February 2005 Archives

Tour London with Christopher Hitchens and David Horowitz

We will be staying in London, England for 7 nights at the 5 Star Athenaeum Hotel with day trips to Oxford and Kent. Christopher Hitchens will give lectures drawing on his expansive knowledge of Britain and America, talk about the two cultures, their world roles etc. and generally illuminate the relationship between these two nations and peoples.

There will also be an optional 3 day trip to Normandy from June 15-18th. Please let us know if you are interested in taking this excursion.

Yea, that's the ticket. . .

The Tipping Points

I haven't been this excited about a crap shoot since the last bold roll of the dice

U.S. Prepares to Test Bird Flu Vaccine

Amid dire warnings of an Asian pandemic, the government is preparing to test an experimental bird flu vaccine and is increasing disease surveillance in hopes of reducing the toll from any eventual American outbreak.

Antiviral drugs are being stockpiled, and 2 million doses of vaccine are being stored in bulk form for possible emergency use and to test whether they maintain their potency.

United Nations officials warned on Wednesday that the Asian bird flu outbreak poses the "gravest possible danger" of becoming a global pandemic.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites), told the National Press Club this week that "it is a worrisome situation," though she also said the United States "is not immediately on the brink of an avian flu epidemic."

No terrorists will be involved, I might add.

Today I was listening to NPR on the way into work, and the most surreal segment came on. It was about how the Thais were not going to kill their chickens because they don't want to kill their valuable fighting cocks. They don't even want to cage them so they don't mix with ducks n' geese (which spread the avian flu).

Maybe if Thailand wasn't in the middle of recovering from a devastating Tsunami I could believe that maybe we'd skate by with a little bit of luck. But conditions seem pretty darn ripe for natural biological warfare that will make the threat of terrorism look like a quaint walk in the park.

I'm just saying.

Precious.

Update: Also see Dvorak on JJ

What I found even more amusing was the fact that Keller cited his experience as a boy in the Model UN exercise in Berkeley. Jarvis, not to be outdone, tells his tale about being in the Model UN. Hey, I was also sent to the Model UN at Berkeley when I was in high school too. This ludicrous event was an exercise in futility in every way. In fact it was just plain silly and mostly peopled by blowhard high school wonks — as I recall. Anyway, within three or four years I had long since forgotten the country I (and a friend of mine, Bill Kadi) represented. France maybe. Gabon? I don’t know. In fact I forgot all about the event until today when I read the entry in the Jarvis blog. What I find creepy is that both guys recalled the country they represented and details about the event. This is like recalling the number of stars you received on your 9th grade English test and bragging about it when you’re 50.

Via Zucker Abrams and Zucker

Skeet Surfin'...
Skeet Surfin'...
If everybody had a 12 gauge
With a sufboard too.
You see em shootin and surfin'
From here to Malibu.

Because he's totally bitchin'
Ridin waves and blastin' pigeons.
And its a' neat shootin' skeet when youre ridin' on the heavies all day.

Andrew is arguing that it's good for the country to have the democrats finally figure out National Security^tm. However noble the goal, it's interesting to note that Andrew uses a completely false allegation against Sandy Berger to frame his larger point regarding Iraq and all the heavy lifting the Republicans have done in that effort. (update: Andrew corrected this).

In Andrew's argument, he requires a number of assumptions that I think are completely unwarranted. It is completely unclear, for example, that Iraq actually did anything at all to make us safer with respect to the global war on terrorism. In fact, I would claim we're actually worse off in many actual metrics that are easy to measure and people universally agree on their import.

Now that we know there never were any WMDs, nor were any connections with Al Qaeda ever shown, we are simply left with the purple finger and the faith that the dominoes will fall for freedom across the Middle East. Perhaps Andrew thinks that the 100+ Iraqis that died this week shows how strong our position is and how weak the insurgents position is.

Of course I could go on about how we got into this position in the first place. But my point is that if Iraq is the model Andrew is holding out as the gold standard to be compared against, then I think if we had actually done nothing about Iraq but fight for the status quo (fierce inspections + no fly zones + strengthening embargo) then we'd be measurably ahead in the global WOT.

I think it's hard to argue that any democrat would have not stood on ground zero and comforted the people. I think it's equally hard to argue that any democrat would not have not invaded Afghanistan. I think you can definitely argue that democrats wouldn't have gone into Iraq.

