Fiat Lux

A Soldier's Story.

The Washington Note has a seriously depressing account of what is really going on for our armed forces in the mideast. Basically, there is not one bit of good news.

It is worth a read, though.

What's Up With The Chairman?

The days when I had any positive feelings about Yasser Arafat are long since passed, but if the reports are true, he's not long for this world and that's Not Good News.

Exactly how ill he is seems somewhat up in the air -- the various news reports I've read range from describing Arafat as practically being on his deathbead to his being ill but not critically.

Says ABC:

Palestinian officials said he had the flu. Israeli officials speculated he might have stomach cancer, but two of his doctors said Wednesday a blood test and a biopsy of tissue from his digestive tract showed no evidence of cancer.

On Tuesday, a hospital official said Arafat was suffering from a large gallstone. The gallstone, while extremely painful, is not life-threatening and can be easily treated, the official told AP.

So why is this bad news?

Arafat's health crisis has highlighted how unprepared the Palestinians are for their leader's death, making a chaotic transition period all but inevitable. Arafat refuses to groom a successor; rival security chiefs already have battled each other in the streets.

[snip]

No leader of Arafat's stature and popularity is waiting in the wings, said Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi. "It's only natural to expect that there would be either a power struggle or there would be a loss of cohesion," she said.

Analysts said it could take years for a leader to emerge, hurting prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. However, Israel and the United States hold out hope that a post-Arafat Middle East will be more conducive to peace because of what they say is Arafat's blind eye to terror and opposition to reform.

Polls show the second most popular Palestinian after Arafat is Marwan Barghouti, a leader of Fatah's young guard. But Barghouti is serving five consecutive life terms in an Israeli prison for involvement in deadly shooting attacks.

On paper, at least, a path of succession has been charted. The parliament speaker would replace Arafat as Palestinian Authority president for 60 days, until elections are held. However, current speaker Rauhi Fattouh is a bland backbencher uncertain to hold on during a turbulent transition period, and timely elections appear unlikely.

Somehow I don't think this is going to end well. We shall see though. After all, if the Red Sox can finally break the Curse of the Bambino, anything is possible.

Stern / Powell Steel Cage Death Match

I listen to the local ABC AM radio affiliate, KGO, fairly often, but I missed Ronn Owens' show today. Unfortunately. Howard Stern called in to rant at Michael Powell this morning on the air.

KGO has a link to an audio archive of the show on their home page. I'm about to listen to it.

RFID Passports

My passport recently expired. I should have renewed it sooner:

Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Bush administration--specifically, the Department of Homeland Security--has wanted the world to agree on a standard for machine-readable passports. Countries whose citizens currently do not have visa requirements to enter the United States will have to issue passports that conform to the standard or risk losing their nonvisa status.

These future passports, currently being tested, will include an embedded computer chip. This chip will allow the passport to contain much more information than a simple machine-readable character font, and will allow passport officials to quickly and easily read that information. That is a reasonable requirement and a good idea for bringing passport technology into the 21st century.

But the Bush administration is advocating radio frequency identification (RFID) chips for both U.S. and foreign passports, and that's a very bad thing.

These chips are like smart cards, but they can be read from a distance. A receiving device can "talk" to the chip remotely, without any need for physical contact, and get whatever information is on it. Passport officials envision being able to download the information on the chip simply by bringing it within a few centimeters of an electronic reader.

Unfortunately, RFID chips can be read by any reader, not just the ones at passport control. The upshot of this is that travelers carrying around RFID passports are broadcasting their identity.

Think about what that means for a minute. It means that passport holders are continuously broadcasting their name, nationality, age, address and whatever else is on the RFID chip. It means that anyone with a reader can learn that information, without the passport holder's knowledge or consent. It means that pickpockets, kidnappers and terrorists can easily--and surreptitiously--pick Americans or nationals of other participating countries out of a crowd.

Since the program is currently in test only I suppose I should renew ASAP so I don't get stuck with the chip. You might want to check your own passport's expiration date and see if you're in a similar boat.

Pattern Recognition

I've been meaning to post a review of William Gibson's "Pattern Recognittion" for quite a while now and still have not done so. It's a book that moved me deeply in some ways and left me really annoyed in others, and I find it hard to wirte about that contradition. Hopefully I'll get it finished eventually.

Good news today, though -- Peter Weir wants to make it into a movie.

No Spin Zone a Sexual Harassment Zone

Apparently Fox News host Bill O'Reilly has been hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit. Almost as a side note, he gets quoted threatening Al Franken.

Franken's going to have a field day with this, I'm sure (if you've read his book Lies and the Lying Liars et al you'll know what I mean).

Update: O'Reilly is counter-suing.

Go Yankees!

As usual, the Yankees are in the playoffs and my Mets are in the toilet. Even so, I'd prefer the Yanks to beat the Sox, so GO YANKEES!

RIP Christopher Reeve

I had the great pleasure of seeing Christopher Reeve on Broadway in 1986 at Circle in the Square, in a production of Beaumarchais' "The Marriage of Figaro" -- the play which Mozart used as the basis for his opera of the same name. Reeve played the Count and did it admirably. He was a much better actor than the "Superman" movie and its sequels ever let him show.

A few years later, I briefly worked at the Williamstown Summer Theater Festival while Reeve was rehearsing a production of "Undiscovered Country". I never crossed paths with him, to my great disappointment, but word of mouth was that he was a cool guy.

It's sad that a man who took a shattering personal tragedy and turned it into something positive did not live to see significant progress made towards a cure for spinal cord injuries. I hope something good comes from his passing.

No Shot For You!

If you're a flu shot recipient (I am not) this is a little alarming:

British authorities suspended the license of Chiron Corp. for three months because of problems at its vaccine manufacturing plant in Liverpool, England, which primarily supplies the American market. The action means the company can't supply any flu vaccine during that time, and Chiron said it would provide no U.S. vaccine this year.

(snip)

Chiron had planned to ship 46 million to 48 million doses, but that already had been delayed by a contamination problem discovered in August in the English factory where the vaccine is made. At the time, the company said only 4 million doses were tainted but that the entire supply would be held up and re-tested.

About 1 million doses already had arrived in the United States, but now even that won't be made available because of the British safety concerns.

Chiron's stock, of course, is taking a sharp nosedive today.

And I can't resist the political cheap shot:

Less than two weeks ago, top U.S. health officials assured the public that close FDA monitoring of the rest of Chiron's supply suggested it was fine and that there would be plenty of supplies.

Guess that Reality Distortion Field emanating from the White House has reached the FDA too.

On Iraq and a Draft

It's hardly a new or unique insight, but it's all too obvious that we should never have left Saddam in charge of Iraq after Gulf War I. George Bush senior has been quoted as saying that at the time, the Arab members of the coalition forces objected to Saddam's removal from power so he was left in place. I wonder sometimes, how much would have been different if was had told those allies, "No, he's going down".

The road ahead is grim, and the growing rumblings in the blogosphere and the press about the possible need to re-institute the draft are worrisome. I try not to make too much of the rumblings, but then I picture my 21 year old cousin with a draft card of his hand and it's not so simple.

It's been 30 years since the draft was last a reality. A lot has changed since then. One thing that hasn't changed is that no matter how they try to write the rules, the richer, more well-connected, and smarter kids will find ways around any draft.

I am not, by the way, convinced that a Kerry victory means we will not have a draft instituted. It is not clear whether even with the best intentions we will be able to draw down significant troops out of Iraq in the near future. No matter who wins in November, it's possible we will have to change how we build our military. But I am sure that a Kerry administration would not be so reckless with the lives of our soldiers as this administration has been.

Do-Not-Call is Constitutional

They may be overrun by partisan hacks but at least the Supreme Court got it right with regard to telemarketers:

The Supreme Court let stand a lower-court ruling that telemarketers' rights to free speech are not violated by the government's nationwide do-not-call list.

Without comment, the justices rejected an appeal by commercial telemarketers against the lower-court ruling, which upheld as constitutional the popular program in which consumers can put their names on a list if they do not want to be called by telemarketers.

"We hold that the do-not-call registry is a valid commercial speech regulation because it directly advances the government's important interests in safeguarding personal privacy and reducing the danger of telemarketing abuse without burdening an excessive amount of speech," the appeals court said.

Actually, reading further into the article, maybe I should take back the 'partisan hack' comment. The Justices also:

• let stand a ruling that a Catholic charity in California must include prescription contraceptives in its employee health insurance plan
• rejected an appeal from ousted Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who lost his job after defying a federal order to dismantle a Ten Commandments monument.

