Because after April 1st–no foolin’ this time–the sale of second-hand electronic goods made before 2001 will become illegal. That’s right, against the law. If you have a shop and sell a laserdisc player, you’ll be subject to a prison sentence and stiff fines. The ban is not total–it does not include personal computers, and only applies to businesses that sell used electronics–but that’s quite a ban, if you ask me.

The ban applies to 450 types of items, including “TVs, audiovisual equipment, video-game machines, refrigerators and electric musical instruments.” Ostensibly, the law is supposed to be for safety purposes, but that’s a crock. The standards for checking the safety of products was changed in 2001; before then, the government required strict testing for safety, but changed it so that manufacturers could test items on a voluntary system. Which means that the new testing won’t be as rigorous as the old one. But the new law is based upon the assumption that the old equipment should not be sold because somehow it won’t be as safe as the new stuff. Makes sense, right?

Of course it doesn’t. It makes no sense at all. Until you factor in the way the Japanese government works with its industries. The automobile industry is the best example. In Japan, if you own a car, you have to take it in for expensive “safety” checks every few years, called “shaken” (pronounced “shaw-ken”). When the car is new, you get three years free; then a safety check every two years. It used to become mandatory each year after the car became ten years old, but that was changed and now the two-year check continues indefinitely. But that doesn’t change much–it’s still hideously expensive. Shaken can cost up to $1,750, not including a weight tax (up to $500) and mandatory insurance (up to $250), which is skimpy and usually must be enhanced with additional insurance (also up to $500). So you might wind up paying an additional $3000 every two years–which is why a lot of people sell their cars before a shaken check comes along–which is the whole idea. Shaken is not really for safety, it’s a gift for the automobile industry, intended to boost their sales. The discarded used cars, often in perfect running condition, are then scrapped or sold overseas, another big industry, as they aren’t worth much–if anything at all–in Japan, due to shaken.

Knowing that, you can now understand the whole new “safety” law about reselling used electronics in Japan. It’s more a gift to the Japanese electronics industry than anything else. So head off to Akihabara in March, and maybe you can find some good fire sales for pre-2001 electronics! Courtesy of the Japanese government.

It’s almost certain that it won’t get passed, but the Missouri legislature is considering a bill that would make Christianity as the state’s “official ‘majority’ religion“:

The resolution would recognize “a Christian god,” and it would not protect minority religions, but “protect the majority’s right to express their religious beliefs.

The resolution also recognizes that, “a greater power exists,” and only Christianity receives what the resolution calls, “justified recognition.” [link to main story (which is just a few lines longer) requires registration]

Of course, it is immediately being challenged, and some even think that it’s not serious, but just a ploy to make out liberals as being anti-Christian.

Of course, it’s not the first time that this kind of thing has happened. There was a widespread outbreak of Christian fanaticism nearly a century and a half ago in the 1860’s, when a band of Protestant denominations submitted an amendment to the U.S. constitution that would change the preamble to read as thus (proposed additions marked in bold text):

We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the ruler among nations, his revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the inalienable rights and the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to ourselves, our posterity, and all the people, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This amendment was again forwarded in the 1870’s. It failed both times, which is what I expect the Missouri legislation to do. But the movement of the 19th century eventually resulted in several incursions of religion into government, one of note being the use of the motto “In God We Trust” on our money–which is now being pushed as a precedent to tear down the wall between church and state (see page 5 of Scalia’s dissent in McCreary v. ACLU, noted here). This one piece of legislation will probably not pass, being far more radical than the recent South Dakota ban on abortion, but it does show an unleashing of unabashed right-wing religious glee at a Supreme Court majority being on their side, and a growing confidence, a willingness to try out the kind of theocratic fascism that they would love to establish.

I know it’s bad sportsmanship, but kind deserves kind: I hope the Japanese baseball team does not win the upcoming World Baseball Classic. That’s not out of any antipathy for Japan, nor for the players, but strictly out of contempt for the team’s manager: Sadaharu Oh. I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating.

When I first heard of Oh, I had respect for his record, if not for the claims that his higher number of home runs than Hank Aaron actually meant he was a better slugger; Japan’s ballparks are smaller than American counterparts, and if Aaron had been batting in them, he’d most likely have gotten far more home runs than Oh did. But since there is no way to strictly determine that, it’s enough to simply say that Oh holds the record for Japan, Aaron holds the record for America, and neither “wins” over the other.

But the respect I had for the man died when Oh showed unforgivably poor sportsmanship, not to mention racism (ironic for Oh, a half-Chinese man who initially faced racism himself in Japan) when he denied foreign ballplayers the chance to break his batting record–because they were not Japanese. This happened not once, not twice, but three times. First in 1985, when Oh managed the Yomiuri Giants and faced Randy Bass, who challenged Oh’s record of 55 home runs in one season. Next was in 2001, when Oh managed the Daiei Hawks, and faced Tuffy Rhodes, who had tied Oh’s record. Most recently, he denied the chance to Alex Cabrera, who had also tied Oh at 55 in 2002. In all three cases, the foreign players challenging Oh’s record faced the teams managed by Oh in the final games of the seasons. In all three cases, orders were given to the pitchers for Oh’s teams that these players were not to be given the chance to break the “King’s” record. While some other teams gave the batters chances, Oh’s teams have consistently blocked challengers on racial grounds. Oh tried to blame this on the coaches, saying he was “out of the loop,” but the fact that he never disciplined a coach belies this weak excuse. It was also commonly understood that if the players had been Japanese, they would have been given good pitches and not walked:

“The pitchers are always under the direction of the manager. So it is not up to them,” explains 25-year old Tigers fan Yasuhisa Tadera, seated in the left field stands, of the practice of intentionally not throwing strikes.

Sitting behind Tadera is Eiji Matsumoto. “The Japanese just don’t want the record broken by a foreigner,” he says.

So then if a Japanese player approached the record, would he see strikes?

