February 2006 Archives

If this doesn't make you laugh out loud, either a) you are heavily sedated, b) you have no sense of humor or c) you are Chuck Norris. Don't forget to leaf through page 2.

Just like this. A picture really is worth 1000 words.

Beware the dangers of email, a cautionary tale. The next time you're angry and want to flame someone, keep in mind, it lasts forever.

Last week I did something I haven't done in years. I went to a play and it was great. I don't what's been keeping me away from the theater. Apathy. Laziness. I don't know.

Anyway, It was great. I went to see David Mamet's Oleanna. It was fantastic. Just two actors. Mamet's typically tight and naturual dialogue. And to see the play performed in such an intimate setting, there were about 125 seats, was really special.

This play is something of a mindfuck. The two characters are a male college professor and a struggling female student. The opening scene involves the student visitng the prof to explain that she just doesn't understand what's he trying to teach her. The professor is trying to explain it her and help her unserstand. All the while the phone keeps ringing and during the subsequent phone conversations (just as an aside, I think it's a great feat of acting to pretend like you're talking to someone on the phone and this guy made it look easy) we learn that the board is considering granting him tenure and in anticipation of this, the prof is buying a new home with his wife. But the board's decision is anything but foregone and his relationship with his wife is being strained to breaking because the real estate deal is going awry.

In the next scene, you find out that the student, based on their interaction in the first scene, has filed a sexual harrasment suit that has threatened not only his tenure, but his job. There was a certain off color story told by the prof and he did put his arm around her at one point to offer some comfort, but from my perspective, it was all incredibly innocent. And I think that was the point. I don't how succesful he was, but I think Mamet was trying to demonstrate how easily it was for two different people to share an experience an perceive that experience in a commpletely different light.

Without givng away the ending, let me just say that the relationship between the teacher and the student dissolves and the play ends with what I thought at the time was a bizarre twist, but in retrospect seems more like a logical conclusion.

I finally got off my keister, headed up to Tahoe, picked up my Heavenly season pass (oops) and had a day of skiing. It was great but it was exhausting. For one thing, I was seriously out of shape. I skied more than 20 days last season, but it's been almost 10 months and my legs and lungs got worked. Then there's this whole wake up a 5am, drive to the mountain, ski like a bat out of hell for 6 hours and drive 3 1/2 hours (traffic) back to the Bay Area. That's a seriously long day. I don't know how people do it. I can tell you I'm not exactly psyched to rush back. It knocked the stuffing out of me.

On the other hand, the day was awesome. It was over 50 degrees Farenheit. It was so hot, I had to stop and go back to the car to drop off some clothes mid-morning. The snow was in great shape considering they hadn't had anything new in more than 3 weeks. And the crowds were relatively sparse.

I want to ski more days this season. I need at least to get in 4 more days at Heavenly to make my pass worthwhile. I don't know if I'll be able to do it though (see above).

The Olympics comes around every 4 years. If you're a sports fan, it's something to look forward to, something to be cherished. It's the one opporunity for most of us in this international sports deprived country to get a look at bobsled, speed skating, luge, ski jumping, cross country, biathlon. All these incredible sports that essentially do not exist for Americans outside of the Winter Olympics. These events need to be covered and covered well. They need to be live. LIVE LIVE LIVE. I know it sounds insane, but I want to have to wake up at 2am to watch fucking curling live. I want to wake up at 3am to take in the Nordic Combined.

If it's not live there is no drama. Simple as that. It's too easy to find out the results. I hear it on the the NewsHour. I see them on the ESPN scroll. I even see them on NBC's damn website. NBC has covered a few events live, notably hockey, which has been excellent, but not nearly enough.

The games should not be in the hands of NBC. They are just such a goddam joke as as sports network. The Olympics should always and ever more be covered in the US by ABC. And the day that ABC recovers the games, will be happy day in my life.