Cybersecurity Chief Gives One Day's Notice to DHS

This is weird:

The government's cybersecurity chief has abruptly resigned after one year with the Department of Homeland Security, confiding to industry colleagues his frustration over what he considers a lack of attention paid to computer security issues within the agency.

Amit Yoran, a former software executive from Symantec, informed the White House about his plans to quit as director of the National Cyber Security Division and made his resignation effective at the end of Thursday, effectively giving a single's day notice of his intentions to leave.

I'm sure there's a story there we're not hearing, but no clue what it is.

That Delux Apartment Is Good For You...

I'm a city dweller - have been so my whole life. So the new study that says living in a city is better for your overall health is a welcome bit of news:

Living in the suburbs may have once been part of the American dream but it can lead to nightmares such as high blood pressure, arthritis and headaches, researchers reported on Monday.

An adult living somewhere like Atlanta, with its spread-out suburbs and car-heavy culture, will have a health profile that looks like that of someone who lives in Seattle -- but who is four years older, the study found.

And also

There was no link between suburban sprawl and mental health. The RAND team found no differences in the rates of depression, anxiety and psychological well-being between people living in downtown areas and those in suburbs.

Even living in San Francisco, which is less dense that New York, I've noticed that I walk less here. It's easy to see how that effect would be magnified once you leave town altogether.

On Blogs and Blogging

Billmon's op-ed on blogging in the LA Times has a lot of people navel gazing today. Given that I've been struggling with the question of my own relevance it seems timely.

Billmon takes issue with the fact that some of the top leftleaning bloggers (Kos and Atrios most notably) have achieved enough success to be self-sustaining financially and have arguably started to be taken seriously by the more mainstream press, as well as the political establishment.

In the process, a charmed circle of bloggers -- those glib enough and ideologically safe enough to fit within the conventional media punditocracy -- is gaining larger audiences and greater influence.

The fact that the New York Times would do a major Sunday story about left-leaning bloggers is a good sign - the mainstream media is starting to admit bloggers are something more than a bizarre new Internet fad. And I think that this is more a positive than a negative. I've always been more interested in results than in precess. Even if this blog is insignificant, people who more or less share my point of view are getting listened to, and that's a good thing.

There are some bloggers who, I think, have let success go to their heads, but the number is small (the annoyingly smug Matt Yglesias being the most notable one). But overall, the successfull bloggers that I most liked do not seem to have been affected by success. Billmon is going through some sort of crisis of the soul, I suspect. What it is I don't know and I am not going to speculate. I hope he's OK, because his blog was consistently excellent and I'm sad he has decided to shutter the Whiskey Bar.

I'll just add that the day Kevin Drum linked to a post here and I got 650 views in 18 hours was the day I realized exactly how big blogs really had gotten.

At any rate, blogging ablout blogging is somewhat of an exercise in navel gazing, something I've been doing too much of, so I won't belabor the point.

Final side note - As it happens I have a Six Degrees connection in all of this - my husband was a co-worker of Kos' before Kos went full-time with the blog. That does color my attitude a little.

Please check in at the security desk

I haven't been in large office buildings much the past few years, but having started classes at UC Berkeley's extension campus in downtown SF I am now going to one several times a week. And the security is ridiculous.

Call it a sign of the post 9-11 times, I suppose. Every person who enters the building is supoposed to sign in and show photo ID. Fine, but you're talking about a building where both Berkeley and SFSU hold classes. At peak times you'll have several dozen students lined up at the desk trying to get in before class starts, and two harassed, overworked guards trying to check everyone in. Someone 'unauthorized' can get in with no problem by scrawling something illegible on the paper and waving their wallet in the general direction of the guards. There's no metal detectors or bag checks, so it's not in any way a deterrant. It's more of an annoyance to the students who are standing there checking their watches and wondering if they'll get to class on time.

Seems to me this is just another example of a vast trend in America -- doing something to look good although no actual result is being produced. The building management's insurance company likely insisted on it, and if they didn't, then some of the major tenants' insurance companies probably did. After all, if a terrorist decided to bomb a classroom of people studying accounting and there was no building security someone might get sued. So now there's a desk and some people and a nice set of policies to point to in case of an emergency. Not that a spiky haired kid and an overweight older woman behind a desk could really do anything about anything except possibly call 911.

Now maybe there's hidden cameras with facial ID working to provide some accurate security, in which case I take it all back, but even in the unlikely possibility that there is, why go through the farce at the desk at all?

What's even more annoying is I have to go through this three or 4 times a week for the next couple of months.

Savage Numbness - Welcome Home Bob

Amidst the despair, and there is a lot of it, a small ray of hope. Go read Bob Harris' excellent column.

Welcome to Berkeley. Don't Forget your Condom..

I was going to put an even nastier title to this post but I don't want this blog to get into any smut filters. In short, the wackoes in Berkeley are at it again - they want to decriminalize prostitution.

I consider myself to be a feminist, but I cannot understand how this is a "woman's issue". It seems to me that the people who are going to benefit most by the decriminalization of prostitution are the pimps, who will not have to worry about their 'stable' getting busted and therefore be able to make more money for them, and of course the customers, who will be able to buy as much sex as they want without having to worry about police sting operations.

Backers of the measure insist that prostitution is a societal mainstay, a commodity in perennial demand. Therefore, it should be treated like any other job and have unions, government workplace protections, fair wages, insurance and legal recourse for workers who face abuse or civil rights violations

What planet are these people on? Women who go into the sex trade don't do it becuse it's a 'good job' or has the potential to be one. They do it because for whatever combination of reasons (poor self-esteem, bad coping skills, lack of education, drug addiction, etc) they can't do anything else. What we should be doing is helping prosititues get the skills and self-confidence they need to stop being prostitiutes, not helping them stay in the sex trade.

Sad Day for the Theater

Sad news for fans of musical theater - Fred Ebb has died.

I was part of the technical team for a production of Cabaret in college. I have a love-hate relationship with the show - on the one hand, it's great theater, but on the other hand, given the timeframe it's set in and the unhappy ending, it's not exactly uplifting material to work on. But then you have a gem like this:

[HERR SCHULTZ]

How the world can change
It can change like that -
Due to one little word:
"Married".

See a palace rise
From a two room flat
Due to one little word:
"Married".

And the old despair
That was often there
Suddenly ceases to be
For you wake one day,
Look around and say:
Somebody wonderful married me.

[FRAULEIN SCHNEIDER (spoken)]
You don't think it would be better simply to go
on as before?

[SCHULTZ]
No.

Rest in peace, Fred. Thanks for the memories.

This is kind of cool

Amazing what you'll find when you're a police officer exploring the catacombs below Paris:

a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said. A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.

"The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."

Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."

What al-Qaeda wants

Juan Cole has a lengthy article about how al-Qaeda sees the world, and what it really wants. Whether he's right, I don't know, but it's an interesting assessment of the situation.

9/11/01

God bless you, Kath, wherever you are.

Good News Bad News

2 Russian airplanes go boom and it's barely a blip in the US press. Why? Because it's internal terrorism.

A top Russian official acknowledged Thursday what many citizens already suspected -- that terrorism was the most likely cause of two jetliners crashing minutes apart, a feeling reflected in a newspaper headline warning that "Russia now has a Sept. 11."

A day later, a Web site known for militant Muslim comment published a claim of responsibility for Wednesday's twin plane crashes, connecting the action to Russia's fight against separatists in Chechnya.

OTOH, I suppose the lack of press is good in that at least it won't inflame the paranoid among us even more.

Abu Ghraib Report

Yet another report on Abu Ghraib is out but this one at least starts to point the finger in the right direction.

What began several months ago with the emergence of shocking photographs showing a handful of U.S. troops abusing detainees in Iraq has led this week to a broad indictment of U.S. military leadership and acknowledgement in two official reports that mistreatment of prisoners was more widespread than previously disclosed.

The reports have served to undercut earlier portrayals of the abuse as largely the result of criminal misconduct by a small group of individuals. As recently as last month, an assessment by the Army's inspector general concluded the incidents could not be ascribed to systemic problems, describing them as "aberrations."

But the findings yesterday of another Army investigation offered a more critical appraisal of what led to the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. It implicated 27 military intelligence soldiers in abuse, providing some support for assertions by some of the seven military guards previously charged that they were not acting alone. Counting other intelligence, medical and civilian contract personnel cited for failing to report the abuse, and three more military police officers alleged to have engaged in abuse, the report appeared to raise to nearly 50 the number of people who may face charges or disciplinary action for misconduct at Abu Ghraib.