And considering the way Iraq has been handled, I can't imagine that anyone would want to claim responsibility for it. To use it as a club to beat the democrats senseless with - regardless of how well intentioned the though is - seems unwarranted. The incompetence in the prosecution of the war is obvious and astounding to behold.

Perhaps the democrats have a problem with National Security^tm and we need to get on board about it. But considering we nominated a decorated veteran who ran a hard campaign against a NATO general, it seems an insupportable premise that the democrats aren't serious about national security.

I believe it was Clinton's army that won Afghanistan and Iraq. And lets not forget the number of nation building excursions during Clinton's regime - one's that the right opposed and ridiculed. I seem to recall that GW, himself, ran against Nation Building^tm in 2000. Maybe I'm just not seeing the subtlety, being a civilian, and missing something basic. But this is sure how it looks from outside the military and from the left side of the fence.

Democrats don't have anything to be ashamed about with respect to National Security^tm. We're human - to be sure. But at least we didn't kill 1464 soldiers, wound thousands and spend 300 billion dollars creating far, far, FAR more terrorists than we had before the Iraq war.

I mean, really.

Yee gods. I just got back from Constantine. Message to Vertigo: it sucks. It sucks so bad that I couldn't get anyone to go see it with me. Theater was pretty full for a Sunday night, but they were just part of the army of zombies that Keanu received as compensation for that stinky pile also known as Matrix Revolutions.

In a way, it's kind of a fitting end to the whirl wind week we had. Although I can't find hard statistics on this, I think that well over 100 Iraqis died this week - something like 2000 people, proportionate to the US population. Heck, it could be way higher than that because at least 50 of them died Saturday. Lord only knows how many wounded by I'm sure there's an ungodly number of maimed that get classified under the antiseptic term "wounded".

And as far as I can tell, the War Whores^tm seem completely oblivious to the massive numbers of dead and are whistling past the grave yard hoping the whole thing will blow over and that the "purple finger" will be victorious in the end. Hearing Hillary say that the massive death count only showed how weak the insurgency is just reminded me once more why I simply can't wait for 2008 - I'll just shoot myself now and get it over with.

There were several bright spots this week, though. For instance, the blossoming of the whole Gannon/Guckert affair. It's not often you get to see a bunch of rabid homophobes defend the "private" life of a male escort and his god given right to wank off the president in public. Just seeing Jeff Goldstein ball up his tiny fists and shake them at the evil, evil left was pretty much worth the price of the ticket. I see his computer imploded from the sheer depths to which Jeff is willing to sink in pursuit of degrading all that is good and right with life.

As I write this, Jeff is breaking the news that Hunter S. Thompson is dead of apparent self inflicted gun shot wound.

Somehow that is fitting as well.

JHCORFC! Why on EARTH did they have Constantine chewing a stick of gum at the end of the movie? Why? WHY?

Anyways, it's good to see that the BLOG OF THE YEAR is populated by the biggest dicks of the year as well. And what the hell is up with Ann Coulter? Riddle me this, Batman: Michael Moore is considered to be the spokesman for the left when he sits with Jimmy Carter. What the hell is Ann Coulter, then? I keep hearing how she's been kicked out of the republican party, but she keeps showing up places trying to bring back McCarthyism. Call me old fashioned, but actually arguing for the return of McCarthyism seems to me to be a six sigma event.

So I'm getting used to the idea that things are going to get a heck of a lot worse before they get any better. I think David Brooks' recent decent into madness after too many tokes on the crack pipe literally is the fist broken seal of the apocalypse. I mean, how on earth can anyone read those terrible 754 words and not come away shaking your head in sadness of a mind lost to the horror of drugs. And think about it. Would anyone actually notice if David Brooks wrote every column while on Psilocybin?

I've got fifty bucks that say no.

So I guess we'll see what this next week brings. Gannon/Guckert (not Goldstein) still seems to have "legs" (hey, 8+ inch long) so who knows how this is all going to end - Rove with an apple in his mouth served on a silver platter could be right around the corner, you never know. I heard that the Iraqi and US forces (that is, the US forces) are currently rounding up the usual suspects. After watching Rummy literally walk out of Senate testimony last week like he didn't have time for such losers, I imagine the man has a lot on his mind and that despite the war whores' deepest collective wish, things really are as shitty as they appear from over here.

