The day after John McCain visited a marketplace in Baghdad in order to demonstrate how things have improved in Iraq, 21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound, and shot dead. There are two ways to interpret this. In one scenario, the attacks are completely unrelated to McCain’s visit, and are simply a morbidly ironic and coincidental reminder of how wrong McCain is. In the other scenario, the workers were targeted in order to make a point that those who commit the violence are not under control–in which case, John McCain is responsible for getting those 21 people murdered, all because he said something stupid and then decided to go on a campaign-related PR junket to make up for it.

Either way, McCain is an idiot; the difference is a question of how much blood is on his hands. His trip already diverted resources away from controlling the violence he was supposedly pointing out was being quelled, and the trip in itself proved exactly how wrong he was about the safety of Baghdad. There was no point to the trip except to try to score some points with voters after he made a gaffe, and what he did at the very least caused disruption, and at the most, caused a good many deaths.

I’m beginning to wonder exactly how much better than Bush McCain would turn out to be.

Established: There is no “good” ending to the Iraq War. Whether we leave now or ten years from now, bloodshed and chaos will ensue. Staying on makes little difference, except to the grieving families of our own fallen troops. The insurgents aren’t going anywhere, and we’ll never clean them out (on the contrary, staying longer most likely inflates their numbers). The civil war based on sectarian feuds will not likely ebb soon, either. Iraq is an irreparable arterial gash, and we are simply applying pressure to it. This is important to realize because of all the claims made by conservatives of what terrible things will happen if we pull out “too soon.”

A left-wing blog has caught Bush in another hypocritical weaseling that the mainstream media isn’t commenting on. Bush’s current rant:

It has now been 57 days since I requested that Congress pass emergency funds for our troops. Instead of passing clean bills that fund our troops on the front lines, the House and Senate have spent this time debating bills that undercut the troops.

The “Liberal” media runs stories like “Bush Berates Dems Over Iraq War Funding,” “Bush: Democrats irresponsible for approving war bills,” and “Military readiness will suffer if Congress doesn’t send clean war bill, Bush says.” Most push Bush’s message at the top, and some push it throughout the articles, giving short thrift to the Democratic response.

Note Bush’s emphasis that it’s been 57 days.

But none show what Think Progress found with a simple check into the records: Bush allowed much longer delays from Republican congresses without complaint–and even praised them. In 2005, the Republican congress waited 86 days to pass supplemental funding. Bush didn’t complain. In 2005, it took Republicans in Congress 119 days–and when Bush got the funding then, he “applauded” them.

How is Bush’s hypocrisy playing the in “Liberal” media? Aside from Think Progress, not a peep.

Meanwhile, the media continues to amplify Bush’s attacks on Pelosi for making a congressional trip to Syria (“Sending delegations hasn’t worked. It’s just simply been counterproductive”), but it took Think Progress and Josh Marshall to point out that Bush at the same time helped a Republican congressional delegation make the same trip.

What the hell is it with the “Liberal Media” and unflattering photos of Hillary Clinton? Hillary is not my favorite candidate at this time, but the media’s obsession with catching her in mid-reaction and making her look like a loon is reaching new lows. This photo was represented as “news” by the AP, with this caption:

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York reacts to seeing and old friend during a campaign stop at the National Education Association New Hampshire, in Concord, N.H., Friday, March 30, 2007. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

As if this image were somehow representative or legitimate as a news photo. The fact of the matter is, when you photograph people, you always get shots like this. Try it out on anyone who is having an animated conversation, especially on video, and then freeze-frame through it–you’ll catch them in any number of bizarre-looking poses. It’s not because they’re ugly or because they’re a loon–it’s simply an effect of the camera.

The thing is, such photographic buffoonery is typical of ten-year-olds, not news organizations. Any serious photojournalist will as a matter of course edit out these shots when choosing something for serious consideration. To do otherwise is considered an editorial dig at the person in question. And yet, Hillary Clinton repeatedly gets shown by news organizations in shots just like this.

Usually, you’ll find this kind of crap on biased blogs and humor sites, not news outlets–at least for Republican figures. It’s not as if Bush could never be caught looking stupid; witness these shots from non-news sources:

And yet, I guarantee you that you won’t see these images of Bush on the major news services, especially above captions that would otherwise be deemed serious. Instead, we get views of Bush that look like this:

The thing is, this is not new. I wrote on this back in July 2004 when I noticed the exact same dichotomy between press images of Bush and Gore.

Doubt me? Then check for yourself. Thumb through the Yahoo photo collections of Bush, and then of Clinton. Every fifth or so shot of Clinton has her looking stupid and goony-faced. At best, one of every thirty or so of Bush has him looking even slightly silly.

So why is it that leading Democrats get plastered in the news media with those freeze-frame effects looking like loons, while Bush and Republicans get the hero shots?

Gee, you don’t think there could be a bias in the media that’s not liberal, do you? Naaahhhh.

Humor me. I’m going off on another Mac-is-great rant. For those who tire of this, movealongthere’snothingtoseehere.

