Let’s say that a Democratic candidate wins the 2008 election, and, for a while at least, we still have soldiers on the ground in Iraq. Will Republicans lay off criticizing the president, especially on war issues, during that time?
No, I don’t think so either.
After Fox seemed to Do the Right Thing and broadcast a longer and more specific apology for showing the Conyers clip instead of Jefferson, they are back to being idiots with an explanation of what happened:
Fox pinned the error on a young staff member in an Associated Press report Tuesday night.“Fox blamed the mistake on a 22-year-old production assistant hurriedly grabbing a wrong videotape. Fox’s Washington bureau chief, Brian Wilson, said he was mortified by the error,” the news service reported.
Okay, let’s work this one out. The error was made by a “22-year-old production assistant” who “hurriedly grabb[ed] a wrong videotape.” First of all, stating the age of the person raises a tiny red flag–it’s as if they’re using that to explain the error by implying it was some inexperienced newbie, as if they are trying a wee bit too hard to place blame. But the real flags go up when you think about how this could have played out.
The production assistant hurriedly grabs the wrong videotape. Think about it: someone tells the assistant to get a tape showing Jefferson. The assistant runs to the archive and somehow grabs the wrong tape. But how does he make such an error? Are the archive tapes of black Democratic representatives in the House all bunched together or something? Clearly, the “hurriedly” part makes it clear that the assistant did not sit and view tapes, so that he himself made the error in identifying the person on the tape. So how did the assistant make the error?
This is clarified, sort of, by the on-air explanation as reported by the AP:
On Wednesday, Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum explained to viewers that a production assistant picked up a tape that had been identified as a meeting about Jefferson. The picture showed Conyers.
OK. So now we are supposed to believe that the assistant took the wrong videotape because it was identified wrongly (identified how–by a label or by someone telling the assistant?). So, how does that make this the fault of a “22-year-old production assistant”? Even if it was the assistant’s job to review the tape, the person who initially misidentified the tape should be the one to blame.
All of this only removes the explanation one iteration and does not explain how the original mixup was made. The tape was not only obviously of Conyers, but the fact that Gonzales was there should have tipped off even the most inexperienced of interns.
So we are back to the original question: how did Fox News mix up one black representative with another? That’s the question Fox is trying not to answer, and likely for good reason.
Read about one conservative saying that banning “partial birth abortions” is a good thing because the remaining legal alternatives have a higher risk of injuring or killing the mother.
Meanwhile the GOP chief from Arkansas said that “we need some attacks on American soil like we had on [9/11]…” in order to understand why Bush should be appreciated.
Here’s a bold move by McCain in the Republican debate:
I’m going to give you a little straight talk. This war was very badly mismanaged. And Americans have made great sacrifices, some of which were unnecessary because of this mismanagement of the war.
What courage! In the face of being identified as tied to a failing, greatly unpopular administration, McCain says he’s going to give “straight talk” and then promptly blames the administration. How brave of him to be so candid about someone else’s mistakes, especially when McCain gains personally by distancing himself from them. He should get a freedom medal for that!
More brilliance from the Republican debate: Mitt Romney channels George Bush:
Well, the question is, kind of, a non sequitur, if you will. What I mean by that — or a null set — that is that if you’re saying let’s turn back the clock and Saddam Hussein had opening up his country to IAEA inspectors and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein therefore not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn’t be in the conflict we’re in.But he didn’t do those things, and we knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in.
Note for those people who have already forgotten: Hussein did let the inspectors in, and they didn’t find any WMD. Nevertheless, the Washington Post identified as “gaffe of the night” Governor Huckabee’s misstatement that the previous day was Ronald Reagan’s birthday. Yep, that’s a lot worse.
And this from the Bush FCC chairman, on a court ruling that “non-literal,” “fleeting expletives” were not actionable offenses that the FCC could clamp down on:
If ever there was an appropriate time for Commission action, this was it. If we can’t restrict the use of the words “f * * *” and “s * * *” during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want.
I know that it is in reference to the swear words in dispute, but nevertheless, the Bush FCC chairman expressing dismay that “Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want” is, you have to admit, both fitting to administration policy and, most likely, despite the immediate context, expressive of an ultimate agenda beyond the scourge of potty mouth.
In a rather bizarre instance of irony, however, the network that allowed the words to be uttered–the aforementioned “Hollywood”–is none other than, you got it: Fox.
However, probably the biggest shame among conservatives this week is the fact that, of all people, Scooter Libby was showered with letters sent to his judge pleading for lenience in his sentencing. These letters came from people like Henry Kissenger, Richard Perle, General Richard Meyers, General Peter Pace, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and a host of other conservative luminaries. In their letters, they pleaded for the judge to go easy of Libby because he’s such an admirable human being.
Now, let’s think about this. Scooter Libby probably wasn’t the mastermind of this whole thing, but he wasn’t a pure fall guy either–he was at the very least in the thick of it all. We’re talking about someone who, in order to support a sham war that has brought this country to near ruin, to support a president in a shameful lie, as an act of petty political retribution, took the identity of a covert CIA agent working to find WMD, and released it publicly–thereby ruining the agent’s life’s work, derailing a part of our own national security, and putting the lives of people the agent ran in danger. Libby helped destroy the work of a CIA agent working against WMD so his president could lie and get us into a futile war.