“If [Hideki] Matsui of the Giants, for example, were close, they’d give him a chance,” admits Matsumoto, a 52-year old Giants fan, “The Japanese don’t play fair.”

Any person who acts with such a depraved sense of foul sportsmanship not just once but three times does not deserve any titles or respect. This is, after all, baseball: what happened to “three strikes and you’re out”? For Oh to lead this present team to a victory would be a crowning achievement for a man who has disgraced a sport which still idolizes him–for in Japan, unfortunately, such acts as Oh has taken part in are quietly dismissed. In America or almost any other country, the manager would have been ostracized and banned from the sport for such offenses. Japanese baseball is improving–when Oh shut out Rhodes in 2001, Japanese baseball commissioner Hiromori Kawashima criticized Oh, saying his decision was “completely divorced from the essence of baseball, which values the supremacy of fair play.” But Oh has not been penalized in any way, nor has he taken much of a hit in his popularity in Japan. After all, he was chosen to manage the Japan team this year in the World Baseball Classic. What does that tell you?

In just one day, I’ve gotten about 1500 hits via Google from one source which seems to be carrying out robotic searches. This is not just starting now, I’ve noticed it for the past few days, but it really stands out in my stats, in the search engine details, since the clean slate of March 1st has zeroed all the figures.

The searches seem to be carried out using Google as a vehicle and seem to target Movable Type blogs. The copious searches all have the same structure, looking for web pages which include a Movable Type archive address structure like this:

inurl:”archives/001026.html”

Just change the number before the “.html” extension to include any possible number between 000100 and 001700, and you’ve got an idea of the massive barrage of auto-generated searches that get carried out (the 1700 limit is due to my blog having roughly that number of posts–the searches must certainly exceed that number elsewhere). The robot software then apparently follows each of the links given by Google which results in a referral hit on my site–and, I suspect, many, many others. Moreover, each search results in up to 20 hits for any one archive page. It’s as if someone is using Google as a tool in a bizarre cataloging of Movable Type blogs.

Anyone else out there notice this?

The searches and hits, by the way, are all coming from the same base IP address within an eleven-number range, specifically 85.255.113.179 ~ 85.255.113.189.

Update: I’m not the only one, as I expected. Here’s a guy who linked to this post and is having the identical problem. He’s done better than I have, though, and identified the IP address block as being from the Ukraine.

I don’t know who this clown Cavuto is, but one thing is for sure, he’s spinning the Iraq civil war faster than the Tasmanian Devil. First, the civil war could be a “good thing,” then soon after that, the media has made the whole thing up. So I guess Cavuto thinks the press is doing a great job, since it is “making up” a “good thing” about Iraq!

In the meantime, reality in Iraq seems to be paying no attention to Fox News, with violence escalating and sectarian tensions becoming critical. Not to mention that it could be easily argued that the shrine bombing was not the real start of a civil war, but that one has been brewing since a long time before that.

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Meanwhile, Bush takes hits galore now that the videos have come out showing that he not only received massive warnings about the seriousness of Katrina and the danger to the levees, but that he himself asked no questions about the storm or the relief preparations, and confidently stated that he was “fully prepared.” Obviously he was not.

It is already well-established (though not as often reported) that Bush was responsible for the late deployment of relief, his cronyism resulted in massive mismanagement, and his photo op forays into devastated areas put actual relief efforts on hold while people were dying. That this story brings light to these issues and that the government is still screwing up, still not delivering badly needed supplies, and is still short-changing the victims of the storm, is nothing less than a very just reward for an administration that still pretends that it did the best it could.

Is it possible that these news stories will bring Bush down below the low levels he’s already at? One could only hope. Bush is already looking like midterm-election poison, and Republicans in Congress are edging away from him, and even openly rebelling.

Not really, thank goodness. But someone did a great job of illustrating the differences in style between Apple and Microsoft, in this 2 1/2-minute animation of what the iPod’s packaging would look like if the marketing people at Microsoft were in charge of the project. A great little video, and perfectly chosen music to boot.

Zogby has just come out with a survey taken of 944 military personnel currently serving in Iraq. The results are fascinating: 72% think that the U.S. should pull out in the next year. The tough ones are the marines–only 58% agree with that contention, while 89% in the reserves and 82% of the Guardsmen are saying to bug out within twelve months. One can only assume that Bush and the GOP will now start calling the troops traitors and cowards who just want to cut and run–unless they don’t care about being consistent.

What’s more interesting is data that seems to belie what the government is telling the troops: 85% believe the U.S. attacked to retaliate for “Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,” and 77% feel that a major reason was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.” Now, the poll was not clear on whether the troops believed that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and was protecting al Qaeda, or whether they thought the administration believed that–but it’s likely the former is true. Which tells you something about the propaganda these kids must be getting fed to them. Even at its most gullible, no more than 70% of the American public believed Saddam was involved in 9/11. And it’s a pretty well-established fact that Saddam did not get along with al Qaeda, and vice-versa; Saddam was clearly not “protecting” them. For these personnel to believe these things means that they’ve been lied to even more than we have.

Zogby explains the survey in more detail in his blog.

CBS just posted a poll where Bush got an all-time low of 34%. The story implies the Dubai ports deal and the mess in Iraq as possible causes. Usually Bush gets this low only when he’s done something to tick off his base, like with Harriet Miers.

Update: this comparison shows that at this point in his second term, Bush has approval ratings higher only than Nixon, who at this point was mired in Watergate. Clinton, under fierce attack by Republicans, was at 57%.

The Iraqi military is not necessarily getting better, The single battalion rated as ready to operate independently just got downgraded to one requiring the support of U.S. troops. Not exactly encouraging three years into the occupation and with the country teetering on the brink of civil war.

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Talk about spin. Here’s “fair and balanced” Fox News trying out the idea that an Iraqi civil war might be a good thing. Think I’m kidding? Check it out.

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More torture evidence. Damn, that Lynndie England gets around, doesn’t she?

