The Washington Post is running a major story on Barack Obama’s admitted drug use in high school (ending when he was in college), as if this can and will be held against him as he considers a run for office. The admission was made freely, eleven years ago, in a memoir he wrote at the time; Obama has been open and honest about his past, a past he has clearly learned from and uses to benefit others.

In contrast, we have George Walker Bush, a man who was clearly a user of the same drugs Obama used–but Bush used them not as a confused teenager, but for many more years until he was middle-aged. Bush has consistently lied and dodged questions about it. The media let the story die even after Bush gave a non-denial denial–a weasel, in short–about how he wold pass certain government tests which only meant that he hadn’t used drugs recently. He also lied about being arrested for drunk driving with his underage sister in the car. In short, he used illegal narcotics and was a drunk who drove illegally, far beyond the time one experiences “youthful indiscretions,” and then lied his ass off about it. What a sterling example of high moral fiber.

The media has given him a free pass on all of this for the past eight years, in addition to the latter part of his first presidential campaign. Bringing it up in the press is apparently verboten.

Maybe Obama should have simply kept using drugs well into middle age, then become a Jesus freak, and cover up and lie about his usage. Then he could have qualified for President under the standards of the Republican Party. For that is what appears to pass as “moral,” “honorable,” and dignified” among Republicans.

But hey, we’ve got a liberal media at work here. One which lets the Democrats get away with anything, and won’t give Bush a single break–right?

Here is another excellent example of the conservative mindset at work. Some people take science so simplistically that they do not try to understand a concept beyond the two words used to describe it–especially when they know that dealing with the issue would threaten the lifestyle they are comfortable with.

Of course, while that might explain people like Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, it cannot explain someone like Pat Michaels, someone who actually studied the subject and holds a professorship, trying to claim that extreme cold weather events are proof that global warming is a crock. One would assume that a person who actually got a Ph.D. in ecological climatology would not be so idiotic as to say, “if you believe that warming causes cooling, you’re like my neighbors down in Virginia who think that if you put hot water in the ice cube tray, it freezes faster. It doesn’t work that way.”

Unless, of course, you are a right-wing extremist who is so blinded by your political leanings and the money you can make whoring for the energy industry as to make nonsensical statements like that one–as if the Earth’s climate is not complex enough for a warming trend to cause disruptions that could create extreme cold weather events in some places.

Which, of course, is another way that conservatives find to believe the “science” that suits their politics: find the rare “scientist” with credentials for the task, ignore their severely compromised status, and believe what they have to say, like a chain smoker buying into the “research” and “studies” funded by the tobacco industry that say smoking is harmless. It’s little more than that–addictive behavior–which is why it’s no surprise that it is a common practice in the Bush White House.

Apparently, Darlene and Nancy over at the Associated Press don’t cross-check their stories. Both writers took the same AP-AOL poll from mid-December and wrote a story based on it. Here’s Nancy’s article:

AP poll: Americans optimistic for 2007

By NANCY BENAC, Associated Press Writer
Sat Dec 30, 7:22 PM ET

WASHINGTON – The news from Iraq and other national headlines may be grim, but in Greenville, N.C., John Given has a new baby and his first home, and life is good. [Continued]

The next day, Darlene wrote this:

Poll: Americans see gloom, doom in 2007

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Writer
Sun Dec 31, 6:11 PM ET

WASHINGTON – Another terrorist attack, a warmer planet, death and destruction from a natural disaster. These are among Americans’ grim predictions for the United States in 2007. [Continued]

Who knows, maybe it was a contrasting-piece set. But neither article references the other. Whatever the case, it most certainly highlights the opinions I’ve recently written saying that you have to be careful of the press as its members often contradict each other in impossible ways. Of course, I did not expect the same news agency to contradict itself quite so starkly.

Or maybe this is all one of the glass-half-empty, glass-half-full deals.

Of note: the poll claims that 25% “anticipate the second coming of Jesus Christ,” and only slightly fewer believe we’ll meet E.T. I have to figure that most of those two groups overlap. About half as many people foresee Congress passing a minimum wage hike. So, maybe the entire thing is April Fool’s, come four months early. But then again, I am in the optimist’s group.

Hat tip to FARK.

The RIAA has filed a $1.65 trillion (that’s right) lawsuit against Russian media download company AllofMP3.com, an outfit that claims that it operates legally under Russian statute–but which charges ridiculously low prices for music. The closest I can place their pricing is that they seem to charge 7 cents for the first minute of music, and 3 cents per minute after that.

