Answer: the policies and failures of George W. Bush, the same policies still being pushed by the GOP today, toward the same failures. Under a Republican administration, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might be replaced by expanding and extending our presence in those countries, plus maybe a new war in Iran (or who knows where else); the Bush tax cuts would not only be extended, but would be expanded.

Of course, all other costs of government could be put up there as well, but this does quite well to demonstrate what a huge difference the cessation of the wars and the repealing of the Bush tax cuts would make.

Not that this, even were it to come from an unbiased source, would make an impression on those opposed to Obama. They still think he’s not a Christian, for chrissakes, or even not born in the U.S. Even more moderate people have accepted the idea that the deficit is “his,” which it may be in a political sense, but clearly is an artifact of Bush and continued GOP pressure.

The problem is, voters seem far more interested in blaming whomever is in office when bad stuff is happening than they are in figuring out whose policies would lead to a better result.

It’s as if we had a babysitter who turned out to be a child molester, and after we got rid of him and hired a qualified babysitter, the kids are still suffering severe trauma, made worse by the molester hanging around, so we blame the current sitter and start looking at hiring back the molester.

When I was a kid and our mom had to work nights, we took responsibility for our own cooking, and one of our usual meals was Romertopf clay-pot chicken. Romertopf is an unglazed ceramic cooking pot which does a great job of keeping juices in–I had just forgotten how well it can do that.

When my brother and his wife left Japan recently, they left us their Romertopf; they had acquired one small enough to fit into a Japanese microwave/convection oven. It was not as big as the ones we used to use, but it can be big enough.

Eager to try it out, I went to our local supermarket and ordered a whole chicken–they don’t sell them whole in Japan usually, and this one took 4 days. Now, my sister-in-law warned me that the pot would not take more than a 1.5 kg chicken, and so I tried to order one. The store guy warned me that the chickens they could order would be bigger than that, so I just asked him to order the smallest one he could get.

It turned out to be a 2.5 kg chicken.

And, as expected, it came nowhere close to fitting in the pot. I still wanted to try it out, though, so I cut off the neck (they had left about 6 inches of it), the wings, and a bit of the tail; I also cut off the legs and thighs, but didn’t leave those out. With everything trimmed, I could fit the torso in the pot, and though it was a tight fit, I was able to put the legs and thighs back in, albeit reversed.

One of the tricks, I think, is to leave the torso cavity open, stuffed with onions and spices, so I did not want to just chop the bird up and pile the pieces in–they would have fit better, but keeping the chicken as whole as possible was optimum.

So, after pouring on some soy sauce, brandy, and red wine, then adding the same spices I put in the chicken (basil, garlic & onion powder, celery salt) on top, with some paprika (Spanish pimentón in this case) for appearance.

As you can see, it was bulging out. I could fit the cover on, but obviously there was not much space left. I could only fit in a few small potatoes, instead of several along with some carrots.

Figuring it was the best I could do, I put it into the oven–even with a small pot, it barely fit–and set it for 90 minutes at 175 C. Or, for 60 min at 180 C, as the oven couldn’t be set for more than an hour, and only could be adjusted to 10-degree intervals. After 60 minutes, I set it for another 30; you’re supposed to cook for 80 minutes, take the top off, then cook for another 10 minutes.

Of course, the oven was so small that I had to remove the whole thing to take the top off, and so all the heat escaped; I cooked for 15 minutes rather than 10 with the top off.

But boy, did it ever work!

Alas, the photos (different colors as they were taken by different cameras) don’t do it justice. It looked good enough from the outside, but when I cut up the meat, it was the juiciest chicken I remember ever seeing. Just fabulous. Again, this photo doesn’t do the spread justice:

We went in for seconds and thirds, eating nearly the whole chicken.

Next time, I want to try a 2 kg chicken, if I can get one just the right size. One of the nice things about Romertopf, however, is that it is really hard to get wrong; it’s very forgiving, and consistently good.

Romney, as it turns out, was a bully as a teenager:

John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenage son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors. …

“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”

“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”

The bullying, and his reaction to it now, are somewhat reminiscent of another recent president, George W. Bush, who branded pledges with a red-hot coat hanger and defended it as being no worse than a “cigarette burn.” (A few reminders here, here, here, and here.)

Romney’s “youthful indiscretions,” however, go somewhat beyond that–leading a gang of youths who chased and tackled a kid, pinned him to the ground, and hacked off his hair while the kid screamed for help–for no better reason than that the kid was different.

Now, people change. People who were bullies as teens often mature and become better people. However, sometimes they only evolve into a different kind of person with the same basic disregard for other people. Like Dubya, sometimes they just get better at masking it.

What would have impressed me would have been if Romney had sat down and given a heartfelt expression of remorse. He could have told about how, when you are found and want to be liked by your peers, you do stuff that you regret later in life. That would not have been damaging to him–quite the opposite. It could have been an extremely human moment, respected by everyone, not to mention a teachable moment, helpful to many teens who might be doing wrong but could be steered right. It would be the kind of thing somebody like me, a person strongly opposed to Romney politically, could have said, “I may not like his policies, but I really respect what he did there.”

So, what did Romney say about violently assaulting a kid for being different?

“I’ll tell you,” Romney said, chuckling, “the thought that that fellow was homosexual was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case. But as to pranks that were played back then, I don’t remember them all, but again, high school days, I did stupid things. … And if anyone was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that.”

Holy crap. Really. My first thought is, this was just one of so many similar “pranks” that he can’t even remember what happened? What else did he do? How many other people did he assault? I mean, seriously, if he cannot remember chasing down and shearing a kid’s hair off while the kid screamed, that’s pretty goddamned significant.

It raises serious questions about his conscience, and shines a clearer light on how he could be proud of the work he did later on at Bain Capital, destroying companies and jobs for profit. What kind of person does even that one thing to that kid–or, as Romney himself admitted, many acts of bullying (excuse me, “pranks”)–that he can’t even remember something so chilling? The incident was so vicious that not only do the other people in his “posse” remember it vividly, but even bystanders, half a century later, have powerful recollections of it.

But then there’s his cavalier attitude toward it today, calling such a thing a “prank”–were I that guy he pinned down and cut the hair off of, I would be livid right now. (Sadly, he passed away years ago.) Worse, Romney said, “if anyone was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that.” “If”?? Really? You chase a kid down, pin him to the ground, and hack off his hair while he screams for help, and you’re still not sure if he was hurt or offended?

Like I said, holy crap.

Yes, In know–it was not his “human” answer, but his “politician” answer. Trying to minimize damage by apologizing and yet not admitting to any wrongdoing. Perhaps it only demonstrates that he’s a piss-poor, tone-deaf politician.

His campaign is also trying to minimize the story instead of dealing with it in a human manner:

“The stories of fifty years ago seem exaggerated and off base and Governor Romney has no memory of participating in these incidents.”

“Off base”? What is that supposed to mean? And exactly how can they know the stories are exaggerated if Romney says he cannot remember them? How can you both claim that a story is inaccurate and you don’t know anything about it?

A man who witnessed the incident seemed to remember it just fine–not to mention, had the appropriate response, years later:

Sometime in the mid-1990s, David Seed noticed a familiar face at the end of a bar at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

“Hey, you’re John Lauber,” Seed recalled saying at the start of a brief conversation. Seed, also among those who witnessed the Romney-led incident, had gone on to a career as a teacher and principal. Now he had something to get off his chest.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t do more to help in the situation,” he said.