And in his defense comes out virtually all of neocon Washington, high-profile people arguing that this is a man of great virtue and high moral standing who does not deserve to be sent to jail.
Lawrence O’Donnell makes an excellent point, showing that the injustice here goes even deeper:
Now I’m waiting for every one of these letter writers, especially Kissinger, especially Rumsfield, especially Pace, I’m waiting for their letters to the court martials that are going on right now in the United States, young Marines who were put in impossible situations in Iraq, Keith, who find themselves on trials now that will jeopardize their freedom for the rest of their lives because of split seconds decisions they made in a war that they should not have been in.When those kids get sentenced in their court martials, if they do, in this country, is General Peter Pace going to write a letter to their sentencers about what kind of mercy they deserve? Is Henry Kissinger who never ever saw a shot fired in his life, never spent a moment in battle, but was a champion of sending soldiers into battle in this country and to their deaths, is he going to write a letter asking for mercy for these American Marines who found themselves in this impossible war situation in Iraq, and now find themselves on trial for their lives? Who are the letters going to come from for them?
Of course, by now we should all be aware of the fact that people like this don’t give a rat’s ass about the soldiers, and would happily let them rot away in prison, especially if it helped to take heat off of the conservative cause. These people see our soldiers as disposable cannon fodder, good for little else than serving the neocon cause.
These conservatives have no shame. And to top it all off, virtually everyone expects George W. Bush to pardon Libby before he serves even a day of his sentence. And that will probably happen.
That’s how long before Jobs’ keynote at the WWDC, and that’s how long before we find out, at long last, what the hell those “top secret” features are. On Apple’s 30th anniversary, and ten months since Jobs’ cryptic remarks about hiding secret features from Microsoft, and after delaying Leopard supposedly to concentrate on the iPhone, Leopard had damn well better have some fantastic stuff waiting in the wings. If not, then Apple’s stock will decline by a lot in a single day–not a disaster, as the stock has risen dramatically over the past month and may even need correction, and then the iPhone release may help recoup whatever losses could come.
However, I am guessing that there are some actual “top secret” features that may actually be at least somewhat spectacular. That’s the general expectation. The question is, what will those features be?
The most-expected feature will be Core Animation utilized in the OS at a fundamental level–that is, animation available everywhere. Knowing Apple, that would not mean that your Mac would suddenly become the same flashing, graphically shouting morass that Flash ads turn your favorite web sites into. It would mean classy, subtle, smooth, real-world-imitating animation, animation like we see on the iPhone. In fact, many believe that the new animation features we see on the iPhone are part of what’s coming to Leopard. One example is how scrolling works–you scroll, and gravity seems to take over; when the end of the scroll is reached, there’s a small rebound. Little touches like that which make the interface appear more lifelike.
However, animation alone seems a bit lame for such a huge build-up, no matter how well-executed it may be. But animation could be one part of something that Apple has been urged to do for some time now: FTFF, or “Fix the Fracking Finder,” paraphrased. This could be as subtle as fixing the dozens of small but annoying glitches in the Finder interface, or as overt as changing the interface style completely, as was supposed in a theory that Apple was switching to a “windowless” interface.
A second theory has resurfaced recently, one that personally I don’t think is likely: that Apple is readying the Mac so it will be able to run Windows applications without installing Windows. While this is certainly possible, it is unlikely for at least a few good reasons. First, this would require massive changes to the OS, adopting all manner of Windows APIs, adopting clashing styles of the two OS’s to work together smoothly within a single interface, and then dealing with more criticism than praise when not everything works well, at least at first. Not to mention that Apple’s workload would increase as they would have to keep updating this feature whenever changes in Windows or its application set evolved. Unless Apple has, in complete secrecy, pulled off a programming miracle, I doubt that this is really going to happen.
Second, Apple has benefitted well from Parallels and has voiced public support for them, even to the point of saying that they do not plan to supplant it. Parallels could well be devastated by an announcement that Leopard could do its job instead, and without the cost of either buying Parallels or Windows XP. Of course, Apple has screwed developers before by incorporating their software’s abilities into the OS (Dashboard stealing Konfabulator’s gig was one such example), and Apple has in the past denied things that turned out to be true (such as building Mac OS X versions that run on Intel). But this instance would almost be going too far, as Parallels has so far been a major boost to the Mac since the Intel switch.
Third, this is not a rumor based upon observations or leaks–it is pure speculation, and that tends not to bear out too well in the end.
On the other hand, there was that very odd rumor that Apple delayed Leopard to make it compatible with Vista; making the Mac run Windows apps natively could have mutated into that chestnut. And there is no denying that, with all the flaws that would be inherent in such a revolutionary change, such a feature would in a single stroke shoot down one of the biggest criticisms of the Mac platform–specifically, that it doesn’t run “most software.” (As if anyone ever criticized Windows for not running software made for other platforms.)
And then there is the possibility that Apple has something completely different, completely unknown up its sleeve. They certainly have kept the lid on tight concerning this story. Less than a week from the event, and no clear idea exists as to what is coming up. Any way you look at it, it should be interesting–and for me, a good reason to stay up until 4 am in the morning to read about it. And yes, I know I’m a total geek for it.
Here is Fox News’ “apology” for “mistakenly” running the “wrong footage” yesterday, showing John Conyers instead of Bill Jefferson.
