June 2005 Archives

This link showed up in my in box and so I gave it a visit. Loved what I saw. Pass this along to someone who's confused about the whole Social Security issue...

How I wish I had some talent at animation... or tools that made up for my lack thereof.

Interesting. Give it a whirl... Here's the results, if you're interested...

Mitchell Freedman points to this hilarious La Cucharacha comic strip which sums up a great truth about the role reversal that's been going on between conservatives and liberals. Well, I should point out, between whatever it is that passes for conservatives these days and liberals. I don't think I can find any more conservatives wandering about any more - they seem to be quite extinct in the United States of America. Maybe they exist in other game preserves countries - but I digress.

Yesterday I was driving home and listening to that commie pinko, Saddam coddling public radio station and this guy was going on about some rodeo in his town - can't remember the context precisely (you know how us liberals lose short term memory - wink, wink). Anyways, he was setting up the picture of the town and he said "this isn't the place for some long haired liberal hippy would show up for a love-in or..." - can't remember the rest because I almost choked because I was laughing so hard.

Love-in. Let the phrase roll off your tongue. Now, I don't know about you, but I think the last "love-in" was somewhere around 1970 - maybe 1969 (get it?). Wait, I take that back. They occurred artificially in TV sitcoms throughout the 70's, but that doesn't really count. Anyways, the point is, this joker on NPR was basically using a stereotype of the left that hasn't been true for at least 25 years - if ever.

And that's kind of the point of this rambling post. As far as I can tell, what passes for the conservative right these days has a comically inept viewpoint of what it is to be liberal. Apparently we're all members of PETA, spend our weekends in Greenpeace rubber rafts harassing Japanese wAzaelers while criss crossing the mid west in our never ending quest for the perfect city to hold a massive "love-in".

Oh, I forgot. Since 9/11, our main goal has been to support the terrorists and search for therapists who can turn that bin Laden frown upside down...

My lord. What a bunch of absolute morons.

Drezner has posted his 2 cents on the issue of the Downing Street memos, and Henry has expanded on the thought. First, here's Drezner

The administration was clearly wrong about the WMD threat -- but I think they thought they were right. They deserve any criticism they get about being wrong -- but they don't deserve the meme that they consciously misled the American people.

This, it seems to me, is what happened in the lead-up to Iraq. The Bush administration, like others, probably did genuinely believe that Iraq had an active nuclear program. But it didn’t have the necessary evidence to prove this, either to its allies or to its own people. It therefore cooked the evidence that it did have in order to make its claims more convincing. It didn’t deceive the public about its basic belief that there were WMDs in Iraq. But it did deceive the public about the evidence that was there to support this belief, in order to convince them that there was a real problem. In other words, it did “consciously mislead” the American people (and its allies). When the police are caught perjuring themselves to get convictions, they should (and frequently do) suffer serious consequences, even if they believe that they’re perjuring themselves in order to get the guilty convicted. That’s not what the police should be doing; they haven’t been appointed as judges, and for good reason. If the police persistently lie in order to get convictions, the system of criminal law is liable to break down. Similarly, when the administration lies about a major matter in order to get public support, it shouldn’t be excused on the basis that it thought that it was lying in a good cause. It’s still betraying its basic democratic responsibilities.

Click on the picture for a larger size.

<chuckle>

H/T Dr. G!

Lately I've been reading one of the most fascinating blogs I've ever read: Global Guerrillas. I'll let you find out for yourself what it's all about... I originally found the blog in a series of searches I was doing through Google to find some background information for a couple of arguments I was having on various blog comment threads. Coincidentally, one of my readers sent me an email pointing out the blog and suggested it as an excellent source of analysis of the type I look for.

Anyways, Robb has a post up today about the analysis gap in the oil markets and ends with this

Currently, oil analysts treat the disruption of supply by global guerrillas as a random exogenous variable. They see it as unpredictable. This is wrong-headed. Current and future disruption is entirely predictable and quantifiable. They merely lack experience in the applicable fields of knowledge and an understanding of the innovative theories of conflict necessary to analyze it correctly. The right analysis can provide deep insight into changes in the price of oil worth trillions to the global economy. Global guerrilla models, developed by this author, can provide insight into the following:

• Global targets of potential disruption (now and future).
• Scale and frequency of disruptive events in target locations.
• Iraq's resumption of production.