Let me give you an example of how fucked up NBC is. Last weekend NBC was pumping the 4x10KM cross country. It's a huge event in Europe, and for a good reason. There's a massive rivalry between that has developed between Italy and Norway since 1992 when Italy, a huge underdog, eeked out a victory over the powerhouse Norwegians in Lillehammer. Norway returned the favor and won the subsequent 2 events in Nagano and Salt Lake City but only by the tiniest of margins. NBC played a a great retrospective of the 92 race narrated by Sam Waterston. I was pumped to watch the race. This is cross country and I'm so stoked to see this event.

What does NBC do? First mistake - they don't show the race live. Second mistake - they don't even show the race tape delayed in it's entirety. What do they do? They break up the legs of the relay with Ice Dancing performances. Ice Dancing. ICE DANCING,for god's sake!?!$#% I mean, shit, how the fuck do they come up with this? Do the programming execs sit in a room and try to see how they can piss off as many of their viewers as possible? I'm sure the people (I mean women) who tuned in to watch the Ice Dancing weren't all that thrilled to see their event broken up with Cross Country.

Do you think ABC would pull that shit? I think not.

I'm not a huge fan of figure skating, but I'm getting a huge kick out of listening to the commentary of Dick Button. Dude is just brutal. He's the Bill Walton of the ice rink - got almost nothing nice to say about anything or anybody. It's hillarious. Just a minute ago (delayed here on the west coast god knows how many hours) Tracy Wilson was commenting on a Ukranian skater who was performing in her 4th Olympic games and saying that you have to love to practice everyday to be that committed. Button chimes in saying he's seen her skate for all those years and she hasn't changed at all. You'd think with all that practice she'd learn something. Then he punctuated it by saying I hope I'm not being unkind. Unkind? Unkind? You're not unkind. You're a Dick!

Today is not just Valentine's Day. It's National Donor Day. So find a blood drive near your and give some of that extra blood you have lying around doing nothing in your body. Clearly you're not doing much with it if you're spending time reading this blog. Someone out there will really appreciate it. It doesn't take that long, maybe an hour (most of which is answering questions). It's not painful. They give you free juice and cookies. And you'll feel great about yourself.

George W Bush's approval ratings have plumetted post State of the Union to a low of 39%. Basically that means that just about everyone in the country who isn't a wide eyed Cult of Personality devotee has serious questions about him. The NYT editorial page thinks it knows why:

I've been looking for months (ever since I moved into my new place) for a cat proof fire place screen so I could keep my ever curious critters out of the fireplace. Not so much because I plan to have fires, although that might be nice now and again, but because the fire place is filthy, covered in soot from years of use and has a shelf at the back which would be impossible to clean because of the angles involved. Of course, it's not impossible for Mak and especially Fil to get up onto said shelf and turning their snowy white paws into a black mess and then tracking that mess over the walls, the white cabinets, the fridge, basically everywhere.

While I was looking for a suitable screen, I have jammed a framed print against the fire place and buttressed it with a plastic crates full of books - not really the ideal set up for my living room. I was getting sick of having this shit cluttering my place, so I gave up on finding a screen for now and went to Home Depot to have a piece of plywood sized down to cover the roughly 28 x 33 opening. It's not an elegant solution, but it's a solution. Now the junk is out of the living room and the cats are out of the fucking fireplace.

Apparently Vice President Dick Cheney shot someone over the weekend in a bizarre hunting accident.And now iIt seems that the boys at The Daily Show have manged to find some humor in it. Shit, can't we let the VP maim people in peace?

Glenn Greenwald has another excellent post, this one entitled "Do Bush followers have a political ideology?" on understanding the George w. Bush Cult of Personality. He articulates many of the thoughts that I have had about Bush followers over the last 5 years, only with much more depth and insight that I will ever be able to muster.

Here's the central premise of his argument.

Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required - a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more "liberal" one is. Whether one is a "liberal" -- or, for that matter, a "conservative" -- is now no longer a function of one's actual political views, but is a function purely of one's personal loyalty to George Bush.

...

