January, 2009 archive
A Night for Extra Law and Order Reruns 2
Please. Just. Go. Away.
Afterthought:
Dan Froomkin, responding to a question in his chat earlier today (emphasis added):
Dan Froomkin: Odd, yes. I think it’s Bush shorthand for “I’m disappointed that we were wrong about the WMD.” But even that doesn’t cut it. For one, there is a powerful argument to be made that, as the Downing Street Memo said, the intelligence was being fixed around the policy. And then there’s the fact that he won’t say that, had he known there were no WMD, he wouldn’t have attacked anyway. So what’s he disappointed about?
The answer is that, like the Mission Accomplished banner and not landing Air Force One in Louisiana, he’s just sorry things looked bad. He doesn’t seem to have any genuine regrets at all.
Legacy 0
The Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie. From the Guardian:
Bush did not win Iraq. The surge merely stopped bleeding from a self-inflicted wound. Current Iraqi politics are more akin to “Shakespearean drama than to nascent democracy,” according to the New York Times. Each political party has its own militia. Terrorism is down, but hardly gone – bombs killed 50 last week. . . .
Metal Is Dead 3
(With apologies to Jono Bacon.)
How do I know?
Time Life is offering a metal anthology.
Now, where did I put that AARP renewal notice?
When the State Plays the Numbers 1
I have always had problems with basing the polity’s budget on gambling. This pretty much sums up why. From Philadelphia City Paper:
As I walked past the glowing machines, I saw a strange sight: A man, maybe in his 60s, had gotten off his stool and was standing between two machines in a kind of half-squat, his arms banging the buttons on either side like two flippers. As the reels spun, he stared between the machines, at nothing.
The night before, I had gotten a call from Les Bernal, executive director of Stop Predatory Gambling, which he runs out of his kitchen. I told him I’d be going to Harrah’s Chester the following day.
“Tell me this,” he said. “The gambling industry talks about slot machines as being entertainment, as being fun. Tell me if anybody you see looks like they’re having fun.”
He was right. There were a few exceptions — a couple talking while they played, for example — but most of the players in that vast room sat alone at their machines, smoking and tapping buttons, their faces blank.
How To Handle the Press 0
Jon Stewart gives Mr. Obama a lesson:
She’s Republican.
Natch
0
You can’t make this stuff up.
The former aide is Gina Santucci, who now works as associate general counsel at BGR Holding, the lobbying, public relations and financial advisory firm formerly known as Barbour Griffith & Rogers, founded by current Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and veteran GOP political strategist Ed Rogers.
H/T Karen for the link (she reads this stuff so we don’t have to).
Magickal Shrinking Man 2
Someone told me yesterday that she was looking forward to hearing what I had to say about the Current Federal Administrator’s last scheduled press conference.
Please, I said, I’m trying not to think about him. I don’t want to write about that.
Besides, I said, I’m afraid it will make my fever and headaches come back, not to mention the shakes and chills.
Nevertheless, she said, I’m looking forward to what you write.
Man, I just want to see him ride off into the sunset on his mountain bike and go clear brush somewhere (I hear there’s brush in Van Diemen’s Land), while still holding my breath about what more damage he might do.
Remember, there’s a week left. He has demonstrated an impressive capacity for doing immense harm in short time spans. Now he’s down to the two-minute drill of his presidency. He has nothing left to lose.
Cause he’s lost it all.
Not just for him. For us.
And, of course, it wasn’t just him. It was him and the whole rotten Republican and neocon establishment, which finally got to work its way on the United States, leaving her naked, bleeding, penniless, and violated, lying in a ditch on the road to Crawford.
Let us consider the record.
- Pissing away blood and treasure on the Glorious and Patriotic War for a Lie . . .
- . . . and in the marvelous Wall Street sinkhole, because, well, rich people can be trusted to do what is right. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be rich, now would they?
- Deregulating the economy right into the sewer.
- Trashing a 250-year tradition–one not always maintained, but one not before trashed by God-help-me the Preznut–of treating prisoners of war with at least a modicum of humanity.
- Not just ignoring, but destroying truth.
- And displaying a general ability to get anything and everything wrong.
Oh, yeah, and remember how he was going to solve the Israel-Palestine problem by the end of his term?
Furthermore, picking up from the Blondie comic strip, his party even managed to sully the image of the plumbing industry.
But there is a bright side.
He seems to have brought the Republican Party right down with him. One can only hope.
Of course, now that party is back in the role of doing what it does best: fighting progress, blowing stuff out of proportion, making mountains out of molehills, and impugning the patriotism of honest Americans.
Come next Tuesday, I expect to be bitchin’ about the Obama administration.
(I also expect to be reading with glee all the news reports that will no doubt spill forth from decent, honest civil servants who have feared to speak of the abuses and corruption they have witnessed under the regime of neocon hack political appointees.)
Nevertheless, however much I expect to disagree with them from time to time, I look forward with relief to the prospect of a Future Federal Administration that so far gives no signs of actively working as to do evil.
I don’t mind policy disagreements. Reasonable persons can disagree in good faith. Not that any policy-makers ever notice me unless I drag out Open Office and write them letters.
But I sure am tired of the bad faith, tired of the lies, tired of evil done in my name.
Waiting Game 1
In eight days, it will be January 21. Wonder what other stuff is waiting to come out?
Ooh! Ooh! More gifts to Big Pharma.
“What about the Ticking Time Bomb?” 0
Last week, a professional military interrogator who has served in Iraq appeared on Radio Times to discuss his new book, How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogator Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.
The host actually asked him, to her credit, “What about the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario?”
He answered, “In Iraq, we lived with the ‘ticking time bomb’ every day.”
From the website:
Listen to his full answer here (mp3) or follow the link to the website and search for January 8, 2009.
Then come back and answer this question:
So, why do the Bushies love torture so?
Drinking Liberally 0
Tomorrow, Triumph Brewing Company, 117 Chestnut, Philadephia, Pa, 6 p.
I’m taking a by. After spending all last week on my back, I ain’t pushing my luck.
So hoist one or three for me.
Inside the Walled Garden (High Geek Alert) 2
I’m waiting for my rowboat to come in; I’m in the market for a new MP3 player, one that supports OGG Vorbis (the open source audio format). Two of my favorite geeky podcasts have stopped doing MP3s and are exclusively OGG now.
One thing I really like about using my cheapo Radio Slum clearance sale MP3 player with Linux is that the device mounts just like a harddrive or a memory stick.
I plug it in and there it is.
I can copy files to and from it using the standard copy (“cp“) command; I can change directories (“cd“) to it just as if it were any other directory; I can delete files from it with the standard remove (“rm“) command.
No proprietary software; no “syncing”; no crap.
So I decided to see whether I could do the same with an iPod, which lives inside of Apple’s Walled Garden.
I could.
Stray Thought 2
I remember when National Football League quarterbacks were smart enough to call their own plays.
A Toad in a Tuxedo Is Still a Toad . . . 3
. . . and this is bigotry, no matter what fancy duds its supporters choose for it.
Sadly, I reckon there will never be a shortage of those who wish to build their political fortunes on fear and hatred.
Podcasters on the Prowl 0
Todd has been at the Consumer Electronics Show this week.
Frankly, I’m not particularly interested in learning what the new toys are quick like a bunny; I’ll learn about them soon enough and decide that most of them mean nothing to me.
But his description of the equipment that he took along so that he could report on the show–now that’s something else. When he refers to his traveling studio, he ain’t kidding:
For the best coverage of CES, go to Geek News Central.