The people at the top of the foodchain, of course, are probably never going to have to pay for what happened. We'll be lucky if anyone over the rank of Colonel feels the heat.

Overpriced Places to Live

Maybe moving back to NYC isn't such a bad idea after all .... SF beats NY on the "most overpriced places to live" list. At least we don't live in the most overpriced city - Seattle!

RIP Julia Child

Sad news this morning.

We all should be so lucky to have had a life and a death like Julia Child's. Dying peacefully in your sleep at age 91 is a pretty good way to go.

Julia Child's passing is a great loss. Her honesty and humor were refreshing, and her passion for good food, good wine, and having fun in the kitchen were obvious.

I saw a couple of the FoodTV programs featuring her last year. One that stuck in my mind was a visit by Emeril to her home, where they cooked together. She totally schooled Emeril on how to cook a chicken. It was a hoot. There was another epiode where Wolfgang Puck came over bearing champagne and made her veal, asparagus, and dessert.

Red wine with your steak, anyone?

Economic Instability

I've often thought over the past few years that my grandparents, who weathered the Great Depression, would have a lot of insight to offer on today's economy. Kevin Drum makes a similar point on his site today:

Almost everyone who's not already well off these days knows someone who's been ruined by a personal catastrophe, and this personal knowledge rubs off. You're worried that you could get laid off at any time — and not be able to find a job for months or years. You're worried that a sudden healthcare crisis could devastate you. You're worried that your pension fund or your 401(k) might not be there when you retire because you made bad investment choices.

FDR dedicated the New Deal to "freedom from fear." He believed that government's role was not to provide handouts to the poor, but to provide a certain minimum level of security against the everyday catastrophes that ruin people's lives.

It is this minimum level of economic security that George Bush and modern movement conservatives want to abolish. In fact, it's the point of Bush's "ownership society": if everyone owns their own Social Security account, owns their own healthcare account, and owns their own college accounts, then the government no longer provides security against disaster. If you make a mistake, or if the market makes a mistake, you're screwed.

This is likely to be the eventual downfall of modern conservatism. Human beings have a deep desire for a certain minimum level of stability and security in their lives, and eventually they'll rebel against a party that refuses to acknowledge this. Life today is so much better than it was in the 30s that people have forgotten the basic New Deal ethos that made it that way. But if conservatives have their way, it won't be much longer before they start remembering.

That said, I am not sure what the government's actual role in this process should be. My initial feeling is that attention should be paid to restructuring the tax code in order to encourage 'good' corporate behavior. Instead of the government spending billions of dollars on health insurance, why not alter the tax code so companies have a big financial incentive to give all their employees good health insurance? Self-interest and greed are powerful motivators. If you make it worth a company's while to make life better for their employees, they'll do it gladly.

If this tactic worked (and whether it could I have no idea, I'm not an economist), it would have the added benefit of totally spiking the "democrats hate business" card.

On a more personal note, certainly this household has had a large share of income instability over the past few years. It's left both financial and emotional scars on us, and an intimate knowledge of how easy it is to fall out of the 'middle class'. You need to work hard to not become a victim of your unhappiness. Finding a good job may seem impossible but you still have to believe you can find meaningful work. You may feel resentful or envious of friends who are doing better than you, but you can't let that poison your friendships, or you'll have few friends left at a time when a broad base of emotional support is more important than ever.

And taking that perspective out to the realm of the political, you can't fall victim to class warfare rhetoric. Blaming X, Y or Z for your problems might feel good for a little while but it won't solve the problems. And more than anything, that's what we need to do.

That said, I agree with Drum that today's so-called conservatives are not solving the problems we're facing. We need to give something else a try.

Bow Before Giblets!

There is so much bad news coming out of Iraq these days, so much confusion and chaos, and no idea how anything good is going to be able to come out of that mess, that I just shut down and stop processing information. I don't want to deal with it.

I suspect I'm not the only person who feels that way, and that might be part of why Iraq coverage is not in the press as much anymore. Also, of course, the so-called handover of power now means that news stations can, if they choose, slot Iraq back into their Middle East coverage, not treat it as US news (despite the fact that American troops are still dying and being wounded there daily).

All this is a very long preface to yet another reason why I LOVE Fafblog. The guy is a freaking genius. He somehow manages to report on a lot of news and still make me smile.

"You gotta use discipline on a young country," says Giblets. "Otherwise it won't grow up with the right values. Spare the gonad electrocution, spoil the child." "But won't torture corrupt the government an make the people angrier and more hostile?" says me. "An won't they hate us more for letting the new government torture them?" "Oh-hoho," says the Medium Lobster. "You poor, ignorant little Fafnir. You must understand: Iraq is going through a transitional period right now. It would be wrong for us to shock them with the presence of strange, new, unfamiliar cultural elements, such as 'not-torture' and 'not-oppression.' The key phrase here, Fafnir, is 'transition'."

Meanwhile Iraq's new Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has banned the TV network Al Jazeera for the next 30 days after accusin it of "inciting hatred" an actin "against the interests of security, the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people."

"But how is this different from politically-motivated censorship?" says me.
"Well you can't have a democracy without some politically-motivated censorship," says Giblets.

Go read the rest. Then bookmark Fafblog if you haven't already. And then bow! yes, bow before Giblets, bow before Giblets NOOOOOOOOW!

American Newspapers

Sent to me by my sister. I have no idea who wrote it originally.

A Guide to U.S. Newspapers

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand the Washington Post. They do, however, like the smog statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn't have to leave L.A. to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country, and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority, feminist atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from ANY country or galaxy as long as they are democrats.

10. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.

My addendum:

11. New York Newsday is read by the people who used to read the New York Daily News but have moved to Long Island. They still don't care who runs the country as long as they get a seat on the train, but now their commute is twice as long.

Crying Wolf on Terror

Three months to election day. And a fresh round of terror warnings. What concerns me is not so much the warning but

1) The sense that there have been too many vague terror alerts without anything happening - and by that I mean the arrest and successful prosecution of some actual terrorists here in the US.

2) A sense that there is so much skepticism of anything that comes out of this administration's mouth that warnings are not going to get taken seriously, even if the threat is real.

Now I'm still willing to believe that our law enforcement agencies are sincerely trying to find and stop terrorists. But it would help me and I think a lot of other citizens be less cynical about the whole thing if we saw or heard more than just vague threat announcements ever so often. I'm not an expert on how terrorists get busted, but it seems to me that if our law enforcement services know enough about domestic plots to be able to provide warnings about specific times and places, they should know enough about who is doing the planning to make some arrests and make some cases in court (hint - Jose Padilla doesn't count). It also doesn't help credibility when the government can't even produce an accurate report on how many terror attacks have occurred recently.

At least on the left side of the fence I don't have a lot of company in my willingness to give the benefit of the doubt. It's not just the flame-throwers like Pandagon who think the government is either deliberately politicizing, flat-out lying and/or too incompetent to do a good job of protecting the country from real threats. Even more moderate lefties like Orcinus are highly skeptical of what's going on.

It Might Be Funny...

Trent Lott calling John Kerry “a French-speaking socialist from Boston, Massachusetts" would be funny except that unfortunately, in some parts of America, implying someone does something different like *gasp* speaking a language other than English (let alone the language of those cheese-eating surrender monkeys) is not a positive.

What Trent Lott told a crowd of people at one fair in Nebraska is ultimately immaterial to the overall election. It's just another stroke on the canvas of Us versus Them that's being painted in America these days. But it's also about the isolation of America from the greater world.

It's a human trait to fear that which is different. And if you only speak English, everyone you know only speaks English, and you like it that way, then hearing that a political candidate is not like you creates a sense of difference. And that sense of difference, that subtle feeling that the candidate is not a part of your world, makes a difference when you're in the voting booth on election day.

I know of a guy who was contacted by some business types about starting a new venture. They were based in England and he lived in Middle America. He decided to commit to the project and jumped through all kinds of paperwork hoops, getting his visa in place so he could move to Scotland to start a new business. When he got there, there were some issues with the investors and it was a hectic few weeks straightening out some of the wrinkles with his colleagues (not surprising when you're trying to start a new company at a distance). Once he'd gotten everything set how he wanted it, he cancelled the sale of his house and came right back to America.