Lauber paused, then responded, “It was horrible.” He went on to explain how frightened he was during the incident, and acknowledged to Seed, “It’s something I have thought about a lot since then.”

Romney denies the attack on Lauber had anything to do with his assumed gender identity, but was known for similar attitudes toward other students–sadly, an attitude apparently encouraged by the school:

But Friedemann and several people closest to Romney in those formative years say there was a sharp edge to him. In an English class, Gary Hummel, who was a closeted gay student at the time, recalled that his efforts to speak out in class were punctuated with Romney shouting, “Atta girl!” In the culture of that time and place, that was not entirely out of the norm. Hummel recalled some teachers using similar language.

One could argue that Romney was simply a product of his environment and his time, and this may be true. It is certain that he has matured and would no longer look kindly on exactly these actions. But there does remain the question of whether he has evolved into someone who does look kindly on adult versions of the same kind of attitude. A disregard for those who are different, a lack of compassion for people in need, a disposition to confirm to the behavior of those in his environment rather than to work from an individual moral base.

People around him are talking about what a swell guy he is. But this means very little–remember, Dubya was described in the same way–in light of the fact that people with serious deficits in morality can easily present themselves as good ol’ boys.

Even more significantly, there is the realization few people understand, which is that most forms of discrimination and harm come from people who not only act decently most of the time, but who sincerely believe themselves to be moral people incapable of such things. Most racism today comes from such sources, as do most of the injustices, some large but the majority small, that happen in the world today.

One must judge people on their actions, not the image they project. Romney’s origins speak somewhat to his moral foundation, but his current casual disregard for the terrorizing he did as a young man speaks far louder.

Wow. It’s hard to imagine being more brazenly dishonest, hypocritical, and egotistical–all at once–as this.

I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet. So, I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back.

Well, I pushed the idea of a stimulus back in November of 2008, so I’ll take credit for millions of jobs saved. You’re welcome.

Oh, wait, you actually have to do something to get credit for it?

“Auto Czar” Steve Rattner is taken aback:

I’ve read, I think, everything Romney’s had to say on this subject, and the level of flip-flopping and dissembling is truly mind-boggling. He’s been on every side of the auto rescue at different times and said different things, so it’s hard to know what he honestly thinks.“

One notable area where Romney was relatively consistent was that he always pushed for private takeovers of the industry rather than using government money, though no private parties expressed any interest. He also advocated punishing the unions, which would essentially have meant devastating worker pay and benefits. Ironic, as well-paying America jobs were supposedly what this whole business was all about saving.

Like Obama’s call on bin Laden, the moves the president made with the auto industry were risky, unpopular, and could have sunk his presidency had he failed. However, he made them, succeeded–and, again as with bin Laden, Republicans who attacked him for even suggesting such moves now crowd in and try to take credit for their success.

The Heartland Institute is a conservative “think tank” (read: propaganda engine) set upon supporting conservative and corporate agendas. Aside from denying global warming, the institute has famously challenged the adverse effects of cigarette smoke, opposes public health care and education, and essentially supports privatizing almost everything government does. So one cannot expect them to exactly come from a place of reason if their purpose is so deeply set in supporting positions not achieved by reason. When you are so invested in issues that deny the obvious because they fail to benefit the political and economic agenda you want to believe in, basic logic tends to fly out the window.

Even so, the billboards on climate change had me puzzled for a while, in that they seemed so stupid, so nonsensical, that I figured I was missing the point. I mean, a fifth-grader could figure out that even bad people can believe in true things. “Adolph Hitler believed that pi equals 3.14159! Do you?”

Seriously, that does not even pass the laugh test. Trying to apply guilt-by-association to common-sense facts is, well, stupid. It truly puts on display how divorced from basic logic people like those at Heartland really are.

It’s no surprise that Romney is picking up where McCain left off, but “on steroids,” to use Bill Clinton’s recent phrasing. McCain, if you recall, was a flip-flopper who outrageously and hypocritically lied about his opponent as well. Romney, fresh out of the gate, apparently feels it necessary to go even further.

A few of his opening shots? Well, they certainly seem to understand their problem points, as they are going straight for Obama’s big strengths: he is popular with women, he helped save the auto industry, and he killed bin Laden. Knowing that these are tremendous pluses for Obama, showing him to be strong on social issues, jobs, business, and foreign policy, they feel the need to relentlessly attack him on these points; it is no mistake that these three points came first, and have no doubt that conservatives will, barring some huge embarrassment, continue to hammer Obama’s achievements in these areas. If they cannot deprive him of credit for these, then they hope to at least mire them in criticism and question enough to blur and weaken them.

s for Detroit, the Romney campaign is now claiming that not only was Romney not against the Detroit bailout, but that Obama was just “following Mitt Romney’s advice.”

This goes beyond Mitt’s trying to save face by pointing out that he was for saving the auto industry, but differed in how to do it. Romney wanted Detroit to go through a managed bankruptcy, and not receive any government funds–i.e., a Bain-style restructuring. At the time, he specifically contrasted his plan to Obama’s.

At the time, there was also not so much doubt about one big reason why not just Romney, but conservatives in general, wanted the bankruptcy: it would have broken the unions, and allowed the industry to strip workers of pay and benefits. Romney left no doubt about this, citing what he called “excessive union contract obligations.” (An excellent rundown of Romney’s positions here.)

Obama, in contrast, bailed out the industry, saved it without bankruptcy, saved tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of jobs while not wrecking the unions or the hard-won pay and benefits the workers enjoy, helped the industry not just recover but thrive… and now Romney, after disagreeing with and then criticizing Obama for what he did, is trying to take credit for it.

hen there is Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden was ignored for years by conservatives, embarrassed by their inability to capture him. After basing their entire mideast strategy on how much of a threat he was, they dismissed him as unimportant and stopped even trying.

During the 2008 election, Obama vowed to cross Pakistani borders and take bin Laden out, if there was actionable intelligence and Pakistan did not appear cooperative. He was referring to Bush’s grave error in Tora Bora, of course. At the time, Romney and most other conservatives came down on Obama as reckless and naive, and opposed any such move.

As it turned out, of course, Obama was dead right. Ever since then, conservatives have been trying to ignore something which, had it only been accomplished by a Republican, they would have celebrated as the ultimate act of a courageous leader.

Their first strategy was to act like Obama had nothing to do with it. They thanked the soldiers, they thanked the military in general, they even thanked our allies, some of whom they savagely attacked in the past. They also thanked President… Bush. They credited the capture to Bush, to torture, to Gitmo, to everyone and everything… except Obama. He was a braggart trying to take credit for everyone else’s hard work.

Then they started nipping at Obama like a bunch of ducks, attacking Obama for how he did it, for not showing the video, for not putting the body on display, for the burial at sea, or for even announcing that bin Laden had been killed at all. No detail was too small to claim that Obama somehow “blew it” and made things worse.

