September, 2007 archive
What Digby Said 4
This is my sixth edition of What Digby Said.
Bush Lies (Updated) 1
And that surprises us how?
From Factcheck dot org. Follow the link for facts, ’cause you ain’t goin’ to get facts from the Current Federal Administration:
- He said “36 nations … have troops on the ground in Iraq.” In fact, his own State Department puts the number at 25.
- He said “ordinary life†was returning to Baghdad. Perhaps. In fact, news reports describe the city as starkly segregated with Shiites and Sunnis living in separate neighborhoods, which are walled off from one another with huge concrete barricades.
- He said Baqubah in Diyala province was “cleared.” But the Washington Post quotes a State Department official as saying the security situation there was not stable.
- He said that “the Iraqi Army is becoming more capable,†which may be true. But the Iraqi defense minister says it’ll be 2012 before the army will be even 60 percent capable of protecting the nation from external threats.
Addendum, 9/15/2007:
Dan Froomkin stops the spinning on the morning after:
In the alternate universe that President Bush occupies, he gave a smashing speech last night.
Over there, the people of Iraq need our help to save them from the al Qaeda terrorists who intend to overthrow their brave and united government on the way to attacking America. It’s a battle of good versus evil. We have 36 countries fighting alongside us. And the fight is going very well indeed. Ordinary life is returning to Baghdad.
A few more things about Bush’s universe: There, the president can make things true simply by solemnly pronouncing them from the Oval Office. He can reach out to his critics just by saying he is doing so. And people believe him.
But over here in the real world, things are different.
Iraq is mostly ruled by armed gangs, not a central government. American troops are dying in the crossfire as the country continues to violently disintegrate along ethnic and sectarian lines. We’re in it pretty much alone. There’s no end in sight. And the real al Qaeda is regrouping in Pakistan.
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.