Well, okay, so June is only a little more than two months away (if it will take until June, as many are now reporting). But in two months, something come out that I am very excited about. Specifically: Leopard. But not just Leopard: also iWork, with (most likely) a spreadsheet app that will complete the suite as an alternative to Microsoft Office, and the next version of iLife. Supposedly the suite is coming out in June, possibly June 11th. According to the lethargic and yet usually well-sourced ThinkSecret rumor site:

“Leopard is shaping up to be a more significant release than anyone expected, with much more to come than any of the developer builds have led on,” one source said.

Also scheduled for a June release now are new versions of Apple’s iLife and iWork suites, which will pack extensive Leopard-dependent features. Sources say Apple continues to toy with the idea of bundling one or both suites with the new operating system free of charge in an effort to further play up the extra value and features Mac OS X offers over Microsoft’s new Windows Vista.

… Apple’s next version of iWork, meanwhile, is poised to compete even more directly with Office with the addition of a new spreadsheet application.

One has to wonder at what Apple has up its sleeve. I have become convinced that Apple does indeed have something rather special. I refuse to believe that Steve Jobs would talk up “Top Secret” features, let rumors build for 6-9 months, and then say it was all a gag and Apple has only a tepid upgrade to release. That would be incredibly stupid, and Steve Jobs is not incredibly stupid. Obstinate, secretive, obsessive, and perhaps even egotistical, yes. But not stupid.

And if the rumor is right and Apple actually decides to sell Leopard with iLife and iWork bundled, it’s my belief that they would have a blockbuster on their hands. For just $30 more than the lowest upgrade-level pricing for Microsoft’s most-disabled version of Vista, you would get a full-featured OS at least 2-3 years ahead of Vista, bundled with most of the software you’d ever need for a computer–including an office suite comparable to what Microsoft is selling for $340. And all this would come free with the purchase of any Mac.

Bundling in iWork would be the finishing touch. When I compare a Mac and Windows purchase for my students, I always have to add a few hundred bucks for the purchase of an Office suite, as they need Excel, and can get Word and Excel bundled with most PC purchases. If I could tell them that they could get a Mac and that a full office suite–including presentations software (not offered in the PC bundle, you have to buy PowerPoint separate)–would be bundled with it, that might be enough to make even more of them decide on the Mac purchase instead of the PC.

Think about it: here’s the list of software that would come with Leopard, with most of the listed apps being integrated for cross-functionality:

• Pages (word processor, Word-compatible)
• Keynote (presentation, PowerPoint-compatible)
• Numbers/Charts (spreadsheet, Excel-compatible)
• iTunes (music/video media center, iPod Syncing)
• iMovie (video editor)
• iDVD (video DVD creator)
• iPhoto (digital photo cataloging/editing)
• iWeb (web page editor/publisher)
• GarageBand (music publishing software)
• Mail (email)
• Safari (browser)
• iCal (calendar software)
• iChat (text/audio/video chat software)
• Address Book
• Time Machine (backup/recovery)
• Dictionary
• Dashboard / Dashcode
• Accessory apps: PhotoBooth, Front Row, QuickTime, TextEdit, DVD Player, Preview, Automator, Applescript, and more

That would be one hell of a lineup for a $130 purchase. And even without the fact that Boot Camp and/or Parallels lets you run all Windows apps on your Mac, that whole package bundled with every Mac would shoot down most complaints about software not being available for the Mac. Most of the software that most people would ever use would come free with the machine!

If Apple does it right, of which there’s no guarantee. Still, one can dream, yes?

Scary. As today’s decision on EPA regulation has yet again demonstrated, there is a 4-member conservative block on the Supreme Court that decides on purely political grounds, and not based upon law. That block is, of course, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts. While Scalia was appointed by Reagan and Thomas by Bush 41, the most recent two were put there by Dubya–more evidence of what damage he has wreaked on the country. And since they were all installed very young (another prerequisite; three are still in their 50’s), they’ll continue to scar the legal landscape for decades.

Something that I figured I would start doing: blogging quick thoughts that don’t get into full blog-post form, but I’d like to shoot out anyway. Sometimes there’s stuff that doesn’t need elaboration, or I just don’t feel like going in-depth about it (which I usually feel is necessary to qualify as having officially blogged for the day). Kind of like the equivalent of post-it notes in blog form. So here goes.

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Ironic. After all those years of methodically trying to destroy the “liberal” and “Democrat” brand names so that anyone would be embarrassed to call themselves by those names, Republicans have succeeded in destroying their own name appeal in far less time. In the past six years of full Republican control, fewer people than in the past 20 years [PDF] want to call themselves a “Republican,” while more people than ever want to call themselves “Democrats.”

After writing the prior piece, I was reminded of something I’d read a few months back: a letter from a U.S. Marine to his friends and family back home. In what Time Magazine called “The Secret Letter Home,” the Marine wrote down a list of “Most” this-or-thats in his experiences in Iraq. One of them:

Biggest Hassle — High-ranking visitors. More disruptive to work than a rocket attack. VIPs demand briefs and “battlefield” tours (we take them to quiet sections of Fallujah, which is plenty scary for them). Our briefs and commentary seem to have no effect on their preconceived notions of what’s going on in Iraq. Their trips allow them to say that they’ve been to Fallujah, which gives them an unfortunate degree of credibility in perpetuating their fantasies about the insurgency here.