Several things to note here. First, the statement is so brief and, as Conyers himself put it, lackluster, that it in itself is almost an insult for that reason. If you blinked, you could have missed this statement. In fact, fully half of the statement simply recaps the story about a Democrat being indicted. The “apology” part takes all of five seconds.
Second, such an apology requires a special note to any person who is shown and labeled as corrupt and up on charges, but who is actually innocent. Not mentioning Conyers by name or apologizing directly to him was a grievous insult in itself, as if to say that no one specific was wronged.
Third, such an apology usually focuses on what was wrong about the error, and at least tries to dispel the belief that there was any intention behind it. Fox’s statement barely covered this, as one could infer from the word “mistakenly” that they did not intend to show what they did. But a proper apology would at least touch on the easily-inferred racial undertones and stated that such were not intended and no one should take offense. Not that such a statement would be believed, but at least it would be proper.
Fourth, the briefest possible “explanation,” that the footage was shown “mistakenly,” is hardly an explanation. Normal errors of this type are when footage of an upcoming story is queued up ready to go, and someone in the control room accidentally pushes the wrong button and the video is shown out of sequence with the commentary. However, this “error” was of a completely different order. The Conyers footage was not for any pending story. Instead, the Conyers footage had to be retrieved from archives where it by practice is carefully labeled and notated, and then reviewed and edited manually to select the appropriate small clip to be aired. Which means that either the clip was badly mislabeled and nobody in the review process caught the error (nor in the broadcast itself since it took a full day to note it) or it was not an error at all. And since, from Fox’s history and its well-known bias, it is easy to believe that it was an intentional jab at Democrats and blacks, a more detailed explanation and disclaimer was at the very least appropriate.
Of course, the reason for the lack of a real apology here is pretty clear: Fox would have to admit to… well, to being Fox News. They would have to apologize directly to a Democrat, which would probably cause half the Fox News executive staff to suffer brain hemorrhages. They would have to publicly recognize that something they did was racially offensive, which would dredge up all sorts of equivalent behavior on their part. Or they would at least have had to touch peripherally on the matter that they were either intentionally racist and biased, or that they simply can’t tell black people apart. You can bet that on another network, someone–perhaps even the newscaster–would have quickly recognized that it wasn’t Jefferson, if not because Conyers is so well-known and recognizable, then because Jefferson would not have been anywhere near Alberto Gonzales. But, yet again, we have to remember: this is Fox News we’re talking about.
As a side note, YouTube has just made it a lot easier to embed their videos when viewed on a non-YouTube site. They added some Javascript goodies that allow for choosing related videos in a very Mac-Dock-like fashion, and at the end, an easy-to-use copy-the-url-or-embedded-code feature. Very nice. In the past, I had to click the “share” button, then change the URL from “share” to “watch,” and then grab the embedded code from there. This is much easier.
Watch this video segment, via C&L, if you haven’t seen it already. It lays out a detailed chronology of how the Bush administration used terror alerts, terror arrests, and other terror-related events to control the news cycle, dampening both positive attention to Democrats and negative attention to the administration.
Josh Marshall has the goods on Fox in this YouTube segment of TPM News. Essentially, he points out two incidents of what seem to be racist jabs–at the very least, errors based on a racist mindset, at the worst, intentionally racist pieces with political intent mixed in. The first is a piece from some weeks ago when Fox News ran a piece on alleged voter fraud. The voter fraud issue is pretty well established as fraud in itself, baseless accusations aimed at creating ‘remedial’ measures which would disenfranchise minorities, who vote predominantly Democratic. Fox News’ piece had stock footage of voters at a polling place, all of whom just “happened” to be black. Considering how many randomly chosen polling places in the U.S. would have only black voters present, and considering the unspoken race angle inherent in the right-wing cause, it stretches credulity to ask that this be a coincidence.
Then Marshall moves on to the most recent Fox News clip, one in which Fox is making a huge deal out of the Bill Jefferson case, talking it up as if it were the biggest scandal in recent memory (one could go on about how their use of “counts” against Jefferson relative to Cunningham is not a valid standard for measuring the breadth and width of a scandal, but that would be a bit off-topic here). But that’s just Fox News, you can expect that. What was notable about this piece is that when the “news” network switched to video footage of Bill Jefferson… it wasn’t Bill Jefferson. It was John Conyers, another black representative.
At first, you might forgive Fox because the shots are in a crowd from a bit of a distance, and at that level of detail, if you weren’t paying close attention, you might get the two mixed up. But then you realize several points which make you realize that excuse is too lame to accept. First of all, a news network should be correctly labeling and indexing all of its stock footage; Fox, apparently, does this only to the extent of noting “this is a shot of some black Democrat in Congress.” Second, the footage does not stay zoomed out; after a few seconds, it closes in and you can see very clearly that it’s not Jefferson and is indeed Conyers. Third, the footage includes someone holding a sign saying “RESIGN” which seems at first to be chiding “Jefferson” to resign–until you see “Jefferson” talking to someone who turns around and clearly is Roberto Gonzales. The “Resign” sign was aimed at him, not Jefferson/Conyers.