I was amazed. I couldn't believe after all the work he'd put in getting the right to work legally abroad, that after a couple of weeks he would turn around and run for home, but he did. And he's happy about it. To be honest, I think he's a bit of an idiot for running home so fast. But as I think about it more, living in such a large and homogenous society does that to you. It's hard to handle differences when so much of America is the same. And some politicians have made a lot of political hay on this fact.

I don't know what if anything can be done about this state of things. The only way to become comfortable with difference is to experience it on a regular basis. When you live in a city like New York or San Francisco, that's pretty easy to do. It’s not so easy living in Nebraska.

Trust Us, We're Here To Help You

Let's say you built a building, got it inspected and a certificate of occupancy issued, and then the roof caved in. You sue your builder. Then the twist - the local government files an amicus brief on behalf of the builder. Their claim? The building was issued a certificate of occupancy, so suing the builder undermines the credibility of the government.

It would be funny except that the feds are doing the same thing right now with the FDA. And in at least one case they've won. By way of the NY Times:

The Bush administration has been going to court to block lawsuits by consumers who say they have been injured by prescription drugs and medical devices.

The administration contends that consumers cannot recover damages for such injuries if the products have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In court papers, the Justice Department acknowledges that this position reflects a "change in governmental policy," and it has persuaded some judges to accept its arguments, most recently scoring a victory in the federal appeals court in Philadelphia.

Allowing consumers to sue manufacturers would "undermine public health" and interfere with federal regulation of drugs and devices, by encouraging "lay judges and juries to second-guess" experts at the F.D.A.

As if no product has ever been FDA approved and then later been found to have serious problems and been pulled off the market (the FDA's own website even has a page about this issue). But even more than that, it's the idea that the government is right and people are wrong that bugs me.

Sharon Unbends a Little

Seems like good news to me at least:

Israel's Defense Ministry has mapped out a new route for the separation barrier in the West Bank that heeds a Supreme Court order to reduce hardships for Palestinians and runs closer to the Israel's 1967 border

As with all things in Israel, the Devil is in the details. But at least it's a step in the right direction.

Clarke is Right Again

Good op-ed from Richard Clarke about the 9/11 commission report (yes I know I said I wasn't going to talk about it) and how to make its recommendations even better. Key points below:

First, we need not only a more powerful person at the top of the intelligence community, but also more capable people throughout the agencies - especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. In other branches of the government, employees can and do join on as mid- and senior-level managers after beginning their careers and gaining experience elsewhere. But at the F.B.I. and C.I.A., the key posts are held almost exclusively by those who joined young and worked their way up. This has created uniformity, insularity, risk-aversion, torpidity and often mediocrity.

The only way to infuse these key agencies with creative new blood is to overhaul their hiring and promotion practices to attract workers who don't suffer the "failures of imagination" that the 9/11 commissioners repeatedly blame for past failures.

Second, in addition to separating the job of C.I.A. director from the overall head of American intelligence, we must also place the C.I.A.'s analysts in an agency that is independent from the one that collects the intelligence. This is the only way to avoid the "groupthink" that hampered the agency's ability to report accurately on Iraq. It is no accident that the only intelligence agency that got it right on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department - a small, elite group of analysts encouraged to be independent thinkers rather than spies or policy makers.

I saw the report in a bookstore on Friday night but I can't bring myself to buy it. It's like books about the Holocaust - too painful for me to want to read them.

Word Replacement

Orcinus has a lengthy comparison of attitudes today towards Arabs with attitudes towards Japanese in the 1940s - worth a look. If you replace the word "Arab" with the word "Jap" in the materials he presents, it's hard to tell what was written when.

Bottom line?

The reality, just as it was in 1942, is that focusing on a single race as "the enemy" is not only wrong-headed and grotesquely unjust, it's amazingly ineffective. The United States wasted a large portion of its wartime food production by incarcerating Japanese farmers, devoted millions of taxpayer dollars to rounding them up and incarcerating them, and eventually paid billions more in reparations for having done so.

More to the point, the reality is this: It's extremely, extremely unlikely that you will witness real terrorists in action, whether merely "warming up" or actually carrying out a plot. Suspecting someone merely because they are a different color or are acting in a way you think is unusual is almost certainly a leap of logic based in prejudice and false stereotypes.

Outsource Those Fries!

You can't (yet) outsource the person who actually hands the order to the customer, but you can outsource at least some fast-food jobs. The latest application of technology:

Pull off U.S. Interstate Highway 55 near Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and into the drive-through lane of a McDonald's next to the highway and you'll get fast, friendly service, even though the person taking your order is not in the restaurant - or even in Missouri.

The order taker is in a call center in Colorado Springs, more than 900 miles away, connected to the customer and to the workers preparing the food by high-speed data lines.

At least the call center is is Colorado, not Hyderabad.

Tip of the hat to The Left Coaster for the link.

Linda Ronstadt and Fahrenheit 9/11 - My Gesture

So Linda Ronstadt got in trouble with the casino who hired her for dedicating a song to Michael Moore. I think that's pretty lame, frankly. I also think it's lame that nothing was done about the audience members who reportedly

tore down concert posters and tossed cocktails into the air.

Michael Moore has weighed in on the issue here - offering a personal appearance and a free screening of Fahrenheit 9/11 as a way for the Aladdin casino to make it up to the American public. Think what you want of Moore, but he is an excellent publicist.

I'm kind of annoyed by the whole thing and decided to make a gesture. I went over to iTunes and bought a copy of the song 'Desperado' that was at the core of the whole mess. I know it's a somewhat meaningless gesture, but it was fun picking which version of the song to buy - there's at least a dozen of them aside from the Eagles' original version and Ronstadt's cover of it.

A Tale of Two Cultures

Two op-eds this weekend decry the decline of reading in America today: Harold Bloom and Andrew Solomon. Kevin Drum takes Bloom to task for writing off the Internet completely. Solomon, to his credit, concedes that the Internet can have some good writing, but also assigns it to the same category as TV watching - non-interactive, alienating.

I actually agree with Bloom and Solomon that Americans should read more. What I take issue with is the sweeping generalization that the Internet is part of the problem. For example, this Solomon quote:

The Nazis were right in believing that one of the most powerful weapons in a war of ideas is books. And for better or worse, the United States is now in such a war. Without books, we cannot succeed in our current struggle against absolutism and terrorism. The retreat from civic to virtual life is a retreat from engaged democracy, from the principles that we say we want to share with the rest of the world. You are what you read. If you read nothing, then your mind withers, and your ideals lose their vitality and sway.

If Solomon thinks that the 'virtual life' is not capable of producing an engaged democracy, then he has not only never checked out any blogs but also slept through the entire Democratic primary season. Interaction and communication are the lifeblood of the Internet. It's worth noting that long before the Web came along, most of the major functions of the Internet were interactive - email, mailing lists, and Usenet - not to mention IRC, MUDs and MOOs as well.

Of course, by posting this here instead of writing a letter to the editor, I'm well aware that I'm preaching to the choir.

Totally gratuitous side note: Andrew Solomon attended the same high school as I did, although he was a few years ahead of me. The Horace Mann School gave us a heck of an education. I grew to love Shakespeare by having to read several of the plays aloud in various English classes. The first time we did it, in 8th grade, I thought it was a little weird. But by 10th grade it was one of my favorite things to do in class.

The Ridge Who Cried Wolf

Digby has a nice long post today about what happens when innocent people, like the guy whose crossword puzzle scribblings got him onto the Homeland Security watch list, get swept into the DHS's web.

His conclusion?

The stories begin to accumulate, each one a random intrusion by dumb, underqualified government authorities who seem to have watched too much television and have very little common sense.

Dumb? Not quite. What I think we're seeing is a bunch of people who do not know how to handle the situation they have been thrust into. This is not to say they're stupid. They're scared, and scared people rarely make smart choices. Just look at today's latest security alert:

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on Thursday warned Americans that al Qaeda may try to carry out "a large-scale attack" to disrupt upcoming elections, but offered no details and had no plans to raise the terror threat level.

Bottom line, this is about fear - or terror, if you will - and how humans respond to it. You'd think that by now we'd have learned that the predictable response is usually the wrong one, and that we need some new solutions.

How are people supposed to react when they hear ongoing unspecified warnings of terrorist threats? Absent any concrete information, those of a more fearful cast of mind are going to see a potential threat at every hand. A doodle on the edge of a crossword puzzle can be seen as a threat of lethal action. (There's a Greek tragedy in there somewhere but I'm not smart enough to write it.)

