2007 archive
Faux Sports 1
The introduction to the World Series, with silly actors in stupid scenes spliced into cuts of real ball players doing real things, is one of the most painful piles of pitiful perflufful I’ve ever seen.
But it is typical of an organization that likes to Make Stuff Up.
To Paraphrase My Old Boss, “Well, This Stinks.” 1
Had to turn on the heat today.
It’s Not the Bumbos. It’s the Dumbos 8
Second Daughter requested one of these when First Grandson was born.
She says First Grandson seems to like it.
And it says right on the box not to put it anywhere but the floor or the ground (emphasis below added):
The CPSC says, “If the seat is placed on a table, countertop, chair, or other elevated surface, young children can arch their backs, flip out of the Bumbo seat, and fall onto the floor, posing a risk of serious head injuries.”
I’m going to be the last person to argue that businesses are always virtuous.
They are not.
But in this case, it’s not the chairs that need to be recalled. It’s the parents.
Swampwater 0
Erik Prince makes a point:
Prince was asked, “Whose laws are you subject to?” And in response, almost in passing, he told CNN: “Well, in the ideal sense, we would be subject to the Iraqi law, but that would mean — that would indicate that there was a functioning Iraqi court system where Westerners could actually get a fair trial. That’s not the case right now.”
Well, that’s not very helpful to the Bush team, is it? The administration has been struggling for many months to put the best spin on the failure of the Iraqi government to meet the benchmarks laid out in Washington…and here is Prince, casually mentioning a failure that is not even addressed in the benchmarks.
So much for the Bushie-installed “government” of Iraq.
Of course, the next inference from the statement is that Swampwater is subject to no laws, but that’s already been discussed here.
Danger! Will Robinson! Danger! 3
Josh Marshall observes Islamofascism Awareness Week.
No, that’s not right.
He doesn’t observe so much as dissect it.
Which fits with this, from Arianna Huffington. As I have observed to a couple of my Republican friends (yes, I do have them, and, yes, we are able to talk with fisticuffs, because they are good and decent persons–I’m the jerk), the Republican Party of Ev Dirksen, Dwight Eisenhower, and even Robert Taft is long gone:
Reagan’s GOP has been replaced by the dark, moldering, putrefied party of Bush, Cheney, Rove, Limbaugh, Coulter, and Malkin. Morning in America has given way to Midnight in America.
Of course, there the Republican Party has always had it Jesse Helmses, Spiro Agnews, and Lee Atwaters. But they were the minority, far removed from the mainstream of the Party — Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, the first George Bush.
But these days it has become impossible to tell where the mainstream stops and the fanatical fringe begins. Just look at what the so-called “mainstream” of the party is endorsing
We have a mainstream on the right that supports torture, that is backing an Attorney General nominee who is agnostic on torture, and that rallies behind a president who refuses to define what the word “torture” means.
A mainstream that supports — even applauds — the behavior of Blackwater thugs.
A mainstream that continues to back the White House’s delusions about Iraq at the expense of our military, our treasure, our safety, and our standing in the world.
A mainstream that supports the gutting of our civil liberties.
So, it can no longer be denied: the right wing lunatics are running the Republican asylum.
Josh Marshall video via Brendan.
Random Acts of Evil 1
This is beyond words:
But a man in a white shirt who encountered the dog Monday afternoon didn’t do that, New Castle County police said. He strangled Kelsey beside a tall pine tree outside the Centreville-area home where her owners live.
Hallelujah Brothers! They’ve Seen the Light 0
Phillibits has the details.
Stark Comments (Revisited) 1
Which, of course, they wouldn’t have been if Democrats sank to the civilty level of Republicans, who casually and routinely question the patriotism of patriots.
A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation 1
As I pointed out here.
It’s called history. It’s sort of made up by a lot of facts and some interpretation. But the interpretation has to at least give a passing nod to the facts.
The history tells us where we came from and helps us figure out where we are going.
Lying about the history confuses us about both.
But, then, there are folks who base their way of life, their philosophies, and their politics on lies.
Josh Marshall comments.
Never To Be Seen Again 0
Extraordinary rendition.
Involved being rendered.
Like a horse into glue.
Follow the link for the facts.
1. Rendition is something the Bush administration cooked up.
Nope. George W. Bush was still struggling to coax oil out of the ground when the United States “rendered to justice” its first suspect from abroad. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan authorized an operation that lured Lebanese hijacker Fawaz Younis to a boat off the coast of Cyprus . . . .
Beginning in 1995, the Clinton administration turned up the speed with a full-fledged program to use rendition to disrupt terrorist plotting abroad. According to former director of central intelligence George J. Tenet, about 70 renditions were carried out before Sept. 11, 2001, most of them during the Clinton years.
2. People who are “rendered” inevitably end up in a foreign slammer — or worse.
Actually, that’s not a foregone conclusion.