When you think about it, there are only two explanations: one, Fox News can’t tell black people apart and have a lousy indexing system and can’t tell one video event from another despite obvious clues… or two, they intentionally put the Conyers footage in as a racist political dig at Conyers–another riff on the “black Democrats are criminals” theme. Either way, there are clear racial undertones and practices which are unacceptable for even the most shoddy of news organizations. Not that this is the first time Fox has mislabeled or put in the wrong footage or labels somewhere–they branded Mark Foley a “Democrat,” for example, and have had a string of “errors” which always happen to dig at Democrats in one fashion or another.
And right-wingers wonder why Democratic candidates don’t want this network hosting their debates….
Anyway, watch the Marshall piece.
Jeeezus, I had forgotten about this. Applying for Internet service in Japan can sometimes be an incredibly time-consuming and labyrinthine process. Having just suffered through it again, I now remember having done this a few times before. What should be a simple process of filling out a web form with telephone assistance–choose this, put this info here, etc.–is made into an excruciatingly painful chore. I was on the phone with KDDI, talking to their reps for two hours and fifty minutes. That does not count the half hour I spent talking with their tech people before that or the twenty minutes after. As a result, I am now pretty sure that I have submitted an application, but I have no idea whether they gave me the right service or how it is going to work.
The building I am moving into is supposed to be equipped with the latest Internet capabilities; as you can see in the photo below, there are three LAN ports built into the wall, one modular phone jack, and a special direct fiber optic connector. But from what I gathered talking to the KDDI people, they will bypass all of that cool new techie stuff and give me the exact same old-style telephone-line connection that I presently have in my aging pre-fiber mansion in the sticks.
None of this makes sense. However, nobody seems to know anything about this. I tried asking the Vanguard Tower sales staff; they said to ask at the orientation. At the orientation, they said to ask the administrative office. At the administrative office, they said to call KDDI. And KDDI seems to know jack. They instead led me through the signup process, by the end of which I had not been told what speed our connection is nor how much we will be paying. I had to ask about those details, and only get the answer for the speed–and later was told that even that wasn’t right. So I am still not sure who was telling me the accurate information and who was not. I have signed up for service and I don’t know anything about it. Swell.
KDDI has to be given credit for one thing: they do try to provide full English-language service. They get it right with the tech support–they speak English pretty well. But in sales, for some reason they can’t hire English speakers and train them in how things work; instead, they hire translators. Bizarre–translators should cost more, and are certainly less efficient than direct communication–but that’s how they do it. And this time (like all the other times, actually), the process was glacial. Probably 80% of the stuff I could have done a lot faster by myself just in Japanese, but the other 20% would have made it all impossible. So we use the translator, and as a result, some issues that should have taken half a minute to resolve suddenly became twenty-minute chores. I sat there looking at what should have been a simple choice, ask a clear question–but then the translator for some reason chooses not to simply translate my question, but instead to repeat five minutes of backstory on my situation, and the sales person then launches into what seems to be a scripted spiel only tangentially connected to my question, which the translator then brings back to me–which does not answer the question I asked. So I ask again, emphasizing the simplicity and asking for the translator to simply ask the question, which half the time would result in a more direct questioning and answer, but not always. At other times, the sales clerk and translator would get tied up with irrelevant details, like would I be getting an NTT land line installed, when it was clearly not required, but they would refuse to move on until I committed to such an answer. This kind of thing happened time and time again, drawing the phone call out far too long. But KDDI can’t be singled out in regards to the difficulties in getting things set up; that seems to be an industry-wide problem.
After getting off from talking with the sales people, I got back on with the technical people and got some things straightened out. The biggest clarification was that we will probably be getting 100 Mbps speeds, despite the sales people saying that only 70 Mbps was available. One operator said that KDDI had not yet installed their equipment in the building, and another said they had. One said I had a choice of plans, another said I did not.
There are likely to be other problems associated with getting a connection, however. As is usually the case with these things, the ISP always insists that it will take three weeks or more between applying for service and getting it. Apparently, it could even be a bit longer in this case because the building is still new. And if that happens, then we might be without Internet service for any amount of time from days to weeks, even longer, in theory at least. During that time, our options are slim: either use dial-up or ADSL, and in either case we’d have to get NTT to activate the land line, which would lose all utility once the fiber optic connection was established. Again, there were conflicting reports; one operator said I could get ADSL on the fiber optic line, though it would be slow and unstable; another said I had to get the land line first. Even worse, they refused to let me sign up for KDDI’s ADSL, instead for some reason insisting that I go to NTT for the service, without clearly explaining why it would be necessary to deal with a second ISP.
But ADSL is not a great option in itself–after all, one has to wait three weeks or more for that to get started as well. Silly me, I just figured that KDDI would have other alternatives available, instead of effectively saying, “We’ll get you connected at some undetermined time, but until then your dark with no options.” I would have an option, though–use outside sources for the Internet. It’ll be just a ten-minute ride in to my school with their network, and there are Internet cafes everywhere in case the school is not open every weekend day.
Maybe someday, using the Internet in Japan will be as simple as choosing options from a menu and having the phone company switch them on more or less immediately. Maybe some places are already like that, though I doubt it. And this is not just a language problem–Sachi had similar travails getting her ADSL line started some months ago, with confused agents and conflicting information, and more. Bottom line is, these people just do not have their act together–and so wasted my entire afternoon on my day off when I could have been getting productive work done.
