2007 archive

My brother did a little informal survey today.

He asked everyone at work if they knew the significance of June 6.

Only one person did (interestingly enough, one of the younger staff-members).

We need to know our history. Not knowing our history leads to things like this.

Yeah. Right.

Listen here, from today’s Fresh Air on NPR:

Journalist Scott Shane writes for The New York Times about terrorism and the CIA’s interrogation techniques. His article “Soviet-Style ‘Torture’ Becomes ‘Interrogation'” describes how the United States has adopted interrogation techniques that it decried when they were used by the Soviet Union.

Protecting the American Way by emulating the KGB.

Addendum:

Brendan. Read it. I’m not even going to try to summarize it.

Yesterday, I bugged out of the cooling tower place early. When I went down there, I had not realized that the Circular Soiree had been postponed because of rain and I wanted to be on the road and past Dover before the traffic hit.

I missed most of it. A lot of people left Sunday because they weren’t able to stay an extra day. I’m told the stands were only half full (that’s 70,000 or so people, I think).

The presence of the Monster Mile draws a lot of money to Delaware.

People stay as far as 50 miles away, and big box stores, such as Walmart, allow the fans to park their RVs on portions of their lots.

It’s an odd phenomenon. A lot of the fans set up their RVs, set out their portable TV satelite dishes, and watch the race from their lounge chairs under their RV awnings. That way, they can drink unbroken from morning till night.

Sadly, a certain percentage of them are not very good advertisements for civility. This can happen when you cross large numbers of persons with large quantities of alcohol.

Dover residents pretty much stay in their homes except when the time trials or the race is actually going on and the fans are either already passed out or otherwise occupied.

In other news, NASCAR is concerned that its popularity has sort of plateaued. In particular, they are trying to attract more minority fans.

In the words of one citizen of Dover, (I am not making this up), “Fat chance, as long as they have a bunch of drunken, obnoxious rednecks waving the Confederate flag surrounding the track.”

Oh, back to my commute. I got caught in the first wave of RVs fleeing Dover. From the way they were driving, they were trying to get back home Sunday night. I saw one RV so big the driver was towing it with a semi-tractor.

That’s another side effect of the Monster Mile. It give out-of-state drivers an excuse to come to Delaware and drive badly.

Tangier, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, tomorrow, 6 p. m.

By the way, Tangier’s hamburgers got honorable mention in the local rag’s hamburger search.

I-76 to the South Street Exit. East on South Street and look for a parking place around 18th. It’s Philly, you may have to circle a few blocks. Bring quarters.

Lombard is one block north of South next to Jeff.

Plan (God willing) to see you there.

Addendum, 6/5/2007

God wasn’t willing.

I was an occasional, but not a regular reader of The News Blog.

But this post on the passing of Steve Gilliard by Jon Swift affected me deeply.

The death rate is constant: One per person.

But it is always sad when a good person passes away.

Depreciation.

Via rubber hose.

Phillybits describes what those of us whose children serve honorably for a dishonorable regime try not to think about.

Addendum, later that same night:

Oh, my. I missed this earlier (it’s been a long week, and it’s only Monday).

I mentioned IThings.

El Reg now warns us, be careful what we mail.

Cheneyesque.

Read the entire post.

When I’m not being disgusted by what the Current Federal Administration has done to the American dream, I’m being sick, or protecting myself by being in denial (yeah, I know, that’s a river in Eqypt) that we have allowed such evil to be done on our names.

And we are stuck with these villains for another 18 months.

President Bush lashed out at Iran yesterday for detaining American citizens and called for them to be freed “immediately and unconditionally.” White House aides said the president broke his silence because of Tehran’s decision to charge three of the four detainees.

And this is the guy who claims he can imprison anyone he wants, for as long as he wants, just on his say so, because he’s never wrong, and he’s always right.

Tell me, my friends, how is his malfeasance any different from their (meaning the Iranians’) malfeasance?

Indeed, his malfeasance undercuts his complaints about their malfeasance.

One can’t talk from the moral highground when one is wades in the moral mud.

. . . we used brownies. Then, again, in the olde days, this wouldn’t have happened in the ninth freakin’ grade:

On Thursday, eight ninth graders became mildly ill after eating homemade chocolate chip and sprinkle-covered cookies that, police believe, contained more than the usual ingredients.

A male student, whom police would not identify because of his age, supplied the troubling treats.

I’ve heard his whiny voice on the radio all week talking about “goals” for climate change.

Dan Froomkin points out the difference between goals and action. Why should I rewrite what someone else has nailed so well?