Now, clearly, the Russian company is not selling any of this music by any agreement with the copyright holders, and I cannot vouch for the legal justification the firm uses.

All that notwithstanding, exactly what are the idiots are the RIAA thinking in suing this company for $150,000 per song, after 11 million downloads at maybe 15 cents per song? My math may not be the greatest, but it would seem that the RIAA is asking for something along the lines of a million times more than the company has so far brought in–and that’s not counting the money they’ve probably blown on salaries and office supplies and stuff like that already. And something tells me that these people are probably not trillionaires in the first place. They have already responded to the RIAA announcement, claiming that they don’t operate in New York and what they do is legal where they are.

But I can tell you one thing that the RIAA has achieved: they have made me aware of this service. And now you. Hmmm. I will have to check out the company and see if it is fly-by-night or anything–for all I know, they are mafia types and your credit card number will be used for nefarious purposes. But if they are not, and better yet, if their service does turn out to be legit and legal via convoluted international copyright and Internet laws, I am going to seriously consider buying all my music from them in the future–for no better reason than to spite the RIAA.

Greedy bastards.

I’m rather impressed. Just one and a half days after posting an entry titled “Akemashite Omedeto Gozaimasu,” that blog entry is ranked 8th on Google under a search for that expression. Which is quite something, as it is a common expression in Japanese, at least as far as New Year’s is concerned. Somebody at Google seems to like me.

Or maybe it is a combination of the recency of the posting, along with someone on a Google Blog linking to the entry. That would be my sister-in-law, who has (so far) done a four-part series on New Year’s in Japan, from the neighborhood-at-day perspective.

Whenever you call customer support for a product that is not a closed system, that seems to be their philosophy. I’m having the same problem with my ISP right now.

I went on vacation in the U.S. for two weeks, and when I got back, my POP email wouldn’t work right. (POP3 email is what you use with an email client like Eudora or Outlook Express, as opposed to web-based email like GMail or Yahoo Mail.) I can receive email all right, but I cannot send; the software says that the server doesn’t respond. Whenever I have had that problem in the past, it has always been the ISP either having some problem somewhere, or demanding that you set your email software exactly to their specifications.

When I called KDDI-Dion (they have an English-language help center, though you don’t get to talk to tech people, they mainly translate), they said that they ran a check of things on their end, and everything worked OK–so the fault must be on my end. I don’t know how extensive their check was on their end, so I can’t really call them out for not doing everything they could. And everything after that vague “check” was a suggestion that something was wrong somewhere else.

The thing is, it almost can’t be somewhere else. Let me explain. I went to the U.S. on December 12. At that time, my email was working fine. In the U.S., I used my PowerBook, my laptop computer, and email worked fine. Then I came back to Japan On December 28, and immediately, the email didn’t work. But that’s not all: I have three computers, two email programs (three, if you count different platforms), and three different SMTP (outgoing mail) servers. On three computers, I have two Mac OS’s and two Windows. I use Eudora 6.2 on both Macs, and Eudora 7 and Outlook Express on Windows. And I have two different web hosts with different SMTP server software, in addition to using Google’s GMail POP service.

And on all computers, and on all software, using all the different SMTP servers, the problem is exactly the same: I can receive mail, but cannot send it.

That sends a clear message: it’s not a software package problem, as three versions of two programs across two platforms cannot all simultaneously have the same problem. It’s not a problem specific to the computer, because three different computers running different platforms all have the same problem. And it’s not something different about the outgoing mail servers, because the same problem manifests itself with three different mail servers run by three different companies, and all started having the problem within a 12-hour period. While it is possible that all three companies involved all changed their mail server software within 12 hours of an upgrade, it is stretching things way too far to suggest that (a) this event just happened to occur exactly as I returned to Japan, and that (b) none of them released notifications of a change that would effectively disable outgoing email. Hold this up against there being a problem with my ISP somewhere, and there’s just no comparison.

Naturally, logically, all the evidence points to a problem with the ISP somewhere, that at some point in the two weeks during my trip to the U.S. that something got out of whack and caused this problem–but because that would involve KDDI-Dion having to do some work to suss out the problem, they seemed unwilling to admit that possibility. So I went through the motions with the support person trying out all the different email programs on all my computers with different things turned on and off, rewiring my network this way and that.

