Category — Uncategorized

I spent my day engaged with another leak from The Toilet From Hell®. This is a half-century-old chunk of porcelain with which I have an ongoing battle over the past several years.

It always starts the same way:

It’s leaking.

I’ll replace it.

It doesn’t need to be replaced, it’s a good toilet.

Good toilets don’t leak.

It would be replaced with one of those new toilets that don’t flush properly.

They work now, and it will be quicker and cheaper to replace the miserable thing.

That would mean re-papering the bathroom to cover the space behind the tank.

Okay, I’ll fix it.

Four hours, three foam gaskets, two complete sets of tank bolts [I asked for stainless steel and one of the known properties of stainless steel is an absence of RUST SPOTS!], plumbers putty, ½-inch open end wrench, medium channel lock pliers, large vise grips, spud wrench, large flat blade screwdriver, wet/dry vacuum, towel, first aid kit, and a large wad of chewing gum to mute the curses.

If I didn’t hate hanging wall paper more than a root canal, The Toilet From Hell® would be providing drainage as shards in the bottom of dozens of flower pots.

An example of undeserved blame for bad work came from the Shrubbery who is blaming Saddam Hussein for the current civil war in Iraq.

I guess we aren’t supposed to remember the “suggestions” to the Kurds from Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. Let’s ignore the cheerleading directed towards the Shi’ia by George H.W. Bush after Gulf War I. Let’s ignore the support for Saddam’s murderous regime by the Reagan and Bush I foreign policy team, including the neo-colonials who were screaming for the man’s head under Bush II.

No, we have to forget all of that, or the Shrubbery would have to admit that “he broke it” and we have to pay for it.

A humble suggestion: before you vote for anyone for anything, why don’t you check to ensure that the individual has actually done something on their own.

Via Holden at First Draft: Hunter College has announced the The James Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism.

The magnificent Molly Ivins has been given a lifetime achievement award and Juan Cole has been recognized for his web log, Informed Comment.

Well deserved recognition for good work.

A low turn out [about 63.2%] and new major party have led to confused results for the Israeli election. With 75% of the vote counted Ariel Sharon’s Kadima party appears to have won 28 of 120 seats in the Knesset which gives them the opportunity to attempt to form a governing majority with the other Israeli parties.

There is no natural fit with the other parties, and no clear direction from the voters.

I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for creative policies, and expect the voters will be given another chance to express their wishes in the near future.

Blogger does not play favorites. During the recent “troubles” they managed to delete the Google blog.

This was assumed to have been a hack at the time, but no, their blog was erased on their site by their software and personnel.

Given what Google pays for Blogger, I feel better about the service I received.

Thanks to Steve M. at No More Mr. Nice Blog I don’t have to go looking for NPR’s interview with Karen Hughes, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy yesterday on All Things Considered.

Hughes says she’s trying to convince foreigners about the positive aspects of U.S. policy.

“One of my frustrations as a communicator is that a lot of times people don’t even know what we’ve done.”

Au contraire, Ms. Hughes, the problem is that people do know what the US has done in their area for more than a half century during the Cold War, and while the actions may have been in accord with the goals of the US at the time, they have not been universally beneficial to the local inhabitants.

The local people know:

The US and UK removed a democratically elected government in Iran with Operation Ajax;

The US supplied Saddam Hussein with weapons and helped him create WMDs during the Iran-Iraq War; and

Most of today’s “terrorists” were created by the US financed Mujahideen during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Painting schools or rosy verbal scenarios are not going to negate what people know.

Echidne has a moving tribute to her friend, Hank the Lab, who died last evening.

It is always hard to lose a living thing that shares in your life and makes it better.

My condolences and sympathy go out to her and Henrietta.

[A screenshot from CBS this weekend.]

Given the definition used by the Shrubbery’s agitprop people we did not have a civil war in the United States from 1861 to 1865. It wasn’t The War Between the States or The War of Northern Aggression, it was an insurgency.

The incident at Fort Sumter wasn’t really a battle. There were only four casualties, and they were the result of an equipment malfunction, so it doesn’t count as a real battle.

Since the current Iraqi military and police units are derived from Shi’ia militias it is little difficult to discern Shi’ia on Sunni violence. This was the obvious result of Bremer’s “de-Ba’athification” program as the Ba’ath party was a Sunni organization.

Let me spare Secretary Rice the trouble of saying: “No one could have imagined an Iraqi civil war.” Yeah, right.

Riverbend of Baghdad Burning is in the running for the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction writing. The award includes £30,000 [$52,281] in cash, but she would have to identify herself to collect it, and I can’t believe that she could remain in Iraq if she did.

Being identified as wealthy in Iraq makes you and your family the target for kidnappers.

How about we enforce some of the laws that already exist, before we enact any more?

It is illegal to hire undocumented workers, but they are all over and being abused by businesses. You start by actually enforcing the laws against the businesses. Stop arresting workers and start arresting employers.

Then, actually fund the securing of the border. Hire the Border Patrol agents you need and let them patrol the border. Hire the Coast Guard and give them equipment to patrol our waters. Fund and implement port security.

The great fallacy of the “guest worker” programs and the H1B visas, is that Americans don’t want these jobs. Americans don’t want to work for the money that business wants to pay for these jobs, and as long as business is assured of labor at poverty level wages, the wages won’t rise to a living level. “Guest worker programs” are nothing more than a variation of outsourcing.

NBC says Scalia Speaks His Mind, but it should probably read Scalia Shoots His Mouth Off.

Scalia is not interested in facts, jurisprudence, or the Constitution, only in his own ideology. He apparently supports the “imperial presidency” and not the rule of law.

While he should recuse himself from the latest Guantanamo case, I would be surprised if he had that much integrity left.

The BBC, among others, is reporting on the election in the Ukraine as some sort of huge victory for Viktor Yanukovych’s “blue” party, the Putin faction in the Ukraine. While they are the leading party, they only have 27.3% of the votes.

President Viktor Yushchenko’s party is running third with 16.3% of the vote, but the coalition, the “oranges”, that elected him included Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc, currently second with 23.4%. If the “oranges” stop arguing among themselves they still have a majority in the government and should use it to help the Ukrainian people.

Or dog bites man. From the BBC: Microsoft warns on browser bugs.

“To avoid falling victim, Microsoft urged users to avoid websites they did not trust and to refrain from opening attachments on e-mail messages from unknown senders.”

Internet Explorer is a bad piece of software that was written more to enforce Microsoft’s platform orthodoxy than to assist the user. Its proprietary “features” are designed to lock users into dependence on Microsoft, not to assist them with the task at hand.

The real shame is that Microsoft has some talented coders who are quite capable of writing software that would win market share on its merits without all of this extraneous garbage. They could write software for Linux that people would be willing to buy.

Too bad they don’t believe in their people enough to compete on a level field, rather than attempting monopoly.