September, 2009 archive
“Homeward Bound” 0
A poem by Moazzam Begg, based on his experience of being held in Guantanamo as an innocent man for more than three years, never charged with any crime:
ACORN 0
Will Bunch explains what the fuss is all about (he goes on to explain what he considers to be legitimate gripes about ACORN, mainly that it’s not run very well):
ACORN helps poor people. We can’t have that, now, can we?
Missing the Bus (Updated) 1
My two or three regular readers know that I have for years said that we should have finished with Afghanistan, rather than pursuing the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq.
But I am more and more coming to conclude that the Bushies wasted too much time on their delusional imperial adventures and that Afghanistan no longer matters.
Shaun Mullen advances powerful arguments at Kiko’s House.
Addendum:
I listened to yesterday’s Radio TImes today; Dick Polman and Trudy Rubin discussed U. S. foreign policy. In it, Trudy Rubin, who has reported on the Middle East and Afghanistan for years, articulates an argument for staying in Afghanistan. It sums up to
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America’s leaving Afghanistan too soon ———>
Pakistani support for the return of the Taliban (which is distinct from Al Quaeda) because Pakistan fears Indian influence in Afghanistan ———>
further destabilization of Pakistan from Pakistani religious fundamentalists ———>
increased chance that Pakistan’s nukes fall into the wrong hands.
In her view, Afghanistan is not the issue. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is.
Trying to balance Mr. Mullen’s and Ms. Rubin’s arguments makes my brain hurt.
Rubin also kept saying that President Obama had “turned on a dime” about Aghanistan. When the interviewer pressed her, she had to admit that he has not, that he appears to be rethinking his strategy and she fears he might withdraw.
Frankly, I want elected leaders who are willing to think about stuff. We’ve seen what the other kind can do.
Follow this link and search the archives for September 24, 2009, Hour One, or listen here (mp3).
End Addendum
Greater Wingnuttery XXXIX 0
Brendan takes up the loon watch.
Watch the video. It proves once again that facts have a liberal bias.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Reuters:
530,000 + 21,000=551,000, or it used to in my day.
Interestingly, the initial figure reported for last week was 545,000.
Reuters’s analysts also blew it last week guessing high. Who are they anyway?
Home sales also dropped.
“Yes, But . . .” Always Means “No,” Reprise 0
In a follow-up story, the local rag quotes the emails exchanged amongst members of the Huntington Valley Swim Club.
All those code words really aren’t very pretty.
Aside: Persons don’t get up in the morning and say to themselves, “Oh, gee, I think I’m going to do something hypocritical today.”
They are often not even aware of the contrast between their stated beliefs and their actions.
That’s one thing that differentiates them from frauds.
As the Man Said When His Daughter Was Learning to Play the Oboe . . . 0
. . . great aches from little oak horns grow.
Adventures in Linux: Automating a Virus Scan (Updated) 0
From time to time I scan for viruses and other malware with AVG for Linux. I decided to automate the process, so I wrote a script to scan my home folder and save the results of the scan to my home folder. If this works, I’ll see about automating a weekly scan for the entire computer (a complete scan takes several hours, because it also scans my 250 GB external hard drive).
Here’s what the script does:
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1. Declare a variable (“$NOW”) to give the report file a unique name and store it in a unique location.
2. Make a directory to hold the report.
3. Start the scan.
4. Save the report to the selected directory.
The scan command parses as follows:
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avgscan=scan
-r/home/[username]l/AVG/$NOW/scan$NOW.txt=save the report to this directory with this file name.
/home/[username]=scan this directory (folder)
“Echo” means to display a line of text in a terminal.
Here’s the script:
#!/bin/bash
#Set the variable NOW
NOW=1
#Define now as today’s year-month-date-hour-minute.
NOW=$(date +%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M)
echo “Now = $NOW”
#Make the directory to hold the backup file.
mkdir /home/[username]/AVG/$NOW
echo “Making the directory ~/AVG/$NOW for the backup.”
#run scan home folder
echo “Scanning your home folder”
avgscan -r/home/[username]/AVG/$NOW/scan$NOW.txt /home/[username]/
echo “Scan completed and report saved.”
The script works. Then I put this line in my crontab file
* 2 * * * /home/[username]/scripts/vscan.sh
so that the scan will run automatically at 2 a. m. every morning.
I also put a line in my root crontab to update the virus scanner every morning at 1 a. m.
* 1 * * * /usr/bin/avgupdate
We’ll find out tomorrow whether the cron job runs.
Addendum:
I have some trouble to shoot.
The cron job ran. And ran. And ran. There were multiple instances of the script still running this morning. I’ve added “exit” to the end of the script and will see what happens the next time it runs.
“Yes, But . . .” Always Means “No.” 2
Think about it.
The “but” is almost always followed by a list of why whatever is being discussed is actually completely impossible and just can’t be done.
And “I am not racist, but . . .” means–well, if race were not at least part of the equation, it wouldn’t get mentioned, now, would it?
The members and the management of the swim club have denied from the beginning any racial basis. And I suspect they deny with sincerity. This racism stuff can go so deep that we may not even recognize it in ourselves when it’s in play.
Heck, when I was growing up in Jim Crow Virginia, I didn’t realize I was part of a social system founded on racism. It was just Our Way of Life(TM). And I will never be so arrogant as to claim that I have expunged all the vestiges of that upbringing–and I’m pretty good at arrogant. (Perhaps that’s why this issue is one of my hot buttons.)
We can lie about our motives, even to ourselves. But our behavior calls us out.
Boner Boner 0
Fact Check dot org looks at statements by Congressman Boehner of Ohio on “Cap and Trade” and flatly declares, “That’s not true.”
Not that it was spin. Not that it was “shaded.” Not that it was half-truths.
Just that it was flatly “not true.”
He is, of course, a Republican. Lies are all they got.
The Emmy Awards 0
Who are these people and does anyone care?