And when all these efforts failed, they tried to claim that it was the people running the email servers who had somehow all secretly upgraded their security software at the same time. When the rep told me about it, she even declared it as if it was an actual, reported event that had been announced somewhere. She didn’t say that they may have upgraded their security software, she said that they had upgraded it, and that was the problem. Had I been less well-equipped or less well-informed, I would have had no choice but to accept that line of bull, and would have been forced to deal futilely with my web hosts from then on about the SMTP server status.

All I can say is, thank god that I have so many different computers, programs, and email accounts available, otherwise I could not have insisted that they were almost certainly wrong on that one.

And of course, whenever you call tech support for just about any company that makes a product that in any way interacts with others, you get the same attitude: when it comes down to us doing actual work to solve your problem or blaming someone else, we blame someone else. That way, you make the other guys do the work before you do, even if all the evidence points to your system being the problem. I remember that even with Apple, in fact–one of the first things they would insist you do before they got involved was to blank out your hard drive and then reinstall everything from scratch, and only if the problem persisted after that, they would get involved. Well, thanks! All I have to do is a full day’s work, probably unnecessarily, to prove to you that it’s not my problem, but yours instead.

Now, that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the tough job tech support has. Believe me, I have had more than enough experience trying to solve computer problems for people over the phone. It can be painful. Being the most computer-savvy person that most of my friends, students, and co-workers know, I tend to get all the requests from people to help them when they have a problem. Which is why I am a very good tech support client, as I know to alert them to the details of my computer hardware and setup, tell them all the technical details about my software, and the precise nature and process of the malfunction, giving more detail rather then less.

Unfortunately for them, it also means that I don’t accept BS cover-your-ass answers either.

But at the very least, I ask them to work with me and not tell me to waste time hunting down by-the-book problems that I can logically eliminate as described above. In the end, I got them to do this. They were down to asking me to change the ports used by my SMTP servers when I insisted that we check out ISP equipment problems first. So soon I will do their local-equipment check of turning off the vDSL modem and router, then rebooting them while connected directly to just one computer. In the meantime, they are setting me up with a new password for the KDDI-Dion email account (I never use it and can’t recall the password I chose 3 years ago), so we can test whether I can send mail through their servers.

I hope it’ll clear up soon (and if anyone has any ideas about the problem, let me know!), because it can get really tiring dealing with a service which seems to be set up to do nothing but talk and slough off responsibility in every way possible before actually doing something.

Researchers in the U.S. are carrying out experiments to see if gay sheep can be changed into straight sheep. This, naturally, has sparked all sorts of fun outcry, including people defending the sheep’s “right” to be gay, and others saying it’ll be a “cure” for homosexuality.

The fundies must be conflicted about this one. After all, if homosexuality could be reversed chemically, I am sure they would be overjoyed. On the other hand, accepting this research, especially before knowing whether it will be successful, would be the same as admitting that homosexuality does occur in animal species, and axiomatically that homosexuality is a natural process and not a choice (those sheep chose to be gay!)–both being conclusions they have soundly rejected.

Although I am usually favorable to most scientific research as a matter of principle, I am not very positive about this particular line. The only benefit I see is the possible light shed on mammalian reproductive biology, and then only if the experiments produce some kind of measurable and reproducible effect. However, the nature of the experiments themselves is disturbing, as it would appear to be an attempt by people who are anti-gay attempting to “cure” homosexuality. (How ironic it would be if they failed to make gay sheep straight but instead found a way to make straight sheep gay!)

But should the “desired” technique be found, it could lead to what is essentially forced chemical alteration of human beings, akin to chemical castration of sex offenders. This of course stems from the belief that homosexuality is a disease, or at least an “imbalance,” something unhealthy and undesired, which should be “cured.” It brings to mind a relatively bad episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Riker falls for a member of a sexless society who is sexual; when discovered, she is cured of her “deviancy.”

Of course, there is also the possibility that a drug regimen could be found which does not change one’s actual sexual orientation, but could make one temporarily more inclined to respond to sexual cues from a certain gender. Think of drugs that make a peaceful person violent; you have not changed their nature with the drugs, you have simply poisoned them with a mind-altering drug. This would be particularly dangerous because it could be used to “prove” that homosexuality can be “cured” or “treated” whilst doing no such thing. Similarly, if the experiment fails, fundies will likely claim such a result to be proof that homosexuality is not a biological process, which would also be a faulty conclusion.

All in all, it does not sound like a very worthwhile line of study–unless the researchers are closet fundies trying to “get rid of” gay people. In which case it might be worthwhile from that point of view, while repugnant and horrifying from others.