People who self-identify as "conservatives" and have always been considered to be conservatives become liberal heathens the moment they dissent, even on the most non-ideological grounds, from a Bush decree. That's because "conservatism" is now a term used to describe personal loyalty to the leader (just as "liberal" is used to describe disloyalty to that leader), and no longer refers to a set of beliefs about government.

That "conservatism" has come to mean "loyalty to George Bush" is particularly ironic given how truly un-conservative the Administration is. It is not only the obvious (though significant) explosion of deficit spending under this Administration - and that explosion has occurred far beyond military or 9/11-related spending and extends into almost all arenas of domestic programs as well. Far beyond that is the fact that the core, defining attributes of political conservatism could not be any more foreign to the world view of the Bush follower.

As much as any policy prescriptions, conservatism has always been based, more than anything else, on a fundamental distrust of the power of the federal government and a corresponding belief that that power ought to be as restrained as possible, particularly when it comes to its application by the Government to American citizens. It was that deeply rooted distrust that led to conservatives' vigorous advocacy of states' rights over centralized power in the federal government, accompanied by demands that the intrusion of the Federal Government in the lives of American citizens be minimized.

Is there anything more antithetical to that ethos than the rabid, power-hungry appetites of Bush followers? There is not an iota of distrust of the Federal Government among them. Quite the contrary. Whereas distrust of the government was quite recently a hallmark of conservatism, expressing distrust of George Bush and the expansive governmental powers he is pursuing subjects one to accusations of being a leftist, subversive loon.

Indeed, as many Bush followers themselves admit, the central belief of the Bush follower's "conservatism" is no longer one that ascribes to a limited federal government -- but is precisely that there ought to be no limits on the powers claimed by Bush precisely because we trust him, and we trust in him absolutely. He wants to protect us and do good. He is not our enemy but our protector. And there is no reason to entertain suspicions or distrust of him or his motives because he is Good.

The post has generated quite a fire storm of response and you can read Glenn's noteworthy follow-up here.

"Tim, we can do what we have to do to prevail in this conflict. Failure's not an option. And go back again and think about what's involved here. This is not just about Iraq or just about the difficulties we might encounter in any one part of the country in terms of restoring security and stability. This is about a continuing operation on the war on terror. And it's very, very important we get it right. If we're successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it's not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it's not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11. They understand what's at stake here. That's one of the reasons they're putting up as much of a struggle as they have, is because they know if we succeed here, that that's going to strike a major blow at their capabilities."

--Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, September 14h, 2003

The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11

--Dick Cheney, The Cheney-Edwards Vice Presidential Debate, October 5, 2004

The past not only changed, but changed continuously. What most afflicted him with the sense of nightmare was that he had never clearly understood why the huge imposture was undertaken. The immediate advantages of falsifying the past were obvious, but the ultimate motive was mysterious.

--George Orwell, 1984

'Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that -- it's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point, but that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.

--Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, December 9th, 2001

Borger: "Well, let's go to Mohamed Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, 'pretty well confirmed.' "

Cheney: "No, I never said that."

Borger: "Okay."

Cheney: "Never said that."

Borger: "I think that is . . . "

Cheney: "Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9th of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down."

--Dick Cheney, Talking to CNBC's Gloria Borger, June 17, 2004

I will tell you this: that after five years of war, there is a need to make sure that our troops are balanced properly, that threats are met with capability. And that's why we're transforming our military.

The things I look for are the following: morale, retention and recruitment. And retention's high, recruitment is meeting goals and people are feeling strong about the mission.

But I also recognize that we've got to make sure that our military is transformed. And that's what's taking place right now, we're transforming the United States Army so that capability and the threats are better aligned.

--George Bush, White House Press Conference, January 26st, 2006

It is no secret to Congress that the Army, which is fighting the brunt of the war in Iraq, is facing a severe personnel crisis. A Pentagon-commissioned report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments leaked last week warned that prolonged deployments and recruiting problems were "breaking" the Army. A chapter of that report, titled "A Recruiting and Retention Crisis?" goes so far as to say that the grind of war on the Army -- rather than any political imperatives from Washington -- will accentuate the pace of military withdrawal from Iraq.

