2005 archive
In Other News, Brazil Is Drying Up 0
I mentioned somewhere earlier in these ramblings that, wherever I go, I get the local rag. The local rag where I am today had a very interesting story of weather and devastation. Not rapid devastation, as we saw in New Orleans and Florida, but slow devastation (warning: free registration required to read the entire article):
MANAQUIRI, Brazil – While hurricanes thousands of miles away battered the United States and the Caribbean with water and wind, the residents of this fishing town deep in the Amazon region watched the lake they depend on shrivel away.
Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians across seven states have been hit this year by the region’s worst drought in four decades – the result, meteorologists say, of warmer ocean water, which also is being blamed for one of the most violent hurricane seasons on record around the Gulf of Mexico.
(snip)
The last time the Amazon felt such withering conditions was in 1963, meteorologists say. Less severe droughts have hit parts of the Amazon twice over the past decade during the annual dry season, which runs from July to September.
This year, some towns, such as Tabatinga near the Colombian and Peruvian borders, received a fifth of their normal rainfall. Water levels on the Amazon and other rivers have dropped as much as 33 feet.
Interesting Take on the Valerie Plame Case 0
Chris Satullo, in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, takes a realistic, and ironical, look at the insinuation that a trip to Niger was somehow a junket:
When White House leakers tried to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, their method was to insinuate that Wilson’s fact-finding trip to Niger in 2002 had been a junket wangled by his CIA-agent wife. In other words, rank nepotism.
Right. A junket to Niger. Niger?
Yes, sir. If you wanted to exploit your CIA badge to score a nice little perk for your hubby, where else would you send him but a sub-Saharan nation where 85 percent of the land mass is arid, where the annual per capita income is a whopping $230, and the locust swarms come repeatedly? Living large in West Africa, eh? Grounds for divorce is more like it.
(snip)
. . . First, Wilson was a logical choice for the mission. He was a highly praised deputy chief of mission in Baghdad during the first Gulf War (when Hussein really did have weapons of mass destruction) and a former ambassador in West Africa. He was not a sworn opponent of invasion at the time of his trip.
Second, all together now: a junket to Niger? The media may be dumb, but they know what a junket looks like. If they forget, all they have to do is follow Tom DeLay around.
Big Silver Bird 2
I frequently travel to Southern California on business, and usually end up on America West. They’ve generally done a good job for me since they emerged from bankruptcy–only one missed connection, and I can’t blame the airline for violent thunderstorms in Philadelphia.
If you don’t know, America West no longer offers complimentary food service on any of their flights. Instead, they offer food for sale. Usually, I come equipped with a bag of beef jerky and a couple of packs of cheese crackers, but my flight took off early today and I didn’t want crackers for breakfast, so when the crew came around offering their meals for sale, I got one: a hot ham, cheese, and egg sandwich.
The eggs were okay. The ham was actually pretty good. The cheese, well, I’m a sucker for cheese, real or artificial.
But, frankly, someone in their menu planning staff needs a reality check. The sandwich would have been good on rye, good on pumpernickel, good on wheat, okay on sponge bre–American white bread.
But on cinnamon-raison bread?
Aside from that, the flight worked. I lived in metal tubes for six and a half hours and survived, made my connections, and got to my destination on time. And my seat mates all weighed less than 300 pounds.
A Woman Who Plots Her Revenge 0
Courtesy of the Obscure Store and Reading Room:
The evening of May 7 Mr. Slaby took a nap at Ms. O’Toole’s home.
He woke “to a strong burning sensation” in his genital area and found red and blue nail polish poured in his hair, the suit says. Glue had been used on his private parts and an unflattering comment had been painted in nail polish on his back.
The suit says Ms. O’Toole took away the man’s keys and clothing and told him she’d planned the attack since their breakup months earlier.
Second Thoughts: Maybe It’s Not So Lame 0
Hmmmm. Maybe I was too quick to react in the previous post.
Maybe the current Federal Administration is laying the groundwork for the defense predicted by Alan Dershowitz:
So here’s my prediction about how the Scooter Libby case will go down. His two new lawyers (both of whom are tough, experienced and first rate) will demand every bit of classified information arguably relevant to his defense. The independent prosecutor will seek to turn the material over, because he knows that unless they are turned over, the judge may well dismiss the charges.
But the intelligence agencies will veto the independent prosecutor’s decision, claiming that disclosure of the requested classified material would endanger national security.
This would certainly be consistent with Rovian conduct: suddenly discovering ethical behavior when it becomes convenient.