The White House yesterday showed that it still knows how to play the American press like a harp.

President Bush yesterday put forth a new proposal on climate change that is most newsworthy for its attempt to muddy the debate about the issue and derail European and U.N. plans for strict caps on emissions. Bush’s proposal calls for a new round of international meetings that would nearly outlast his presidency. The purpose of the meetings would not be to set caps on emissions, but to establish what the White House — uncorking a bold new euphemism — calls “aspirational goals.”

(snip)

(Quoting Andrew Gumbel of the Independent as he paraphrases the whiner Decider; follow the link for citations–ed.)

“‘In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it.’

“Translation: In recent years, my refusal to acknowledge the reality and seriousness of global warming has turned me into a laughing-stock and contributed to my record low poll ratings. So now I have to look interested.”

The Current Federal Administration, when confronted with any issues other than making fraudulent war and cutting taxes for the wealthy, has consistently been all talk and no action.

My friends, that leopard ain’t changing its spots anytime. Not “anytime soon.” Anytime.

Adlai Stevenson was derided as an egghead. Apparently, he was too smart to be President.

Well, now we’ve seen what happens with the anti-egghead: someone too dumb to be President.

Mr. Robinson’s comments are at this link:

One thing that should be clear to anyone who’s been paying attention these past few years is that we need to go out and get ourselves the smartest president we can find. We need a brainiac president, a regular Mister or Miss Smarty-Pants. We need to elect the kid you hated in high school, the teacher’s pet with perfect grades.

When I look at what the next president will have to deal with, I don’t see much that can be solved with just a winning smile, a firm handshake and a ton of resolve. I see conundrums, dilemmas, quandaries, impasses, gnarly thickets of fateful possibility with no obvious way out. Iraq is the obvious place he or she will have to start; I want a president smart enough to figure out how to minimize the damage.

I want a president who reads newspapers, who reads books other than those that confirm his worldview, who bones up on Persian history before deciding how to deal with Iran’s ambitious dreams of glory. I want a president who understands the relationship between energy policy at home and U.S. interests in the Middle East — and who’s smart enough to form his or her own opinions, not just rely on what old friends in the oil business say.

Okay, so I’ve always been an Airplane freak.

Wooden Ships. And it dissolves in the end to Plastic Fantastic Lover.

(Sorry, no video. Just the song from Volunteers.)

Grace, for Karen:

A while ago, I posed a license plate question.

Well, I’ve got a new one. As I was driving to the cooling tower place today, I saw this plate:

TPFOCSB

Ideas?

The White House, long irritated by the frequent use of Vietnam as a metaphor for Iraq, embraced its own analogy yesterday: South Korea.

There’s an undeniable attraction to holding up America’s military presence in South Korea as a model for Iraq: Our soldiers stationed there aren’t dying in large numbers every month.

But in other ways, the analogy is troubling. And flawed. And dangerous. And telling.

It’s troubling because American troops have been in South Korea for more than 50 years — while polls show the American public wants them out of Iraq within a year.

It’s flawed because in South Korea, unlike Iraq, there’s something concrete to defend (the border with North Korea); and because Iraq, unlike South Korea, happens to be in a state of violent civil war.

It’s dangerous because the specter of a permanent military presence in Iraq is widely considered to be one of the most inflammatory incitements to Iraq’s ever-growing anti-American insurgency, and may even be destabilizing to the entire region.

And it’s telling because it gives credence to persistent suspicions that establishing a long-term strategic presence in the Middle East was a primary motivation for this misbegotten war in the first place.

(sigh) Another Bush lie. It does get tiresome after a while, does it not?

Professor Cole demolishes the comparison. Follow the link to read the full CSI treatment of this vapid, insipid, illiterate, ignorant-of-history analogy.

So what confuses me is the terms of the comparison. Who is playing the role of the Communists and of North Korea? Is it the Sunni Arabs of Iraq? But they are divided into Iraqi/Arab nationalists and Salafi Sunni revivalists. (The secular Arab nationalists are the vast majority according to recent polling). So they are not a united force. They are fighting with one another in al-Anbar. And, the Arab nationalists and the religious Sunnis cannot both play the role of the Communists. Some Arab nationalists are allied with the United States (Egypt, Tunisia, etc.) Others are not (Syria). Some religious Sunnis are allied with the US (Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan). Others are not. So where is the analogy to International Communism? Who is China and who is the Soviet Union? Is it Syria and Iran? But both are ruled by Shiites, not Sunnis!

Saturday Afternoon.