Sooner or later some adult is going to have to say the emperor has no clothes. It's been astounding to me personally how long these jokers have been able to get away with it. Maybe Rove has discovered the political equivalent of perpetual motion. Maybe they'll never, ever have to pay a price and things will continually be in a shitty state with no resolution, continually living in fear that the whole seething mess is going to fall to pieces at any moment.

Or not. Sometimes it's the strangest things that bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.

Or so says Tim Barnett, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California

“The models got it right. If a politician stands up and says the uncertainty is too great to believe these models, that is no longer tenable.”

Dr Barnett’s team examined seven million observations of temperature, salinity and other variables in the world’s oceans collected by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and compared the patterns with those predicted by computer models of potential causes of climate change.

Natural variation in the Earth’s climate, or changes in solar activity or volcanic eruptions, which have been suggested as alternative explanations for rising temperatures, could not explain the data collected in the real world. Models based on man-made emissions of greenhouse gases matched the observations almost precisely.

“What absolutely nailed it was the greenhouse model,” Dr Barnett told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington. Two models, one designed in Britain and one here in the US, got it almost exactly. We were stunned.”

Via Secrecy News. (Warning 6+Mb PDF)

U.S. military personnel in Iraq are presented with a laminated card that summarizes the rudiments of Iraqi culture, as refracted through the understanding of the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity.

"The 16-panel, folded card includes information on religion, religious holidays, clothes and gestures, ethnic groups, cultural groups, customs and history, social structure and Arabic names. Also included are 'Do This' and 'Don't Do This', commands, numbers, questions, and helpful words and phrases."

So, instead of using instances like this as a chance to demonstrate our benevolence and capacity for forgiveness, let's give these people, and their large and passionate audiences, credit for being adults capable of saying what they mean to say, and not just victims of a mass outbreak of Tourette's. People like Glenn Reynolds, Powerline, the Washington Times, FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, and the most powerful figures in the White House and Congress are very comfortable employing the rhetoric of those other "neo-cons", the neo-Confederates, and are rarely at cross-purposes. They, like Nixon, McCarthy and the properly fascist movements of the last century, identify themselves and their agenda as the only legitimate representations of the nation, and identify those who oppose them in any way with appeasers at best, or, just as likely, dangerous traitors. Their philosophical approach to "debate", such as it is, owes everything to anti-rationalist, often explicitly anti-Enlightenment and anti-science, power dictates truth nihilism of Nietzsche and the "postmodernists". These aren't nice things to say or believe, but there they are, supported by countless instances and associations, and can't just be swept away by an excuse or a denial. These people are not just misguided or ill-informed. They have said what it means to be on their side.

SHA-1 has been broken. Not a reduced-round version. Not a simplified version. The real thing.

The research team of Xiaoyun Wang, Yiqun Lisa Yin, and Hongbo Yu (mostly from Shandong University in China) have been quietly circulating a paper announcing their results:

• collisions in the the full SHA-1 in 2**69 hash operations, much less than the brute-force attack of 2**80 operations based on the hash length.

• collisions in SHA-0 in 2**39 operations.

• collisions in 58-round SHA-1 in 2**33 operations.

This attack builds on previous attacks on SHA-0 and SHA-1, and is a major, major cryptanalytic result. It pretty much puts a bullet into SHA-1 as a hash function for digital signatures (although it doesn't affect applications such as HMAC where collisions aren't important).

Just remember. . .

Here's why it matters that the Bush administration allowed an alleged gay male prostitute with no journalistic experience into the White House on a daily basis and even allowed him to ask the President a question at one of Bush's precious little press conference debacles:

JJ has a triumphant post up regarding the Mob Times.

All I got to say is that I think the French Revolution was really cool and the stacks of heads they had stinking up the streets were only a symbol of how corrupt the French aristocracy had become. Yes indeed.

So.

When do we start renaming the months n' stuff, eh Robespierre?

You got it reversed, my friend. The head isn't the journalists. The head isn't the politicians. The head is the people.

We work for the public. We serve the public. The public is our boss. Remember?

If you don't believe the public is capable of that -- if you don't believe in the wisdom of the crowd -- then (I've said it before and, be warned, I'll say it again) you don't believe in democracy or free markets or reformed religion or art. If you think you're smarter and better than the people, you set yourself up for a fall -- especially today, when the people own the press.

If anyone's going too far these days, I think it is the few -- and I emphasize few -- who are still digging to destroy "Gannon" after he's already toast (I do not approve of the old-style tabloid vindictiveness going on in some of the links in the comments). They forget that their real target is not this jerk, "Gannon." It is the White House. Remember: Question the powerful.