Then they tried to claim that “any” president would have done the same thing–ignoring the fact that Bush did not. “Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order,” Romney himself claimed. Of course, Carter gave the order to send helicopters into Iran–a mission which failed, and Republicans had no problem giving Carter full blame while never once suggesting that the soldiers or the military were in any way responsible. Which was appropriate–but now stands out as hypocritically inconsistent in regards to their reaction to Obama’s actions. Like it or not, Obama made a call, and had the mission failed, the blame would have been 100% his, and probably would have sunk his chances for re-election. Do you think, had the mission failed and soldiers died, that Romney would hesitate for a microsecond to politicize that? Hell, no.

Then there’s the question of whether Romney would have done it; after all, when Obama said he’d go after bin Laden if he were in Pakistan, Romney disagreed:

“I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours… I don’t think those kinds of comments help in this effort to draw more friends to our effort,” Romney told reporters on the campaign trail.

Recently, has has attempted to pivot that statement, acting as if it were only Obama’s statement of intent, not his actual intent:

“It was a very, if you will, fragile and flammable time in Pakistan,” Mr. Romney said during an appearance with Rudolph W. Giuliani at Engine 24, Ladder 5 in SoHo. “And I thought it was a mistake of him as a candidate for the presidency of the United States to announce he would go in–rather than to say, as I did, we reserve the right to go wherever we feel is appropriate to secure the interests of the United States of America, and certainly to track Osama bin Laden anywhere he could be found.”

The problem? That statement contradicts what else Romney said when he criticized Obama in 2008:

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is one of the Republican front-runners, said U.S. troops “shouldn’t be sent all over the world.” He called Obama’s comments “ill-timed” and “ill-considered.”

“There is a war being waged by terrorists of different types and nature across the world,” Romney said. “We want, as a civilized world, to participate with other nations in this civilized effort to help those nations reject the extreme with them.”

So, in 2008, he felt that we should “participate” with other nations, and disapproved of sending troops “all over the world.” But in 2012, he said he meant to “reserve the right to go wherever we feel is appropriate to secure the interests of the United States of America, and certainly to track Osama bin Laden anywhere he could be found.” How can you criticize Obama for sending troops everywhere and at the same time mean that you would send troops “wherever … appropriate” and “anywhere [bin Laden] could be found”?

Finally, there is criticism that Obama is politicizing getting bin Laden. This, of course, is laughable on its face. Of course he’s using it in his campaign; that’s what any politician would do, what every politician does. If Romney had done it, he sure as hell would have mentioned it. And why not?

How about this by Bush in 2004:

“In Iraq, we saw a threat, and we realized that after September the 11th, we must take threats seriously, before they fully materialize. Saddam Hussein now sits in a prison cell,” the president said. “America and the world are safer for it.”

Was that inappropriate? Certainly Romney would not have thought so. Not to mention that Romney just appeared in New York near Ground Zero with Rudy “noun, a verb, and 9-11” Giuliani, making hay of the War on Terror and politicizing exactly what they criticized Obama for touting–how he performed in the war on terror.

McCain, a Romney surrogate, has also blasted Obama, saying “heroes don’t brag.” Alas, he didn’t seem to be aware of this when he was running in 2008, when he bragged about what his team and his party claimed were his own acts of heroism.

In the end, what we have is massive hypocrisy on the part of Romney and the GOP and all of their surrogates; no surprises there. But it is telling; to attack Obama on women, Detroit, and bin Laden betrays the fact that Republicans know that Obama is very strong in those three areas.

The question is, can Romney and the GOP successfully pull of the Etch-a-Sketch strategy, hoping voters forgot everything they said and did in past years, believe all the lies they now claim are true, and deny Obama credit where credit is due?

In Karuizawa, however, there are birds galore (you ever want to go birding in Japan, Karuizawa is not a bad choice), and I took the time for birding there. The first interesting one I spotted was just outside the hotel, a Chestnut-cheeked Starling. Far more interesting than the white-cheeked version so common in Tokyo.

In the same location, I saw some Great Tits, Oriental Greenfinches, Meadow Buntings, Wagtails, and one I could not identify–as one birder I showed it to said, “a female something.”

Here’s the “something”–probably a Flycatcher of some variety (less probable but still possibly, a warbler), but I can’t tell myself. This was the only angle I got it at.

In Karuizawa, there is a special birding area–“yacho no mori,” or the “bird forest.” I caught great images of a misosazai, a Winter Wren, when Sachi and I went there five years ago. I immediately spotted some Long-tailed Tits:

Coming out of the park, I spotted something I had never seen before: Coal Tits.

Here’s a beautiful shot of two of them, click for a larger version:

And another nice shot with a larger version:

The catch of the day, however, was a Blue-and-white Flycatcher wooing a potential mate. The Blue-and-white is kind of iconic to Japanese birdwatching; the deep blue colors and contrast with the whites get it put on the covers of most birdwatching books.

It wasn’t too hard to spot; in its display, it was hanging around the female, which had perched along the walking path; the male was hopping from branch to branch, trying to be in easy view (unlike most birds in the park), and singing like, well, a songbird.

A lot of its display was wagging its tail up and down.

The female is less spectacularly colored, but still nice:

Sachi and I took Ponta to a few dog-friendly hotels in April, first to a resort in Fuji, and then on the way back from ohaka-mairi (visiting the family gravesite), in Karuizawa. Along the way, I got a chance to do some birding–and surprisingly, saw four new species of bird I had never seen before, which is quite a few for me, in such a short time.

The first was at Fuji: a Brambling. Spotted this one in the forest just south of the resort. The colors are not as rich as an adult male in season, but the dark head, red shoulders and breast, and striped wings tag it fairly distinctively.

There was a Grey Wagtail, common in more inland, wooded areas:

There was some larger mystery bird lurking back where I could not catch it, but got this image–it’s probably a kakesu, a Eurasian Jay, but it’s hard to tell.

And there were the Black Kites, fairly ubiquitous for the countryside:

I did not spend much time birding at Fuji, however–frustrating a few times, because I am pretty sure I spotted some really nice birds but did not have my long lens.

A new Macbook Pro refresh is on the horizon, hopefully sooner rather than later. The shortest historical refresh time is not until June, but I am hoping it’ll come sooner, especially since the last release was only the barest of speed bumps (0.2GHz CPU bump, a slightly better graphics card, 256 MB more graphics memory–nothing else changed in the 15“ model), meaning that is was hardly a ”refresh“ at all. It’s also why I did not replace my seriously aging MBP, long without an optical drive anyway (it broke a year and a half ago) and struggling to keep up with current software demands.

So here I am, straining at the bit to buy a new machine, but I have to wait. I have a lot to look forward to: the new Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs have come out, and the new MBPs are bound to have them.

What worries me is talk about a new, slimmer form factor. It sounds nice, but I’m worried that they might make the Macbook Pro into little more than a 15” Macbook Air. Granted, the Air is nice, but I really need the capacity and ports that a Pro gives.

It’s expected that the new Pro will come without an optical drive; Apple was the first to abandon the floppy, so this makes sense. Sure, a Blu-ray drive would be fantastic, but that’s an extreme long shot. Apple will more likely continue with their direction towards wireless and the cloud. If there’s no optical drive, Apple could save a lot of space.

Ports are another probable cut–but they are also what have made the Pro a “Pro”; cutting FireWire would be a big disappointment for many people, like myself, who still have FireWire peripherals. Apple has a tendency to not give a crap about that, unfortunately.