Wow. Very cool. This was always one of my favorite series in Heavy Metal (still have them somewhere). Enki Bilal has produced some seriously warped shit and some of it quite disturbing, but Immortel is one of those seriously warped things that I love. It's playing @ the Roxi in downtown SF, starting June 24th. Man, this is going to be good.

You can check out the trailers at the official site. Thanks to the wonders of digital film making, it promises to be amazingly like the original series. Downloading the trailers is a bit slow - curious that. Still, well worth the wait.

This is going to be good.

Go sign the petition if you're tired of the beltway bunch childishly chastising someone who speaks for you as well.

(200 signatures per hour, btw)

I R A Q
t e n u
s a o a
  l t g
  l h m
  y e i
    r r
      e

George H.W. Bush in his book A World Transformed (Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1998): on page 489:

Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep" and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Further more, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different -- and perhaps barren -- outcome.

-- George H.W. Bush in A World Transformed

So, John Edwards seems to have picked up the clue card and spins his reaction quite admirably. Tone deaf politicians I hate. Ones that can cleverly spin their bit of indiscretion into a nice rant against Republicans - they are what I'm looking for.

Wandering over to the TPM cafe, it was quite depressing to read the usual round of circular firing squad action from all the reasonable centrists. It simply bothers the hell out of me to hear people get upset about how something was said and simply ignore the actual content of what was said. I mean, I understand the whole marquis of queensbury rules, but I'm not really sure future generations are going to be quite so pleased with our restraint.

But what do I know? Maybe we should take the Gandhi way and go on a hunger strike. Man, that'd show those red state meanies.

Sometimes the fantasies over take me, I apologize.

Still, you got to wonder what universe people are living in these days. There is the whole attempt at getting out the news about the Downing Street Memo - something I applaud and whole heartedly endorse. Who knows? Sometimes it's the most obvious and inane things that cause the whole house of cards to come tumbling down.

Sometimes not.

Item! John Cole is still firmly grasping the clue card that he picked up a while ago. And yet, one clue card is hardly sufficient these days. (go find the link yourself, as I still can't really bring myself to link to the bastard).

Item! Apparently John Kerry had about the same GPA as George W. Bush. Oh well, my whole world view is crushed and I must now go off to a monetary and meditate until I come back into balance. Not.

And I must say that I think that I will need the smelling salts for Kristof's latest column about Darfur. He managed to write an excellent column criticizing this administration without once bitch slapping the Democrats or even speaking ill of one of their special interest groups. Maybe it has finally penetrated his thinking that perhaps the party that controls all branches of government is the one he should be poking with the hot stick.

Still, Kristof's column should be scorching us all. There's genocide going on and I'm sitting here worried about some trivial politics going on at my work. I would say that everything is relative and perhaps they really are relative, but somehow I think that mass rape, genocide and the sheer inhuman brutality that is going on in Darfur is well off any scale I've ever experienced. My life doesn't suck. Heck. Most of the homeless people I see have it far better than most living in that special ring of hell.

Still, I guess you have to deal with the things that are happening in your own life and try to affect the knobs and dials that you have under your control (or at least the illusion of control). Myself, I subscribe to the illusion of control. I'm pretty well convinced that what we think we're in control of is just a quaint little story that special part of our brain tells us to keep us procreating and playing our part in the grand scheme of gene propagation.

But enough depressing stuff! Think about how cool it is to have the rich get even richer! I think most of the libertarians and the entire right wing had a simultaneous group orgasm over yesterday's report in the NY Times regarding the wondrous fact that not only are the rich getting far richer, their taxes are plummeting. It's like Christmas 365 days a year these days.

Still, on a sadder note, the Supremes have blocked yet another attempt to get Marijuana into the realm of medicine and off of the list of schedule one drugs. Seems that Scalia hates pot smokers more than he hates the misapplication of the commerce clause. Thomas! Thomas! Thomas! Gotta love the cult that's being built up behind that man. And I must say that I have to agree with all the belly aching on the right about this decision. I'm completely puzzled as to why the commerce clause even applies(see update below). But hey. At least we don't have state sanctioned torture, right?

Oops. Gotta have perspective on these things.

Anyways, take care out there. I know it is hard to believe, but I'm guessing that things are going to get far weirder now that his nibs' popularity numbers are falling like a stone across the board. I mean, that's when people start getting nasty - when their backs are against the wall.

Word.

Update: Mitchell Freedman makes a convincing case that one should not be blaming the commerce clause for this decision.