In a grim coincidence of milestones, the last U.S. soldier killed in Iraq in 2006 was also the 3000th killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war. (Unless reports of more deaths come to light.) The soldier, Specialist Dustin R. Donica, 22, of Spring, Texas, was killed in Southern Baghdad.

But hey, Bush got to hang Saddam, complete with shaky cellphone-camera video of his death being spread over the Internet. So it was “worth it“, apparently.

In translation, the title of this post means “Happy New Year” in Japanese. When I first came to Japan in the mid-80’s, I was taken to a shrine for New Year’s, and since then have always preferred this place at this time. Every year, I try to make a point of going to a good local shrine to participate in the goings-on; I simply enjoy the atmosphere very much. Not a crazy party atmosphere, but a quietly festive neighborly get-together of strangers for a unified purpose, everyone friendly and enjoying themselves.

This year was also special because it was the first time in three years that I have been able to make it to the local shrine. As you may recall, two years ago, a severe nosebleed kept me over in the U.S. for an extra week and I missed the proceedings here. Last year, a broken foot saw me back in Japan on time, but unable to go out and do anything–especially to climb the steep stairs of the shrine. So this year was the first time in a long time that I was able to get back into the action.

Visiting a shrine or temple on New Year’s is called “Hatsumode,” literally “first visit to a temple.” It is usually done anytime in the first three days of the year, though right at midnight on New Year’s is Prime Time, so to speak. One visits the shrine, throws coins in the offering box, shakes the rope with the big bell at the top, and then prays to the spirits (I always say a prayer for my mom). Famous shrines are often swamped; Meiji Shrine, for example, has so many visitors that most cannot even get to the batteries of offering boxes arrayed before the shrine. Most visitors wind up tossing the coins over the heads of those in front of them, causing some in the first row to get pelted with coins. Shrines and temples see their biggest revenues of the year at this time.

Activities at the shrines and temples are also a big draw. Temples ring a large bell 108 times, allowing visitors to take one hit each. Shrines offer a variety of attractions. When I first came to this town, I thought that the shrine atop the tallest hill near the central train station would be the Place to Be. However, when I got there just before midnight (this must have been 2001, I suppose), there was no one anywhere around; I was all by myself at this dark, deserted shrine, albeit with a great view. But then I saw fireworks from another location, and followed them to their origin–and found the shrine that I go to to this day. And that shrine has just about every attraction a shrine is bound to have: fireworks, shi-shi-mai dancers, hyottoko, sake and ama-zake, festival-style food, a traditional Japanese band, and a few bonfires. It’s quite a show.

In the image above, people line up to ring the bell and pray; the line winds down the stairs all the way to the bottom. This year, I got there at 11:15 and was surprised to find that I had gotten there before anyone else. Even after waiting for 20 minutes (and getting the very first cup of sake to be served from the barrel), I was still first in line–after the band players, who all got to cut to be first in line.

You shake the rope, you clap twice (optional), and you pray. It’s not a big religious thing.

I caught one of the fireworks on film, with embers from the bonfires rising to meet the burst.

Bonfires are maintained partly to provide warmth (it’s cold!), and to allow you to burn the old stuff you bought the year before, like the wooden arrow I always buy.

The shi-shi-mai dance; someone inside the big lion’s head goes around to visitors at the shrine. They approach a visitor, who then bows their head. The lion’s head opens, and touches the visitor’s head for a few moments, then the dancer pulls away, bobs up and down and claps the jaws a few times. This is supposed to frighten away the evil spirits about you. It also scares the heck out of half the kids at the shrine, some who go running and screaming.

In this case, a hyottoko doubled as the shi-shi-mai dancer. “Hyottoko” is actually “hi otoko,” or “fire man; supposedly, the distorted face comes from blowing through a straw to stoke a flame.

Finally, a nice time-lapse photo showing the scene from the bonfire at bottom to the moon above the shrine and the tall trees.

Happy New Year!

“Devilstower” at DKos hits the nail on the head with this writing about the Republican Party. In a nutshell: Republicans are supposed to be for smaller government, but have increased its size and power over the people; they are supposed to be for fiscal responsibility, but have exploded the deficit and debt; they are supposed to be good at managing the military, but have decimated it in a series of massive strategic blunders while crapping on the soldiery; and they’re supposed to be tough on crime, but after Democrat Clinton oversaw a steep decline in the crime rate, it has started to rise under Bush.