A bigger potential problem would be if they went with SSD, and chintzed and went with a 256 GB storage solution. I have long been looking forward to increasing my drive space, which is currently 250 GB. A pro model should have more than that (current models have 500 and 750 GB), and I fear that Apple would make 256 GB standard and charge hundreds of dollars to upgrade to 512 GB. Look at the Air–you get 128 GB for the base 13“ model, and pay $300 to get 256 GB. I can easily imagine Apple giving us 256 GB on the 15” and then asking $500 for an upgrade to 512 GB. Even worse, they might make 128 GB standard on the low-end 15“ model, and ask $250 to upgrade to 256 GB, which would really tick me off.

Now, if a 512 GB SSD came standard, that would be sweet. But somehow I doubt it; Apple has been known to disappoint on stuff like this (look at the iPad and how they have refused to bump the SSD memory on those for the 2nd and 3rd generations). As with the no-Blu-ray and early FDD and now probably DVD retirements, they can be dictatorial about what you need and what you will get, as it suits their esthetic sense. SSD will be a big, fat target to chintz on.

What alternatives are there? If Apple keeps 2.5” HDDs, they could keep the rear end of the Pro a similar thickness and start tapering to the front only, which seems unlikely if they really want a slimmer enclosure. Or, if they wanted to improve performance without switching to SSDs, they could try a 2- or even 3-disk RAID array with 1.8“ drives (maybe 2 250 GB drives in a striped array and a third as a built-in ”Time Machine“ backup to address higher failure risks in the striped array).

This seems unlikely, however; HDD and RAID are moving backwards, and Apple likes shiny, futuristic stuff. SSDs look far more likely, meaning my primary hope is that Apple’s huge consumption of flash memory (not to mention their recent acquisition of an SSD manufacturer) allows them to give the best capacity solution for a reasonable price.

But if Apple goes down the ”oh, the Cloud is here, you really don’t need all that storage“ road, I will be ever so pissed.

Late Edit: One other possibility I forgot to consider: if Apple stays with the 2.5” HDD storage solution, they could go for an SSD cache. Given that they don’t go for an ultra-slim model, this actually might be the most likely compromise, allowing for both capacity (perhaps continuing the 500 and 750 GB drives) and speed (with perhaps a 64 GB SSD), with the missing optical drive and a redesigned battery shape allowing them to slim down enough to make a difference in aesthetics.

The media is atwitter again, this time over a newly released photo reportedly showing blood and a wound on the back of George Zimmerman’s head just minutes after he shot Trayvon Martin.

Many of the stories, especially from the conservative media, call the photo a “game changer” and suggest that it could help Zimmerman’s case. A few more responsible reports cautiously remind people that the photos might not mean what people think, and no reports I have seen take any note that the photos may not even be genuine.

An observer who does not think very long or deeply may jump to the conclusion: hey, Zimmerman was telling the truth, so these photos exonerate him. He’s innocent.

However, there are several problems, the last one being the clincher.

Problem #1: where did the photo come from? ABC News, which released it, says that the source wishes to remain anonymous and was very reluctant to release it. That a source may wish to remain anonymous is understandable for that person in a case like this. However, if this photo is to be treated as evidence, the identity of the source is crucial.

ABC claims that the image came from a witness who heard the incident but did not see it, and arrived at the scene just after the shots were fired. Reportedly, there are other photos ABC did not acquire or release. Lacking a specific identification of the source, however, verification of the photo is problematic at best.

Amusingly, conservative sites which, just a few days ago, were treating ABC as completely unreliable, are now taking their claims as rock-solid evidence.

Problem #2: how do we know the photo is genuine? ABC News said that they checked the “embedded” data, meaning the EXIF data. EXIF data is information attached to a digital image file which specifies most if not all of the information available about the image and the device which produced it. EXIF data includes a time stamp, GPS coordinates, identification of the camera and its settings for the photos, and technical information about the image. It is assumed that if the EXIF data shows that the photo was taken at the scene of the killing at the time one would expect, then that would assure us of the image’s veracity.

The problem is that, like any digital information, EXIF data can be altered and falsified. It is not a smoking gun, so to speak. Instead, a critical question is, when, if ever, did police take possession of the image? If they took the cell phone (reportedly an iPhone) at the scene on that night and checked it into evidence, then the data would be more trustworthy. If the police did not take possession of the device immediately, then grave questions arise over the data’s authenticity.

In this case, it seems apparent, though not specified, that the police did not take possession of the device. For one thing, the source, presumably a private individual, had possession of the images; if police had taken the device at the scene, the owner may have received it back, but almost certainly would not have received the images back with it. Second, when the prosecution filed its case, they cited that “Zimmerman’s wounds are not apparent,” which indicates they did not have this photo even as recently as a week or two ago. Other reports have the prosecution saying the have “seen the photo,” but did not specify if it was before or after the charges were filed; if before, then their affidavit claiming no visible wounds would be very problematic to their case.

That means that the owner of the image did not submit the image to the police, or that the police did not accept or log the information. Worse, it means that the chain of evidence is broken, and that the image was “in the wild” for more than a month–more than long enough for the image to be very cleverly faked. For example, Zimmerman could have posed somewhere with the exact same jacket and had the blood applied, then the EXIF data altered. It is not likely, but it is possible. If the data was not handed over quickly, this could raise serious doubts.

Problem #3: pieces that don’t fit. Certainly Zimmerman must have known the photos existed. Over all that time that people were claiming no images existed, why not mention that someone at the scene snapped the photos? Zimmerman probably consented to the photo being taken, and may even have requested it, which might mean he knew or came to know the photographer. Almost certainly he knew they had been taken.Why not get the images and release them himself?

For that matter, although the photographer’s desire for anonymity is understandable, why on earth would s/he be reluctant to release the photos? Any responsible person would have at least tried to hand them over to police. A very responsible person would have done so at the scene, a slightly less responsible one later, probably after they had downloaded copies for themselves. But to keep them until this late date? For what reason?

The witness also reportedly claimed to have seen gunpowder burns on Trayvon Martin’s hoodie. This seems oddly specific–an unusual thing to notice and comment on. Most laymen would not necessarily recognize such a thing, and may not even be qualified to make that conclusion. Was the person trying to say more about this and ABC truncated the statement? Not to mention, would not have blood around the wound occluded any such marks to a casual observer, or even if photographic evidence existed? Is Trayvon’s hoodie still in evidence? Examination would, of course, be revealing as to distance and so forth.

Next comes the photo itself. It would appear to show a wound on the right side of the head, apparently the source of the lower and rightmost of the two evident blood streams.

However, there is another blood stream to the left of that with no apparent source. Even stranger, the blood in this area appears cut off in what seems to be a void, as if something had been covering Zimmerman’s head. The line appears too sharp for it to have been cleaned off, and there is no visible wound to explain where the blood came from. This would suggest that the blood came from an outside source, most likely Trayvon. This would seem to confirm that Martin was on top of Zimmerman when the shooting occurred. However, this puts into question the source of the other blood stream as well.

Additionally, the void is strangely located, near the crown of the head; a hat would not explain this, unless it was moved forward so as almost to cover the face. What created the void, if that’s what it is?

Then there is the question of how the blood is arranged, and if it is consistent with having one’s head slammed into the concrete several times. A blood expert would certainly have to examine the patterns and all other evidence to suggest how this whole pattern came to be.