Therefore, focusing attacks on the Court's jurisprudence as to the "commerce clause" is dangerously wrong. The key is to get the Court to overturn the Oakland Cannabis decision and then the non-economic privacy and health and safety issues may trump the plenary power of Congress to regulate "commerce" to the extent one is growing marijuana in their own home or back yard and using it only for oneself.

If anyone finds my view incorrect, I would only ask them to read the dissenting opinions from O'Connor and Thomas, which will reveal that neither of those justices are concerned with the facts regarding the therapeutic value of medical marijuana. They are primarily interested in pushing their ideology that would overturn a broad reading of the "commerce clause," which, in turn, would undermine the ability of both state and federal governments to pass laws regarding economic issues.

Thanks for your opinion, now shut the fuck up and get a clue.

Probably the only thing of true value I've ever seen from one of the preeminent bullshitters of the right wing. Having said that, it's yet another "find yourself on the two dimensional political axis" quiz. Here's mine - not much of a surprise.

On Non-Fiscal Issues, you rank as a Strong Liberal (15).
On Fiscal Issues, you rank as a Moderate Liberal (24).

Your score is on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being fully liberal and 100 being fully conservative.

Via Eric Wolfson...

Oh what a price we pay
For the things we say
And the closer I get to you
The further you move away
All the lies we tell
In the games we play
And the longer I think it over
The harder it is to stay
Sooner or later I'll be free
To leave the past behind
Sooner or later you're gonna be
The last thing on my mind
Little by little I'm finding out
The truth behind your eyes
Maybe if I don't show
I thought you might like to know
You're gonna be the last thing on my mind
You didn't want to know
I could have told you so
But the moment I think it's over
The further there is to go
Just a little word
Such an easy way
But the longer I think about it
The harder it is to say
Sooner or later I'll be free
To leave the past behind
Sooner or later you're gonna be
The last thing on my mind
Little by little I'm finding out
The truth behind your eyes
Maybe if I don't show
I thought you might like to know
You're gonna be the last thing on my mind

Say goodbye to all that. Man, this is really starting to suck. Or is that "blow"?

New hack cracks 'secure' Bluetooth devices

Cryptographers have discovered a way to hack Bluetooth-enabled devices even when security features are switched on. The discovery may make it even easier for hackers to eavesdrop on conversations and charge their own calls to someone else’s cellphone.

Bluetooth is a protocol that allows different devices including phones, laptops, headsets and printers to communicate wirelessly over short ranges - typically between 10 and 100 metres.

Over the past few years security experts have devised many ways of hacking into Bluetooth communications, but most require the Bluetooth security features to be switched off.

In April 2004, UK-based Ollie Whitehouse, at that time working for security firm @Stake, showed that even Bluetooth devices in secure mode could be attacked. His method allowed someone to hijack the phone, giving them the power to make calls as if it were in their own hands.

I'll be back and posting up a storm. Just give me a moment to dust off this interface. Yea, I'll be right on it. It's like falling off a bicycle.

Ugh.

Well, I wanted to spruce up the place, seeing as how I let it go to seed while I was out, and it looks pretty much how I want it to look under Internet Explorer (modulo a text formatting weirdness I'll point out later). However, under Firefox, my browser of choice, it kind of sucks - no doubt it looks equally displeasing under Mozilla and Safari as well.

So, hopefully some kind soul out there will take pity upon this site and will understand the deep mysteries of cross browser style sheet compatibility and help me out. I know, not a likely combination, but what the heck? Random events, coincidences and such being what they are...

Here's the screen shot of what this front page looks like under Firefox. Here's the screen shot of what this front page looks like under Internet Explorer.

As you can see, under Firefox, the nice mauve (?) background doesn't continue down to the bottom. And my right side bar doesn't seem to even have the mauve background. Kind of disturbing. The IE view is how it "should" be. Bizarre, right?

Another odd thing with the text that is present under both IE and Firefox. Look at a paragraph of text that follows a sequence of block quoted text.

Here's the blockquoted text

Note how this paragraph now seems to be back to normal. Weird, eh? Weirdness also strikes the second paragraph in a blockquote, as you can see in the following

Here's the first paragraph, which is "okay".

But this paragraph is now indented even more. Very, very odd.

Anyways, if there is any kind an charitable soul out there who can tell me what's going wrong and - perhaps more importantly - can tell me how to fix all this, I would be eternally grateful...

Many thanks...