And something struck me about McCain’s PR visit to Baghdad that should have occurred to everyone but clearly hasn’t: that McCain’s visit was not only a purely political showcase to revive his popularity after having made a serious gaffe, but as a result has distracted our troops from their real work and possibly even put them in danger–not to mention that is has cost taxpayers plenty as well.

The same happened with Bush’s fake visits to Louisiana and Mississippi after Katrina hit, a political visit to a place where serious work is going on. The result after Katrina: serious rescue work was halted to provide for the politician’s PR piece, and people almost certainly died as a result. McCain has likely had the same effect in Iraq. Did those 100 soldiers, three helicopters and two gunships have nothing better to do that day? One can only imagine American troops in Baghdad today engaging in a firefight, wondering where the hell their air support was. Was a soldier in Iraq maimed or killed today because his much-needed support was in the Green Zone babysitting a vain political hack?

We’ll never know for sure. But it’s not hard to imagine.

Good work, McCain.

This morning, my parents Skyped me and we had an hourlong chat. During our talk, I mentioned to my father that John McCain, after previously stating that things were so safe in Baghdad because of The McCain Surge™ that one could walk unarmed through the streets, had gone to Baghdad and taken a “stroll” while wearing a bulletproof vest and surrounded by squads of armed soldiers. My father, who had not heard of McCain’s visit, expressed incredulity, which prompted me to wonder if I had fallen afoul of an April Fool’s fake-news gag. I had had a similar experience many years ago (December 1987) when I told my brother that Gary Hart had re-entered the race for president after he had dropped out due to the Donna Rice scandal. In both cases, then and now, the story in retrospect sounded so bizarre that I had to re-check to see if I hadn’t been somehow mistaken about them.

But in both cases, the stories were indeed true. In an interview with ultra-conservative gambling moralist Bill Bennett, John McCain had stated that “there are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today. The U.S. is beginning to succeed in Iraq.” He later defended and compounded his statement, adding that “General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee.”

Later, however, journalists scoffed at McCain, noting that his rosy statements about Iraq were ludicrous. CBS news correspondent Allen Pizzey noted that things were far from safe in Baghdad, despite relative quiet compared to the past–the operational word being “relative,” not “quiet.” Pizzey wrote,

A young sergeant was assigned to accompany myself and cameraman Mark LaGanga wherever we went. When I suggested that it was fine and the sergeant could take a break, he replied quietly; “No sir. I need to be with you. Wouldn’t want to take the risk of you being kidnapped.”

“In a police station?” I asked. “You’re kidding.”

“No sir,” he replied, “I am not.”

Any time Senator McCain wants to walk the streets of Baghdad, unarmed and without a serious security detail, we’d be glad to lend him a camera so he can record his experience.

As for General Petraeus and the “unarmed” (or “unarmored,” whichever McCain actually meant) Humvee, that was shot down quickly as well. CNN’s Michael Ware reported that such a suggestion was greeted with “laughter down the line” with all of the military sources he spoke with. In addition to Petraeus using a heavily armored Humvee, “There’s multiple humvees around it, heavily armed. There’s attack helicopters, predator drones, sniper teams, all sorts of layers of protection.” Ware also said,

Well, I’d certainly like to bring Sen. McCain up to speed if he ever gives me the opportunity. And if I have any difficulty hearing you right now Wolf, that’s because of the helicopters circling overhead and the gun battle that is blazing away just a few blocks down the road. Is Baghdad any safer? Sectarian violence, one particular type of violence, is down. But none of the American generals here on the ground have anything like Sen. McCain’s confidence. I mean, Sen. McCain’s credibility now on Iraq, which has been so solid to this point, is now being left out hanging to dry. To suggest that there’s any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I’d love Sen. McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll.

So, after all that, you’d think that McCain would have to be daft to go to Baghdad and demonstrate how “safe” it was by walking in the heavily fortified Green Zone, surrounded by heavily armed troops and wearing a bulletproof vest. But nope, there he was, in full glory–surrounded by “100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead.” That’s how safe it is in Baghdad now! In the Green Zone, the most heavily fortified part of the city!

The fact is, Baghdad is marginally safer only because of what observers have called the “Whack-a-Mole” effect, where if you pour huge numbers of troops into a specific, controlled area, the insurgents will leave–but will only pop up somewhere else to cause havoc. Then, when your troops move out of the “secured” area, the insurgents just pour back in and things reset to the way they were.

Case in point: Tal Afar. A city Bush himself heralded as a model example of success in Iraq:

Tal Afar was an insurgent stronghold until U.S. and Iraqi troops drove them out in a September 2006 operation and constructed huge sand barriers around the city to limit access.