Finally, ABC did not release the actual image file; no one aside from them and the authorities are able to examine the image clearly. What is apparent from ABC screen grabs is not enough to thoroughly check for telltale signs of manipulation or other possible distortions.

Problem #4: and this is the clincher–the image is not relevant to Zimmerman’s innocence or guilt. This is the major misconception going around, mainly due to the fact that evidence of Zimmerman’s wounds has been a central point of argument concerning the case. People make the mistaken assumption that evidence of a struggle is the key to the whole case, and if this photo is genuine, that exonerates Zimmerman.

What people fail to realize is that the evidence of wounds was a question, not a key point, concerning Zimmerman’s story. He claimed to have been beaten half to death, yet did not show the signs of it. It was only an inconsistency, however–it was never the crux of the case, never the piece of evidence upon which his innocence or guilt hinged.

If the image is authentic and we find that Trayvon did indeed injure Zimmerman, it only dismisses the supposition that Zimmerman lied about that detail only.

The key elements in the case remain: (1) who instigated the altercation, being relevant to the “stand your ground” defense; and (2) did Zimmerman have justification to use deadly force? Head wounds or not, a bloody scuffle is not justification for shooting someone to death.

The photo answers neither of these questions. If authentic, it may help Zimmerman in his case before the general public and the media, but not in a court of law.

Ars Technica headline:

Mac OS X invulnerability to malware is a myth, says security firm

Following it is an article which lays out how Macs are not “immune” to malware.

To quote two commenters: first, “Duh.” And second, “It’s a myth that there is a myth of invulnerability.”

Another commenter posts that “every single Mac owner” he has ever known claimed their Macs were “immune.” Something tells me that whatever number of people told him this said that their Macs were immune to PC malware, probably specific types that were the subject of conversation.

This is likely the source of the “Macs are invulnerable” myth. I have never heard a Mac user claim this, but people who dislike Macs and/or Mac users claim it all the time. It’s probably from just such cases–“Oh, you were hit by Conficker? Heh, my Mac is immune to that. I don’t even run antivirus software.” The Mac user does not mean “my Mac is perpetually invulnerable to any kind of attack,” but the annoyed PC user hears it that way, and starts spreading the claim.

However, articles like the one on Ars will be around as long as antivirus vendors are. And PC users will continue to perpetuate the “invulnerable” myth despite it’s lack of basis in fact, because it was never about facts, but about wanting to have something with which to attack their sources of annoyance.

As a side note, here’s a quote from a post I put up seven years ago, noting something I have steadily pointed out many times over the years (2006, 2007, 2008, and then in 2011):

So essentially, there’s no evidence that a wave of Mac viruses is headed for your computer. Not that it’s impossible, mind you–Mac OS X is very strong, but not completely impenetrable. It is assumed that at some point, a virus will break through. But it is also acknowledged that cracking OS X with any kind of substantial virus or worm is extraordinarily difficult.

Which remains true–there have been no viruses or worms that have had any success in infecting the Mac community–they are primarily trojans, which are more about tricking the user than they are about defeating the system’s security. That the Flashback trojan was able to infect without getting a password is troubling, however, and hopefully there will be re-thinking on Apple’s part toward eliminating that possibility.

Once again, the Mac is not invulnerable. It’s just safer.

Under the category “The Power to Destroy,” WND is aping Drudge and the rest of the conservative media and rehashing the same fake claim:

ONLY 85 MILLION ACTUALLY PAY U.S. TAXES
41 percent of those filing returns are non-payers

Americans making over $50,000 paid most of the federal taxes that were paid in the U.S. in 2010.

According to statistics compiled from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by the Tax Foundation, those people making above $50,000 had an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent, and carried 93.3 percent of the total tax burden.

In contrast, Americans making less than $50,000 had an effective tax rate of 3.5 percent and their total share of the tax burden was just 6.7 percent.

Egads. This report is full of bullcrap–and it’s getting even more egregious than before.

Drudge was slightly more specific, noting that there were 85 million federal taxpayers. “U.S.” taxes is even more misleading. They are both, however, dead wrong: payroll taxes are “federal” taxes, and all taxes paid to the U.S. and state government are technically “U.S. taxes.” At least previously, they noted that the numbers applied to income tax, though it was de-emphasized; apparently, even that was too honest for them, so now they are making a far more fraudulent claim.

Plus, payroll taxes cap out at about $110,000–meaning someone making a million dollars a year pays no payroll tax on almost 90% of their income, while the “deadbeats” who pay “no” taxes actually pay this tax on 100% of every dollar they earn.

Therefore, a person who made $30,000 in 2010 had to pay a flat 6.2% tax, while Mitt Romney, who made $42 million that year, shelled out a total of… well, almost nothing probably for payroll tax, as the vast bulk of his earnings were not even subject to this tax. Mitt Romney paid nearly 0% (about 6/1000ths of 1%) while a hardworking stiff making minimum wage paid 6.2%! (Actually, 7.65% if you include Medicare taxes–also capped!)

But even if Romney’s $42 million were completely subject to the payroll tax, he’d have paid no more than a grand total of $6,621.60, or roughly 1.6/100th of 1%–because of the cap.

Which is why they dishonestly omit any mention of the payroll tax in the conservative media.

But that’s not all–then there are federal taxes on alcohol, tobacco, tires, gasoline, diesel fuel (adds to shipping and retail costs), coal (adds to your electric bill), firearms, and even telephone service. Most people pay most of those to some degree.

And, all of the above will take a far bigger chunk, percentage-wise, from lower-income earners than it will from higher earners.

Nor is that the end to the dishonesty of the numbers being quoted–books could be written about how much the demarkations, counting tricks, omissions, and number-juggling are being used to create completely false impressions.

Not to mention that all of this ignores state and local taxes, all of which again hit the low wage earners more, especially as wealthy people can move to or even just claim residence in states with the lowest rates.

Suffice it to say that people of low income are being bombarded not just with a far higher tax rate, but with a propaganda barrage designed to make them comfortable with raising their own tax rates even further while giving yet another tax cut to rich people. Or, alternatively, changing to a completely new tax structure which would be even more regressive.

And with far too many people, it’s working.

Apple is reportedly trying to be “more secure” about its Apple Store setup. The thing is, they’re going about it in the most idiotic way I can imagine–one which may beef up their security, but at the same time, sets up millions of users to fall for trojans and phishing schemes.

As we are exposed to these schemes more and more, we learn to avoid falling for them by adhering to a few basic principles. There are two which have become engrained the strongest. The first is, when a pop-up appears and asks you to enter your password, be very leery of it, especially if it does not look fully official and could be a scam. That is exactly the method used by the FlashBack malware creators; break that principle, and you open the door for trojans.

Next, when you get an email and it links directly to a “trusted” site and asks you, before anything else, to enter your user ID and password, don’t. Banks will even tell you outright that they never send emails that link you to login pages, and that you should enter the bank’s URL directly. With Safari being vulnerable to counterfeit URLs, the danger is even greater. Break that principle, and you can be suckered into phishing schemes.

And yet, with Apple’s “more secure” tightening of iTunes accounts, they are leading users to violate those exact two principles, setting them up to be victimized by scammers and hackers.