--Mark Benjamin, Out of Jail, into the Army, February 2nd, 2006

Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.

--George Orwell, 1984

Here at home, America also has a great opportunity: We will build the prosperity of our country by strengthening our economic leadership in the world.

Our economy is healthy and vigorous, and growing faster than other major industrialized nations. In the last two-and-a-half years, America has created 4.6 million new jobs -- more than Japan and the European Union combined. (Applause.) Even in the face of higher energy prices and natural disasters, the American people have turned in an economic performance that is the envy of the world.

--George Bush, State of the Union Address, January 31st, 2001

'Comrades!' cried an eager youthful voice. 'Attention, comrades! We have glorious news for you. We have won the battle for production! Returns now completed of the output of all classes of consumption goods show that the standard of living has risen by no less than 20 per cent over the past year. All over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous demonstrations when workers marched out of factories and offices and paraded through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big Brother for the new, happy life which his wise leadership has bestowed upon us. Here are some of the completed figures. Foodstuffs----'

The phrase 'our new, happy life' recurred several times. It had been a favourite of late with the Ministry of Plenty. Parsons, his attention caught by the trumpet call, sat listening with a sort of gaping solemnity, a sort of edified boredom. He could not follow the figures, but he was aware that they were in some way a cause for satisfaction. He had lugged out a huge and filthy pipe which was already half full of charred tobacco. With the tobacco ration at 100 grammes a week it was seldom possible to fill a pipe to the top. Winston was smoking a Victory Cigarette which he held carefully horizontal. The new ration did not start till tomorrow and he had only four cigarettes left. For the moment he had shut his ears to the remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grammes. Syme, too--in some more complex way, involving doublethink, Syme swallowed it. Was he, then, ALONE in the possession of a memory?

--George Orwell, 1984

New tomb found in the Valley of the Kings. Not royal, just connected. How cool is that?

It's funny how the Olympics snuck up me. I was right about to blame NBC for not promoting the games enough then I realized that I have no reason to watch network television... ever.

On September 17, Bill Maher, host of ABC's Politically Incorrect, took issue with Bush's characterization of the hijackers as "cowards," saying that the label could more plausibly be applied to the U.S. military's long-range cruise missile attacks than to the hijackers' suicide missions. Maher, a hawk on military issues, intended his comment as a criticism of Bill Clinton's emphasis on air power over ground troops, but major advertisers, including Federal Express and Sears, dropped their sponsorship, and several ABC affiliate stations dropped Maher's show from their lineups (Washington Post, 9/28/01).

Commenting at an official news briefing, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer called Maher's remark "a terrible thing to say," adding, "There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is." The White House's transcript of Fleischer's remarks mysteriously omitted the chilling phrase "watch what they say," in what White House officials later called a "transcription error" (New York Times, 9/28/01).

--FAIR, Patriotism & Censorship, 2001

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

--George Orwell, 1984

The eureka moment is two reasons why the output-based standard should be adopted: common sense and accountability. Input-based standards don't encourage energy diversity; they don't create any incentives; they don't produce solar, hydro, nuclear. As a result, companies are actually penalized if they use the cleanest fuels, and it doesn't make sense. It's not substance; it's language. And when they heard the language that they wanted to hear and they were able to apply it to an idea that at least they were open to, you watched a marriage of good communication and good policy. That was the eureka moment: I watched people nod their heads; I watched them look to each other, and they were willing at this point to fight for this position. Now I'll be able to walk to this electricity company on Monday and be able to say to them, "Your policy makes sense, and here's the language to explain it."

And the amazing thing was, it explained a very complicated policy. That's the job of language; that's the job of English. This is not about politics; this is not about selling soap. This is taking very traditional, simple, clear-cut words of the English language and figuring out which words, which phrases to apply at which opportunities, which times.