Democrats might not be stellar at managing the military or keeping government small, but they are far better at it than Republicans; and while the Republicans suck at deficits and law & order, Democrats do a very good job. Democrats also are historically much better at creating new jobs as well, while Republicans have overseen an economy where well-paying American jobs have been shipped overseas, middle-class Americans have lower salaries and fewer benefits, and the tax burden is steadily shifted more and more onto the backs of the middle class.

Then there are also freedoms. Republicans are very big on freedoms, on protecting the Constitution, and making sure that government doesn’t infringe on our individual right to be left alone and not interfered with. But this administration has suspended habeas corpus, instituted warrantless wiretaps against U.S. citizens and claimed the right to do so universally without oversight, and can even arrest you and detain you without a warrant or any charges at all. You can be held indefinitely without charges or access to an attorney, and can even be declared an enemy combatant and stripped of your citizenship, on the basis of evidence that can be kept top secret and never reviewed by anyone. Are Republicans really OK with this, based solely upon the promise that the government will only use this against terrorists, cross their hearts?

And then there’s responsibility, honesty, and accountability, right? Republicans respect these virtues especially, don’t they? Except that the Republican Party has been horribly irresponsible, drowned in scandals and mismanagement whilst simultaneously shutting down ethics investigations while they were in power. Republicans have been steeped in financial criminality and cronyism, and when they are caught red-handed, they always blame somebody else and everybody else–and only when all of that fails, do they “bravely” step up and “take responsibility” even while they persist in claiming they did nothing wrong and it was still somebody else’s fault.

Republicans are also big on the bottom line, as I recall. On getting good results. Say no more. (Unless, of course, you have an extraordinary respect for underhanded political maneuvering.)

Again, Democrats may not be all that hot themselves, but in all of these areas conservatives claim to respect and value, they at the very least do a better job than Republicans, and in many areas do a far better job than the GOP.

So, exactly what conservative values are actually being upheld by Republicans? Doesn’t leave much, does it? Except for the question, if all of those things are important to you and you are voting Republican, then why are you voting Republican? Inertia?

I love Crooks & Liars. They’re a great blog. They’re on my LinkBoard. But I do think that they’re going way overboard with effusive self-praise at a recent ranking released in the press:

There are literally millions of blogs now.  For one single blog, on its own, to generate 40% of the ten most linked-to posts for the year is a truly remarkable achievement.  It is a testament to the uniquely valuable role C&L plays in the blogosphere — not only in providing invaluable video content but, more importantly, in helping to shape the dialogue and agenda for the liberal blogosphere as a whole.

The thing is, all four of their top 10 most-linked-to blog posts were posts that were linked to because they contained video content, namely Colbert’s White House Correspondents’ dinner monologue, Al Gore’s SNL “presidential address,” and two Keith Olbermann commentaries.

The reason people linked to these posts were not because of the commentary offered by C&L, it was because the video was there. But Glenn Greenwald, author of the self-praising post, claims that C&L’s ability to “shape dialog and agenda” was more important than providing video content. Now, I think that C&L does a good job in regard to shaping the liberal dialog and agenda, but in all fairness, I do not believe that they received all those links on those posts for that. Remove the video content from those posts and allow them to stand on their commentary alone, and they would instantly drop into obscurity.

Don’t get me wrong–providing the video content is fantastic, and I depend on C&L to see so much of this stuff that I would never get to see otherwise, living overseas as I do. But the true credit for the inbound links lies with C&L only insofar as they went to the trouble and expense to provide the video content; the credit for shaping the dialog and agenda goes to Stephen Colbert, Al Gore, and most of all, Keith Olbermann.

Iraqi TV is reporting that Saddam Hussein has been hanged.

I am so glad that this whole thing is over, the Iraqi people are now at peace and no longer suffer under violence and bloodshed, and things are just better all around.

No, wait.

There was no holiday break for soldiers in Iraq this Christmas season. Seven US soldiers died on Christmas Day, followed by six others the next day and nine the day after that. Only 3 of the 22 deaths were non-hostile.

December deaths are increasing at a worrying rate (3.79 per day for the month overall), making December this year the worst month for casualties in two years, exceeding October 2006 (3.55 per day). The average death rate over the past four months has been 3.1 soldiers per day, as opposed to 2.2 soldiers per day in all preceding months, excluding the initial invasion.

Meanwhile, Bush, on vacation yet again in Texas, reports “good progress” in his plan to escalate the war in Iraq, sending as many as 20 to 30 thousand more troops into the meat grinder. Thank god Bush realizes how hard that kind of work is.

It must be hard, especially when your priorities are to set up a good PR campaign to decide how to cast the plan in the best light with the best buzz words before you actually work out the plan itself.

