Category — Uncategorized

The BBC notes that the Pentagon gears up for new media war:

The Pentagon’s new effort to influence media coverage of the war in Iraq is an example of how governments react when a war is not going too well.

They begin to think it is not the war that is the problem, but the presentation of it.

The media, being the messengers, get the blame, not the message itself.

While probably not the most egregious error the Shrubbery and Company make, yesterday NPR had a nice piece on one of the “media problems”:The War on the Word ‘Jihad’.

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CNN reports: Critical congresswoman lands on no-fly list.

TSA wouldn’t put Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D CA-47) on the no-fly list just because she is one of the most vocal Congressional opponents of the list and has been complaining to TSA about the appearance of the names of some of her constituents on the list. This was just a little confusion because “Loretta Sanchez” is such a common name among Islamic extremists.

That was the same reason Edward Kennedy appeared on the list.

It was interesting that her Congressional identity card wasn’t good enough to prove she wasn’t the person on the list.

Avedon Carol of Sideshow highlights an excerpt from the novel Thud by Terry Pratchett. Like a lot of Pratchett’s novels about the fantasy Discworld, it might seem to ring true of problems that exist in this world.

It is fantasy, so you have to remember that Small Gods is not about religious fundamentalism and Jingo isn’t about neocon nutcases. They are humorous fantasy novels not satiric social commentary.

As long as we are taking about fantasy in the UK you might want read the interview with General the Lord Guthrie, who was Chief of the Defence Staff [US = Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] five years ago, that is in the Guardian: Afghanistan war is ‘cuckoo’, says Blair’s favourite general

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Update: Mea culpa. I forgot the link to Lisa English at Ruminate This who brought up the investigation into Smartmatic’s Venezuelan ties.

As Anya mentioned in comments, we are having early voting in Florida and things are not running smoothly according to the Miami Herald: Glitches cited in early voting.

This is the calibration problem I was talking about. These machines have a grid of sensors around the screen to determine where you are pressing and they can become misaligned over time. They should be calibrated at a minimum, every day, and the more they are used, the more often they are going to need calibration.

Just being moved can cause them to “lose their place.” It’s a great concept that isn’t ready for the real world.

CNN’s Political Ticker reports on the Venezuela connection:

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First off, you should know that communism was the new “great threat to the American way of life” when New Jersey adopted its latest constitution in 1947. To prove that the state of New Jersey has nothing in common with the godless Commies there are more instances of “Almighty G-d” in this constitution than your average Baptist sermon.

New Jersey State Constitution 1947
Article I – Rights And Privileges:

3. No person shall be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshipping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience; nor under any pretense whatever be compelled to attend any place of worship contrary to his faith and judgment; nor shall any person be obliged to pay tithes, taxes, or other rates for building or repairing any church or churches, place or places of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry, contrary to what he believes to be right or has deliberately and voluntarily engaged to perform.

4. There shall be no establishment of one religious sect in preference to another; no religious or racial test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust.

5. No person shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil or military right, nor be discriminated against in the exercise of any civil or military right, nor be segregated in the militia or in the public schools, because of religious principles, race, color, ancestry or national origin.

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Time has an article, Can This Machine Be Trusted?, about the introduction of the new voting systems. Their subhead:

The U.S.’s new voting systems are only as good as the people who program and use them. Which is why next week could be interesting.

together with their final paragraph:

In a country of 300 million, it is far preferable for partisans, poll workers, defensive voting-machine manufacturers and voters to adjust to the new technologies, eliminate their weak spots and work to keep human errors to a minimum. In that way, voting by machine may someday be no more mysterious than making a visit to the ATM.

illustrate a basic problem with a lot of people who select equipment and those reporting on it.

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It’s that time a year when we all get to relive the exciting time between 1:00AM and 2:00AM Sunday morning twice on the same day — yes, it’s the end of Daylight Saving Time.

While most of the clocks I use do it automatically, for some reason I have to reset the blog manually. Maybe in the next up-grade, although I have already failed to install the last one.

As numerous outlets have reported, Virginia Republican Senator George Felix “Macaca” Allen blasts Webb novels for sex scenes.