John McCain showed himself to be pretty damned stupid when he claimed that the streets of Baghdad were safe to stroll through and then, to prove his point, went there with a hundred troops, five helicopters, and a flak jacket. Now that he’s gotten that out of the way, he attended a conference on technology and quickly made an ass of himself there as well.
First of all, he came out against Network Neutrality. You know, the protocol that was probably one of the most responsible for making the Internet successful. The one that has kept the Telecoms from turning the Internet into their private piggy bank, making everyone pay for everything and throwing their weight around worse than Microsoft does.
McCain, a self-described “free trader” and “deregulator” apparently does not understand what the hell “Network Neutrality” is. To be against Network Neutrality is virtually the opposite of free trade on the Internet, allowing a few companies to have constrictive proprietary control over the system. And it’s not “deregulating,” because there’s no tome of regulation or any bureaucracy involved–just a simple rule, that everyone is truly equal and free on the Internet. McCain’s statements were virtually spot-on to the scripts written by the Telecom lobbyists.
But then McCain made an even bigger fool of himself, by saying that he would put Steve Ballmer on his cabinet to advise him on technology issues (apparently unaware that such a cabinet position does not exist), and said he’d consider Ballmer for an ambassadorial position, maybe in China. The latter has been noted as a “joke,” but probably because no one in his or her right mind could believe that a person could be so monumentally stupid as to seriously suggest such a thing. But then, was McCain’s statement about having Ballmer as a technology advisor also a joke? Nobody thinks so, though pretty much everyone sees the idea as ludicrous. Who knows, maybe McCain seriously promoted the idea of Ballmer on his cabinet, then either because of laughter from the audience or an internal realization of how stupid the idea was, then tried to turn it into a joke by mentioning the China spot.
Either way, McCain is poison to technology. The man is dropping like a dead weight–sorry to see after he seemed so enticing in 2000. Either it was a sham then too, or McCain realized that the only way to be taken seriously was to sell out, big time.
So I’m waiting for the details to come out on the latest “terror plot” which was “foiled” by authorities. It’s pretty much inevitable by now: first, the story is released by the government and the media goes wild. Terror plot! Another 9/11! Maybe even bigger than 9/11! Fiendish masterminds!
And then, a week or two later, or maybe even sooner, after all the scare and sensationalism has ebbed, we find out that the “terrorists” were nothing but a bunch of sorry losers who couldn’t attack their own arses with a wad of toilet paper. Like the flakes in Miami who were supposed to be capable of blowing up the Sears Tower, but in reality couldn’t even afford to buy boots, and their only link to al Qaeda was actually an FBI agent who virtually egged them on. Then there was the plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with acetylene torches, an idea that was almost comically unfeasible, and the “Fort Dix Six,” a laughably bad plan which had a small group of meagerly-armed “terrorists” busting into a heavily-armed military base and probably getting shot down before they could say “boo.”
The Columbian Journalism Review wrote a good roundup of the whole phenomenon of the scares:
The Bush administration’s Justice Department has a vested interest in portraying every “plot” it busts as the next 9/11, regardless of how embryonic or feeble. It serves as a distraction from the administration’s failures in Iraq and elsewhere, it perpetuates the state of fear that has served this White House well in recent years, and it justifies the massive Homeland Security bureaucracy. Journalists, meanwhile, are at a decided disadvantage when trying to determine the seriousness — or lack thereof — of the threat, because the government holds all the cards.
And the most recent plot is now showing the same early signs of a “terror plot” that never would actually have come to anything:
Officials viewed the alleged plotters as a credible threat, but sources said they apparently did not have the technical savvy to carry out the plot.One official said the plan “was not technically feasible.” Officials added that the alleged plotters had no explosives and had not yet figured out a way to get some.
One could argue that plotters do not look as menacing in their early planning stages, and it would be foolish to let them get close to actually pulling off an attack. However, the people who have been arrested so far have pretty much all turned out to be buffoons incapable of doing any real damage. Worse, in the few cases where the case may have led to something, like the alleged terrorists making connections to actual terror groups, where the surveillance could have had some value, the Bush administration has jumped the gun and made arrests for publicity’s sake at the expense of following up leads. That’s what happened in the “Water Bottle” terror plot, not to mention that the whole concept of liquid-based binary explosives was unworkable in real life anyway.
Probably that’s the level of credibility that we’ll see in the latest “foiled terror plot,” essentially some “jihadist wannabes” with an elaborate scheme that would never work in practice, inept to the point of being tracked by the feds for years and more or less encouraged by them, and eventually arrested because either they failed to draw any serious leads and/or the administration needed another terror scare to control the latest negative news cycle. That, and Bush recently fell to another low stall in the polls.
The right wing simply can’t stop being enraged by Hollywood! The Hollywood Elite! Actors who try to get involved in politics! Just some of the buzz, all actual quotes: “the ‘Hollywood elite’ are openly hostile to the attitudes, opinions, and values of millions of Americans” … “anti-Americanism and a rejection of traditional morality are positives in the glitter capital of the world” … “The problem with celebrity elitism is not the idiocy of the ideas that are expressed by the stars… but the blindly arrogant expectation that somehow their views deserve to be taken seriously merely because they are famous” … “creators of false images (i.e., movies, TV) live in their heads and their imaginations” … “they can afford, socially and economically, to live like moral reprobates” … “Hollywood should JUST SHUT UP” ….