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Remember how the Republicans made a huge, gigantic deal about the Clinton White House “discovering” certain documents some time after the Republican Congress demanded them? Guess what? Now the Bush White House is doing the exact same thing–and not only are Republicans silent, the “liberal” media is barely noticing it. In this case, the Bush administration “discovered” 250 emails that could incriminate Cheney in the Plame scandal. Frankly, I’m inclined to believe that the documents were overlooked, as it seems unlikely that the Bush administration would now reveal them if they didn’t have to–just like it was with the Clinton administration and their late-discovered records. Betcha Republicans won’t see equity in the two situations, though…

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“Established” media web sites, including the Washington Post, MSNBC, and CBS News, have taken to scrubbing their web sites for whatever reasons. Sometimes it’s an error, but sometimes–as in MSNBC’s scrubbing of the news that Cheney drank beer before shooting his hunting buddy–apparently are scrubbed because somebody doesn’t like the idea of that news getting out there. I recall Fox News doing this back in 2004 when they reported complete lies about Kerry. Like printed media, such stories should always carry at least a retraction notice. The entry also notes that bloggers scrub blogs too, usually just to correct errors–but when something is removed from a published story, there should be some note of it somewhere. The most I’ll do is make an edit in style–wording or clarification–without noting it. Usually a commenter will spot an error (like Tim did yesterday), and I’ll correct the error and note it in another comment. But to remove something without notice is a horse of a different color…

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Wal-Mart wants you to pay their workers’ health care costs so they don’t have to. As if they don’t have the capital to create their own health care plan. Just another reminder: shop Costco. They actually pay their people well, with reasonable benefits, and have been criticized for it. Steer clear of Wal-Marts and Sam’s Clubs.

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Governors from both parties agree that Bush is decimating their National Guards. Bush has run off with their troops and equipment, leaving too little at home for guarding the nation and handling local emergencies. Even when NG troops return, the federal military keeps their state-bought equipment, thank you very much. More than $1.2 billion worth of equipment has been snagged from states’ possession so far. What’s more, Bush plans to funnel funds away from National Guards, further depriving states of what they need. But we’re not really surprised by any of this, are we? Update: Bush is promising to rebuild the state National Guards. The governors’ response: we’ll believe it when we see it.

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A Texas nonprofit group was critical of Tom DeLay–and were promptly audited by the IRS at the request of DeLay’s friends. The nonprofit was cleared by the IRS, but the fact remains that the IRS was used as a political weapon. We haven’t seen that since the Nixon days, have we? Oh no, wait–we have. Liberal churches are targeted by the IRS on political grounds while right-wing churches get away with murder. And we’ve seen the Department of Homeland Security wielded as a political weapon as well. And taxpayer dollars used to create fake news stories praising Bush in an election year, and paying off journalists to hype Bush’s programs. And… well, you get the idea.

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The U.A.E. received a letter from al Qaeda in 2002 that the terrorist organization has infiltrated key government positions. Of course, one would expect them to say that more if they hadn’t actually done it. However, it still raises questions about putting the U.A.E.–from which two 9/11 hijackers and some of their funding came–in charge of U.S. ports. Even if all Americans are hired for security and other staffing, it still means that U.A.E. officials have access to intel on our ports. And what about England and Singapore? Frankly, I don’t see why it is necessary to open port control to any foreign national organization or government. But that’s just me. I’m crazy like that, wanting stuff like more than 5% of incoming cargo containers inspected. Paranoid, that’s what I am.

Then again, the story was in the New York Post…

It turns out that Cheney was not the only one who injured someone and then held back reporting on it. Last July, when in Scotland for a G8 Summit, Bush lost control of his bike (for what, the 4th time?) while attempting to wave at constables on the road, and crashed smack into one of the policemen. The unreported part concerns the injury to the constable–originally reported as a “very minor” injury, it turns out that Bush broke the man’s ankle, putting him on crutches and out of work for three months. Having just suffered nothing worse than a broken toe and lived on crutches for three months myself, I can tell you that’s it’s not “very minor.” In Scotland, a normal citizen would probably have been charged with “careless driving” and possibly even assault on a police officer.

Now that the news is out, I suppose we can expect the Scottish constable to hold a press conference where he will formally apologize to president Bush for all the anguish he’s caused him.

I’ve been meaning to blog on the Pat Tillman story for a while now–but Kevin Drum just did the job for me better than I could have done. If you’d rather not read the linked post, it boils down to this: Tillman turned down a lucrative football career to fight in the war–in Afghanistan. Instead he was sent to Iraq, a war he disapproved of and felt was illegal. Later, he was sent to Afghanistan, where he was killed by friendly fire. The Bush administration, stinging from the Abu Ghraib scandal, needed a poster boy, so they lied and used Tillman’s death to punch up their own agenda. They hid the fact that he died under friendly fire and made him out to be a pro-Bush all-American hero. In fact, he was pro-Kerry and had arranged to meet with anti-war advocate Noam Chomsky after he got back. When his parents found out how the administration had lied and used their son for political gain, they were, in a word, pissed. And yet to this day, most people still believe the Bush lie that Tillman was pro-Bush and pro-Iraq and that he died for Bush’s cause and “the war on terror.” They were right about the hero part, and, ironically, how Tillman stands as a symbol of how we cannot let the troops down–just not they way the GOP usually plays it.

Reading Google News, I’ve been watching a steady stream of “news” reports go by that make me doubt how seriously I should take most of the computer reporting out there. There are just so many stories out there which are completely misinformed, I have to wonder how many of these people went to journalism school. Let me give a few examples:

Apple’s OS X Suddenly Not So Secure After All (FOX)
Security scares mount for Apple Macintosh users (USA Today)
First ever virus for Mac OS X (Ferret.com)
Apple Mac Virus Is Real Threat – The Apple Mac malware threat is real, according to anti-virus experts (GameSHOUT)
Second Mac virus in the wild (SC Magazine)
McAfee Provides Protection Against Mac Os X Exploits and Viruses (Hardware Zone)
First Mac virus found in wild (Globe and Mail)
Has the “Mac virus” struck your computer? (Austin American-Statesman)

Read most of these and you’ll find out about “viruses” hitting the Mac as told by “experts.” Well, not exactly. First of all, there are no viruses. A trojan, a worm, and a vulnerability. The “experts” and “researchers”? People who work for anti-virus software and security companies, who have a vested business interest in making people think they have viruses so they can sell their product.