Due to supposedly non-existent global warming, a huge 50-sq.-km chunk of ice has broken free of an ice shelf in Canada and could smite oil rigs and wreak havoc upon oil tanker shipping lines.

Let’s think about this like a fundie televangelist: what, exactly, is god trying to tell us?

Hmmmm….

There’s been a bit of a flap about a photo showing John Kerry sitting in a cafeteria at the US Embassy in Baghdad. Apparently, right-wingers have been having a snicker-fest about how the “troops are shunning Kerry” by not sitting next to him. Here’s the photo:

Now, the main point to be made is, even if this were true, then why would it be relevant? Whatever his presidential ambitions might be, Kerry is a has-been, and serves now as little more than a punching bag for the right wing–and ironically, even then, only after studied distortion to make a normal situation appear scandalous or pathetic.

But, OK, let’s consider the photo as if it actually meant something. First: it’s taken at the US Embassy, and not a military mess hall. Note that in the photo above, there are a good number of people in view, and only one is in a uniform. While more soldiers might be expected to be making use of the embassy cafeteria in Baghdad than in a US embassy elsewhere, it is hardly a stretch to imagine there not being soldiers there all the time. Not to mention that this is a single moment out of a long lunch; this does not prove, for example, that Kerry was not surrounded by others just a few minutes prior or after. This could have been the tail end of an event, for example, with Kerry staying on to discuss matters with a single person.

But it gets better. At first, because of a year-old date stamp and apparent cropping of the photo, left-wing blogs initially called the photo a fake. It seems that while the photo was cropped, that it is not fake, and the photographer may simply have forgotten to set the date stamp on the camera.

But the irony comes in when Michelle “Moonbat” Malkin attempted to prove the authenticity of the first photo by posting a second photo:

Malkin makes a note of Kerry’s clothing being the same and the table looks similar, but if you look closely, you’ll note that the cups are different and the flowers are missing (the tablecloth may also be different). Likely this was taken at a different time on the same day, possibly even at a different location.

But the true irony lies in the fact that Kerry is surrounded by soldiers in uniform. In order to prove the validity of the photo showing that Kerry is being “shunned” by the soldiers, Malkin showed a photo of Kerry surrounded by soldiers. Talk about stupidity.

As it turns out, the photo that right-wing bloggers have been hyping up was taken while Kerry was giving a media interview, according to Frank Lowenstein, Senator Kerry’s foreign policy staffer:

It’s a weird feeling seeing this photo of Sen. Kerry debated and decoded like some artifact out of the DaVinci Codes. It’s strange to me because I was there when the photo was taken. I traveled with Sen. Kerry throughout his Middle East trip. I’m his foreign policy staffer. Myself and Major McKnight were sitting right there when this photo was snapped.

Snubbed? Alone? Hardly. Sen. Kerry isn’t eating alone. In fact that photo is at an off the record breakfast meeting Senator Kerry conducted early Sunday morning with the very real Marc Santora of the New York Times Baghdad bureau and his younger colleague from the newspaper. The man shown in the green shirt across from Sen. Kerry is Marc Santora. Right after that interview was completed, Senator Kerry videotaped a message expressing his and the country’s support for the troops, to be shown on the armed services network in Iraq. Just the night before, Sen. Kerry was in that very same mess hall at a table where he ate dinner with about 10 U.S. soldiers.

Additionally, Senator Kerry spent nearly a day and half (out of two days in Iraq) outside of the Green Zone because he felt strongly that he wanted to hear from troops on the front lines. On Saturday morning, he greeted U.S. soldiers in Basra, and also met many British troops while he was there. On Saturday afternoon, he flew to FOB (Forward Operating Base) Warhorse, where he had a town hall meeting with over 100 soldiers. On Sunday morning, he was briefed by U.S. commanders at a training camp for Iraqi security forces. On Sunday evening, he traveled to another FOB where he had a long dinner in the camp mess hall with soldiers, including many from Massachusetts. These troops are nothing short of amazing, and my boss knows that with every fiber of his being. He’s a combat veteran. He’s been there.

Which brings us back to the original point: the whole thing is a non-issue, little more than wingnut bloggers trying to squeeze yet another let’s-ridicule-Kerry story out of an out-of-context story with a completely fabricated conclusion sewn into it.

Well, it was a good trip. A short one this time–just two weeks in the U.S., and Sachi was with me for only the last seven days. But we packed a lot into that short time.