First, in the iOS, when you try to download a new app from the App Store, it will, as usual, take you out of the App Store so you can see the app downloading–a “feature” which is stupid for different reasons.

Here’s the stupid part, security-wise: outside of the App Store app, you get a dialog box which pops up and says, “Security Info Required”; before you can download anything, even a free app, you have to accept it and–despite having just entered your user ID and password to download the app only seconds before, you are prompted to do it again.

When that happened to me, red flags went up–it had all the hallmarks of a trojan (a pop-up followed by an unusual and redundant ID & password request, neither of which I had ever seen before). Nor am I the only one to get this sense–many were baffled by this procedure for exactly the same reasons. It was only after researching on the web that I felt halfway confident that it was indeed genuine; for obvious reasons, I am extremely reluctant to enter my iTunes Store password, and Apple did a piss-poor job of making it seem authentic. All they had to do was make the pop-up appear a second earlier, within the App Store app, and I would have been more confident it was genuine. Even better, they could have gone to the trouble of being consistent, and, like with the iTunes Store EULA, simply prompted you to go back to the App Store app and go through the process. Instead, they made it happen outside any known and trusted app, which makes it more suspicious.

Sure, the chance of an unheard-of trojan popping up just then on my iPad was unlikely–but Apple’s method here violated the principle.

That’s the first ball dropped by Apple. The second: after they require you to enter a backup email address, they send you an email with a link to authorize the email address. OK, I thought–this is the standard thing where you click on the link, they get the message, and tell you “OK, you’re authentic.” That’s how it always works–again, consistency is key.

Instead, the email link takes me to a page telling me to re-enter my iTunes Store ID and password. What the fuck, Apple? Are you people not just stupid, but insanely stupid? I never input IDs and passwords in response to any email link. Especially at a time when Safari is know to be susceptible to URL spoofing.

Essentially, Apple is demanding that users follow a process which you should never, ever follow because it is exactly the process used by scammers to harvest your private information–exactly like they did just a few months ago. Simply on a matter of principle, I refuse to follow that process. Yes, the chances of a scammer sending me a phishing email to the right email address just after I secured my account to that address are exceedingly slim–but anyone who takes security seriously–and I take my iTunes Store account security very seriously–you simply do not enter a password like that in response to an email someone sent you. Even if the link appears legit and the URL seems legit, you never know when scammers are going to find a way to make it look that way.

What Apple should have done is simply accepted the coded email response, like everyone else. Or, if they have such a hard-on to get your iTunes Store ID and password confirmed, do it within an app or again, a site the user navigates to.

But to force users, not once but twice, to follow a route that makes them wide open to malware and phishing attacks in the future?

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Newt is pissed off because Fox News is biased:

During a meeting with 18 Delaware Tea Party leaders here on Wednesday, Newt Gingrich lambasted FOX News Channel, accusing the cable network of having been in the tank for Mitt Romney from the beginning of the Republican presidential fight. …

“I think FOX has been for Romney all the way through,” Gingrich said during the private meeting … at Wesley College. “In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than FOX this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of FOX, and we’re more likely to get distortion out of FOX. That’s just a fact.”

He’s OK with the network being obsessively biased in favor of conservatives, but is pissed when they are unfair to him. We all know that the man’s not such an idiot that he actually believes Fox is “fair and balanced.” I mean, if the man seriously thinks that Fox News is usually less politically biased than any other network, he’d have to be the blindest dumbass ever. Which he’s not. Which tags him as a whining hypocrite.

Another category to file it under: “Waaahhhhh.” Or, “Irony’s a Bitch.”

Nobody in the “liberal” media is going to ask it, and certainly no one from the Obama camp will… but exactly how hard was being a stay-at-home mother for Ann Romney?

Did she clean the house or wash the dishes? Or even cook?

Almost certainly not. In 2010, for example, the Romneys reported have no fewer than four domestic servants, with reports of many more at other times.

Did she take care of the family finances, as many spouses do?

Incredibly unlikely, not with Romney’s fortune. She did probably not delve into finance any further than using credit cards, and probably did not even review the statements.

Did Ann Romeny have to take a second job not as a career choice, but as a means of keeping the family afloat? Did they ever have to worry about health care, or maintain family budgets and the like?

Of course not.

An “anonymous source” claims that the Romney family never used nannies or au pairs, though claiming this through an unnamed surrogate is hardly indicative of wanting to go on the record for such.

Still, even if Ann Romney had no help raising the kids, she would have been free of any other work that stay-at-home mothers are typically faced with.

This is not to say that it wasn’t work–five kids, I am sure, are a handful just by themselves. Nor am I knocking Ann Romney for taking advantage of their wealth to get help; I might have done the same thing. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But to insinuate that Ann Romney worked as hard, or even half as hard, and the majority of mothers today, is, frankly, an insult to all mothers who work their asses off and then some. To equivocate Ann Romney’s total financial security and use of a household staff to mothers who have to take on outside work to make ends meet and do all the household chores in addition to raising the kids is, frankly, something that would tick me off were I a mother of children in middle- or lower-class America. To claim their mantle and take on the role of exhausted mom victimized by that nasty Hilary Rosen, is, at a minimum, disingenuous.

But then, what about the GOP and Romney campaigns these days which is not?

Republicans most recently alienated women by fighting furiously against allowing contraception to be covered under new insurance plans, and famously denying a woman the chance to speak in Congress on the issue, whilst giving their full attention to a panel comprised entirely of men, all of them religious authorities. This was their statement: women’s health is all about religion, which is ruled by men. When the Democrats got their one female panel member to speak separately, Rush Limbaugh, the Voice of the Right Wing, called her a slut and a whore for suggesting contraception be covered by private health plans. Called to denounce the slurs, the presumed GOP presidential nominee only said that “slut” and “whore” were “not the language I would have used,” clearly implying that he supported the general sentiment.

Even more disturbing are recent right-wing efforts to force women, even rape victims, to undergo a form of rape before they are allowed to undergo an abortion, a legal procedure. This as part of a larger campaign to deny women reproductive rights, a campaign with a history of maligning women.

None of this is new. Conservatives have always fought against women’s civil rights, from suffrage to the ERA to the Lily Ledbetter Act. Feminists, who want nothing more than to allow women to choose whatever they want to do–including stay-at-home motherhood–and to receive equal treatment as men in doing so, have found themselves viciously attacked and dehumanized by right-wingers, reduced to an ugly stereotype and cast as villains against many of the very things they fight to defend.

The conservative, Republican “war on women” has been a longstanding, entrenched battle taken up willfully by the right wing, whose policy and language have been filled with rhetoric which, at best, misunderstands women, and, all too often at worst, is openly hostile to them.

So, according to Romney–famous for not understanding women, or taking up their causes, or speaking to them in a non-condescending manner–according to him, the real war on women is coming from the Obama camp. The two main pieces of evidence? A statistic wholly unrelated to Obama’s policies and actions, and a deliberately misinterpreted quote from a woman wholly unrelated to Obama save that she occupies the same half of the political spectrum–a quote which Obama, his administration, and even his wife all immediately condemned, no less.