But the trojan, worm and vulnerability are real, right? Depends on what you mean. The trojan and worm are “proof of concept,” and don’t do any damage (though Symantec, another anti-virus vendor, is claiming the trojan does damage files and the OS, completely unsupported from what I have ascertained). Furthermore, the trojan requires the user to enter a system admin password in order for the trojan to work, unlikely since the user will have just tried to open an image file. And the fake image file has to be downloaded (not viewed on a browser) or sent as file transfer by iChat, which not too many people ever do. The worm, meanwhile, requires not only two Macs using Bluetooth to be in the same room, it also requires both Macs to have an OS almost a year out of date, when most Macs update automatically. And it requires you to actively accept a file transfer over Bluetooth, which can be immediately confirmed as fake by asking the other Mac user in the room if they’re really trying to send you something. Oh yeah, and it self-destructs tomorrow, leaving no damage. And the vulnerability? Just that–it’s an opening, not an actual exploit. It means that no one is actually trying to damage your computer, it’s simply possible that such a thing could happen.

Which is really what all three of these represent: potential malware, not actual malware. Two harmless proof-of-concepts and one vulnerability. With the proof-of-concepts being almost ridiculously hard to acquire. Frankly, I doubt I could acquire either of them even if I went out on the Internet and aggressively tried to. And what’s more, you don’t need anti-virus software to guard against them–though the news stories, which could easily be just copies of press releases by anti-virus vendors, don’t tell you that. The vulnerability? Go to Safari’s preferences and turn off the “Open ‘safe’ files after downloading” option. The worm? Update your software through the Software Update control panel (it’s free, and probably it’s already been done–if there’s nothing in Software Update to install, you’re OK). The trojan? Don’t enter your admin password unless you are knowingly installing software or changing system preferences. To be completely safe, know that the filename suffix “.tgz” (signifying compressed files) is one you should avoid opening unless you know what you are doing.

Strange that all these stories trying to scare you don’t mention these simple protections against the malware, which doesn’t do any harm anyway. So, should you buy anti-virus software? Not yet, certainly. In fact, the Solution published by Sophos, an anti-virus security firm, actually didn’t work, mistakenly identifying the Bluetooth worm where none existed, sending users into a false panic and wasting their time. In the future, when Mac malware actually poses a threat, you’ll need security. But not yet. The problem is, when all these news outlets are reporting misinformed stories generated by businesses out to make a buck, how will you know when it’s really unsafe out there? I guess you’ll just have to research hard and read as many stories as you can–there are some out there that tell the real story, though not many.

Or you come come to this site–when I think I need anti-virus protection, I’ll certainly blog on it.

Just because we have no choice in a matter does not mean that the right choices led to this impasse, nor that we should forget the errors made.

There is a strange phenomenon that I’ve observed with the war in Iraq: that having no good options left and being forced to choose a horrific course of action in order to avoid a catastrophic one is somehow being played as “we did the right thing.” Add to that a great deal of “the past is past, so ignore it and be optimistic about the future,” and you’ve got what many people are saying about the war.

On this site, I have been scolded several times by people who say that prognosticating a bad outcome, even though it is rather obvious to see, is a big no-no, and that complaining about the past will serve no purpose.

I beg to differ.

First off, I am a strong believer in learning from your mistakes, and am a stronger believer in not letting politicians get away with them, else they feel comfortable doing so. The Iraq War was a huge and terrible mistake. What’s more, it was not hard to see.

The Bush administration either lied about it or was so foolishly optimistic as to be a bunch of bright-eyed idiots. They said the war would cost no more than $2 billion. Opponents (like me) said it would “easily cost $80 billion, probably much more than that.” We were right: it cost more than $80 billion in just the first year, and now is over $240 billion, with the administration asking for money to put the cost over $300 billion. Think of the schools we could have built with that money.

The Bush administration lied about how easy it would be: they said we’d be greeted as liberators, the people of Iraq throwing flowers at the feet of our soldiers. The critics, again like myself, pointed out that people in the region “do not and never have reacted kindly to U.S. intervention.” Cheney said that “extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad,” while people like me said that “an unsupported attack by America on an Arab nation would generate such fear and hostility in so many people that extremists would be swamped with volunteers willing to die for their cause.” Guess who was right? The war has inflamed the region, the country is on the brink of massive civil war, and the ranks of al Qaeda have swelled to more than 18,000, new recruits made passionate because of Bush’s war.

The Bush administration claimed that they could get a strong coalition and that the U.S. would not suffer in international respect or reputation. Critics again disagreed, saying, like I did, that “not only is there no coalition, but it appears that at this point, a coalition would be impossible to form,” and that we “would also pay in terms of lost reputation, international respect and influence in world affairs.” Again, we were right, they were wrong. The “coalition of the willing” was just as lame as the name it bore, and lacked support of most of the world. Basically, it was the U.S. and Great Britain, with a few other militarily smaller countries throwing in token forces.

The Bush administration painted Iraq as a grave threat, warning of “mushroom clouds” in the State of the Union speech, and claiming that they had solid evidence that Hussein was 6 months away from completing a nuclear weapon. Critics denied this, like the point I made that there was no evidence of a nuclear program and the fact that before the first Gulf War, the Bush 41 administration made the exact same fake claims in their own justification.