--Frank Lunz, Repbulican Wordsmith, Frontline Interview

'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,' he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. 'Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?'

--George Orwell, 1984

Russ Feingold, Senator from Wisconsin, took to the Senate floor and delivered an eloquent and harsh condemnation of the administration's illegal wiretapping activity at the NSA:

The President issued a call to spread freedom throughout the world, and then he admitted that he has deprived Americans of one of their most basic freedoms under the Fourth Amendment -- to be free from unjustified government intrusion.

The President was blunt. He said that he had authorized the NSA's domestic spying program, and he made a number of misleading arguments to defend himself. His words got rousing applause from Republicans, and even some Democrats.

The President was blunt, so I will be blunt: This program is breaking the law, and this President is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify this program.

How is that worthy of applause? Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? In that moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed

Congress has lost its way if we don't hold this President accountable for his actions.

Powerful. Mostly ignored by the media. The whole speech is below the fold, if you care to read it.

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution, in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for, though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefitwhich the use can at any time yield.

--George Washington, Farewell "Address" to the Nation, September 19, 1796

Glenn Greewald, one of the most astute political bloggers out there, breaks down the NSA scandal for mass consumption:

Thus, to compel the Administration to face real consequences for their unlawful actions, Bush opponents must do something they virtually never do -- agree on a limited set of clear, focused and principled points, and then activate every instrument of public persuasion which exists, and invent new ones which do not exist, to convey the formulated argument in a coordinated fashion. If that is done, Americans can be convinced that the actions of the Administration and the theories of presidential power they have embraced are deceitful and dangerous, and that these actions constitute a profound assault on the political values on which America was founded and which has made our country both unique and great for the last 225 years.

The war over this scandal is not going to be won in the comfort of courtroom arguments as part of some litigation, nor is it going to be won because some Republican Senators decide - for the first time in five years - that their loyalty to the law or to the country outweighs their loyalty to George Bush. The Administration will be held accountable for its illegal conduct here if and only if Americans becomes convinced that the Administration's actions were wrongful and deserve punishment. And that, in turn, will happen only if Bush opponents formulate an effective and coordinated strategy for making this case directly to Americans, and then articulate those principles aggressively and passionately.

The whole post is lengthy, just shy of 3,000 words, but it is well worth your time to get a handle on why this matters. You should read it.

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military -- which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

--Washington Post, November 2, 2005

Some time after their release Winston had actually seen all three of them in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. He remembered the sort of terrified fascination with which he had watched them out of the corner of his eye. They were men far older than himself, relics of the ancient world, almost the last great figures left over from the heroic days of the Party. The glamour of the underground struggle and the civil war still faintly clung to them. He had the feeling, though already at that time facts and dates were growing blurry, that he had known their names years earlier than he had known that of Big Brother. But also they were outlaws, enemies, untouchables, doomed with absolute certainty to extinction within a year or two. No one who had once fallen into the hands of the Thought Police ever escaped in the end. They were corpses waiting to be sent back to the grave.

--George Orwell, 1984

Republican Who Oversees N.S.A. Calls for Wiretap Inquiry

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 - A House Republican whose subcommittee oversees the National Security Agency broke ranks with the White House on Tuesday and called for a full Congressional inquiry into the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program.

The lawmaker, Representative Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico, chairwoman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, said in an interview that she had "serious concerns" about the surveillance program. By withholding information about its operations from many lawmakers, she said, the administration has deepened her apprehension about whom the agency is monitoring and why.

Ms. Wilson, who was a National Security Council aide in the administration of President Bush's father, is the first Republican on either the House's Intelligence Committee or the Senate's to call for a full Congressional investigation into the program, in which the N.S.A. has been eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of people inside the United States believed to have links with terrorists.

The congresswoman's discomfort with the operation appears to reflect deepening fissures among Republicans over the program's legal basis and political liabilities. Many Republicans have strongly backed President Bush's power to use every tool at his disposal to fight terrorism, but 4 of the 10 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voiced concerns about the program at a hearing where Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified on Monday.