James Webb can’t avoid his past any longer. He needs to stand up and admit he was a Republican when he wrote those sex scenes. I know he has seen the light and repented, but he needs to be honest about his problem and act as a model for others, enabling them see the light and make the change in their life. Show Republicans that they too can be saved from a life of ignorance and fear that leads to inserting gratuitous sex scenes in otherwise good novels so they’ll be purchased by other Republicans.

Jim, if you had done this earlier you might have saved Representative Mark Foley (R-FL-Resigned in anticipation of Indictment) from his novel Turning Pages: My Life in the Congressional Cloak Room.

Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof and dozens of others have written about the New Jersey court decision. My reading is not nearly as dramatic as many. From what I have read the court ruled that the New Jersey constitution says everyone has to be treated equally. The state has created a class of partnership agreement called “marriage” that discriminates against a group of people. The legislature needs to fix this problem.

The quick fixes are to change the name to civil union and open it to everyone, or to get the state out of “marriage” altogether. I can’t see the second option being pursued, as there are too many voters who enjoy the benefits of “marriage.”

As predicted the Reich is out in force to use this decision to stir up the “base.”

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Apparently Cheney wants detainees to take regular baths:

“You know as a matter of common sense that the vice president of the United States is not going to be talking about water boarding. Never would, never does, never will,” [Presidential press secretary Tony] Snow said. “You think Dick Cheney’s going to slip up on something like this? No, come on.”

In an interview Tuesday with WDAY of Fargo, North Dakota, Cheney was asked if “a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives.”

The vice president replied, “Well, it’s a no-brainer for me, but for a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.”

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Robert C. of Interstate 4 Jamming wonders: Have Public Officials Gotten A Huge Case Of The Stupids Lately?

Yes, they have. It is a well know facet of Stalinism, that the ruling elite don’t feel constrained by mere laws.

When Education Secretary Rod Paige calls the National Education Association a “terrorist organization” and Representative Peter King (R-NY) calls AARP and the NAACP “radical organizations”, it is an extension of the Stalinist policy of attacking dissidents. When you fail to follow the Party line, you have to be minimized because you are an “enemy of the people.”

Glenn Greenwald of Unclaimed Territory complains about Monday morning quarterbacks among the pundits.

Glenn, when you are a pundit, you have to be ready to airbrush the losers from the pictures when the winds change. Punditry is predicated on short attention spans and bad memories. You only have to keep up the pretense until the “history” is adjusted to prove you have always been right. The Shrubbery may be gone in two years, but the Party is eternal.

Glenn is also concerned about networks refusing to accept ads that “disparage” the Shrubbery. Self-censorship is one of the most powerful tools of the propaganda machine. When you control the news long enough, you find that people censor themselves and the “correct message” is always presented.

The Shrubbery has hinted that more troops will be going to Iraq after the elections. We don’t have any more troops, and 4,000 of the people in Iraq today are on extended tours, so the message is that people are not going to be rotated out when their replacements arrive.

They have been calling up every warm body they could locate in the Reserve and just about used up all of the deployment time available for the National Guard without changing a number of laws, so the regular forces are going to be extended, and they know it.

The people who are near to the ends of their enlistments know they are going to be retained by “stop-loss” orders because many of the new enlistees can’t be trusted with a broom, much less a weapon.

The Reptilicons brought this on themselves by drawing active duty military personnel into partisan political activities. They have broken down a very high and long-standing wall between the military and anything political, and now they are reaping what they sowed.

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Kevin Hayden at American Street provides a an introduction and link to a MSNBC report: Gitmo interrogations spark battle over tactics.

Before you go read part one of a two-part report there is something you should know that isn’t totally clear from the article. These investigators are the military’s criminal investigators who gather evidence for courts martial, not civilian criminal cases. The administration was talking about creating military tribunals to try those charged as “enemy combatants” and these people worked under the military’s rules of procedure for trials, which are a bit different than those of civilian courts.

These investigators are complaining about tactics that are unacceptable for military trials and they complained all the way to the top of their chain of command, Rumsfeld himself.

These complaints went up the chain of command early in 2002, well before the Iraq war. The DoD can’t claim they didn’t know what was going on, because they had been told about the techniques in use almost two years before Abu Ghraib was revealed.

The investigators told them this would blow up on them, but they did it anyway.

Update: Part 2 is now available.

It’s not just UN Day, it’s Michael at Musing’s musings birthday!

Jim in comments has located the original for Bushcronium: Administratium.