The Bush administration said that their planning was good and they did all they needed to; critics warned that the Bush administration had no exit strategy. I wrote, “what is the exit strategy? How long will it take? How many of our troops will die? How many Iraqis … will we end up killing? How long will our troops be there? How deeply will we become involved in rooting out everyone there who violently disagrees with our occupation? And how will the nation-building succeed?” Do I even need to point out that every one of those concerns has been proven to be a major concern, and that Bush’s lack of an exit strategy has now made each one of these points a painful area of loss? No thought was given to any of these points by Bush; it was purely a case of wanting something and not giving a damn about the cost.

My overall point here? That this was not a mistake that anyone could have made. This was not a mistake that no one could have foreseen. It is critical that we remember the fact that all the mistakes the Bush administration made in this war were foreseen well before the war started, and warnings were loudly given. We did know that this was a mistake, it’s just that the Bush administration was so blinded, so foolish, and so single-minded that they did not believe and/or care that they were making these errors.

Whatever the case, it is now the right of the critics who were correct to step forward and point out that the Bush administration was wrong, that they made terrible blunders though thoroughly warned, and they they are fully responsible for everything that happened. And it is the responsibility of the Bush administration to acknowledge these mistakes–though we all know that this is the last thing they will ever do.

Already, I can foresee the comments to this point: “but that’s in the past! We gain nothing by obsessing with things we can’t change, and that doesn’t help us now.” Hell yes, it helps us. It helps us avoid doing this again, and it helps us because it proves that the Bush administration is dangerously stupid and that we should not believe or trust them. That we should instead put into place a Congress that will serve as an opposition to them, and to pay attention to critics when they point out the wrongness of what the administration wants to do next.

But, as I have been scolded before and likely will be again, “you’re just being pessimistic. If we have a negative outlook on what will happen, it will just bleed into our actions and assure our loss. We have to be optimistic and support the administration.” Like hell. There is a difference between harmful pessimism and pragmatic realism. Being an optimist will not prevent Iraq from descending into civil war. Being an optimist will not make the insurgency crumble. Being an optimist instead of a realist will only repeat the same mistakes that Bush made when he pushed us into this war.

The realistic view of this war is that we’re screwed. I’m sorry, I wish it were otherwise, but when there writing is on the wall you don’t just ignore it. That’s the dangerous course of action. To close your eyes to reality and wish real hard for a good outcome, that’s what’ll lead to more disaster. To pretend that if we just hope and see things as ending well, that such will turn about our fortunes is, forgive me, foolishly naive.

Think I’m wrong? Well, I was right before the war. What makes you think that I’m wrong now?

The tragedy here is that if it were ever possible to have made things work out in Iraq, the time to make that happen is long past. One turning point would have been before the war, to work with our allies instead of bullying them and build a real coalition; at the start of the war, to have used enough troops to do the job right, stopping the looting and fighting the insurgency before it started; right after the initial military success, not to have disassembled the Iraqi military, and to have immediately brought in U.N. and Arab-nation overseers and managers, instead of greedily grabbing all the goodies and business contracts for ourselves. But time after time, despite warnings, despite advice to the contrary, Bush made mistake after mistake. And now, as much as we all would rather have it be otherwise, it is just too damned late.

The only thing we can do now is to realize the mistakes that were made, make sure that those who committed them are held responsible and are not allowed to repeat them. Then we clean our wounds, get out as gracefully as we can, and never do something this stupid ever again.

Unfortunately, that last paragraph was the expression of wide-eyed optimism. The pragmatic realist in me realizes that we probably won’t do any of that.

I figured that I’d spend a little time trying to come up with a list of the outrageously stupid, criminal, and incompetent things George W. Bush has done. I found that making the list was a lot easier than I thought it would be, and the offenses just kept piling up–and I am certain that I am still missing a whole bunch of stuff. Here’s what I could come up with, without even doing so much as a Google search:

• Has threatened long-cherished US freedoms, liberties and civil rights
• Has consistently used fear and fake security “alerts” to bolster his popularity and sabotage political opponents
• Pretended not to have links to corrupt figures like Ken Lay and Jack Abramoff, not to mention being in the pocket of the Saudis
• Has overseen rampant cronyism, mismanagement in many government agencies like FEMA
• Stayed on vacation and let New Orleans drown for several days while he did nothing
• Raced back from vacation to sign Terri Schiavo legislation that was later proven wrongful
• Staged fake relief operations in Louisiana as photo ops for himself while halting actual rescue operations during his visits
• Took more time off on vacation than any president in history, about 20% of total time in office
• Allowed energy industry to write US energy policy
• Signed legislation designed to benefit pharmaceutical industry against interest of the American people
• Signed legislation designed to benefit banking & credit industry against interest of the American people
• Abrogated multiple international treaties the U.S. had signed and long honored
• Turned international trust, respect and sympathy for the U.S. into contempt, anger, and suspicion
• Allowed the 9/11 attacks on his watch though his administration had multiple warnings and more than enough evidence to stop them
• Fought attempts to investigate 9/11 mismanagement at every turn
• Despite massive spending on “security,” has underfunded domestic security
• Has left US ports unprotected and mostly unchecked, gave control of some to country where 9/11 hijackers came from
• Failed to follow up on policies urged by 9/11 commission
• Failed to capture Osama bin Laden
• Has enabled al Qaeda to make massive recruitments
• Lied about Iraq having “massive stockpiles” of WMD
• Lied about Iraq being close to completing a nuclear weapon
• Lied about Iraq trying to buy uranium
• Lied about Iraq’s ties with al Qaeda
• Lied about Saddam Hussein’s involvement in 9/11
• Lied about his early intent to invade Iraq
• Established dangerous and unethical policy of pre-emptive warfare
• Mismanaged the War in Iraq from the start
• Initially tried to avoid Congressional or U.N. approval for Iraq War before flip-flopping
• Failed to build a coalition that could succeed in winning a long-term war in Iraq
• Failed to prepare an exit strategy from Iraq
• Failed to send enough troops as per the advice of the generals
• Failed to supply troops with necessary gear, especially armor
• Allowed massive looting of everything except oil fields
• Lied about the cost of the war
• Tried to hide flag-draped coffins, does not take time to even sign letters to families
• Has allowed massive corruption and mismanagement causing billions of US tax dollars to be stolen
• Stacked Iraqi press office with GOP operatives during election to fabricate “good” news
• Administration blew cover of CIA operative in retribution for operative’s husband exposing Bush lie about Iraq
• Turned a historic budget surplus into a string of record deficits
• Has overseen weakest overall job growth in nearly a century
• Has never used a veto while Republicans in Congress go on biggest pork-barrel spending spree in history
• Has stacked the Supreme Court with ultraconservatives who will destroy Roe v. Wade and dismantle civil rights
• Has consistently short-changed troops, taken away benefits, treated them like crap while constantly using them as window dressing for his photo ops and speeches
• Anemic “recovery” from recession is the weakest and latest-coming in more than half a century
• Has overseen a surge of McJobs: low-paying and benefit-free employment exploding
• Ignored Middle East until situation festered, oversaw terrorist group Hamas gaining power in Palestine
• Ignored North Korea and allowed its nuclear program to go unchecked
• Ignored Iran and allowed its nuclear program to go unchecked
• Did not object in the slightest when “ally” Pakistan gave nuclear secrets to Iran and others then pardoned leaker
• Instigated culture of torture, created secret prisons for that purpose, defended use of torture
• Oversaw sending of “suspects” to be tortured in third-party countries
• Has given multiple massive tax cuts and payoffs to wealthy individuals and to industries while short-changing lower- and middle-class Americans
• Paid journalists to say good things about him and his programs without disclosing payments
• Paid Iraqi journalists to report slanted news
• Lied about whether he’d apply an abortion litmus test to Supreme Court nominees
• Used taxpayer dollars to pay for ads for his campaign, disguised ads as fake “news reports”
• Mismanaged US military until stretched so thin it is unable to do anything more
• Mismanaged US military until recruitment crisis has developed
• Deliberately withheld true cost of Medicare bill from Congress, threatened job of actuary who wanted to reveal truth
• Sent thousands of US soldiers to die, tens of thousands to be maimed, then joked about not finding WMD
• Has sabotaged clean air and water regulations in favor of industry and to the detriment of the environment
• Underfunded education programs and pushed failed testing policies
• Slashed funding for welfare, education and housing while allowing record spending on weapons systems, wars, and wealthy people
• Has consistently suppressed scientific evidence that disagrees with his policies
• Supported “intelligent design” and pushed for it to be taught equal to evolution in public schools
• Smeared long list of former administration officials and agents who spoke out against him, including Paul O’Neill, Joseph Smith, Lawrence Lindsay, Anthony Zinni, Eric Shinseki, Richard Foster, John DiIulio, Scott Ritter, Joseph Wilson, and Richard Clarke
• Has been uniformly hostile to homosexuals and their rights
• Has consistently attacked the separation of church and state
• Authorized illegal wiretapping on American citizens
• Lied about obtaining court warrants for wiretaps before the program was made public
• Lied excessively about his reasons for authorizing illegal wiretaps
• Pretended to speak to the American public but closed events and only allowed in supporters even when taxpayer dollars funded events
• Removed protesters to “free speech zones” far from appearance areas or even travel routes
• Had protesters arrested on bogus charges even when they just wore T-shirts critical of him
• Has acted in an unprecedentedly partisan manner in political affairs
• Under Bush, oil prices have skyrocketed
• Got more of his judicial nominees approved than almost any modern president, then whined and attacked Democrats for being obstructionist, then re-nominated the ones he couldn’t get passed previously
• Tried to kill off social security
• Encouraged businesses to move jobs overseas, supporting tax breaks to do so
• Prohibited Medicare from negotiating drug prices with pharmaceutical companies
• Has failed to raise the minimum wage, allowing it to fall to absolutely unlivable levels

And let’s not forget this golden oldie:

• Consistently unwilling to admit to having made any mistakes at all

Of course, do you think he cares about all this? My guess is that his response to this cataloging of his incompetence and corruption would be, very much in character, like this actual clip of Bush. It certainly expresses what he thinks of the American people, as evidenced by his treatment of them. And I am certain that Bush supporters don’t give a damn either, they are just tickled pink that he’s doing half this stuff, and are perfectly willing to look the other way about the other half–I’ve found it next to impossible to get a Bushie to even acknowledge the least of the malfeasance Bush is guilty of.

So, to those who give half a damn about responsible governance, what did I miss?

I could have sworn that I’d blogged on this before, but a search does not reveal it. So here goes.

I am pro-choice. Like almost every other person who is pro-choice, I do not favor abortion. As Bill Clinton put it so well, abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. There is a mischaracterization, usually intentional, by the pro-life side that people who are pro-choice are “pro-abortion,” hence the epithet. But this is just as if not even more inaccurate than calling a pro-life advocate “anti-choice.” Pro-lifers like to characterize pro-choice advocates as people who love to see abortions carried out, and unhappy when a woman chooses to carry her pregnancy to term.

Well beyond these base political smears lies the truth. Being pro-choice has nothing to do with how one feels about abortion. That’s the center for the pro-life argument, but not for the pro-choice argument. The two are based upon entirely different foci: the pro-life paradigm centers on whether or not abortion is moral; the pro-choice paradigm pivots on who should make the choice about that morality.

I’ve always been dissatisfied with Roe v. Wade, not with its effect, but rather with its rationale. The rationale is based upon privacy, with foundations in Griswold v. Connecticut. The idea is that a person has the right to privacy in their medical decisions. Griswold was about whether the state could prohibit contraceptive medicine. The argument against was made claiming that an invasion of a patient’s privacy could endanger their health. The Supreme Court agreed, citing “penumbras” implying privacy rights in the Bill of Rights, as well as the 9th Amendment which guarantees rights not enumerated specifically in the Constitution.