The statistics? Technically true in that most net job loss has been among women, but false in that Obama has anything at all to do with that. In fact, ironically, most job losses for women have been in education and government–and Obama actually tried hard to save these precise jobs, but Republicans stripped the bill and were the deciding factor in many of these job losses. Not to mention that Republicans have always been hostile to educators and government workers, even attacking Democrats for trying to hire more people in these areas.

And yet, this is not just supposed to be an equivalency, but proof that Obama is more hostile to women than conservatives are.

You have to admire the balls on conservatives, not just to lie, but to lie as big as that.

The recent case of Trayvon Martin brought an interesting parallel to my attention: that of Yoshi Hattori, the young Japanese exchange student shot and killed by a Baton Rouge homeowner who mistook him for an intruder. In both cases, the victim was an innocent young man. In both cases, there was a state law on the books giving ordinary gun owners permission to shoot people they believed to be criminals. In both cases, there was a media firestorm which failed to give fully accurate descriptions of the events in question.

However, in both cases, the most significant factor, at least to my reckoning, was that the men who wielded the guns failed to act responsibly. Neither did what they were supposed to do. Rodney Peairs, the man who shot Yoshi Hattori, had a right to defend his home–but he violated that precept when he unnecessarily stepped outside his home to actively confront the “intruders.” No matter how it played out in terms of specifics, George Zimmerman made the same error: instead of holding back and allowing trained professionals to do their job, he pursued Martin, and Martin is now dead as a result. In both cases, the men with guns felt the necessity to confront the people they felt threatened by, no doubt emboldened by the possession of their weapons.

Every right comes with a responsibility. We have a grave misperception about the “right” to bear arms, that this right comes with little or no obligation to that responsibility, save for after the fact. Even for something as mundane as driving a car, we require a person to be well-trained and to pass a specified test. After being licensed, the driver must register their vehicles, and maintain the licensing and registration for as long as they own and operate them. The right to travel freely is held even more sacredly than that of the right to own and carry a gun, and yet no one seems to mind the trouble we are required to go to with car ownership.

Suggest that the same level of training and registration be necessary for firearms–devices inherently far more dangerous, devices designed to kill people–and gun advocates start acting like you’re some kind of fascist or something.

Peairs and Zimmerman both owned guns, and they both assumed a right to step beyond their own bounds and confront people they believed to be criminals. That is an explosive combination that will result in the deaths of innocent people. Peairs required no training to be armed in his home; Zimmerman only needed to take a few hours of gun safety courses before he was allowed to walk the streets armed. If either received training which firmly emphasized that they retreat from confrontation instead of seek it out, it certainly did not take.

In my mind, Zimmerman is guilty. Not because I know how the specifics played out, that Martin did not assault him, or anything else. Instead, it was because Zimmerman was the one holding a gun, he did not need to pursue Martin (the 911 call made that clear), and so he bore responsibility.

I blogged extensively on the Yoshi Hattori case back in 2003 because I felt that it had been wildly misrepresented in the media. Some commenters took issue with me because they assumed that I did not hold Peairs responsible for the shooting death of Hattori. This is because I represented the case realistically, and in detail, from Peairs’ point of view, making it clear how he believed that he and his family were actually in jeopardy, and even out in the carport, how he believed that he had given fair warning and had reason to believe the person approaching him was criminal in nature. Nevertheless, I made the strong point that Peairs was fully responsible, and that responsibility stemmed from his decision to open his door, step outside, and confront people he thought were criminals. The moment he did so, he sealed his fate, and bore responsibility for what ensued. The right thing to do would have been to make sure the doors and windows were locked, maintain vigil within the house, and wait for trained professionals to arrive.

There are reasons why they are trained: it is not a trivial matter to confront possible suspects with arms. Police train quite seriously to make that decision responsibly; ordinary citizens cannot be expected to act with the same level of judgment, no matter what they believe themselves capable of. By taking a minimal NRA gun course (which may have had little more than target practice and instruction in safe handling and cleaning of firearms), Zimmerman gained the ability to carry a concealed weapon. As for being a “neighborhood watch captain,” it was only because he was the only one to volunteer. However, his “neighborhood watch” was not one of the thousands of official watch groups or police-trained watch organizations which require background checks, interviews, and 60 hours of training–all of which require strict adherence to rules. Zimmerman, with an apparent checkered past in terms of his temper and work in security, was apparently just waved in to that position by a certain number of neighbors.

This is fully legal, though. And that’s a big part of the problem: as a society which venerates gun rights over safety, we allow and even encourage this idiocy.

We have states where legislatures pass laws which allow people to be armed in bars. I mean, really, how stupid can you get? Pass a law which specifically says that you can go to an establishment which sells an intoxicant which impairs your judgment, and carry a lethal weapon while you’re at it? What, was there are shortage of armed drunks somewhere? What possible reason could there be for such idiocy? The same bars are probably required to take measures to make sure that you do not go out and drive drunk–but the lawmakers thought it wise to encourage the same people to go armed?

This is indicative of a culture which believes that gun possession and use are sacrosanct, and believe there should be no barriers whatsoever to that right.

There is a legal right to keep and bear arms. I strongly hold that this right is not enshrined in the Second Amendment, as is widely believed, but in the Ninth Amendment. However, where the right is written matters little. What matters is that no right comes without responsibility. You may wield rights, but not to the point where they infringe upon the rights of others. And to let a virtually untrained random citizen go on the streets armed thinking he’s some kind of vigilante cop is, almost by definition, a violation of the rights of all people who walk those streets, as their lives are in danger–far more than if an unlicensed driver got behind the wheel of an SUV and drove around your neighborhood. You would feel extremely nervous if you knew that were happening–why not the same with untrained people carrying arms around? Especially when the person carrying the gun is more likely than usual to have a sense of vigilantism and an inflated perception of his judgment in using his firearm.

Anyone who wants to buy a gun for home protection should be required to take at the very least a gun safety course, to store the weapon safely, and keep licensed and registered all weapons in their possession (spare me the “what if a new Hitler rises” bullshit). Anyone wishing to leave their home armed should be required to take extensive training and testing designed specifically for that purpose (not minimal generic safety courses), at the very least as much as is done with cars.

As for Zimmerman, he bore responsibility the moment he walked out with a gun and decided to confront the stranger he saw. He claims that he did not confront, but was blindsided by Martin–an incredible unlikelihood considering what we know, and a story that sounds like it was suggested by a family attorney familiar with the stand-your-ground law more than it was an accurate and truthful telling of how events unfolded that night.

Like Peairs, Zimmerman armed himself and then went out to find bad guys despite having no training qualifying him to do so. In my mind, that is what makes him guilty in the most general sense.

If you carry a weapon, then you must answer to a higher level of responsibility.

Kind of hard to deny that Romney’s lying like a bastard when videos like these stack the lies against video proof that they are lies.

The one is more of a he-said-he-said, but still makes the point. “Attacking success,” “apologizing for success” my ass. Pure and utter fiction.

The “new government-centered society” is another recent meme they’re pushing, and just as bogus. They’re really trying to create a public animosity for any government program that does not benefit the wealthy, hoping that it will take root strongly enough so that people will, in the end, condone the deconstruction of Medicare and Social Security, which is really what they’re talking about–and which are anything but “new.” Obviously they believe that if they blame it all on Obama, it’ll be easier to take down. If they’re smooth enough about it, the people cheering for them won’t even know that they’ve been suckered to remove their own health care and pension funding, nor that in the end, their taxes will go up as a result, and spending will still increase.