Right now, I am sitting at gate 100 at SFO, hearing them page Sachi for the nth time. We had a bit of a mix-up, and thought we’d be going to the same terminal (we have different flights). Sachi went ahead just a few minutes, and we arranged it so that she would wait after getting through all the red tape. Then I find out that my flight leaves from the terminal at the other end. I try to get into her terminal to tell her, but despite the advice to do so from the guy at the information desk, the security wouldn’t let me in. I tried paging her, but the paging person keeps screwing up–mispronouncing her name, and then instead of saying “White Courtesy Phone please,” she says “Whitcurtsyphnpls” in a fast bunch at the end; I doubt Sachi can understand it, and if she knew what to do after a page, she’d have answered by now. So, as is my nature, I’m worrying that she’s wandering the airport trying to find me or something. I’m sure that I’m wrong, but as I said, worrying is my nature with stuff like this.

I just asked the courtesy telephone people to page only one last time, but this time I spoke to a guy. I told him that the female announcer was trying and that there should be just one last page before stopping. So a minute later the guy pages her, loud and clear–and then the woman comes on five seconds later, paging her again with the “Whitcurtsyphnpls” suffix. Poor Sachi, she must think that there’s something really serious going on. As usual, I’m making a mess of things. We’ll get it straightened out when we meet again in Narita.

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Okay, we’re on our way back from Narita now. It turns out that Sachi indeed could not understand the announcer, but there was no problem; she realized as I did that we had different gates, so we just met up at Narita–where we could at least communicate by cell phone.

Anyway, the first week here by myself (Sachi came later due to work) I went birdwatching (as you have noted if you read this) and did some shopping. After the whole two weeks, I have come away with a new digital video camera (a cheap $230 Panasonic that performs surprisingly well for a cheapie), a similarly cheap 500GB firewire/USB external hard drive ($240, available for $245 at Amazon [price updated]), a new leather jacket for $80 (my old one was getting too worn), several new shirts and a few new jeans, a very nice knit zip-up sweater with a hood, and a new pair of dress shoes (maybe the priciest item for the value, at $200), plus a lot of miscellaneous items. Didn’t go so heavy on the DVDs this time–just a few News Radios, a season of Rockford Files, and a few others. I figure it doesn’t make sense to get movies on DVD for the next few years until I upgrade to HDTV and Blu-Ray and/or HD-DVD.

Sachi and I together went to San Francisco for a few days, seeing the sights and going shopping. There were family days (such as Christmas Eve, when we did the whole present-opening deal), and alone days (such as Christmas Day, when many in my family fell ill) and Sachi and I could spend time just together. We had a great stay for a couple of reasons: first, a good family friend let Sachi and I stay at her home, where we had lots of room and close proximity to my family without crowding them, and second, my father let us use his Prius (with all the bells and whistles) most of the time, and the GPS mapping feature alone saved us from unfolding maps in the car while parked at the side of the road many times.

But perhaps the biggest thing for me was that I did not suffer from some terrible malady. As you may recall if you’ve been here for a while, two years ago my Christmas vacation was muted by a serious nosebleed (massive, really) that virtually immobilized me, and last year I was hobbled by a broken foot suffered one week before I left for the U.S. Everyone (including myself) was wondering what would strike me down this year, but nothing did.

So all in all, it went very well.

It truly is a commentary on the sad state of affairs in the media when the Bush administration can perform such blatantly transparent political manipulation of matters supposedly related to national security, and no one in the mainstream media (outside the editorial pages) dares to suggest the connection.

One excellent example is the manipulation of the “terror alerts” in the 2004 elections. Even at the time, it was clear that the alerts were ginned up; one alert was supposedly called on the basis information that was several years old, and virtually all others had just as little if even less justification. And there was little doubt they were fake anyway, seeing as how each terror alert just happened to be timed for maximum effect when Kerry was about to get a jump in the polls. And then after the election was over, the alerts stopped, dead cold. And yet, even today, the press is unwilling to go the full distance and call the fake alerts for what they were–even though Tom Ridge, the administration’s own head of Homeland Security, came out and said that the alerts were baseless in terms of actual security.

More recently was the timing of the sentencing of Saddam Hussein–an event that simply “happened” to get scheduled two days before politically charged and vitally important midterm elections in the U.S. Despite cries of protest from the administration that they “had nothing to do with the selection of the date” for the sentencing, the fact is that the Bush administration has powerful influence over the Iraqi government, and anyone who thinks that they gave up ultimate control over Hussein and every aspect of his trial is fooling themselves. And, yet again, the mainstream press refused to call the scheduling for what it so obviously was.