Those of a more conspiracy theorist cast of mind will say that the government's true intent is to keep American citizens cowed and fearful while they move forward to bring about their own nefarious goals. I believe that about as much as I believe the wingnuts who insist that anyone who seriously opposes the Clintons ends up dead - which is to say, not at all.

I have previously commented on the similarities of our current invasion of Iraq with Vietnam. But it also occurs to me that parallels to the "Red Scares" of the 20s and 50s are also apt for the times we live in today. Apparently we have to re-learn the lessons of history all over again.

In Other News

Yahoo News is reporting that the Archdiocese of Portland has filed for bankruptcy under the weight of payouts due to accusations of sexual abuse by priests. It's the first US archdiocese to do so.

I wonder how they will structure the refinancing? The Boston archdiocese avoided bankruptcy by selling off a bunch of church-owned property, and I assume that Portland has similar assets, albeit probably not as many. At last resort the Vatican can bail them out if the local banks can't or won't.

Happy Independence Day Part 2

I said I wasn't going to post unless something bad happened but insead I wanted to note something good happening: the laying of the cornerstone of the new Freedom Tower.

I hate the name but I'm really glad that rebuilding on the Ground Zero site has begun. It's a good way to show terrorists that in the long term they didn't win.

Happy Independence Day

No blogging for me unless something really bad happens. In the meantime, here's some thoughts for the day:

The Declaration of Independence

The United States Constitution

And in honor of the 800+ members of the US armed forces killed in Iraq. May they rest in peace, and may those still in Iraq come home soon, safely.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Is This What They Died For?

Per the AP via Yahoo News:

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's new government is considering offering amnesty to Iraqi insurgents who fought the U.S.-led occupation, perhaps even pardoning those who killed Americans.

A spokesman for Allawi said fighting with U.S. troops was "justified" as resistance to occupation.

"If he (a guerrilla) was in opposition against the Americans, that will be justified because it was an occupation force," spokesman Georges Sada said. "We will give them freedom."

1,000 Stun Guns

Well, it's easy to see what the military has decided to use as its next "honest it's really not torture" persuader of unwilling detainees.

Taser Wins $1.8 Million Stun Gun Contract

The company did not disclose Wednesday which branch of the military would be using the approximately 1,000 stun guns and accessories in the new order, said Taser spokesman Steve Tuttle.

We can guess though.

Another Good Idea

Crossposted from the All Spin Zone:

ASZ's "DOUBLE BURN" Campaign

What if "word of mouth" and repeat viewings of Fahrenheit 9/11 literally blew the doors off over July 4 weekend? Right at this moment, it's hard to say if distribution will expand this week, but given all the sellouts, it wouldn't be a surprise to see the movie hit a lot more screens.

Now, we realize that Spiderman 2 is coming out this weekend, and realistically, there is simply no way that F9/11 beats out S2 at the box office. We may be liberal pollyannas, but we're not dopes.

But what if F9/11 came in a barnburning second, and made the $22 million box office from this past weekend look like chump change?

ASZ is proud to announce the DOUBLE BURN campaign. All you have to do to participate is see Fahrenheit 9/11 this coming Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday (July 2, 3, 4 or 5).

I like it.

An Idea Worth Considering

Here's an idea worth considering: Replace the Pledge of Allegance with the Preamble of the Consitution.

The Preamble, which I like many others of my generation memorized thanks to Schoolhouse Rock, is not written as a stand-alone piece of langauge and doesn't have the same patriotic 'punch' that the Pleage does. But looking at it as an alternative to the debate over "under God" is a very good idea and I hope it changes the argument some.

No Wonder

SF Gate columnist Carol Lloyd does an interesting article on Burning Man from a city planning perspective.

One factoid that stuck out:

the nonprofit organization that sponsors the event has 20 full-time employees, a Department of Public Works, a DMV (Department of Mutant Vehicles), a tech department, a media department, an infirmary and an airport.

No wonder tickets have gotten so expensive.

Best Bit from the Day

The best quote from the Ronald Reagan funeral - perhaps from the entire week - belonged to Ron Reagan Jr today:

Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference.

Thanks Kevin Drum and the Washington Post for the pointers to a transcript.

What Blogging Should Be

At the risk of overload on the torture issue, one more post on it.

Tonight I read Digby's take on it and was struck by how well he gets to the heart of the matter. There's been a lot of anger, outrage, and disgust (and deservedly so) about this issue. Digby has transcended these responses and his eloquence is moving.

Do read what he has to say.

Welcome to Texas - Christians Only

Party platforms are supposed to spell out the guidelines within which members of the party operate on a policy basis. That's nowhere near the same thing as actually getting laws on the books, of course, but it's a clear indicator of which way a party wants to go. So when I read the new party platform the Texas Republican Party has adopted, I was more than a little concerned.

Here's three of the scariest items:

A plank in a section titled "Promoting Individual Freedom and Personal Safety" proclaims the United States a "Christian nation."

"We therefore oppose any governmental action to restrict, prohibit or remove public display of the Decalogue or other religious symbols."

[The platform] refers to "the myth of the separation of church and state."

Considering that the Republican party currently controls the Texas legislature and the governor's mansion, one wonders exactly how far they will push the envelope trying to put these party planks into the law books.

Not too long ago, it was not uncommon to see signs that said "Whites Only" in the South. You'd think that after all this time they would know better than to hang a sign on the state of Texas that says 'Jews Not Welcome'. Apparently not.

Tip of the hat to Atrios for the link. Kevin Drumm also has a longer assessment of the platform.

Turn a Negative Positive

A whiff of anti-Semitism seems to be in the wind these days. Kevin Drumm has more on the smearing of George Soros.

On a more positive note, I decided to answer the haters another way. I went and stood with SF Voices For Israel and waved a big Israeli flag at demonstrators for several hours yesterday. I'm sunburned but it was worth it. It feels like too many people these days know what they're against, but not too many people know what they're for. It felt good to go stand for something - in this case, Israel.

Most unexpected note from the rally: At one point a contingent of Soviet Jewish émigrés started singing the Russian national anthem (which I only recognized because it was sung in The Hunt For Red October). I have no idea why they were singing it and it didn't seem to quite fit into the proceedings, but it was touching in its own way.

Most personally uncomfortable note: About 20 or so Freeper types showed up with American flags, Bush bumper stickers and "Vote Arnold" t-shirts, and mostly anti-communist signs. I felt a little weird standing next to them, knowing that on just about every other issue we completely disagree.

Fahrenheit 9/11 - coming soon!

The trailer for Fahrenheit 9/11 is out.

I am not a complete admirer of Michael Moore. In fact, I couldn't get through "Stupid White Men", it annoyed me too much. I prefer Bill Maher or Al Franken; they make anger funnier. But I'll go see this one when it comes out.

Too Good To Be True

Taking a break from politics, here's a neat news item: Prayer does not help you get pregnant after all.

It was a miracle that created headlines around the world. Doctors at one of the world's top medical schools claimed to have scientifically proved the power of prayer.

Many Americans took the Columbia University research - announced in October 2001 after the terror attacks on New York and Washington - as a sign from God. It seemed to prove that praying helped infertile women to conceive.

But The Observer can reveal a story of fraud and cover-up behind the research. One of the study's authors is a conman obsessed with the paranormal who has admitted to a multi-million-dollar scam.

Now, I am not even remotely a scientist, but there does seem to be something slightly hinky with the numbers in the study. If you look at Table II, the NIP group (not prayed for), had 28 preembryos implanted, of which 21 resulted in successful pregnancies. This is a success rate of 75%. The IP group (prayed for) had 62 preembryos implanted, of which 44 resulted in successful pregnancies. This is a success rate of 70% - a figure lower than the not prayed for group. So how did the authors come up with the original claim of a 100% improvement in implantation success? Or am I just a moron that can't read the numbers correctly?

The Journal of Reproductive Medicine is apparently a reputable organization. Why they decided to publish this in the first place is a mystery to me. My guess is they didn't know how to vet pseudo-science like the power of prayer and didn't want to seem politically incorrect by outright refusing to print the study. Less likely - perhaps some misguided believers on the staff were so thrilled to see a study 'proving' their beliefs that the standard review procedure was skipped.

Either way, it's another example of the pervasive influence of religion in America today and why it's a problem.

And This Happened in San Francisco

An art gallery owner is assaulted because someone decided they didn't like some of the art in her gallery - specifically, a painting showing US soldiers torturing naked men. The gallery is now closed.

What's surprising is this happened in San Francisco, not a city know for its quanitity of right wing activists.

