2007 archive
I Hear from One of My Elected Representatives 0
About a week ago, I faxed a letter to my elected representatives incongruously assembled.
I have received my first reply.
It appears he’s gone for the Bushie bait hook, line, and stinker. Below is the bulk of the letter:
Running the Government like a Business 0
A Republican business, that is. Yep, we’ve been enronned:
“It means we really can’t put any faith in the numbers they use,” said Ross Rubenstein, who teaches public administration at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School.
(snip)
Failing an audit in any other venue could have dire consequences , a public company’s stock could plummet, state and local governments could see bond and credit ratings sink. But for the federal government, effects are less direct because the U.S. Treasury is a guaranteed funding source.
For some reason, I doubt that Halliburton is losing any sleep over this story.
I Didn’t Know There Were Shelby Chryslers 0
But there seem to have been. They date from Lee Iaccoca’s leadership of Chrysler; his acquaintance with Carroll Shelby dated from his days at Ford.
This is a Dodge Rampage.
Shacked Up 6
I use my digital camera frequently on the job. I commonly take 200 to 300 pictures a day when I’m on the jobsite as I work to document procedures and processes at the cooling tower place.
When I started this gig, I switched to rechargeable batteries because I was going through two sets of alkaline batteries every three days.
Normally, I get my rechargeables at Radio Slum, because it’s convenient, because I’ve always gotten value for my dollar there, and because I worked there for a while and have fond memories of that experience.
Frankly, Radio Slum rechargeables wear like iron.
Recently, though, I broke down and bought some store-branded AAs at a major hardware chain, because I wanted some extras and because the store was on my way (I won’t mention their name, but if you have four of them and a wildcard, you have an unbeatable poker hand). On the side of the batteries was written, “15-minute recharge.”
What should have been written was, “15-minute discharge.”
They lasted for three charges. Now they have to be “dispose(d) of properly.”
Back to the Shack.
Telephone Etiquette 0
Brendan calls in the chips.
Moral Dilemna 1
I’m not going to excerpt anything. Just please go read this post.
And think what happens we allow liars to take control.
Offline 0
The plug for the hub came out of the UPS.
Thus illustrating a primary principle of organizational dynamics (and, for that matter, politics):
Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity.
Adventures in Linux: One Week of Slackware 12.0 (Geek Alert!) 2
I upgraded the laptop last week.
Rather than do an upgrade installation, which can be a tedious process, I backed up all my data files to the file server, including crucial configuration files such as the Samba and the rc.firewall configuration files. rc.firewall is the current iteration of the old Projectfiles firewall.
I then fdisked the puppy down to bare electrons and loaded Slackware 12.0 from scratch, with the default 2.6.51 kernel. In the process, I got rid of a lot of stuff I’ve played with and abandoned over the last couple of years, but which was still hanging around and taking up space.
It was worth the effort. The machine boots faster, multi-tasks faster, and swaps less. Memory intensive tasks, such as doing parity checks on downloaded files and “unraring” large downloads, used to noticeably and annoyingly slow down multitasking.
Now, such tasks sometimes noticeably slow down the multitasking, but they don’t annoyingly slow it down.
After getting the basics working, I installed Dropline Gnome, not because I like Gnome (I don’t like how it looks or feels), but because a lot of the software I do like to use needs Gnome libraries (for you Windows types, libraries are sort of like *.dlls).
I did find a couple of oddities.
I had to run alsaconf to get the sound card working. In previous installations on several computers, I’ve not had to do this.
par2cmdline doesn’t seem to like Slackware 12.0, but gpar2 works just fine to perform the same function.
Google Earth crashes X Server. I don’t use Google Earth much and have plently of other computers to run it on until I finish trouble-shooting it.
In fact, I’m so happy with Slackware 12.0 that I installed it on my file server (that 10-year old Pentium IBM PC 300 that used to run the website) today. From fdisk to back on the network with anti-virus and firewall and receiving a backup from my work computer–three hours, counting smoke breaks. (No, I haven’t installed Dropline Gnome on it and probably won’t–it’s a server. It’s just supposed to sit there and quietly serve).
Delaware Crime Map 0
I’m not a big fan of the local Wilmington rag. They are stuck between two big metropolitan area (Baltimore and Philadelphia) and are at a disadvantage in competing for ad dollars.