On March 20, 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush cited that operation, in which insurgents melted away into the countryside rather than fight, as an example that gave him ”confidence in our strategy.”

But Baghdad was erupting in violence then, so the U.S. troops left, and now concentrate on Baghdad–and as a result, the insurgents are back in strength in Tal Afar, killing civilians like they did in Baghdad. And when The Surge™ cools down or focuses on some other location, the insurgents will return in strength to Baghdad as well.

But don’t tell that to McCain: he’s prattling on about how safe things are in Baghdad. Well, John, not every citizen in Baghdad has a 100-troop escort while being covered by three helicopters and two gunships in the most heavily fortified marketplace in the country.

One thing is clear: McCain has no integrity left on Iraq. He’s nothing more than a laughable mouthpiece for the administration, tied to the hip with Bush in owning the Iraq “Surge” and just as desperately trying to justify it.

Really. To back up a claim that Baghdad was safe by doing what he did? It’s a media farce that every single reporter is not pointing out how incredibly stupid McCain looks.

It’s that time of year again. Japanese people love this. It’s the one-week period when the Cherry Blossom trees are in full bloom. All too often, the unstable weather at the beginning of Spring will lessen the impact of the trees; one strong rainfall, especially with heavy winds, can ruin an entire viewing season before revelers get a chance to enjoy them. But this year, in Tokyo at least, everyone got a break: the blossoms came into full bloom on Saturday (though it was a bit chilly), and despite a Saturday night storm that had unusually strong winds, the blossoms stayed put just long enough for the trees to still be beautiful on Sunday, when the temperature shot up 8˚ C (15˚ F) for a 24˚ (75˚) partly sunny day.

So millions of Japanese people were doing what they always do when this time rolls around: they lay out blue tarps on just about every inch of space under the Cherry Blossom trees, and party as the petals fall. Beer is a favorite (and often times the area smells of it), but people lay out full picnics, including portable gas stoves and everything they can cook, drink, or snack on, while kids run about like crazy. I’ve never been a huge fan of this pastime, but you have to admit, the white-and-pink boughs contrasted against the near-black bark of the trees is quite a pretty sight on a beautiful spring day. Sachi and I went blossom-viewing both weekend days, Saturday along the Meguro River, and Sunday in a local park. Here are some photos from the walks. Enjoy.

Because of their popularity, Sakura trees are everywhere,
lining streets and rivers in abundance.

This is what you see when you look up.

The Brown-eared Bulbuls love the blossoms as a snack; they were all over the trees.

The petals fell in such abundance that they often looked like drifts of snow on the streets and rivers.
Here’s a close-up of one of the covered areas of the Meguro River. (Click for larger view)

Notice the petals drifting in the breeze just above ground level.
If you walk in such a drift while looking down,
it’s like walking in a river of petals.

And sometimes, when a good gust of wind comes along, it looks like it’s snowing.
Click for larger image.

Revelers.

And let’s finish today’s post with a nice image of two isolated petals, growing almost directly off the tree trunk’s bark. Sachi spotted this one, and it seemed too poetic to pass up. Click for a larger image.

Several times on this blog, I have mentioned my problems with hotlinkers. Since I post a large number of photos (more than many, fewer than some), and I keep those photos on my site indefinitely, I have to deal with people stealing those images. Now, I own almost all of the images that I post; if not, I note the source. But if I do use an outside image, one thing I make sure to do is to host the image on my own site. Why is that important? Let me explain.

When someone sets up a web site with their own domain name, they usually have to pay for “hosting” services. That means that they pay a service to give them disk space, maintenance services, and a 24/7 high-speed connection to the Internet. The web pages, images, and other files are kept on that hard disk. But the hosting service usually keeps track of how much bandwidth you use. For example, if I posted a 1MB picture on my site and 99 people downloaded it, that would equal 100 transmissions (1 up, 99 down) of that 1MB file; that would be 100 MB of bandwidth used. Since almost all accounts have a bandwidth limit (my own is 75 GB per month), it is a commodity which you are paying for.

Now, let’s say that someone wants to use that photo on their web site. So they put a command on their web site that embeds the picture into their own web page, so it looks like the image is part of their own page–but the address of the picture is kept as a reference to my web site. In other words, the photo looks like it’s on their site–but my site is where the image is taken from, so I get charged for bandwidth every time somebody views their web site.

This is called “hotlinking,” and I’ve mentioned it before. People will not only steal your images, but then they will hotlink them so you will be forced to pay money for their act of theft against you. Kind of like someone stealing your cell phone, then you get charged for their phone calls.

The one defense you have: the image file resides on your site, so you control it. So, when some thief steals an image and hotlinks it, what I usually do is to change the image file to something insulting or (if I’m really ticked off) obscene. One time, a travel agency hotlinked one of my China travel photos, so I replaced the image with a graphic calling them thieves and warning their customers to not to buy from them (they swapped images and hotlinked from someone else after a few days, but here’s what the site looked like for a while).