The Grey Lady & Blogs

As Yogi Berra might say, "It's deja vu all over again." Remember the spate of articles published in the mid-late 1990s about people who used the then-new medium called the Internet? What did many of them focus on? Obsessive Internet use. So today, The New York Times writes about blogs. And what do they focus on? Obsessive bloggers.

Blogging is a pastime for many, even a livelihood for a few. For some, it becomes an obsession.

Can't the mainstream media come up with something else to write about? There are probably a couple of million blogs out here in the blogosphere. There's got to be something more newsworthy in all that wealth of punditry, rants, raves, personal details, pet and child photos, and general snarkiness. There's got to be at least a few good stories in there somewhere.

The cynic in me suggests that if mainstream media were to take a more realistic look at blogs and blogging, they would have to ask themelves some hard questions about whether they don't have some things to learn about reporting from the blogosphere. (Jeff Jarvis has touched on this subject over at Buzz Machine). So instead, they look at the freakshow aspects.

I certainly don't consider myself to be obsessed with my blog. There are days I post multiple times, there are days I don't post at all. If I don't post for a couple of days, I do start feeling like I ought to get something up here, but it's hardly a compulsion. And I suspect many - dare I say most? - casual bloggers feel the same way.

But of course, that's not newsworthy.

Smile of the Day

I didn't see a single cicada while in NY/CT this past several days, but this is funny as heck anyway (thanks for the link, Craig!). Here's a sample:

Do Cicadas make that loud buzzing sound to attract a mate? No, that is a common myth. Our research indicates that sound is actually a battle cry that roughly translates as Kill the Humans. When you hear that sound, take cover! It means the killing spree is about to begin.

Courtesy of Cicadaville. Now go read the rest and enjoy.

Bad News for B5 fans

And to end the day, a bit of bad news.

'Babylon 5' actor Richard Biggs dies.

It's sad when talent passes too soon.

New Definition of Sports Medicine

Seen in the New York Times today: A Sports Turnaround: the Team Doctors Now Pay the Team.

Apparently there's a new trend in player health care: "In an upside-down scenario spawned by an increasingly competitive health-care market, hospitals and medical practices — eager for any promotional advantage — have begun bidding to pay pro teams as much as $1.5 million annually for the right to treat their high-salaried players."

It's a lengthy article that tries to cover the practice from both sides. On the surface, the teams are probably correct when they say that their players' quality of care is not affected. That's not the real issue, though.

The article claims, and again I'm sure they're right, medical institutions gain paying customers and prestige by being known as 'The official medical group of [insert favorite NFL/NBA/MLB team here]'. "Sports industry experts say that teams for years have had official soft drinks, official beers and official pickup trucks, so why not official health-care providers?" says the article.

I think it demeans the practice of medicine to equate a doctor with a hot dog. But even more than whether or not it's dignified, I find the concept disturbing on an ethical level. We're talking about people in pain, potentially with career threatening injuries. Sponsorship deals should not be a part of the treatment equation.

Years ago, when I was still active in the theater, I had an accident and broke one of my toes. It was three weeks before opening night for a show I was in, and I needed to get my foot fixed, fast and right. I ended up seeing a doctor who, my mother informed me, treated not only members of the New York Mets but also the New York City Ballet. I was impressed, and rightfully so. When I told the doctor that I needed to dance onstage in three weeks, she knew how to help me; in fact, right before opening night I took my dance shoes to her office and she rewrapped my bandaged foot so it would fit inside the shoe.

What impressed me, though, was that those star athletes and dancers had chosen to go to this podiatrist. I would have felt differently if I'd known that the doctor had paid a big fee to the Mets and that the players were contractually obligated to go there. I suppose I can't blame people for thinking that "the players go there, so it must be good". After all, I did too. But that was then.

Something I Don't Understand about Catholics

As a Jew, I freely admit that some aspects of Christianity are alien to me. The recent public debate about whether or not pro-choice Catholics should be allowed to take Communion brings to light one of them.

Here's one example: Catholics who feel so at odds with their church's ideology - who don't they just go worship at some other church? What makes them stay committed to being a Catholic even if they vehemently disagree with what their church is doing? Is it an unwillingness to let go of their tribal identification? Fear of the unknown? Do they sincerely feel that Jesus won't love them if they go to the church across the street? Is it a love of the liturgy they grew up with? Or do they think that if they wait long enough, the church will change and become more in line with their own beliefs? It could be pure politics - nobody wants to be accused of flip-flopping on moral issues. Or something else entirely that I'm overlooking because I'm not Christian.

I've heard the phrase "cafeteria Catholics" and it's a term that could be applied to a lot of other religions, Jews included. I'm guilty of the practice myself. But I do think you have to draw the line somewhere. Not agreeing with every aspect of a religion is one thing. But if you disagree with enough key points, sooner or later I think you have to ask yourself what you're really doing there.

I'm also aware that the Catholic church is not monolithic on this subject. There are bishops who would excommunicate anyone who is pro-choice and there are those who would not. And perhaps that diversity of opinion is enough to give Catholics hope.

It would make for some big headlines if a few high-profile Catholics switched affiliation to other denominations. I doubt it would change what the Catholic church is doing though. If the morass that is the wholesale molestation of children by priests has not overly upset the Vatican, I doubt a few politicians changing affiliations would.

Side note - Andrew Sullivan has a good article on this issue. His focus is partially on Bob Novak and some snarkiness about an Opus Dei priest, but it's worth a read.

Jobs in 2004

Daily Kos has a good one about the job situation and how it will impact the coming election. The bottom line? There are fewer jobs in the United States today than there were in March 2001.

Of course this is not good news to someone who has just quit her job, but I'll worry about that some other time. The really good news is, if the Kerry campaign handles this information correctly it could be a huge help in pushing BushCo out of the White House.

I just hope they don't screw it up. Watching Kerry in the run-up to the convention has not been inspiring.

What Class is San Francisco?

Atrios has a good one over on his blog today.

I've frequently said there are three kinds of cities (or colleges or countries or sports teams or insert any similar entity here).

People who live in 1st class cities never feel the need to tell everyone how great their city is. It speaks for itself. Think New York, Paris.

People who live in 2nd class cities feel the need to proclaim their greatness, and to convince you that they really are 1st class cities.

People who live in 3rd class cities just accept their lot and get on with their lives.

Scott and I disagreed whether San Francisco is a first or second class city. I think it's borderline first class, he says definitely second class.

Speaking of first class cities, I'm going home to NYC next week. Unlike my Rome trip, 'net access should be easy there, so I expect no blog interruptions.

Off With His Head

Apparently Nick Berg was a Jew. Just like Daniel Pearl. Although his religion seems to have been less of an issue to the people who chopped off his head than his being an American. Still, the subtext is there and concerns me.

Another funny link

Here's one dedicated to all the schmucks who drive behemoth SUVs:

http://www.daveheinzel.com/suv/parking1.php.

And the job fair was a total waste of time.

Ann Coulter is still a raving loon

I'm still more or less staying out of the Iraqi prison mess but caught this quote of Ann Coulter's today & thought it worth citing: "this is yet another lesson in why women shouldn't be in the military."

It boggles the mind how of all the lessons that could possibly be drawn from this catastrophic mess, that is the one less Coulter draws? Crazy, I tell you.

Some reports out there include reports of rapes on Iraqi prisoners. Ann will have to figure out how that too is the fault of women in the military.

And speaking of the Arab World

Thomas Friedman gets it right again:

That overhaul needs to begin with President Bush firing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — today, not tomorrow or next month, today. What happened in Abu Ghraib prison was, at best, a fundamental breakdown in the chain of command under Mr. Rumsfeld's authority, or, at worst, part of a deliberate policy somewhere in the military-intelligence command of sexually humiliating prisoners to soften them up for interrogation, a policy that ran amok.

I know that tough interrogations are vital in a war against a merciless enemy, but outright torture, or this sexual-humiliation-for-entertainment, is abhorrent. I also know the sort of abuse that went on in Abu Ghraib prison goes on in prisons all over the Arab world every day, as it did under Saddam — without the Arab League or Al Jazeera ever saying a word about it. I know they are shameful hypocrites, but I want my country to behave better — not only because it is America, but also because the war on terrorism is a war of ideas, and to have any chance of winning we must maintain the credibility of our ideas.

Indeed. But will Bush do it? Odds are, no.

Another reason Saudi Arabia sucks

When key members of the House of Saud stir up anti-Semitic propaganda instead of taking a hard look at why they have a terror problem in their country, you know there's a problem.

