More PC Suckiness

As in computers. The hard drive Scott gave me to put into my rebuilt computer rolled over and died tonight. So tomorrow I have to go buy a new hard drive and start the tedious process of reinstalling my whole system AGAIN. 2 more days down the drain.

I think I sucessfully saved my most recent data before the drive completely died, but I won’t know for sure until I reinstall. At worst, I lost 2 weeks of work and emails, plus a few odds and ends like the 4 new iTunes I bought last week.

I am so very not happy right now.

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.

Ron Reagan’s case against Bush

I finally read Ron Reagan’s piece in Esquire on why not to vote for Bush. It’s a nice piece of writing, very lyrical in its outrage – RR definitely has gifts in that regard. But one small quibble I wanted to call out. Reagan says towards the end

I write and speak as nothing more or less than an American citizen, one who is plenty angry about the direction our country is being dragged by the current administration.

If honesty is at the core of what Reagan does not like about Bush, then he needs to be honest about this too. The fact is, no matter how well-written his article, it’s being published in Esquire and not some obscure blog because Ron Reagan is the son of a two-term US President. He should acknowledge that point.

The Morning After

Reading around this morning, it seems the Kerry speech was well received just about everywhere (except for the Whiskey Bar and Matt Yglesias). It certainly was at the bar in downtown SF where I watched it with about 60 other SFers at a Kerry fundraiser.

Kerry’s opening line, “I’m John Kerry, reporting for duty” was a risk but I think it went over well. In fact, Kerry did about the best job he possibly could have done last night. Not that I needed convincing who to vote for, but I did walk away with a shift in my feelings about Kerry. Before the speech, I was voting for Kerry because I had to. Now I actually want to vote for the man.

O, and per Kos, may Saxby Chambliss rot in hell for what he did to Max Cleland. He gave a great introduction speech and I hope we see more of Cleland in a Kerry administration.