However, the real damage comes when someone hotlinks your image, and their site is heavily traveled–which means that you get swamped, and your site could even be in danger of exceeding bandwidth limits, which could get your site shut down. The worst incident I had was when an image on my site was hotlinked by Ain’t It Cool, a popular movie rumor-and-reviews web site. Before I could notice it, my site had suffered 30,000 hits, losing 1.5 GB of bandwidth (this was back when my limit was 15 GB, and I came close to exceeding it sometimes). So I swapped the image with a graphic advertising my site. “Ain’t It Cool” noticed the swap quickly, and then replaced the image.

So, why am I mentioning this? Because hotlinking has, at least momentarily, become an issue in the political arena. One of John McCain’s web techs set up his MySpace page–but when he did so, he hotlinked to an image on someone else’s site. When they made McCain’s page, they used a free template offered by NewsVine, which allows people to use their MySpace template so long as they give credit to NewsVine, and so long as they don’t hotlink.

McCain’s site didn’t honor either condition, so NewsVine’s CEO Mike Davidson swapped out the image McCain’s people were using with one announcing that McCain had reversed is opinion on gay marriage, “Particularly marriage between passionate females.” Since Davidson’s swapped image was on his own web site, and McCain’s people were the one’s who had placed it on their own web site, this was an “immaculate hack” that broke no laws whatsoever. Below are the real and hacked pages captures, the hacked one on the right.

image borrowed, but not hotlinked. Click on the image to visit the source.

Davidson writes about his decision to slap McCain’s hand on this one:

But then I read the article in today’s Newsweek about how politicians are all setting up MySpace pages in order to “connect” with younger audiences. McCain’s MySpace page is listed, as are the pages from several other candidates. I think the idea of politicians setting up MySpace pages and pretending to actually use them is a bit disingenuous, so I figured it was time to play a little prank on Johnny Mac.

Luckily, I had already set up a special .htaccess rule on my server which served my real “contact me” image if the image was referenced from my own MySpace page, and served up a sample image if it was served from anywhere else. This is the whole reason I even figured out what was going on. I had my real image in cache and upon loading McCain’s page, the real image showed up (including my special note that said “NO REQUESTS FOR DESIGN HELP PLEASE”). Thinking it was weird that McCain would get any requests for design help, I immediately realized what happened.

So, the only thing necessary to effectively commandeer McCain’s page with my own messaging was to simply replace my own sample image on my server with a newly created sample on my server. No server but my own was touched and no laws were broken. The immaculate hack.

Abortion? The Iraq War? Probably too heavy to joke about. Gay marriage seemed like a more of a non-lethal subject to center the prank around.

So with a few minutes in Photoshop and a quick FTP, a new John McCain was born…

…and The Straight-Talk Express isn’t just for straight people anymore.

Bravo! This is amusing to me on two levels–the political and the geek levels, to be specific. Well done, Davidson.

This was bound to happen. Nevertheless, it stings pretty hard. This from a Guardian writer, on the subject of the 15 captured British marines in Iran:

Turney may have been “forced to wear the hijab”, as the Daily Mail noted with fury, but so far as we know she has not been forced into an orange jumpsuit. Her comrades have not been shackled, blindfolded, forced into excruciating physical contortions for long periods, or denied liquids and food. As far as we know they have not had the Bible spat on, torn up or urinated on in front of their faces. They have not had electrodes attached to their genitals or been set on by attack dogs.

They have not been hung from a forklift truck and photographed for the amusement of their captors. They have not been pictured naked and smeared in their own excrement. They have not been bundled into a CIA-chartered plane and secretly “rendered” to a basement prison in a country where torturers are experienced and free to do their worst.

As far as we know, Turney and her comrades are not being “worked hard”, the euphemism coined by one senior British army officer for the abuse of prisoners at Camp Bread Basket. And as far as we know all 15 are alive and well, which is more than can be said for Baha Mousa, the hotel receptionist who, in 2003, was unfortunate enough to have been taken into custody by British troops in Basra. There has of course been a court martial and it exonerated the soldiers of Mousa’s murder. So we can only assume that his death – by beating – was self-inflicted; yet another instance of “asymmetrical warfare”, the description given by US authorities to the deaths of the Guantánamo detainees who hanged themselves last year.

When Iranian hostage-takers seem eminently civilized and immensely favorable when compared to being held by the United States of America, you know that someone in charge is doing a piss-poor job of maintaining American values. Like it or not, the Abu Ghraib prisoner standing hooded on a box with electrodes attached to him is now emblematic of American justice from an international standpoint. We are no longer known for our freedom and justice, we are instead now known for our torture and abuse. And, from the looks of the criticism from one of Britain’s own, neither can the United Kingdom. But you know that this never would have happened had not Good ol’ Dubya been at the helm. Only from his warped administration could such a state of affairs have been hatched.

When people would rather be held prisoner by Iran than by us, you know that George W. Bush has done a rather thorough and complete job of utterly destroying the image of the United States. No longer can we even begin to criticize countries like Iran for doing what they are doing without looking like complete hypocrites.

Thanks, George.

From Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, to President Bush over his promised veto of the Democrat’s new bill on Iraq:

Last week the House of Representatives on a bipartisan vote passed an emergency supplemental spending bill. The Senate is poised to pass its version of the bill as soon as later today. Both bills contain much needed funding for our troops and our veterans. Both bills also chart a new course forward in Iraq. Given the importance and urgency of this legislation to our troops and our security, we are quite disturbed by your insistence to veto it. Rather than work with the Congress to develop a bill you could sign, you apparently intend to follow a political strategy that would needlessly delay funding for our troops.

The bill, as you may have heard, provides $122 billion in funding for the troops as well as other necessary provisions–but also mandates a March 31, 2008 withdrawal date for U.S. forces in Iraq. Depending on how things work out, this could be a similar situation to the famous government-shutdown showdown between Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress.

When Bush vetoes the bill (a sure enough thing that I won’t bother using the word “if”), necessary funding for the troops will be put off. It will then be a game of public perception: who is cutting off funding for the troops, the Democrats or Bush? Both sides will claim that the other is being unreasonable. Each side will have an advantage: Democrats will have public opinion on their side (most Americans want us out of this war), but Bush will likely be able to depend on his bully pulpit and on a more-freindly-than-not media to get his side out to the people more.

But if Democrats play it just right, they could get the upper hand. When Bush vetoes the bill, they should stress compromise and talks, do everything they can to offer different versions of the bill, removing the pork and perhaps even modifying the withdrawal date–but not taking it out altogether. Bush has nothing really to offer back; he won’t budge on any withdrawal date, and really won’t be able to give any other compromises. As a result, the Democrats will appear to be flexible while Bush is intransigent. If the Democrats then send a modified bill, with everything they desire removed from the bill except a withdrawal date, back to Bush, and still he vetoes it, Bush could easily be seen as the baddie.

On an aside, this entire situation is sweetly ironic, in that the Democrats are using Bush’s favorite tactic against him: you’re either for our legislation, or you hate the troops. So, which is it, George?

REDMOND, Wash., March 26, 2007 — Initial sales figures from Microsoft show its new operating system Windows Vista made a splash in its debut. In the first month of Windows Vista’s general availability, sales exceeded 20 million licenses, more than doubling the initial pace of sales for its predecessor, Windows XP. These initial figures reflect the broad interest in the security and usability enhancements in Windows Vista.

— Microsoft Press Release

Well, yes and no. When Microsoft made this announcement, it failed to break down the “20 million” figure, making a lot of people suspicious of how they got that number. It sounded way high to a lot of people, and some of them started checking it out–and discovered that the number is as phony as Microsoft’s claims of “innovation.”

The claim is that Vista sold 20 million licenses in its first month of sales (presumably between the release on January 30 to the end of February), and they compare this to the 17 million licenses sold for Windows XP in the first two and a half months of sales.

Here’s how they cooked the numbers. First, they didn’t just count the first month. Included in that “first month” were all the sales for Windows XP starting from October 26, 2006, as they included a free or almost-free upgrade to Vista. Regardless of whether the upgrade was actually used, the numbers were added to the first “month” of Vista sales. So, actually, the Vista numbers are for four months of sales, and include many Vista licenses that were never actually claimed or delivered.

Second, Microsoft counted “sales in” figures instead of “sales out.” What that means is that instead of counting the number of Vista licenses that were actually sold at stores to customers, Microsoft counted the number of Vista licenses provided to stores, even if they were not ever sold.

Neither of these accounting tricks were used to inflate XP sales numbers. As a result, the comparison between the two numbers is invalid. An honest statement of the 20-million number would have to be worded:

While Windows XP sold 17 million licenses in the first two and a half months of sales, 20 million Windows licenses (including XP and Vista) were either sold or provided to resellers for sale in a four-month period starting at the end of October 2006.

Doesn’t sound quite so impressive, does it? But wait, it gets worse: computer sales in 2006 were almost double what they were in 2001, meaning that in order to keep even with XP sales numbers, Vista has to sell almost twice as many licenses. So, adjusting for inflation, as it were, Vista has “sold” only about 11 million copies in four months compared to 17 million sales of XP in two and a half months. And even the 11 million number still includes unsold stock on store shelves.

Pitiful.

Here’s the given reason why Bush White House legal liaison Monica Goodling will try to take the Fifth:

John Dowd, Goodling’s lawyer, suggested in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, that the Democrat-led panel has laid what amounts to a perjury trap for his client.

Isn’t that rich? Let’s see, when was the last time we saw a perjury trap? Hmm… let’s see, maybe it was when Republicans abused the legal system to get Bill Clinton to lie about sex. Having found evidence that Clinton had sex with Monica Lewinski, and knowing he would never admit it if he didn’t know there was evidence, they set the trap and caught the president in it. Ask any Bush supporter today if he thought that the charge against Clinton was valid.

The thing is, while Clinton’s situation was the classic definition of a perjury trap, Goodling’s isn’t at all. First of all, there’s no reason to believe that she did anything illegal. A perjury trap is when you have the goods on someone, and you know they don’t know it, and you intentionally maneuver them into telling a lie. Clearly that’s not the case here. If there’s any danger of Goodling perjuring herself, it’s because she intends to lie. The only similarity here to Clinton’s perjury trap is that there’s a “Monica” involved–but that’s where the similarities end.