Iraq did not have any WMD. It was not really any threat to us, aside from possible oil price fluctuations (which the war has helped cause anyway). So the only real benefit was to take out Saddam Hussein, who was not really much of a threat, and actually had a role in stabilizing a powder keg of a nation. Yep, he was a bloody dictator and probably a pretty damned evil monster, but also not too much better or worse than a lot of other dictators around the world, and in that particular region, who we have not removed.

Even in light of the fact that there were no WMD–the putative core reason for the war–many conservatives still say it was worth it, and they would have done it all over again.

How about the cost? A minimum of $1.9 trillion, roughly $6100 for each individual man, woman and child in the United States. The actual cost is probably going to be higher.

So, was that worth it? Had Bush been honest in 2003 and told you that, just to remove Saddam, that you and every other American would have to chip in $6100 (that’s $24,400 for a family of four, no group discount)–instead of what he did tell us, that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the “$70 billion” cost–would you have merrily chipped in?

How about if he told you that it would cost an additional 4,800 or more American lives? And that it would kill at least 120,000 Iraqis along the way?

Is that worth removing a single bloody tin-pot dictator?

Would you really do that again?

Well, it is finally here–what appears to be the first fairly large infestation of malware on Macs. We expected this, and there will doubtlessly be more. It looks like it is a fairly strong infestation, though it still represents only a small, even tiny fraction on the threat Windows users face every day. It’s also still just a trojan, not a virus or a worm (none for the Mac have ever been found), but appears to be more successful than any previous attack–maybe. If you use a Mac, it is naturally best to check (details below)–but it is also reasonable to have certain doubts about the stories being circulated. Let me give you my own experience on this.

My Own Experience with the Attack

About a week to two weeks ago, I started noticing that every day or two, I would, upon visiting some of my regular web sites, get inexplicably redirected to one of two weird sites. One was a “femalebodyinspector” site, another seemed to be a bogus UStream site (“ustreambesttv”). Both sites had a similar attribute: they had TLDs (top level domains, like “.com” or “.co.jp”) of “rr.nu”–which I had never seen before.

Upon looking into it, I found it was a WordPress hack–one or two blogs I visited regularly were, at least temporarily, hacked with this code that caused them to redirect to the “rr.nu” sites. Having suffered from the “Pharma” WordPress hack myself, I figured it was no more than an attempt to direct web traffic and get various ad revenues. Satisfied that it was not something wrong with my machine, I moved on. About a week ago, I stopped getting the redirects, and figured that the sites I visit had cleared out the hack.

FlashBack, and What It Is

However, now we’re hearing about something much wider, something called the Flashback trojan. Apparently, once you are, by whatever agent, redirected to one of these sites (the “rr.nu” TLD seems the best indicator), your browser may be prompted to automatically download a program which will then try to trick you into giving it your admin password–but even if you don’t give it, the trojan could still run in a limited manner.

It is reported that, once installed, it could attempt to harvest passwords or other confidential information, and may also use you computer as part of a “botnet”–a collection of many compromised computers (often referred to as “zombie computers”) to send spam, participate in swarming attacks on targeted web sites (DDoS), or other unpleasant endeavors. If your computer has been so compromised, you may never even be aware of it–the aim of the hacker is not to disrupt your computer, but to add its power to their network, and collect data on you in the meantime. Disrupting your computer’s operation would alert you and make the malware useless to them.

Apple has released patches to prevent this attack (go to “Software Update” in your Apple menu), but these patches only prevent new attacks after installation, and do not clean up an infected computer.

Are You infected? What Should You Do?

To find out if your computer is affected, you may wish to download and run the “Flashback Checker” app, or, if you prefer a more hands-on approach, follow these instructions (the desirable outcome is to get “does not exist” for both checks).

If your computer is infected, then you can disable the malware (instructions here, but they are not simple to follow), but cannot (at this time–an automated app is inevitable sometime) fully delete it short of a clean re-install of your OS and software. That means backing everything up; making sure you have all your installers, settings, and passwords in order; erasing the hard drive; re-installing the OS and software; replacing all your documents from the backup; and re-inputting all settings and passwords. Which, by the way, is something you should do every year or two anyway. If you have the time and haven’t done this in the past few years, you may want to do it anyway, even if your Mac is clean.

Whether or not your Mac is clean, you should install the updates from Apple. It might also be a good idea to disable Java on your browser in any case (for Safari, open Safari Preferences, click on the Security tab, and deselect the “Enable Java”), or even for your whole computer (see that, as well as Chrome & Firefox procedures as well, on this page). You may also want to start using antivirus software (Sophos and ClamXav are free), but no antivirus is perfect. Though this particular trojan would have been stopped were ClamXav installed, just by its own procedure.

The Story Being Told: Is It Believable?

The trojan is in fact real; there is no doubt about that. The question is, how widespread is it, what are the chances of any one person’s infection, and what threat does it represent?

According to the press release provided by an anti-virus software vendor, about 600,000 Macs have been infected by this trojan. However, it should be noted that these people make money selling people antivirus software. Which means that they have a vested interest in scaring the crap out of people with exaggerated reports–something these companies have been doing for years in the Mac community. The evidence for the claim of 600,000 Macs infected has not been presented, and is being treated with suspicious caution at the present time.

Was I Infected?

So, is my Mac infected since I was redirected to one of those sites? As it turns out, no–I ran the Flashback Checker app and got a clean bill of health, after running the terminal code as well. But if I was redirected to that infectious web site, then why is it that I’m clean?

Apparently, being a nerd helps. Remember, the people running this thing don’t want to be detected, and we nerds tend to be more cautious and apt to catch stuff like that. As a result, this particular malware performs a check before it attempts to install, and if it finds certain software, it self-destructs, it aborts and deletes itself. The software it looks for includes Xcode (Apple’s developer software which allows you to write apps), Little Snitch (an app that monitors activity in and out of your computer and alerts you to anything untoward), any antivirus software, or any other monitor of web traffic. Anyone with any of this software would be more apt to discover the breach and thus defeat the infestation, on their own computers and (as is hoped by this post and others) elsewhere. I have Xcode installed, and thus averted infection.

However, as I did get redirected to those sites, I can attest to the fact that this is in fact real–though I cannot attest to the claims that (a) anywhere near 600,000 Macs have actually been infected, or (b) that the infections actually mean that anything malicious is being done as a result.

What to Do: Bullet List

Of course, the best idea is to be as safe as possible. Here’s what to do:

• Get the “Flashback Checker” app and run it.
• If you are infected, and if you can follow instructions on how to use Terminal and manage files, then follow the trojan de-activation procedure.
• Whether or not you are infected, run your Mac’s software update from the Apple menu and install the most recent updates, if you have not already.
• Turn off Java on your Mac unless you have a special need for it.
• DO NOT update ANY software which you did not initiate the update check for–if an app seems to alert you for an upgrade, then close the alert and either open the app itself and do an update from within the app, or navigate manually to the official web site and download the upgrade yourself.
• Do not enter your admin password unless you are sure that it is actually required, and that you understand why.
• If you wish, you can install antivirus on your Mac; free versions are here and here .

I would be very much interested to hear if you found an infection–please let me know in the comments.