In the case of Jordan, we bloggers questioned the powerful and apparently the powerful didn't have an answer; if they had, CNN would not have gotten rid of him. Where there's smoke, there's often fire -- but not necessarily from lynch-mob torches.

<sigh>

So, it's getting pretty weird out there. No. I really mean that this time... They've got three severed heads and they're hungry for a fourth.

Update: Jeff G is even more outraged at me for implying that he was one of the dirty hordes. Sorry, my only point in quoting Jeff G below is for the deep (some would say "almost fathomless") sense of irony in the quoted section. Never did I mean to imply that he was a part of the jackanapes that scour our land searching out victims for their ritualistic sacrifice to bring forth the goat with a thousand young. On the other hand, you can read Jeff's series of posts insulting Oliver Willis and perhaps draw your own conclusions as to the irony of his protestations in the comments below.

Well, Jeff is outraged! Disgusted!

Actively, eagerly, and publically smearing a White House Press Secretary based on the word of a couple of unnamed sources and a dubious 1995 story: this is how thoroughly depraved a certain segment of the American left has become. To these rancid ideologues, tabloid gossip and gay baiting have become legitimate tools to use in their increasingly fevered attempt to dismantle the administration they so patently despise. And though they’ll rationalize every single contemptible thing they say or do—knowing that are protected by a cult of ends-justify-the-means groupthink—make no mistake: they know what they’re doing is despicable.

I have nothing but the utmost contempt for these people.

And then there's the whole Eason Jordan thing. Regardless of whether the guy should be fired, skinned alive or boiled in hot oil until he's piping hot and ready to eat, I still can't find anything material or even meta-physical that the bloggers supplied. I mean, the only thing that bloggers seem to have added to the whole affair is the lynch mob atmosphere.

I mean, how many brains does it take to figure out "we need to see the tape"? The rest of it has just been various forms of calling for his head and standing in judgment.

And then there's Jim Guckert/Jeff Gannon. I don't really understand how Scott McClellan got dragged into this, but need I point out that if these up tight, bigoted wankers didn't use every opportunity to make a big deal about being gay then. . . Well, needless to say that even an idiot can see that line of reasoning and it's pretty comical to see otherwise intelligent people throw reason out the window and come to the defense of bigots exposed in their hypocrisy.

Still, it's quite the spectacle. Me thinks the right side of the blogosphere is starting to like the taste of blood. Again, I'm still a bit unclear as to how they actually how they actually have anything to really do with the scalps of those they are claiming, but the fact remains is that they really are starting to like this heady snort o' power.

Pretty soon, they'll be unstoppable.

Think how cool that will be.

Just doing my part to help out America blog regarding John's excellent little bit of real reporting (as opposed to the fake work Jeff Jarvis thinks he's doing) regarding the private life of Jeff Gannon aka Jeff Guckert.

It's quite the tawdry little affair, wouldn't you say?

Updated because I missed the "t".

On sale @ eBay:

And people wonder why it sends a chill down my spine to hear the phrase "I believe the title of the memo was "bin Laden determined to strike inside the US".

Might I just point out the good news that Andrew Olmstead seems to have glimpsed the light (in the comments).

Jeff Henley explains in The Useful Distraction of Sex

It seems untrue. Bl0wing sailors is "private life." Hiring sailors out to to get bl0wn is a business. Whatever starting a website to pimp servicemembers is, it ain't "private." You'd never get any customers if it were.

Does anyone else find it simply hilarious that the national id card - the one card that is universally feared by every god fearing American as the first sign of the apocalypse - is being driven through by the people they all voted for?

I mean, how cool is that?

Soon we'll have all the tools we'll need for our Stalinist take over of the United States in 2008 when prime leader Hillary takes the mantle from the hated Bush.

Soon, my precious. Soon.

Calling All Democrats

When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a democracy on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one is going to stay up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest democracy in all of the middle east.