Ms. Wilson is the latest of the increasingly large number of Republicans who have made the brave decision to put the Constitution and the rule of law ahead of party politics. It must have taken some serious balls to come out and says this, to demand a full and comprehensive inquiry, while Karl Rove is stalking the halls of Capitol Hill threatening to cut off campaign funding to any Republican Senator on the Judiciary Committee who votes against President Bush.

More here.

I just spent the last hour or so watching Mayor Jerry Sanders speak and take Q&A from the students at Hoover High School in San Diego. If you're interested, you can watch the video here:

http://www.studentsandleaders.org/sandiego/speakers/jerry_sanders.asp

A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners, and that recognize the matchless value of every life. Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Creator -- and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale.

--George Bush, State of the Union Address, January 31st, 2001

The puma was resting to heal that day; but Moreau, who was singularly solitary in his habits, did not join us. I talked with Montgomery to clear my ideas of the way in which the Beast Folk lived. In particular, I was urgent to know how these inhuman monsters were kept from falling upon Moreau and Montgomery and from rending one another. He explained to me that the comparative safety of Moreau and himself was due to the limited mental scope of these monsters. In spite of their increased intelligence and the tendency of their animal instincts to reawaken, they had certain fixed ideas implanted by Moreau in their minds, which absolutely bounded their imaginations. They were really hypnotised; had been told that certain things were impossible, and that certain things were not to be done, and these prohibitions were woven into the texture of their minds beyond any possibility of disobedience or dispute.

--H.G. Wells. The Island of Doctor Moreau

Everything you need to know to understand the background of the current NSA domestic wiretapping scanal courtesy of Shane Harris of Issues & Ideas and The Washington Note.

Our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy -- a war that will be fought by Presidents of both parties, who will need steady bipartisan support from the Congress. And tonight I ask for yours. Together, let us protect our country, support the men and women who defend us, and lead this world toward freedom.

--George Bush, State of the Union Address, January 31st, 2001

Since about that time, war had been literally continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war. For several months during his childhood there had been confused street fighting in London itself, some of which he remembered vividly. But to trace out the history of the whole period, to say who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been utterly impossible, since no written record, and no spoken word, ever made mention of any other alignment than the existing one. At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.

The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten thousandth time as he forced his shoulders painfully backward (with hands on hips, they were gyrating their bodies from the waist, an exercise that was supposed to be good for the back muscles)--the frightening thing was that it might all be true. If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, IT NEVER HAPPENED--that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed--if all records told the same tale--then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'.

--George Orwell, 1984

Super Bowl is here again. I'm going to Brennan's in Berkeley to watch the game which I expect to be great -storied franchise against first time upstart. Not that my predictions are worth shit, but I think it's going to be a close game, not high scoring, not low scoring, something like 24-21 and the Steelers will take it. Honestly, I don't care (other than the fact that for some inexplicable reason, my brother who has never lived in Pittsburgh or Pennsylvania, is a dyed in the wool terrible towel spinner) and I just want a great game.

It is said that prior to the attacks of September the 11th, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy. We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to al Qaeda operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late. So to prevent another attack -- based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute -- I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al Qaeda operatives and affiliates to and from America. Previous Presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have, and federal courts have approved the use of that authority. Appropriate members of Congress have been kept informed. The terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.

--George Bush, State of the Union Address, January 31st, 2001

Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black-moustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at street level another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.

--George Orwell, 1984

Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo found a 2003 photo of Abramoff and Bush on the site of a company called Reflections Photography, among numerous archived Republican political photos. Marshall identified the URL where the pic was supposed to be, but found it gone. All the other pics were there, numbered in sequence, but the Bush-Abramoff photo was missing.

When Marshall called Reflections, the helpful woman answering the phone set out to find the photo for him, but to no avail. Because certain photos can only be obtained on a CD, Marshall asked if it was possible to get the Bush-Abramoff photo that way. Most obligingly, the woman pulled the CD, and then, according to Marshall, with a note o astonishment in her voice, said the photo of Bush and Abramoff "was deleted.'' Marshall asked why, and the woman said sometimes that happened because the White House wanted a certain photo removed from the file.