Unless I’m mistaken, you can only take the Fifth and avoid giving testimony if you already did something illegal and you don’t want to incriminate yourself. You can’t take the Fifth because you intend to perjure yourself in the testimony you are about to give. (“Your honor, I take the Fifth on the grounds that I’m gonna lie!”) What a crock that is. You don’t have the luxury of refusing to testify because you just don’t want to. That’s not what a subpoena is all about. Nor can you take the Fifth if you’re going to incriminate someone else.

Clinton didn’t have the grounds to refuse to testify, and that was a perjury trap. So unless Goodling actually violated the law previously, she has no grounds for taking the Fifth.

But it’s perfectly possible that the Bush White House knows this, as they know that they can’t invoke Executive Privilege. What they are probably doing is simply throwing up every possible roadblock they can to try to slow things down and discourage the other side. Of course, in doing this they run a risk: they’ll look even more guilty than they already do, and the more they fight, the more Congress is bound to force them into testimony.

Republicans have recently been in the process of turning against the Bush administration. Seeing as how the Bush White House has screwed up so badly over time and has now become so universally unpopular, they are turning to campaign against Bush so as to curry favor with voters. They hope to dress themselves up as outsiders, as though they were never married at the hip to the Bush administration and their failures. The Prince of Darkness, Bob Novak, wrote:

The I-word (incompetence) is also used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to cited a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI’s misuse of the USA Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. “We always have claimed that we were the party of better management,” one House leader told me. “How can we claim that anymore?”

The key response to this would be “too little, too late.” The Republicans in Congress have enthusiastically backed Bush’s failures from day one; it’s not as if Walter Reed, the FBI & the Patriot Act, and the USA firings are the very first signs of incompetence from the White House. There is a long, long history of this.

While Democrats justly deserve blame for not providing strong enough opposition, Republicans apparently hope that nobody will remember that they themselves were full accomplices to Bush’s policies, often vociferously so. The Iraq War is a good example. Democrats have been blamed for “letting it happen,” but Bush was the architect and congressional Republicans backed him nearly 100%. While 60% of Senate Democrats and 40% of Democrats in the House voted for the Iraq war powers resolution, 98% of Republicans in both the House and Senate voted for it.

But Iraq wasn’t the only unified GOP failure. Republicans have rubber-stamped and tried to ram through virtually everything Bush proposed over the past six years. Push through the “Patriot” Act? Behind Bush blindly all the way. Massive and successive tax cuts for the wealthy and for profit-flush corporations? We’ve got your back, George! Trash Medicare and dismantle Social Security? We’ve got some reservations, but if you want it, we’re behind you! Stack the courts with extremists? We’re with you 100%, and will use the nuclear option on Democrats if they resist even a little! Pass legislation that favors the banking & credit, energy, and pharmaceutical industries at the expense of the American people? You bet! Switch off Ethics reviews and refuse to investigate even the most blatant crimes committed by the Bush White House? Nod and a wink, Georgie, and keep it up! All you have to do, Mr. President, is keep signing our unprecedented porkbarrel hogfest, and we’ll keep backing you all the way on whatever you send to us to do!

But now that Bush is in the doghouse and Democrats have resuscitated oversight, suddenly Republicans are calling Bush “incompetent” and shaking their heads in disbelief–as if they weren’t just as guilty as Bush for having created this mess from the beginning. Even more so, as if they are not still backing Bush on almost every issue!

Yes, that’s right–Bush, lame duck he is, is now the new fall guy for the entire Republican Party, even as the GOP still stands behind him on almost everything. The Republicans are apparently hoping that as Bush leaves office, they can successfully put all the blame on him and act as if they were somehow against him all the time. Quite a juggling act when you continue to agree with his agenda and try to block investigations of him.

Will the American people buy such an incredibly fake act? Well, considering how many Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, it’s not such a long shot that many will believe the GOP’s all-new play-acting.

The RIAA strikes again. They are suing a 42-year-old disabled single mother who lives off of her Social Security check while raising her 10-year-old daughter. They are suing her for $1 million for downloading, among other things, Gangsta Rap at 4:24 in the morning on KaZaA.

The poor woman says that she doesn’t even know how to download music, and has tried to surrender her PC to the RIAA so they can search it for themselves. The RIAA declined, and instead is now demanding that her 10-year-old daughter, 7 years old at the time of the downloading (and even less liable to have been up before dawn downloading Gangsta Rap), be deposed and put on the stand.

Details of the case are here. I almost didn’t comment on this one because I thought it was the same case as one I reported on a few weeks ago–but that one was where the RIAA sued a paralyzed stroke victim, living on disability in Florida, for downloading music in Michigan. I thought it might have been another case I sub-referenced in that same post about a grandmother being sued for downloading rap music on KaZaA when she used a Mac which couldn’t run KaZaA.