(snip)
3. Step one of a rendition involves kidnapping the suspect.
The individual may feel as though he’s being kidnapped, but that’s not usually what’s going on.
(snip)
4. Rendition is just a euphemism for outsourcing torture.
Well, not historically.
(snip)
Now, though, the Bush team seems to have dramatically eroded such safeguards (torture is their pornography–ed.).
(snip)
5. Pretty much anyone — including U.S. citizens and green card holders — can be rendered these days.
Not so, . . . .
(snip)
In fairness, though, the ghastly case of Maher Arar — a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who convincingly says he was detained at New York’s JFK Airport, handed off to Syria and tortured — is way too close for comfort.
Proud of your government now?
Drinking Liberally 0
Tomorrow, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, Pa.
Be there or be square.
Drumbeats 0
Dan Froomkin (emphasis added):
Stolberg continues: “Mr. Bush has repeatedly said the administration would not ‘tolerate’ a nuclear-armed Iran. But during a news conference on Wednesday, the president went further, saying of Iran: ‘If you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.'”
Furthermore, Stolberg notes: “That distinction — having the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon, as opposed to actually having a weapon — is one the administration has not made in the past. David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute who moderated a panel discussion before and after Mr. Cheney’s speech, said the vice president also seemed to draw a new red line when, instead of saying it is ‘not acceptable’ for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, he said the world ‘will not allow’ it.
More to the point, the challenge to keep Iran “from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon” is prima facie absurd. The knowledge of how to make a nuclear weapon is in the public domain and has been so for over 50 years. It’s called “nuclear physics.”
But as an instrument for whipping up emotions among the ignorant and the hysterical, what a wonderful phrase!
Linux in the Schools 0
Open Source beats pirated. Of course, as far as I am concerned, Linux beats Windows three ways to Sunday, but that’s another story.
Alexey Smirnov, Director General of the Company ALTLinux, said that schools formerly tended to run illegal copies of Microsoft operating systems, but after Russia entered the WTO, the laws became much stricter and schools began to be prosecuted for doing so.
“The situation became rather serious, and something had to be done,” he told BBC World Service’s Digital Planet programme.
“One possible decision was to buy licences for all the software being used – but so much software was being used, it proved too expensive… so the decision was taken to use free software, although not immediately, but over three years.”
Via Adrian Bacon.
Mail-Order House 1
Tizzy in a teacup:
The two-story house, assessed by the District tax office at $813,950, has been boarded up for more than a decade and hardly looks like the showplace depicted in old Sears catalogue drawings. A plumber named Jesse Baltimore put it together — all 10,000 parts — with the help of a 77-page Sears, Roebuck and Co. instruction book. He was among thousands of people across the nation who bought the company’s house kits decades ago.
A plumber built this house in the Palisades neighborhood in 1925 from a kit he purchased from a Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog.
Neighbors advocating demolition declared the house an eyesore years ago. But preservationists hailed it as an important symbol of how Washington’s working-class neighborhoods developed after World War I. The preservationists wanted to keep the house right where it sits in the Palisades neighborhood.
(Aside: Northwest Washington is definitely the high-rent district.)
I grew up on the Sears and Montgomery Ward Catalogs. On Pine View Farm, they were our link to shopping. The nearest cities were 90 miles away (north) or 40 miles and an hour-and-a-half ferry ride (south).
A house in a box is certainly a curiosity, but really not much different from the McMansions being thrown up now (I have seen the kits from a leading McMansion manufacturer heading down the road on the backs of flat-beds–don’t remove the scaffolding until the Ty-Vek is up), but, given that, as the story later points out, “(a)bout 90 percent of the estimated 75,000 Sears houses sold across the country still stand,” this house is hardly a historical site worthy of preservation.
More a historical curiosity.
Back from Williamsburg 0
It was good to see First Son and First Daughter-in-Law.
The campus of my alma mater has not changed much. A few new buildings, a couple of new statues, and co-eds a lot younger than I remember them.
Colonial Disneyland is still as nice as ever.
And the wireless cloud in the hotel did not reach our room, but, in all other ways, the hotel was top-notch.
First Son will be on the way back to Afghanistan early next month, hopefully to end his S(pl)urged ™ tour next spring.
He reckons that, after that, it will be back to Iraq.
I just can’t think of anything more to say.
Stark Comments 2
The scathing comments drew immediate condemnation from Republicans, who demanded he retract it. “Congressman Stark’s statement dishonors not only the commander in chief, but the thousands of courageous men and women of America’s armed forces who believe in their mission and are putting their lives on the line for our freedom and security,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
When asked if he would take back any of his statements, Stark told KCBS “Absolutely not. I may have dishonored the commander in chief, but I think he’s done pretty well to dishonor himself without any help from me.â€
Fairly typical on the part of the Republicans, actually.
Rather than deal with the substance of the comments, they resort to ad hominem attacks.
Ad hominem attacks–the first resort of those who have nothing going for them.
Via Susie.