Via Suzanne Vega

When heroes go down
They go down fast
So don't expect any time to
Equivocate the past

When heroes go down
They land in flame
So don't expect any slow and careful
Settling of blame

I heard you say
You look out for the feet of clay
That someone will be falling next
Without the chance for last respects
You feel the disappointment

When heroes go down
Man or woman revealed
You can't expect any kind of mercy
On the battlefield

I heard you say
You look out for the feet of clay
That someone will be falling next
Without the chance for last respects
You feel the disappointment

When heroes go down
Man or woman revealed
Do you show any kind of mercy
On the battlefield?
When heroes go down
When heroes go down
When heroes go down

This is getting tedious, but let's note for the record that Republicans do not get to say "Democrats have no alternative to proposal X" when, in fact, they actually do have alternative proposals. Just because you don't like the alternatives or that you are ignoring the alternatives does not mean there are no alternatives. For example:

a) Before the Iraq war, letting Hans Blix finish inspections was an alternative to going to war in March of 2003.

b) WRT Social Security, democrats have a number of alternatives. One such was laid out on Meet The Press (hardly a minor, no visibility platform) by Ted Kennedy: Roll back 1/3 of the top 1% earner's tax cuts and SS will be fixed.

Basing an argument of "obstructionist" on this same mantra just makes you look like a political tool.

They March for Themselves

Nothing really matters, and so what if it does?

You don't get to claim "no one predicted X" just because YOU failed to predict X. If the anti-war crowd predicted X and you discounted it, or laughed at it, or just completely ignored it, it does not mean "No one predicted X".

It just means that you're a complete dick.

Henry and John are having a fun time pointing out the sorry excuse for an argument that the Armed "Liberal" has up which attempts to rebut Henry's assertion of Hate-Filled Stupidity from Right-Leaning Academics. Go read the comments at the Winds o' Change for some good wholesome humor at the well earned expense of AL.

"Armed Liberal" - I'm sorry, but this is a post that you should be really rather ashamed of. You're not putting up a "theory" - you're putting up a prejudice. A lazy, ill-informed prejudice, backed by pretty well no evidence. Theories are testable - they can be confirmed or disconfirmed by evidence. They have causal arguments. Your speculations have neither - indeed you've framed them in such a way as to insulate them from the need to be tested against reality. If somebody else put up a post using this kind of logic, but blaming say Israel or the US for terrorism and 9/11, you and others would quite rightly be up in arms about it. The "license to speculate" argument is used to provide cover for an awful lot of unpleasant expressions of prejudice - do you really want to lump yourself in with this crowd?

If you're going to make an extremely broad-reaching claim that puts a large part of the blame for one of the worst events in recent history on a broad group (leftist academics), you need emphatically convincing smoking-gun evidence. "Equally interesting"s, "wonder if"s and "may have something to do with it"s don't even begin to qualify. They seem designed to provide a protective armour under which you can set out your own, rather unpleasant prejudices, without having to prove them or defend them.

Man, you can feel the vibrations. It seems like every right winger on the face of the planet is going to participate in a simultaneous orgasm when Bush brings up the Iraqi Elections^tm in tonight's State of the Union speech. It's like being in the first three rows of a Gallagher show. Everyone needs to be sure to bring plastic coverings tonight because it's going to get real messy.

Here's John O'Sullivan - uh - at the corner in anticipation

This is an event like Dien Bien Phu or the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It marks a turning point in history. It changes the future, of course, but it also changes the past.

As the plainly angry and frustrated responses of the Left demonstrate, it places the entire Iraq adventure in a better and more optimistic light. It gives legitimacy to the wider democracy project. And it cAzaellenges the passionate belief (passionate because not wholly believed) of the UN-EU-Third World-Davos world establishment that history is tending inevitably in their direction: namely, towards "governance" by a non-democratic confederation of elites.

Hard to tell these days. Because it does pretty much seem like the entire right wing seems to be pushing pretty much the same belief. This election was all about them. The Iraqis just validated their world view and rumor is that purple fingers are going to abound in the SOTU. It's the action that legitimizes everything that has gone before.

Myself, I think Frist, Delay, Lieberman should rip off their shirts and assemble together to show a big yellow "W" painted on their chests. And on the back, they could have "Take that you whiny liberals!". "In your face, Kennedy!" and "Sit on this finger!"

It'd be an MTV spring break kind of moment that would seem so appropriate to kick off the next four years of this Administration. Afterwards they could chug beer bongs and get a table dance by the Bush twins.

See, this is the reason they win elections.

P A R T Y ! ! !

Andrew Sullivan has decided to give up blogging.

And there was much rejoicing.

Below the fold is a post I wrote a while back which is a loving tribute to the toady supreme, the hack who's got back, the one, the only. . . Andrew Sullivan.

I think this picture pretty much sums up how I feel about almost all of the security measures we've seen over the last four years.