Wait… Arnold Schwarzenegger could run for president if only we amended the constitution? Fred Thompson is thinking of running now? Really??
HOO-ray for HOL-LYwood!!!!
Sachi and I visited Ikebukuro again before going out to dinner with friends. We looked around the Pororoca supermarket on the first floor of the new building, and found it satisfactory. It had a good supply of meat, poultry, fish, fruit, vegetables, and other assorted goods. No Diet Coke, though–I’ll have to ask them to order some. The prices seemed very reasonable, but then again a lot of the prices were marked down as part of their “opening ceremony” sale. We’ll have to go back in a week or two to see if the prices are still reasonable after the sale ends.
We also tested the walking distance between the building and the station. As measured from leaving the front door to the entrance to the station, it was within the ten to eleven minutes advertised; but if you measure it to the ticket gate, you have to add another minute or two. Not really all that bad, except that none of the route is covered; in rainy weather, it could be kind of a pain in the neck. But mostly for Sachi, who will depend on the train; for me, the scooter would be an acceptable alternative. Hell, it would take me slightly less time to go from the apartment to work on my scooter than it would take to go from my apartment to the station on foot. And it’ll be that much harder for her because where she lives now, she’s used to an eight-minute walk, most of that in a roofed shopping arcade. I’m thinking of giving Sachi a present of taxi tickets, to be used when the rain is bad. I know they exist, I used to use them for company classes, but I don’t know if a regular person can get them. I’ll have to call a taxi company and check.
Sachi and I also sat down and got most of the paperwork done–well, actually, Sachi did most of the paperwork while I sat there not understanding what most of the paperwork even was. Not only does she read and write Japanese way better than me–of course!–but she’s got business experience, and has dealt with this kind of paperwork a lot. A fringe benefit for me from the relationship.
And before I forget, Sachi finalized a deal she’s been working on for some time now: she has just signed on to work for a small company that has been absorbed by a larger cosmetics firm, and negotiated a nice salary from it as well. She starts in maybe three weeks or so. Let’s hope that this new place has a better working environment for her than the job she left before.
Four weeks before moving begins…
When Monica Goodling, a Regent Law School graduate like multitudes of others in the Bush administration, got into legal trouble, she did not hire a lawyer who graduated from Regent’s, a bottom-tier law school–her lawyer graduated from Emory, a top-tier school. That’s what people do–when they need a job done, they try to get the person who is best at what they do. That’s why they hired Goodling–not for her legal credentials, but for her right-wing Christian credentials. But when she needed a lawyer, she hired someone with credentials in Law.
So when you hire a Surgeon General, you want to hire the best person for that job. In a serious administration, that person will be someone who is a serious doctor, a staunch scientist, someone who understands medicine to a tee and knows what is best for the health of Americans. But most of all, it has to be someone in whom you would have absolute confidence, someone you would go to yourself if you had a serious medical condition and needed the best help.
That is not the person that the Bush administration is now considering for the job. In what one would assume is by now a matter of course, they have chosen someone based not on their professionalism or knowledge, instead they have chosen based more strongly on religious and partisan political considerations.
One example: this nominee, James Holsinger, is anti-gay, having voted, as a member of his church’s judicial council, to eject an openly gay pastor from his church. But more to the point is this, found by BarbinMD at DailyKos:
[Holsinger and his wife] founded Hope Springs Community Church in a warehouse at 1109 Versailles Road. Calhoun called it a socially diverse congregation with a “very vital recovery ministry.” It serves the homeless and those with addictions to drugs, alcohol and sex; and it has a Spanish-language Hispanic congregation with its own pastor. […]Hope Springs also ministers to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian, Calhoun said.
“We see that as an issue not of orientation but of lifestyle,” he said. “We have people who seek to walk out of that lifestyle.”
In other words, Holsinger is of the crowd who, with no scientific backing whatsoever, believe that homosexuality is a psychological or moral aberrance which can be cured, reversed.
Holsinger also has less-than-sterling credentials as a medical administrator. While chief medical director of the Department of Veterans Affairs, mismanagement led to the deaths of six patients, and serious problems were found at more than 30 hospitals. Holsinger’s take: the system was “obviously not perfect.”
Well, at least it’s a comfort to know that your doctor can recognize the obvious.
Crooks and Liars has a take on this so good that I almost didn’t make this into a blog post, as it would be superfluous. However, I thought that the quote by Giuliani is more than worth commenting on. Here’s the source quote:
In a potential preview of next fall’s presidential contest, Mr. Giuliani, who is seen as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, directly attacked the leading Democratic candidate, Mrs. Clinton, over a speech she gave Tuesday in New Hampshire bemoaning the return of “robber barons” and promising to pursue “shared prosperity” by increasing taxes on Americans making more than $200,000 a year.“This would be an astounding, staggering tax increase,” Mr. Giuliani told reporters yesterday after a visit to a restaurant on the edge of California’s Silicon Valley. “She wants to go back to the 1990s…. It would hurt our economy. It would hurt this area dramatically. That kind of tax increase would see a decline in your venture capital. It would see a decline in your ability to focus on new technology.”