Naturally I agree with the principle wholeheartedly–we should have privacy, and in my mind, we do have the right of privacy, especially in our health care choices. The problem that I have lies in the court using privacy as the central principle of the ruling, when in my opinion the real issue underlies that.

The Roe decision enumerated the stages of pregnancy and the restrictions involved in each trimester. In the first trimester, abortions are allowed generally without restriction; in the second, restrictions may be applied but may not transgress upon the health of the mother; and in the third trimester (or viable stage), the health or life of the mother is the only allowable excuse for an abortion to be carried out.

The question is, how does privacy dictate these three levels of restriction?

It seems to me instead that the divisions in Roe reflected the increasing likelihood of a fetus being a full-fledged human, capable of being ‘murdered,’ as the pregnancy progresses. It begins with a single fertilized cell which most people would have trouble acknowledging as a murder victim, to a fully-developed fetus at 9 months, ready to be born, which few would say is not a human being. So, for most people, there is a line between those two points at which the fetus crosses that vital threshold–but also for most people, it is questionable exactly where that line exists.

Ergo the divisions in Roe: abortions fully legal in the first trimester, somewhat restricted in the second, and heavily restricted in the third. But, at least to me, this does not reflect a rationale of privacy, but rather a recognition of the decision of where to draw the line of life increasing in difficulty as the fetus develops.

And that, ultimately, comes down to a question of personal beliefs. There is no definite scientific test to demarcate when a person becomes a person. Should it be defined by the heart beginning to beat? If so, why? Does blood flow determine humanity in some way? Should it be defined by viability, the ability of the fetus to survive outside the womb? Not logically–viability is fluid, it changes with medical technology, whereas the establishment of humanity would be an absolute. It’s not as if fetuses became human at eight months of development a hundred years ago, but then started developing humanity at six months only recently.

For me, the most plausible line that could be established would be related to higher brain function, the same test we apply to the end of life. That, however, is similarly vague, as such development happens over a long stretch of time. Self-awareness? How could that be tested? In the end, there is no clear scientific test, and even if there is, it is still a matter of personal opinion as to whether that determination truly matters.

This is ultimately a matter of belief. And that belief is rooted in one’s views of life, the universe, and everything, to steal a phrase. In other words, it is a spiritual or religious decision. And that clarifies the entire matter for me considerably: the state cannot force a certain religious or spiritual viewpoint on its constituents by statute. You can’t make a law that tells people what religious opinion must be followed upon pain of imprisonment. Each person has the right to determine their own stand on the matter. You cannot make a law forcing one to observe the religious determination of when life begins any more than you can make a law forcing people to observe religious doctrines concerning diet, dress, behavior, or worship.

In my mind, this is not nearly as much a matter of privacy as it is a matter of freedom of belief. And that most definitely is guaranteed, specifically, in the Bill of Rights. For me, privacy will act as a surrogate at best; I’ll accept it as doing the right thing if not for the most germane reason.

Of course, for people who are pro-life, this is not an issue. They have made the decision that abortion is an absolute wrong; there is no question in their minds, and they generally have no problem with forcing this view on others using statute, or in some cases, any other means to accomplish that goal.

There are those who claim that their objections to choice are completely secular, and have no relation to their religious beliefs. Quite frankly, I don’t believe them. It just happens that most of the people making this claim are, by chance, also religious, and also believe that abortion is a wrong by those standards. Like a smoker addicted to nicotine defending the idea that smoking does not cause cancer and using studies funded by tobacco companies as evidence, there is clearly too much bias involved to accept the claim that their religious belief is not at all influencing their “objective” conclusions. With those who are agnostic or atheistic and make the same claim, when pressed, the argument always comes down to the same line-of-life dictated by personal beliefs. There is no proof, and so by definition this is always a demarcation of belief. When it comes to medical matters, could there be any more pertinent issue involving personal religious beliefs than when life begins?

It is up to the individual to make this decision. That, to me, is the definition of choice in reproductive health decisions. And I do not have to favor or even remotely approve of abortion itself to approve wholeheartedly of the principle that each person deserves the right to make that decision free from interference by the state.

South Dakota is not even waiting for Roberts and Alito to shred Roe v. Wade to pieces; they’re outlawing abortion in the state today.

Essentially, the law–which outlaws abortions, even in the case of rape, with only an exception for saving the life (not the health) of the mother–is intended to be a Roe-killer. The intent is for the law to be challenged and brought to the new Bush court as soon as possible so that abortion can be outlawed nationwide.

So, for all of those who pooh-poohed the idea that confirming Alito would be no big deal and that Roe v. Wade was really in no immediate danger, here’s a big, giant “I told you so.” Not only is Roe on the edge of being eradicated, but the process is proceeding at warp speed. Yesterday, on Alito’s first day, the court decided to hear a case which would reverse the court’s own 2000 precedent on “partial birth” abortions in a case that could lead to sweeping bans on many types of abortions, and now, the very next day, we’ve got South Dakota blasting away at Roe at full power. Thank you, Senator Feinstein.

I just realized that I have not written a post that I intended to, one concerning my beliefs on the matter of abortion, the definition of “choice,” and what I believe lies at the heart of the abortion debate. For next time….

A great faux-commercial for Dick Cheney by David Letterman, via Crooks & Liars. Though comedic, it could not be more on the spot than it is. Perfect.

Well, the Fundie Faction now ruling the Supreme Court due to the spinelessness of Senate Democrats can’t seem to wait even one day to start chipping away at Roe v. Wade. Now that they have a majority to start making abortion illegal, they are jumping at the first chance to do so. On Alito’s very first day sitting on the court, they–coincidentally, I’m sure–decided to hear a case on the so-called “Partial Birth Abortion Act,” to use the common fundamentalist misnomer/epithet for a wide range of procedures.