Steven Kaus suspects that Patrick Fitzgerald may have anticipated such a tactic:
Alan Dershowitz has posted a defense plan for Scooter Libby that seems like such a winner that it is hard to believe that Fizgerald does not have some plan to counter it. Libby will insist that classified documents are needed for his defense, have the governmental entity refuse to provide them and then claim that the charges must be dismissed because he has been denied the right to present a defense.
After all, this is not Gitmo!
How Lame Can It Get? 0
According to a memo sent to aides yesterday, Bush expects all White House staff to adhere to the “spirit as well as the letter” of all ethics laws and rules. As a result, “the White House counsel’s office will conduct a series of presentations next week that will provide refresher lectures on general ethics rules, including the rules of governing the protection of classified information,” according to the memo, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post by a senior White House aide.
I am a professional trainer. Consequently, I’m conversant both with the power and the limitations of training.
Training can only fix problems related to lack of skills and knowledge.
How likely is it that the persons attending these briefings don’t already know what is legal and ethical behavior?
Sheesh.
Eugene Robinson on Concentration Camps 0
As reporter Dana Priest revealed in The Post this week, the Bush administration has held dozens of al Qaeda prisoners in secret prisons, with no regard to due process. It was a “small circle of White House and Justice Department lawyers and officials” who approved this archipelago of “black-site” detention centers, The Post reported.
These CIA-run prisons have been operated in eight countries, The Post said — Afghanistan, Thailand, the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba and “several democracies in Eastern Europe.” Officials prevailed upon The Post not to disclose the names of the European countries, citing national security concerns. The real reason, no doubt, was that if citizens of those countries knew their governments were hosting secret American prisons, they would surely object.
This conduct, perpetrated by the current Federal Administration, dishonors the United States of America, its citizens, and those who have fought over the course of more than two centuries to create, protect, and preserve this nation.
Hmmmmm. Another Victim of Abramoff? 0
Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in Washington investigating the lobbying activities of Jack Abramoff, it was announced on the floor of the House of Representatives today.
The subpoena, delivered to Ney in recent days, seeks records and testimony from Ney’s office. Subpoenas to Congress are publicly announced and then reported in the Congressional Record.
(snip)
As chairman of the powerful House Administration Committee, Ney promised to add legislation to a bill before his committee to reopen a casino for a Texas Indian tribe that Abramoff represented. Two years earlier, Ney placed comments in the Congressional Record favorable to Abramoff’s 2000 purchase of the casino boat company, SunCruz Casinos.
To quote Deep Throat, “Follow the money.”
Jimmy Carter on Faith, Fundamentalism, and Freedom 0
President Jimmy Carter has a new book, Our Endangered Values, in which (according to the review from Publisher’s Weekly quoted at the preceding link), he criticizes
Christian fundamentalists for their “rigidity, domination and exclusion,” (and) he suggests that their open hostility toward a range of sinners (including homosexuals and the federal judiciary) runs counter to America’s legacy of democratic freedom. Carter speaks eloquently of how his own faith has shaped his moral vision and of how he has struggled to reconcile his own values with the Southern Baptist church’s transformation under increasingly conservative leadership.
He was interviewed today on Morning Edition, and I think he will be on Fresh Air for a more in-depth interview soon:
I commend this interview to your attention, especially if you are one who thinks that “Christian Fundamentalist,” “Born Again,” and “Right-Wing Theocratic Republican” are synonyms.
Heck, I might even buy the book. Then it can join the 30 or so other unread books I have in my library and the half-dozen or so Project Gutenberg E-Texts I have on my HDD.
My Little Gas Price Survey, 11/4/2005, Reader’s Digest Condensed Books Edition 0
I went to Pine View Farm today to visit my mother.
Gas prices on the Eastern Shore of Virginia were at $2.19. There were a couple of renegades at $2.17, but everyone else was $2.19.
Gas prices in Dover, Del., were pretty uniformally $2.13, though there were a couple of $2.15s.
My route did not take me by any gas stations in My Little Corner of Upper Delaware.
Be Careful When You Click “OK” 2
I’ve been reading about rootkits on alt.comp.virus for several months now.
From NPR’s Morning Edition:
More about rootkits.
Valerie Plame, the CIA, and William F. Buckley, Jr. 0
Mr. Buckley (one of the few conservative intellectuals whom I have always respected for his intellectual rigor and consistency) seems to have little sympathy for anyone who would disclose the identity of a covert agent.
Curing the Deficit 2
Robert J. Samuelson, never one to be accused of being liberal, or, in some cases, of being moderate, has a recipe for curing the deficit:
First, you’d repeal the Medicare drug benefit, scheduled to take effect in 2006. For the next five years (2006-2010), the savings would total about $300 billion, estimates the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Preserving an existing drug benefit for low-income recipients might reduce savings by 5 percent.