Frankly (which is how I try to do most things), I like a newspaper that takes more than five minutes to read (10 on Sunday), but this is way cool.
Simply by selecting a neighborhood or a zip code or by clicking on the map, you can see crime reports for that area for the last two weeks by type of crime.
Drumbeats 0
Bang the drum slowly, sing the song lowly:
They [the source’s institution] have “instructions†(yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this—they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.â€
(snip)
Postscript: Barnett Rubin just called me. His source spoke with a neocon think-tanker who corroborated the story of the propaganda campaign and had this to say about it: “I am a Republican. I am a conservative. But I’m not a raging lunatic. This is lunatic.â€
Via Will Bunch.
Welcome to the National Guard 0
Thanks for visiting.
National Honor My Anatomy (What? Updated Already?) 0
From the Republican debate:
“Even if we lose elections, we should not lose our honor,” said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, “and that is more important to the Republican Party.“
Let us look at this critically.
Let us say that, for example and for instance, like, you know, that I started driving the wrong way down a one-way street three or four years ago. Just for grins and giggles, let’s say it was in spring 2003.
After several years and thousands of vehicles run off the road trying to avoid me, their drivers and passengers dead, an occifer of the law pulls me over.
“Turn around,” says he, “Drive the right way on this one-way road.”
“I can’t,” say I. “It’s a matter of honor. I have driven this road the wrong way for three years. I can’t stop now.”
There is no honor in doing wrong.
There is no honor in persisting in wrong.
There is only shame.
Addendum, Oh So Quick:
Dick Polman:
“We have to continue the surge, and let me explain why, Chris. When I was a little kid, if I went into a store with my mother, she had a simple rule for me: If I picked something off the shelf at the store and I broke it, I bought it. I learned I don’t pick something off the shelf I can’t afford to buy. Well, what we did in Iraq, we essentially broke it. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can to try to fix it before we just turn away. Because something is a stake….whether or not we should have gone to Iraq is a discussion the historians can have, but we’re there.
We bought it because we broke it.”Where have I heard that one before…Oh yes. That’s what Colin Powell reportedly said to Bush, when the first-term Secretary of State tried to warn the president about the potential downside of invading Iraq: “You break it, you own it.”
Which means that Huckabee was being quite daring, in a way. Last night he was essentially arguing that we should stay the course with the surge not because it is working, but because we have screwed things up so badly in Iraq that we have no choice except to make amends by persevering.
And that’s basically what passes for dissent these days within the Republican presidential field.
[EDITORIAL MODE ON]
Words fail me. Men and women die for the ambitions of liars.
And the liars persist in their lies.
PacMan in Iraq (Updated) 0
Those old enough to remember the travesty of the Viet Namese War (and, please note, that term is no reflection on those who served; it is a reflection on those who sent them to serve) remember “body counts.”
As it became clearer that the United States was winning neither territory nor “hearts and minds” (to use the phrase of the time), the United States military was reduced to keeping score by comparing the number of Viet Cong (and reputed Viet Cong and civilians and what have you) with the number of American and South Viet Namese dead.
The body counts were often counts of convenience and frequently slanted to support the favorite U. S.military strategy of the day.
And, as has been frequently noted, the continuing travesty in Iraq has reduced the U. S military to the same strategy, attempting to keep score in Iraq the same way score is kept in PacMan–by the number of dead.
Because, frankly, there are no other signs of progress.
And, as before, the numbers coming from the Current Federal Administration are slanted and shaded to support the favorite U. S military strategy of the day, in the case, the s(pl)urge.
This morning, in a detailed report scathing in its dispassionate factual analysis, NPR’s Morning Edition deconstructed the statistics and revealed how they are being slanted and twisted.
Here’s an excerpt. The full story is worth everyone’s while.
In private, a skeptical military adviser pointed out to commanders that the numbers didn’t make sense. “If all the insurgents were killed,” he asked, “why are they fighting harder than ever?”
Addendum, Later That Same Day:
Atrios has more.
What Hath Bush Wrought? 0
This hath Bush wrought.
No One Can Make This Stuff Up 4
Subtitle: From Pariah to Laughingstock.
Once again, Republicans defy imagination. This beats Wilbur Mills jumping in the reflecting pool by two light years and a parsec.
Once again, to beat a position to death:
It ain’t the sex.
It’s the hypocrisy.
Via Kos.