provides the Rupublans with a last hope for a candidate, there was Преступление и Наказание¹, the novel by Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский², something of a morality play when read in the original, but more of a psychological study in translation, mainly because translators don’t translate the names of the characters. Ted liked to direct his readers’ attention by using meaningful names.

Lately there has been a lot of ink spilled over “Punishment” without much regard for the “Crimes” involved. The convicted are put forth as victims of prejudicial treatment because of their wealth and power, ignoring what happens to people who have neither wealth nor power in the “criminal justice system.”³

The first case involves driving under the influence of alcohol. It should be noted that more people are killed every year in the United States by intoxicated drivers than have been killed by all of the acts of terrorism against the United States since people started tracking such acts.

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Scout at First Draft has done a lot of work on all of the issues surrounding Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. This week it was DHS cronyism. When January 2009 finally gets here and there is a change of administration, the Department of Homeland Security is going to be cut back to its third level managers, because there are no civil service people in the top two levels, everyone is a political appointee. In his effort to break unions, the Shrubbery has politicized every department in government, appointing ideologues and partisans to professional positions for which they are not qualified. There is no one available to “watch the store” during the transition period.

Scout’s second piece is on the insurance companies that whistle-blowers are claiming transfered a good deal of their liability to the government Flood Insurance program.

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The fine folks at Facing South have been posting on the efforts of Florida Power and Light to build a new generation plant on the west side of Lake Okeechobee. They say they need more capacity to keep up with growth.

Randy Neal reports:

Earlier this week, the Florida Public Service Commission denied a Florida Power and Light “Needs Determination” permit for a huge coal-fired power plant on 4900 acres of wilderness near the Everglades National Park in Glades Co. Florida, effectively killing the project.

Sue Sturgis writes that FPL is now talking about building a nuclear plant, on the same site.

It’s time for a reality check. It doesn’t make any difference whether they use coal, natural gas, oil, ethanol, biomass, or nuclear fission, they are still going to be heating water to drive a steam turbine, and there isn’t enough water to do it. Ignoring the fact that if something isn’t done about global warming the area is going to be under sea water in a few decades, they just put out a wild fire on the what was once the bottom of Lake Okeechobee because of the drought.

There are no spare millions of gallons of water available every day to be used by a steam turbine. The Florida Aquifer is under stress and development in South Florida has to be reined in, because there quite simply isn’t enough water for the people already living there.

A song parody, GOP Piety Song from Mad Kane, of course.

Juan Cole of Informed Comment: “The Republican candidates are way behind the Dems in internet popularity so far. Imagine losing a race because you did not have enough Facebook friends.”

Kevin Drum Political Animal on cold cash, in which Rep. Don Young [R-AK] get a $40k “campaign contribution” and then adds $91M to a bill to improve roads in Lee County, Florida. Being from Alaska, Rep. Young didn’t have to wrap it in foil and stick it in a freezer.

Sock Gnome Discovered

Who me? I’m just a cute little sleeping kitten.

[Editor: You always wondered what happened to the other sock, now you know – filched by the Sock Gnome.]

Friday Ark

Peter Norton was a nice guy who wrote some pretty good code, useful things that made working with MS-DOS easier. He finally decided to leave the world of coding and sold his company to Symantec.

The quality of products labeled “Norton” has not been uniform since that happened, but I have stayed with Norton Anti-Virus mostly out of inertia. It was okay, it did the job. As long as you limited it to anti-virus and avoided the “all-in-one” System product, it didn’t get in the way.

Well, no longer. I upgraded starting at almost midnight last night and it took hours. They downloaded the new 2007 version, then immediately started upgrading all of the modules in the package. If I had bought a copy at a “brick and mortar” and installed it, I would expect having to upgrade, but I downloaded from their bloody site, so why didn’t they give me a pre-patched version?

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The BBC is reporting: Saudi prince ‘received arms cash’

A Saudi prince received secret payments from the UK’s biggest arms dealer, a BBC investigation has revealed.

BAE Systems made regular payments of hundreds of millions of pounds to Prince Bandar bin Sultan for more than a decade.

The payments were made with the full knowledge of the Ministry of Defence.

Prince Bandar would not comment and BAE systems said they acted lawfully at all times. The MoD said information about the Al Yamamah deal was confidential.

The Prince served for 20 years as Saudi ambassador to the US.

This is the Shrubbery’s best buddy; the man who taught him everything he knows about the Middle East, the current national security advisor to Saudi King Abdullah. It looks like he was paid about $2 billion for his consulting gig.

Tony “the Poodle” Blair stopped the government investigation into the Al Yamamah deal because of “national security concerns.”

Update: I forgot to include the currency conversion when looking at the total Bandar received.

Both CNN and CBS are carrying this Associated Press report: Turkish Officials: Troops Enter Iraq

(CBS/AP) Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq early Wednesday to chase Kurdish guerrillas who attack Turkey from bases there, Turkish security officials said. One official said the troops had returned to their bases by the end of the day, but Turkey’s foreign minister denied its troops had ever entered Iraq.

The BBC has nothing on this and Iraqi and Turkish officials are denying it happened.

Things are a mess and there are Turkish officials who want to launch a full-scale invasion of Kurdistan to deal with the rebels / terrorists / freedom fighters who have been attacking the Turkish military in recent weeks. To date there has been no permission granted by the Turkish government, but there are elements in the government and military pushing for it.

This may have happened, but it is also possible that this was a political ploy directed at the Turkish government. In any case, the Turkish / Iraqi border is not a good place for a family vacation.

I had to go to the county tax collector’s office to turn in the license plate for my Mother’s old car, and they had Faux Nooz on in the waiting room. Some twit [?Neil Cavuto?] was talking to “experts” about the “Dollar Bill” Jefferson indictment.

Thankfully I don’t have to write about it, because back on April 30^th August J. Pollak drew a cartoon that covered the conversation.