Second, you’d repeal a tax cut scheduled for 2006 that would benefit mainly people in the top brackets (taxable incomes exceeding $182,800 and $326,450 for couples in 2005). These groups have already received big tax cuts; the new reductions involve repealing limits on deductions and personal exemptions. The 2006-2010 savings: about $30 billion, estimates the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution.
Third, you’d eliminate all “earmarks” in the recent highway bill. These are projects targeted by congressmen and senators for their own districts. The highway bill contained $24 billion in earmarks, says Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group.
Makes sense to me. As one nearing retirement age, I could easily support each of these proposals. Even the Medicare drug benefit (that reminds me: I forgot to take my blood pressure medicine today; better stop reading the news) was ill-conceived, ill-enacted, and, with its provision that the government could not negotiate drug prices, more a gift to Big Pharma than a benefit to the needy.
And I must note that all of the legislation he would undo was enacted under the current Federal Administration and the current Republican Congress. None of it was initiated by the so-called “tax and spend” liberals. It all resulted from the “spend and spend” conservatives.
Call It What It Is 2
I read this story earlier today.
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The story goes on to say
The existence and locations of the facilities — referred to as “black sites” in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents — are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
and later
“We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a grand strategy,” said one former senior intelligence officer who is familiar with the program but not the location of the prisons. “Everything was very reactive. That’s how you get to a situation where you pick people up, send them into a netherworld and don’t say, ‘What are we going to do with them afterwards?’ “
Read the story.
Call it what it is.
We, citizens of the United States, are becoming the enemy under guise of protecting ourselves.
The current Federal Administration has reduced this country to running concentration camps.
I feel sick.
My Little Gas Price Survey, 11/2/2005 0
Still dropping in my little corner of Delaware:
Claymont, Del., Exxon, $2.21.
Claymont, Del., Sunoco $2.23.
Claymont, Del., Wawa, $2.15.
Claymont, Del, BP, $2.20.
Claymont, Del, Getty, $2.19.
Claymont, Del, Cumberland Farms, $2.17.
Claymont, Del., Gulf, $2.29.
Holly Oak, Del., Mobil, $2.21.
Philly Newspapers on the Block? 1
According the Blinq, the Philadephia Newspapers (the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News) may be up for sale. Apparently the huge profit margin of Knight-Ridder, the current owner of the papers, is not enough for them.
I have read the Inquirer for years. It has had its ups and downs, like any enterprise, but it ranks among the ten best papers in the country, as far as I am concerned–and, as a traveling man, I read papers from all over the country; wherever I go, I read the local rag, because it’s always more interesting than USA Today, the MacDonald’s of Newspapers.
It seems, however, that providing a quality product and making a profit is no longer the issue. The issue is making some ginormous profit that meets Wall Street’s “expectations,” whatever that means, and quality be damned.
Spring Has Sprung, Fall Has Fell, Winter’s Near . . . 0
I am not a big fan of winter. I can’t say that I have a favorite season, but, if I did, winter would not be in the top three finalists.
Indeed, when I see a car with a “Think Snow” bumper sticker, I have an insane urge to shoot its headlights out.
It’s no so much the cold, nor even the heating bills (though, after this winter, it may be the heating bills).
It’s taking five more minutes to get out of the house because of having to put on umpteen more layers of clothes.
It’s not being able to move because of umpteen more layers of clothes.
It’s having to wear long handles and Gore-Tex boots to work. And I work inside!
It’s not being able to leave the doors to the screened porch open. Now I have to open and close them to let the dogs out. And the darned dogs are worse than cats. They want in. They want out. One wants in, the other wants out. Then the first one decides he doesn’t want to be in if the other one is out and wants to go out again. Open and close. Open and close. Open and close.
But most of all, I realized today, I hate having to turn on my headlights to drive home. It’s just not right.
And soon, as December approaches, I’ll have to turn on my headlights in both directions. I’ll go in the building while it’s still dark and exit the building when it’s already dark.
If you have a “Think Snow” bumper sticker, be very careful if you see a little yellow truck following you . . . .
My Little Gas Price Survey, Hallowe’en, 2005 0
Paulsboro, NJ, Exxon, $2.29.
Paulsboro, NJ, BP, $2.39.
Claymont, Del., Exxon, $2.29.
Claymont, Del., Sunoco $2.26.
Claymont, Del., Wawa, $2.19.
Claymont, Del, BP, $2.23.
Claymont, Del, Cumberland Farms and Getty, $2.21.
Claymont, Del., Gulf, $2.35.
Holly Oak, Del., Mobil, $2.25.