--The Village Voice, January 27th, 2006

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of 'The Times' and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of 'The Times' had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs--to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place. The largest section of the Records Department, far larger than the one on which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction. A number of 'The Times' which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it. Books, also, were recalled and rewritten again and again, and were invariably reissued without any admission that any alteration had been made. Even the written instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of as soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy.

--George Orwell, 1984

If we have any hope of turning the tide against the extreme direction this country is headed in and change paths in a more progressive and honest direciton , we need someone like Russ Feingold in the Oval Office.

I know it's a long way out and we have at another year (or more) before the presidential political season starts in earnest. And I know that senators traditionally get blown away by governors in national elections However, it seems likely at this point that we will have two senators battling for the White House from either side of the political spectrum. Feingold vs. Clinton on the Democratic side. And McCain vs. Allen on the Republican side. Of course there will be others thrown in the mix. Former Viriginia governor Mark Warner will probably throw his hat in the ring. Jeb Bush will probably do the same. Bill Frist will run, but he is so dogged by corruption and his foolish long distance diagnosis of Terri Schiavo that his candidacy will go nowhere. Bill Richardson, Al Gore, John Kerry and Wesley Clark could all possibly be in the race for the Democratic nomination. Guiiani and Pataki are possibilities for the Republican nod, but I doubt they will go anywhere.

I know there's a lot of support behind Hillary Clinton. She's going to sweep back into the Senate in November without much of a fight and will be able to raise tons of cash. But she is such a polarizing figure it's going to be very hard for people in the middle of the political spectrum to support her. Feingold on the other hand is relatively unknown, but he's most famous for the well intentioned McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform (wouldn't it be interesting to see those two run against each other? - we might have the most civil presidential campaign in the history of the country and be able to focus on clear policy differences rather than partisan mudslinging).

Feingold, one of the few faces of honest government, is exactly the perscription this country needs to get heathly after 8 years of cancer inflicted by the current administration. He has great credentials. He's on the Judiciary Committee, the Foreign Relations committee and the Senate Select Intelligence Commitee. He is articulate. He is intelligent. He is progressive. And he will make a great president.

I received this letter from the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic in the mail earlier this week:

Plate: CA5KEX274

We have received your inquiry regarding the parking citation listed below.

We have reviewed your claim and found it valid. Therefore, the citation has been dismissed.

No payment or further action is necesary. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Citation Number: 636150690

Ok, so maybe it's not proof of the existence of a higher being, but it did put a smile on my face.

This stupid (or maybe stoopid, in this case):

Yesterday I was having lunch with two women from the web conference, one from Florida and and the other from Buenos Aires. So we're sitting in the restaurant and the girl from Buenos Aires was explaining to the girl from Florida that she is from Argentina. And the girl from Florida's response? "Do you live in houses there?"

Do you live in houses there? Are you shiitng me? My Sobe nearly erupted out my nose.

Think for a second about what it takes for someone to ask a question as inane as that:

1) Clearly she had never heard of Argentina before. To me this is simply remarkable and hard to fathom, yet it's clearly the case. I'm trying to imagine a scenario where anyone mentions any country in the world to me and I'm hearing it for the first time, but that's just me, I'm a traveling geography freak. But come on, Argentina? Who the fuck hasn't heard of Argentina?

2) She had think that there are countries in the world where people do not live in houses. Every country I've been has had houses. You? I suspect a similar experience.

3) She had to think that it was possible that the girl from Argentina, who flew all the way to San Francsico for a fricking web design conference, did not live in a house. Where the fuck did she think that she lived? In a cave? Shit.

At this moment I very much wished that I had been Argentina, but I haven't (something I hope to rectify in the next few years). Fortunately I do know quite a bit about the country and was able to save some face for us pathetic ignorant Americans.