But no, it was neither of those. It was all-new unmitigated vileness from the sweethearts at the RIAA, as part of their overall attempt to use shotgun litigation to extort money from people.

From the email document dump, we have now learned that the latest “reason” the US Attorneys were fired was not only fake, but it was fully premeditated as fake. This email was sent from a DOJ official to a White House staffer:

“The one common link here is that three of them are along the southern border so you could make the connection that DOJ is unhappy with the immigration prosecution numbers in those districts,” Tasia Scolinos, a senior public affairs specialist at the Justice Department, told Catherine Martin, a White House communications adviser, in an e-mail.

“Which ones are they?” Martin replied.

Scolinos was clearly unprepared for the furor that resulted from the dismissals.

“I think most of them will resign quietly – they don’t get anything out of making it public,” she told Martin. “I don’t see it as being a national story – especially if it phases in over a few months.”

The email was sent on November 17th, just before the now-famous 18-day “gap” in email documentation. It leaves no doubt, zero, none at all, that the DoJ and the White House were plotting to fire the attorneys before immigration was brought up, and that the whole “not performing well on immigration” story was a premeditated fiction designed to cover for a purely political firing. This is the proverbial smoking gun as far as that part of the issue is concerned.

But how about the rest of it? The firings in order to obstruct justice, the fact that Bush was advised and approved of it, that Rove and Gonzales were at the heart of the effort? Well, some of that is already established, but some of it may never be: it seems pretty clear that the White House destroyed incriminating emails. While it is possible that they’re still around and could be uncovered, everything seems to point to the White House having digitally shredded them.

Time will tell.

Do I even need to comment on the White House’s “extraordinarily generous offer“? The so-called “reasonable proposal” that Bush is now pushing? In the light of the growing scandal over the Attorney firings, the House is going to issue subpoenas demanding that Karl Rove and Harriet Miers testify before Congress under oath, as so many other White House officials have done in the past.

Bush’s “extraordinarily generous” and “reasonable” counterproposal? That Rove and Miers talk to members of Congress, not under oath, behind closed doors, with no transcript.

Apparently, Bush seems to believe that by continuously repeating the words “reasonable” and “generous,” he can actually make people believe that his offer is something other than the most absurd joke in Washington D.C. in recent memory.

Maybe he still believes that he can get away with the same crap he got away with when Republicans were in charge of Congress, and national security issues were at stake–like he did when he and Cheney were called to testify before the 9/11 commission. Because it was the president and vice-president, because Republicans were ultimately in charge, and because national security issues were in play, they were allowed to water down the questioning so that they could testify together, without cameras or transcript, and avoid going under oath.

This is not the same situation, however.

Now, Democrats are in charge, and won’t roll over and play dead. It’s not the president who’s being asked to testify, it’s a White House counsel and presidential advisor. And the matter at hand has nothing whatsoever to do with national security.

The White House has repeatedly made the claim that anyone who works in the White House can not be forced to testify under oath because then the president won’t be able to receive “candid and confidential advice” from his staff. This sounds good on the surface, but when you think about it, it means that the president wants to receive advice which is potentially illegal. The whole idea of oversight is so that when the president gets advice and acts, he will only do things that will stand up under the light of scrutiny.

To be clear: the only possible reason to demand that Rove and Miers not be put under oath is so they can lie without consequence.

And let’s not forget, Nixon tried this before. The Supreme Court ruled on it. Bush might actually put his foot down and refuse, which is prompting all the talk about a “constitutional crisis.” But there is so much precedence working against Bush that his belovedly stacked Supreme Court might not back him up on this one. However, it probably won’t go that far. So long as Democrats maintain their backbone, they are bound to win on this one. Look at it: Bush will have to force a constitutional crisis and a Supreme Court test over a scandal he’d rather would disappear? So he can make the purely indefensible argument that White House staffers are immune from testifying? He’ll look like he’s hiding something–which, of course, he is. This can only be bad for Bush. He must be doing this in hopes of forcing some sort of compromise that will protect Rove and Miers from being put under oath. If Democrats are smart, they’ll stand their ground.

There’s also more going on: despite the document dumps and large number of emails released, despite the damaging revelations coming from those documents, it’s becoming clear that the White House is holding back, and a number of documents have gone missing. There is an 18-day gap in the email records (the White House calls it a “lull”), and documents which should be there are not.

The gap is especially incriminating because it appears just after an email from Kyle Sampson to Harriet Miers, asking “Who will determine whether this requires the President’s attention?” and continues until just before the firings took place. 18 days in which Bush was undoubtedly advised on the firings and gave his approval. Gee whiz, what a convenient time to have an email “lull.”

The omissions are so obvious that it’s hard to believe how the White House will be able to say that everything was turned over. As I noted before, the dump was preceded by the White House claiming that they needed an extra week to “prepare” the documents–code for “we need more time to review these and delete any that could be really incriminating.

One thing is for certain: White House stonewalling ain’t gonna be enough to stop this scandal from being a problem for Bush.

The Boston Globe is reporting that the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie “lacks substance.”

Ya think?