As C&L rightly points out, this is the kind of tax increase that Bill Clinton executed near the start of his presidency… and we experienced a technology boom, even “irrational exuberance” from investors, which was so successful that we erased the federal budget deficit altogether, a task unthinkable before Clinton. Furthermore, the more level playing field saw to it that the rising tide raised all boats–unlike Reagan’s boom, or Bush’s anemic upswing–and most certainly it did nothing to discourage people from pouring money into research & development of new technologies. According to our experience, we have seen that the kind of tax hike that Hillary is touting is not only not destructive, it is perhaps even essential, as it boosts federal revenue in the least painful way, thus creating the most healthy form of market confidence.
The problem is, Giuliani might have the upper hand with the voters. Even the most constructive tax hike, even when only applied to the richest of the rich, is easily attacked in a way that makes it look like you’re going to raise everyone’s taxes. A corollary to this rule is that you can similarly make everyone believe that a tax cut aimed 99% or even 100% at the rich is something that everybody wants and needs, which is where Bush went and Giuliani will likely follow. It’s the same appeal to fear that the NRA uses when they turn even the most reasonable gun control into a “gun ban.” I hate to say it, but the American people are so easily duped by this kind of scare appeal that it is ludicrously sad.
What Hillary needs to do is follow her husband’s example: don’t say you’re going to raise taxes at all, even on the rich… then do it after you’re elected. I remember in 1992, my conservative landlord in San Francisco (I was an SFSU student then) said that he didn’t like Bill Clinton because he felt Clinton would raise his taxes after he got elected… but later voted for Clinton anyway because he felt that it was the right thing to do, and that a tax hike would help the economy. And he was right.
Interesting that Robert Alan Soloway has three names, just like serial killers or assassins. It’s tempting to group spam kings with those other two professions; while the nature of the one may be far less heinous in some ways than the other two, the one makes up the difference with volume.
I heard people at the office talking about this arrest, in fact, mentioning reports that people might see a drop in the amount of spam they receive since this guy was arrested. I didn’t believe it when I heard it, and that belief is now confirmed. There are just too many spammers out there, and like cockroaches, there are always more where that came from. There will always be more willing to fill the vacuum. After all, it was two years ago that the first big spam arrest was made, sending the creep to jail for nine years (his conviction was upheld), but spam did not ebb then, either.
That does not, of course, mean that we should not go to the trouble and expense of catching these guys, jailing them, and stripping them of all their assets and possessions. On the contrary, we need some form of payback, especially because of the fact that arresting them does not stop spam. I would suggest adding the touch of stripping them naked and forcing them to tap dance in front of large audiences armed with rotting vegetables and water balloons filled with noxious liquids, three times daily. I am pretty sure that this would not constitute cruel and unusual punishment considering their crimes, and there would be not trouble filling the auditorium on a regular basis, and we’d probably get some members of the ACLU and Amnesty International in the crowds.
Not that it’s of any real significance, but round numbers can be strangely fascinating. 1400 days of continuous blogging and counting. It’ll be four straight years in exactly two months, by coincidence. A good thing that Sachiko is patient and understanding of this quirk of mine, and doesn’t begrudge the time it sometimes takes.
Yeah, I remember that too. Heh.
Sam Brownback, one of the Republican contenders for president in 2008, has an op-ed in the New York Times on the topic of evolution. Perhaps he wants to clarify his stand on the issue because he was one of the three Republican candidates who raised his hand when the question “who does not believe in evolution?” was asked. In the op-ed, he says this:
The question of evolution goes to the heart of this issue. If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.
The nod to “microevolution” is creationists’ way of getting past a strong argument in favor of evolution. Creationists sometimes argue that if evolution is real, why don’t we see it happening now? Well, that’s exactly what “microevolution” is. So creationists will dodge, saying, oh, those are small changes. Why haven’t we seen a horse change into an elephant in recorded history?
So they accept “microevolution” as a given, so long as it doesn’t mean that they have to concede that life was formed via evolution. And that shows in the latter half of Brownback’s paragraph, when he says that he accepts evolution only so long as it does not contradict his theology. Of course, he and many others ignore the view held by many religious people that evolution is God’s way of creating life and it did not all have to happen within a six-day time span. That would satisfy Brownback’s “place for a guiding intelligence,” but it’s pretty clear that Brownback is lying here and his real judge is either the six-day myth, or it is his right-wing Christian voter base that he feels it necessary to please. Either way, Brownback is guilty of an either-or fallacy here in rejecting what I suppose he would call “macroevolution.”
But the distinction between “micro” and “macro” evolution is in itself no more than a disingenuous method of denying facts in evidence. Both “types” of evolution are in fact the same thing; one happens over small periods of time, the other over long periods. The distinction, however, allows creationists to dismiss the process as it happens before their eyes by claiming that it’s not real because they don’t see the process as it happens over millions of years. It’s kind of like seeing a watermelon fall past your 30th-story window, then getting up and looking out the window to see it scattered over the sidewalk–and then postulating that the watermelon did not traverse the lower 29 floors, instead that god willed it into and out of existence just long enough to pass by your window, and then god magically created a squashed watermelon on the street below. When a person then shows you the video of the watermelon falling the intervening 29 floors (e.g., fossilized evidence of transitionary life forms), you claim that because the video consists of 1/30th-second frames and does not show every nanosecond of the fall, it is not valid evidence.