To be specific: Crown Prince Abdullah and Prince Saud have both blamed "Zionists" as being the ones pulling the strings behind recent terror attacks in their kingdom.

I've asked it before and I'll ask it again: with 'friends' of America like these, who needs enemies?

12 slices of roast beef

Couldn't sleep, so I was browsing the news sites this morning. I came across this gem from Salt Lake City: No-Carb Eating Couple Booted From Buffet.

Roast beef was the issue. As Reuters put it, "when [customer] Amaama went up for his 12th slice, the manager asked Amaama to stop." Chaos ensued.

What rational person is going to think they're controlling their weight by eating that much food? 'Oh, but it's low carb!' you hear the cry. 'Cut out the carbs and you can eat anything you want and still lose weight!'.

I call bullshit.

If each slice of roast beef averaged a mere 2 ounces, that's just under a pound and a half of meat eaten. Let's look at the calories in that (you remember calories, right?). According to the handy guide at http://www.calorie-count.com/, 3 ounces of cooked beef, all fat removed, has 232 calories. So those 11 slices of roast beef contained approximately 1700 calories - more if my estimate of a 2-ounce slice is too small or if all the fat had not been trimmed off.

It passes my understanding how people can think this is a good way to lose weight. The FDA recommends consuming approximately 2000 calories a day, depending on a person's age and activity level. You can bet dollars to doughnuts (if you'll pardon the carb-laden expression) that this goober ate much more than just 11 slices of roast beef that day. Whether he was excercising regularly or had an active lifestyle wasn't mentioned in the article, so perhaps I'm doing the guy a disservice. Maybe he mountain bikes to work every day and rarely sits down on the job. But somehow, I suspect that's not the case.

You want to lose weight? It's simple but it's not easy. Burn more calories than you consume. How you do that is up to you. Excercise or don't, eat carbs or not - it doesn't matter, as long as your net calorie count is negative, you'll get lighter.

Maybe I should write my own diet manual. Call it "The Sanity Plan." I'd make millions, quit my job, and spend my days doing book tours and being pampered. With merchandising tie-ins (I see 'I want sanity' t-shirts, maybe kitchen products), perhaps a chain of Sanity fitness centers, I'd be set for life.

Unfortunately, most of America is not ready for sanity. And people (I do not exclude myself) are generally lazy. They really want the magic fix-it that's going to let them do as little as possible and still shed pounds. Sanity is too hard.

Ah well. Time to brew some coffee and get ready for work.

The price we pay

Since Vietnam, presidents have been concerned (and rightfully so) that their military antics would lose support once the public started to see the bodies of US soldiers arriving home in flag-draped caskets.

The Bush administration installed a simple solution: It ended the public boradcast of those images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings.

Well, thanks Matt Drudge, and screw the Bushies. This is the price we're paying for the Bush/Cheney fixation on Iraq:

PS - the person who originally took those photos has lost her job.

Quagmire

American troop deaths in Iraq this month now number more than 90, and there's still 11 days to go before the month ends. Yet in just 10 weeks, the US is supposed to hand over soverignity of Iraq over -- although to whom is far from clear.

This would all be funny if it weren't so terrible. It makes me feel like we're trapped, like a mouse caught on a glue trap, nothing to choose from except bad alternatives, and what's worse is that it all could have been prevented.

And now people like Paul Bremer, as well as most of the military in Iraq, seem to think that only more violence is going to break this bad cycle and fix things. Have they learned nothing from the history of the Middle East this past 100 years? Increasing the violence is only going to breed more violence.

This is the kind of crap that makes me feel bad to be an American.

Slippery Slope? We're flying down it.

So the Senate passed an "Unborn Victims of Violence Act" today. This heinous piece of legislation defines an "unborn child" as any child in utero, which it says "means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb." In other words, from the moment sperm meets egg.

This is some scary stuff for people who believe that a woman should have the right to control her own life and her own reproductive system. If it's a crime for a 3rd party to harm a fetus, it's a pretty small step to making it a crime for the mother herself to harm said fetus. And once that's the case, then is it that big a step to having the goverment control what a woman can and can't do, or eat, or drink? Whether she can get on an airplane, or even drive a car while pregnant?

Hell, let's just send all women who become pregnant off to special pregnancy camps, where they can stay for 40 weeks and incubate, only doing exactly what the government thinks is good for them during that time. Never mind the woman's rights. It's all about the fetus.

Think it could never happen in America?

Just wait. If Bush is re-elected, I'll lay good odds that Roe v Wade goes down during his 2nd term.

These people are our allies?

Caught this today: Jews not welcome in Saudi Arabia. It's a new visa policy the Saudi government has instituted.

Not that I would ever want to go there, but really. It's just wrong that they are our ally, but they can do this and we don't say squat.

Shot Across The Bow

So Bush is going to push for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. In other words, he wants to use a document created to guarantee the rights of a free people to take away rights from one class of citizens.

You know, 50 years ago, most people would probably have voted to uphold Jim Crow discrimination laws. That didn't make it right. Neither is this.

Another San Francisco First

It's nice that this should happen 2 days before Valentine's Day: the first gay marriage license was issued in San Francisco today.

To be completely honest, this is an issue I have struggled with. As much as intellectually I have no problem with the equal protection clause of the Constitution meaning that gay couples should be able to marry just like straight couples, in my heart, I am uncomfortable with the concept.

At any rate, I've been giving this issue a lot of thought. As I said, the concept of real, legal gay marriage has pushed my comfort zone quite a bit. I can't even pin down exactly why I feel that way, except to say that it's not something I am used to. I know that must sound pretty lame, and maybe it is. And as someone who's generally on the liberal side of the political spectrum, it's not at all 'correct' (how I hate that word) to say that gay marriage makes you uncomfortable. I've wondered whether I might be hurting some of my friends' feelings by saying how I feel here in this blog. But I think honesty is the better policy. I hope that my struggle to come to terms with the issue will be met with respect. And if reading this does make one of my friends feel bad -- please, let me know so we can talk about it.

My parents sent something of a mixed message when it came to homosexuality. It wasn't a subject often discussed, but if it were to come up, they didn't have much positive to say about homosexuality. On the other hand, they've employed an openly gay man for the better part of 20 years. The fact that this entire time he and his partner have been living together has never seemed to bother them at all - they've always treated him with total respect, asked how his partner was doing, and so on. Like I said, that sends a pretty mixed message.

Things were different when I was growing up. Even living in New York City, with an active passion for the theater & arts, I don't think it really registered on me what "gay" meant until I was in junior high. I had a couple of more or less openly gay teachers in high school and of course, gay colleagues during my career in the theater, but back then (the mid-late 1980s) the issue of the day was AIDS. People were much more concerned about staying alive than about whether or not they could get married. But still, my world was a heterosexual one and marriage was something that a man and a woman did.

Ultimately, what finally pushed me over into the pro-gay marriage camp was a piece Andrew Sullivan wrote called "Here Comes the Groom - The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage". It's a well-written piece that essentially says this: Marriage is an institution created to help stabilize society, and that people who enter into it take on both benefits and obligations. We should be encouraging people to marry because ultimately it's good for society; certainly better than the potential quagmire that 'domestic partnerships' open up.

Sullivan is himself gay, so it's not surprising that he should favor gay marriage. Still, his argument is sound and it was enough to help me come to terms with the question. I may feel a little queasy about it, but the first legal gay marriage in America has been performed. It will be very interesting to see what happens next.

Belated thoughts on BoobGate

Scott and I watched the entire Super Bowl halftime show this year. Not that we were particularly fond of any of the artists -- some of them I'd never heard of before -- but the rest of the party had migrated into other rooms and for whatever reason we stayed on the couch. So I saw Boobgate as it happened.

We weren't quite sure whether we'd even seen a naked breast, it was on screen so short an amount of time. It was not a topic of conversation when the rest of the party wandered back into the room. If someone had asked me about the show, I'd more likely have said how overall the show sucked, or something about Kid Rock's wearing the US flag as a poncho, than about Janet Jackson. So it really surprised me to see the avalanch of press the situation has gotten.

What really bugs me about the whole thing is, why aren't more people mad at Justin Timberlake? He was the instigator. He grabbed her boob and ripped off the clothing covering it. I'm not a lawyer but it seems possible to me that what he did approached the legal definition of sexual assault. So why are so many people mad at her?