This inability of the media to call a spade a spade has likely encouraged the administration to engage in their latest bit of political timing: it was just reported that Saddam’s execution will take place within the next 30 days. While it could come “any time,” there is the somewhat interesting “coincidence” that Bush’s penultimate State of the Union Address falls within that same 30 days. How much do you want to wager that the execution will not take place in the 3 days after the State of the Union? I’ll bet the odds are far worse for that than the 10% they statistically deserve.

And again, there is little doubt that the media will again remain silent on yet another flagrant and unabashed bit of theatrical scheduling to try to help Bush out politically.

Hat tip to TMP and reader “RP” for the call.

Update: Saddam will likely be hanged this weekend, well before Bush’s SotU address. The timing, therefore, is of less significance on this case, though still remains significant in the two others mentioned.

Update #2: Well, then again, maybe timing was an issue here. New reports say that Bush tried to get the Iraqis to delay the execution by two weeks. While released as an attempt to make it seem like the Bush administration was not responsible for the fluster-cluck of an execution, it also means that the administration was aiming for a date that would have been just a few days before Bush’s State of the Union speech. So my original thesis still stands.

Via TPM, a good article on why Obama could win Iowa, despite Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack being there in the running. The article also has good quotes by Obama on the issues.

If you like Wikipedia, you might want to check out its twin, Uncyclopedia. It is a parody of Wiki, and can be pretty entertaining if you happen upon the right article. Naturally, as WikiComedy, its efficacy is much spottier than Wikipedia, and some entries look like they were written by a ten-year-old (and probably were). A few excerpts from better entries:

Japan (lit. land of wind and ghosts) is the nation that is on the other side of the world, if you live in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. If you live in China, it’s quite close. If you live in Japan, just look out of the window. If you live in Japan and do not have a window, you can make a small one by poking your finger through a wall.

God (born Herschel Godstein) is that cool dude wearing white robes and a long beard that you most possibly meet when you die (although it has been unconfirmed because life on heaven is so beautiful everybody who dies doesn’t want to write back). He can be mean sometimes, like in the Bible, but he’s a chill guy most part of his time. He was elected to be our god for the 2006th year running this year, barely beating the Egyptian sun god Ra, Omnipotent Odin, and the Almighty Zeus (still recovering from alcoholism).

Sir Isaac Newton was born Iszaak Nűton in 1621 as a fully formed super-human genius, quoting mathematical formulas and measuring his own velocity as he exited his mother’s womb. Seriously. You think you’re pretty smart because you managed to open that bag of chips without spilling it all over? Isaac Newton was, like, a kabazillion times smarter, though admittedly, he was no Einstein. Nűton was expelled from Hungary to England in his youth for having an overly pronounceable name, and spent his entire life in Engerland to discover the formula “Black Man” + “Basketball” = “White Girl.”

Though sometimes, shades of truth break in while still performing as satire:

Hell is a place made up by the Roman Catholic Church during the 1400s. A fictional place invented to punish beyond death, with exemption for those who obeyed the RCC’s every whim. Before, control was difficult, the most you could threaten being death, which generally occured at or before puberty anyway.

There are also dubious claims that Jerry Springer is the president of Djibouti, dogs are not as stupid as they look, and Ronald Reagan was named after an airport in Washington D.C. As I mentioned, there is a strong crap-to-quality ratio, but if you’re willing to wade through the bad stuff, there is entertainment to be found.

I am currently in the San Francisco Bay Area to visit family and friends for the holidays. One could call this area the deepest reaches of liberal secular culture within the United States, and, as such, the front lines of the War on Christmas (™ and © Bill O’Reilly).

The radio waves are saturated with Christmas tunes singing of Christ Our Lord, Christmas decorations abound with armies of mangers, people are going to church to celebrate Christmas mass, and signs and colors of Christ are everywhere.

Maybe it’s just me, but the whole “War on Christmas” thing seems a lot more like conservatives who get 99% of what they want whining like spoiled children because they can’t have that last little tiny bit and deny others even the smallest of crumbs.

This is not to complain about Christmas. I just had a very nice evening with family last night around the Christmas tree, and am very much enjoying the scenery and the holidays. I have said “Merry Christmas” so many times in the past few days, and will again in years to come.

Let’s just not try to claim that Christmas is in peril or anything, okay? So, as I listen to Bing on KBAY and enjoy the day off with my girl in a house on an avenue decorated by festive lights, Merry Christmas to all.