How is it apparent that this is the new Fundie right-wing alliance on the court swinging things? Because the Supreme Court already ruled on this matter as recently as five years ago, striking down a similar law out of Nebraska in 2000. It was upon that very recent 5-4 precedent that three federal courts ruled this new 2003 law unconstitutional. The 2003 law was designed by Republicans in Congress as an attempt to shoot down to 2000 ruling, almost as if prescient that they would get a new court to look at this, and the timing turned out to be perfect. The new court with Roberts and Alito jumped at the chance, the balance now shifted since Sandra Day O’Connor’s tie-breaking vote is one day absent from the bench.

Even though this case, Gonzales v. Carhart, is not one that could, on its merits, fully overturn Roe v. Wade, it could potentially could include a wide range of abortions, not just the more commonly construed “late-term” abortions that are now used as the straw man representation of abortion in general by the pro-life crowd. The case will probably, at least, demonstrate what Roberts and Alito did their best to deny during confirmation–that they were appointed to the bench primarily on their antagonism toward abortion law. Time to start paying off Bush for the favor he did them. And if they act this swiftly to start disassembling the precedent they claimed to respect concerning reproductive rights, it’s not hard to imagine that they will try to fully overturn Roe v. Wade and send the country back more than three decades as soon as is humanly possible.

The new law uses terminology vague enough to outlaw not just late-term abortions, but also abortions in the first and second trimester. As a result, if this court overturns the lower courts as well as its own precedent, and approves the Fundie legislation, it could lead to doctors refusing to perform most abortions on the basis of fearing prosecution by a right-wing administration intent on interpreting the law as much to their favor as possible.

But the primary difference between the two laws is that the law that was ruled on in 2000 was struck down on the basis that the “health of the mother” was not included as an exception to the ban on the procedure, technically called “intact dilation and extraction.” The 2003 law asserts that it is never medically necessary to use the procedure, though the law also provides for an exception only when the mother’s life is at risk–weasel wording to try to get the law around the 2000 ruling while at the same time defying it. The key difference here is that between the mother’s “life” and her “health,” opening the door for the procedure to be banned if the continued pregnancy would only cause the mother to become a crippled vegetable in childbirth even though the fetus is non-viable.

After all, this is the age of “compassionate conservatism.”

British historian David Irving has been sentenced to three years in jail in Austria for denying the Holocaust. This story caught my attention because I had not known that it was a jailable offense, in any country, to disagree with a historical account.

Apparently, in 1989 Irving made two speeches and gave an interview in Austria in which he denied that Jews died in gas chambers at concentration camps during the war, alleging instead that they died of diseases like Typhus. He also claimed that Hitler was not responsible for the Holocaust and even tried to help Jews.

The law against Holocaust denial was created in 1992. I can only suppose that in Austria, one can be tried for crimes committed before the establishment of the law making something a crime.

Irving claimed that in 1991, he started to change his mind about things and did believe that gas chambers were used to kill Jews.

On one hand, the law in question seems like an excellent idea: denying the Holocaust is intrinsically dangerous, as it usually represents an approval of the policies and actions of the Third Reich, an attempt to cover them up, and signals a potential return to those horrors; call it an “enabling” of the most horrific kind of crime imaginable, popularizing the atmosphere in which such crimes were committed. At the very least, it “unlearns” the lessons of that time, making it more likely that the same crimes will be allowed to happen. Ergo the benefit of penalizing the denial, which presents a clear public harm (not to mention the visceral satisfaction of kicking around the rather disagreeable kind that put Hitler up on a pedestal).

On the other hand, such laws would also represent a precedent which goes much too far in the other direction: making it so that a disagreement with official historical accounts a criminal offense. This could easily be expanded to have the reverse effect of the Holocaust Denial laws, and strides directly into the realm of making a point of view illegal. That’s where we see that the principle of a free and open society demands that we endure the cost of dangerous ideas, necessitating the will of good people to stand up and protest those ideas–but not the criminalization of any idea. As Aaron Sorkin once wrote, a democracy in which freedom and liberty is guaranteed is advanced citizenship. “It’s gonna say, ‘You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.'”

Maybe Austria is too scarred to allow such freedom, it’s hard for me to say. But the principles of freedom of ideas, and the liberty of a point of view, however repugnant, are principles that are hard to justify breaking. And in the end, if we’re going to get where we want to go as a civilization, the people are going to have to want to frown on views like Irving’s. It’s going to have to come from within, which means that it’s better to fight with social commentary, with reason and dogged pursuit of fact, and ultimately with the winning of hearts and minds, breaking our addiction to hatred, vengeance and arrogance–instead of with the extrinsic force of law. Actions can be dealt with by statute, but wills cannot be.

Finally, my foot is feeling better. Ha! Bet I fooled you with the entry title, didn’t I?

After almost three months, my foot is almost good enough to walk on. Good enough to hobble around without crutches, using my heel on the broken foot. As you recall, I broke the fifth metatarsal on my right foot at the beginning of December. Just in time for my vacation and the peak birdwatching season. At least I had a great schedule this semester, Tuesdays and Thursdays only, allowing me to stay home more often–though it would have been great to have actually done something with those days instead of wasting it on recuperating.

The strange thing is, the x-rays don’t really seem to show too much improvement. The image at left is not really the best quality and resolution, but it represents the change between early December and about a week ago. See the difference? Me neither. But my doc assures me that he can see healing going on (I do have to admit that the copy they gave me last week was a lot blurrier and both are taken by my digital camera with the x-rays taped to the kitchen window–a lot of detail was lost in the process).

Apparently so much healing, that I could finally chuck my splint and bandage and start wearing my right shoe (“hard shoe,” the doc said), and it feels pretty good. I’m going to have to take his word when he tells me I can put weight on the foot again, supposedly a week from now. Five weeks ago, he said it’d heal in “four weeks.” Three weeks ago, he said “four weeks.” So last week I expected four weeks again, but he said “two weeks.” What a nice thing to hear that was. Though maybe I’m getting my hopes up too much and he’ll give me another two weeks next week.

All I know is that it’s feeling better. Not like I have to baby it so much. And after three months, I can’t wait to start using the dang thing again.