I was listening to a local toalk radio show coming home from work last night and the guy on the air said that it's all because America is racist and that if Janety Jackson weren't black, things would have been different. I'm not sure I agree with that, mostly becasue I don't think of Janet Jackson as being black. She's so mainstream and so light-skinned that her color is not what immediately comes to mind for me. I think of Halle Berry in a similar light. They're entertainers first; their skin color is a very distant second.

At any rate, I don't think this is necessarily a racial issue. I'm not sure what the real reason is. It could be sexism, or the hypocritical morailty that so many Americans embrace, or just a slow news week.

Whatever the reason, it's a huge tempast made out of a very small teapot. Anyone who thinks that two flashing seconds of breast exposure on TV was indecent or immoral or would somehow harm their children is an idiot.

WalMart breeds a late New Year's resolution

Very interesting article in today's SFGate.com. In a nutshell, here's the issue:

Wal-Mart could save Bay Area grocery shoppers as a whole $382 million to $1.13 billion per year -- roughly 5 to 13 percent of their expected annual spending on groceries -- if the growth forecasts hold true, the report says.

On the flip side, the average Bay Area grocery-store employee can expect to lose $21,000 from his or her current annual wage-and-benefits package of $42,552 per year, the report warns.

From where I sit, this just seems like another example of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Granted, downward pressure on the wages in one segment of the employment market does not translate to downward pressure across the board, but it's indicative of a theme in corporate beliefs these days.

As I've said in these pages before, this ongoing downward pressure in wages and tendency towards outsourcing jobs is one that I consider hugely dangerous to America as a whole. We are sacrificing our future for short-term profits. Because when everyone is making less than $30K a year, who is going to buy all these goods and services?

It's also a good argument for taking your destiny into your own hands, via self-employment and/or starting your own business. If you can.

It's been a few years since my own business venture failed, and I still bear the scars. The biggest one being a loss of confidence that I really can do what I set out to do. That's been ameliorated somewhat over the last year or so by my discovery that I am pretty good at this retail stuff, but it's not entirely gone either. And my credit's still screwed.

I've always said that despite the scars, I'd want to do it again some day. And I still believe that. But I haven't given a lot of thought to how I'm going to make that happen. It's a little late for New Year's resolutions, but perhaps that should be mine for 2004 - to start thinking seriously about what I'm going to do about my career. With the economy and Bay Area job market so screwed, I've basically been in a reactive, not proactive mode. I don't know if the economy has changed all that much, but I'm getting tired of letting the current take me where it will. I need to start doing more of my own choosing, not what others choose for me.

Healthy Marriages?

The New York Times, and many other news sources, are reporting today on President Bush's latest proposal, to earmark 1.5 billion dollars to promote healthy marriages. With 7+ years of marriage under my belt, I'll be first to admit that healthy marriages take work, but I'm appalled that in such tight economic times this is considered a big priority by The Powers That Be.

"A growing body of statistical evidence suggests that children fare best, financially and emotionally, in married two-parent families," says the Times. And that's true. But what this country really needs is not more smarmy commercials promoting being a Dad, but a focus on creating the kinds of jobs that help families stay afloat financially and on improving education so that more Americans are capable of holding down those good jobs.

Most of the press coverage I've read focuses on how this plays to the president's base of conservative voters, and how this may be the first step towards federal regulation or legislation against gay marriage. I find myself wondering whether this is another way to get the much vaunted "faith based initiatives" back into play. After all, the Federal government really doesn't have much apparatus for family counseling or marriage training. A lot of churches do, though.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced this is another one of Karl Rove's political moves. It's not really about public policy or actually helping people. It's about having a proposal on the table that you can use to smear your political rivals as being "anti family" if they say anything to oppose it. And to top it off, this proposal appeals directly to the soccer Moms who are key swing votes.

I know this is the sort of thing to expect in an election year. I'm sure more is to follow. But boy, does it suck. This is the kind of blatant political posturing that made me think I'd sooner pick up doggie poo all day than run for political office.
I did want to run for office when I was younger. I thought I would be able to do something good for people. I'm glad I didn't. I don't think I would like being the kind of person who can successfully get elected in America these days.

The veil descends

Found a long, highly informative article in US News & World Report today about the level of secrecy in the Bush administration. Yet more reasons to be disgusted by what this administration has done to our country. It's quite long but worth a read.

As far as personal veils of secrecy go, I haven't heard back from Allstate yet about my car, so I'm still in limbo. I just hope it's all done with soon so I can get out of that dirty, smelly loaner car.

Moby Dick resurfaces

Scott pointed out something tonight that I totally missed in the last episode of ER. There's a nice echo of Moby Dick in the end to the saga of Dr Romano in that he was killed by the same creature that previously took his limb (in other words, a helicopter, albeit not a white one).

Very clever of the writers.

McDonald's is good for something after all

$200 million dollars to NPR, courtesy of the late Joan B. Kroc (the widow of McDonald's restaurant founder Ray Kroc).

Personally I think McDonald's sucks, but Mrs Kroc did a very cool thing with her money, so maybe I'll actually go buy some McNuggets for lunch tomorrow.

Or maybe not. Their food still sucks.

I Don't Like Donald Rumsfeld

While listening to ABC's "This Week" this morning on my way to work, I started to hear echoes of Robert McNamara in Donald Rumsfeld. Look at what he said today: "It's clearly a tragic day for America," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in Washington. "In a long, hard war, we're going to have tragic days. But they're necessary." (source). Maureen Dowd wrote a great column on this very subject a few days ago. Her best line, and one oh so apt for Rumsfeld's quote today: 'In the Panglossian Potomac, calamities happen for the best. One could almost hear the doubletalk echo of that American officer in Vietnam who said: "It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."'

In the early days of the war on Iraq, my husband and I discussed whether we weren't getting into another Vietnam. As time passes and the shadow war continues, I grow more sure that President Bush and his crew have not learned the lessons of history and have committing our troops to another multi-year battle against an enemy we cannot defeat in a land we do not understand.

I feel both sad and angry that who knows how many of our men and women will have to pay the ultimate price until this mess gets straightened out. I just hope our next president will be able get us out of there quickly and with some faint shreds of our honor intact.

Thomas Friedman is a really smart guy

Taken from his NY Times column today:

It's time for the Bush team to admit it made a grievous error in disbanding Iraq's Army — which didn't even fight us — and declare: "We thank all the nations who offered troops, but we think the Iraqi people can and must secure their own country. So we're inviting all former Iraqi Army soldiers (not Republican Guards) to report back to duty. For every two Iraqi battalions that return to duty (they can weed out their own bad apples), we will withdraw an American one. So Iraqis can liberate themselves. Our motto is Iraq for the Iraqis."

I think it's a very interesting idea. Of course, if we were to do it, depending on the sympathies of the soldiers who re-up, the door is open for a religious takeover of Iraq. That isn't what our soldiers died for. But better ideas are few and far between right now.

Things You Can Learn By Reading The News

According to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, "Jews rule the world by proxy" and that Jews "invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy" to avoid persecution and gain control of the most powerful countries.

Wow. If we're so powerful, why I am so broke?

Link of the Day

Iraq Coalition Casualty Count

Insecure Security

jetBlue Airlines, for reasons passing understanding, violated their own privacy policy and handed passenger information lists over to a government contractor.

Why they blithely handed millions of passengers' names, addresses and phone numbers over without a subpoena to a private company that could do anything with that data passes understanding.

I'm not feeling inclined to be flying jetBlue again.

Update: Check out this website for more on jetBlue and their invasions of personal privacy.

9/11/01

Two years ago today was the worst day of my life.

God bless you, Kath, wherever you are.

Good for business, bad for privacy?

An older article from The Register (a favorite news site) got called to my attention today. RFID, which hasn't gotten much attention to date, is poised to become a serious threat to personal privacy over the next few years. The potential for RFID to make the lives of retail businesspeople easier is vast - and as one of them, I can't say that that's a bad thing. I just got 60 cases of shoes - more than 1,500 pounds of product - delivered to my store in the past 2 days. Comparing the contents of each case to the printed manifest of what's supposed to be there is a pain in the butt. If I could just wave a scanner over all the boxes and get an exact inventory readout that I could upload to the computer, I'd be thrilled.

However, something is going to have to be done to allow consumers to remove or disable RFID chips once products have left the store, just like we can remove the sales tags and security devices today. The potential for abuse is just way too vast for there to be any wiggle room on this one. "Once you buy your RFID-tagged jeans at The Gap with RFID-tagged money, walk out of the store wearing RFID-tagged shoes, and get into your car with its RFID-tagged tires, you could be tracked anywhere you travel." says The Register, and it's not a pretty picture.