The reasonable middle ground in the fight between what the Bible literally says and what the world literally shows us is to believe that God created the universe, that the Bible tells us this in mythical terms, and that science reveals the technical details of god’s achievement which were too complex and intricate to be chronicled in an ancient text written by a scientifically primitive people. But we can’t have that crazy nonsense in our churches, now, can we?
But Brownback doesn’t stop there:
There is no one single theory of evolution, as proponents of punctuated equilibrium and classical Darwinism continue to feud today. Many questions raised by evolutionary theory — like whether man has a unique place in the world or is merely the chance product of random mutations — go beyond empirical science and are better addressed in the realm of philosophy or theology.
These statements fall into the category of disingenuous wordplay, exercises in dishonest semantics. The grandaddy of this category is the claim that evolution is “only a theory,” therefore it hasn’t been proven yet. Which is baloney because evolution is a “theory” in the same way that gravity is a “theory.” We know they both exist, the theories are about how they work. Brownback’s argument here is simply a variation, dismissing evolution because the details haven’t been worked out yet. Well, there are different theories of gravity as well, but I don’t see Brownback flying off the ground yet.
Meanwhile, his statement about “whether man has a unique place in the world or is merely the chance product of random mutations” is the same either-or fallacy I demonstrated in the prior paragraph, little more than code for “whether man was created by god or not.” Brownback also is either confused or lying here when he suggests that empirical science is posing the question. It is not. Science is not saying “god did or did not do this.” Science is only saying, “this is what we see and here is how it could have worked in specific mechanical terms.” It makes absolutely no statement about whether or not the observed processes were designed or simply came into being out of nowhere.
I could go on and on dissecting every statement in the piece, but I don’t have time, so let me end with this choice quote:
Ultimately, on the question of the origins of the universe, I am happy to let the facts speak for themselves. There are aspects of evolutionary biology that reveal a great deal about the nature of the world, like the small changes that take place within a species. Yet I believe, as do many biologists and people of faith, that the process of creation — and indeed life today — is sustained by the hand of God in a manner known fully only to him.
Read that again, this time noting how Brownback transitions from letting “the facts speak for themselves” on how the universe was created, to saying that the universe and life are “sustained by the hand of God in a manner known fully only to him.” And then explain to me how the “facts can speak for themselves” when they are known only to god? And, of course, what “empirical” facts support the existence of god in the first place? Exactly what facts are being spoken here?
In any case, Brownback is a bible-thumping creationist who, like most in that category, defies observation and reason, instead preferring to obfuscate enough so that a confused audience will settle down comfortably. In short, a strong Republican candidate.
One case where the RIAA not only failed to win a case but where the defendant is fighting back is Capitol v. Foster. In that case, Deborah Foster was sued by the music label for illegal music downloads, but proclaimed her innocence, fought, and won. While her countersuit did not go through, the judge did agree that the plaintiff was liable for attorney’s fees. Those were originally $55,000, but the RIAA, fearing a wave of such motions that could cause their extortion scheme to backfire, fought against it. They failed, and as a result of the continued fight, they now must cough up $114,000.
Not that Foster can expect Capitol or the RIAA to cough up what they legally owe as fast as the RIAA expects college students to cough up the money demanded of them, of course. After all, it would be a setback on another level: do you know how many college students the RIAA would have the successfully extort in order to get $114,000? Thirty-eight, that’s how many. That’s a lot of college students to shake down. And if the ruling stands and the RIAA eventually is forced to cough up, that means trouble: if just one out of every few dozen victims the RIAA tries to shake down fights back, the RIAA could be looking at a money-loser here.
Sachi and I signed the apartment contract today, and handed over ¥740,000 (roughly $6,100) for the deposit and first few days’ rent (well, we handed it over to the bank by furikomi, but same difference). We got handed the keys (three high-tech keys; the plastic grip also acts as an electronic pass key which opens the front door of the building) and a big load of documents, the bulk of which is pamphlets explaining this and that. Even so, they still could not answers about the LAN outlets and other technical stuff; when Sachi and I first reserved the place, the office people there said to ask at orientation, while the orientation people today said to call up and ask the Kanri Office. Ah well–somebody’s got to know how things work there.
In the meantime, I also got an envelope from JS Systems which gave me another set of keys, these for the cage where my scooter can be parked. So all we have to do is wait about 30 days and then we move in. In the meantime, I have to post ads on Metropolis, maybe Craig’s List, and in the Daily Yomiuri; we have to unload one or two microwave ovens, a fridge, a washer-dryer, a SkyPerfecTV satellite dish and tuner, a desk, a gas heater, and a variety of other stuff. I’ll also have to stop by Yodobashi or somewhere and start asking about getting signed up for Internet service–better start now or we’ll waste the usual three-week “wait while we do nothing for no reason” period.
In other good news, Apple stick rose again, this time by more than $4 in one day to $118.77, continuing a streak over the past 30 days which has driven the stock up about 20%, about 30% over where it was when I bought into it late last year. Just as I write this, it is up again to over $120. My original investment (I bought in at $91, which at the time was a peak and it stalled under that for a few months) has netted about $8000 so far, and now many traders are setting targets as high as $150, seeing as how the stock will likely rise sharply when the iPhone is released, as well as when Jobs unveils the goodies on Leopard at the WWDC on June 11. Apple has just also hit $100 billion in capital and has joined the S&P 100. So far, so good.