Happy New Year.
That is all.
(And a special Happy New Year to Shakes, who I really really wish was joining me tonight. I'll drink a Mai-Tai for you, snoogums.)
Attention, Shakers...
Question of the Day
Great photo caption from the Telegraph:
Competence can be such an elusive mistress. Competence, competence; wherefore art thou, competence?
The photo (with its sassy caption) accompanies a story headlined: Embattled Bush seeks new ideas to inspire the nation. His search must be going well, because this sounds really fucking inspiring:
"The White House has realised it had too ambitious an agenda and is re-tooling as we speak," the Republican congressman Fred Upton told The Los Angeles Times.God, that’s fantastic. My nipples are getting hard with the anticipation of hearing him stutter, mumble, and “heh-heh” his way through an entire State of the Union address filled with inspiring yet achievable goals.
"They are looking at what is achievable, versus the grand big picture."
I recommend starting small. Something like:
1. Don’t fall off bike for entire year.
2. Teach dogs to walk.
3. Learn name of artists on iPod.
Ya know—the little stuff.
So…what inspiring yet achievable goal do you think the preznit should include in his grand plan for 2006?
New Assholes
It’s the tearing season, friends. Sully gets a new one, care of Larisa. And Bill O’Reilly receives his from Steve Martin, and just in the nick of time, as his old one was almost worn out from falafel abuse.
Oh, Steve—this almost makes up for Cheaper by the Dozen 2. Almost.
Not that I saw it, but even the commercials nearly wiped my good memories of The Man With Two Brains and The Spanish Prisoner right out of my head.
Wicked Witches
If only I’d heard about it sooner, I would have put this book on my Festivus List:
Feminists eat puppiesPSoTD has more on this delightful tome. I noted in his comments: “I can't believe I'm not included in O'Beirne's book, what with all the world-worsening on which I've been diligently toiling away lo these many months.” Said PSoTD in return: “Just gonna have to work harder, I guess, Melissa.”
That might as well be the title of Kate O'Beirne’s new anti-feminist book. Instead the former vice president of the Heritage Foundation (so you know it’s going to be good) decided to go with a slightly more verbose title: Women Who Make the World Worse and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports.
Oh is that all? Damn, ladies; we need to step it up! So many institutions to destroy, so little time.
Indeed. That will be my New Year’s resolution—to make the world a worse place every day. It warms the cockles of my very heart to think how much devastation I can wreak with my radical feminism in a mere 365 days, if I really put my mind to it.
And speaking of women’s minds, my friend Joe and I were just having a look at the Ecosystem rankings…
Joe: Ever notice how all the conservative tee shirt models have large um brains? They shoot them in high contrast light to exaggerate it even. Look at me and my conservative boobs, damn it.
Shakes: At least some of the big conservative bloggers have boobs. And the rest are boobs. They’re very boob-friendly, unless it’s Janet Jackons’s boob, and then they’re very anti-boob.
Bonus commentary on the conservative blogosphere:
Joe: WTF with that LGF?
Shakes: They eat shit for breakfast, then spend the rest of their day regurgitating it into the ether.
Joe: Yes.
Delish
Reuters reports on the Kopi Luwak coffee beans, which cost $175 due their rarity—by virtue of having derived their flavor from the intestinal tract of a critter called the palm civet. Mmm, scrumptious.
I don’t drink coffee, but this wasn’t news to me. I learned all about the specialty poop beans on an episode of CSI. It’s amazing how much information one can absorb while drooling over Gary Dourdan.
Friday Blogwhoring
What's the word?
(Btw, sorry I didn't get it together for Friday Blogrollin', which will resume as usual next week.)
Best Headline Ever
Dodgy kebab pain turns out to be baby
Coincidentally, I’ve had the pain caused by a dodgy kebab (is there any other kind in Britain?), and I thought I was about to give birth to an elephant. But it was just the kebab.
A woman who went to hospital fearing she had eaten a dodgy kebab was stunned when she gave birth.My mom knew she was pregnant when she went into labor with me, but thought she’d eaten bad fish for dinner, which was causing the stomach pain she was experiencing. She didn’t understand why my dad was fine, and she was in agony. It was just me, making my debut—and I’ve been giving her pain in another part of her anatomy ever since.
Helen Smitham from Distington, Cumbria, had no idea she was pregnant when she felt stomach pain.
Her mum took her to hospital - and 60 seconds later shocked Helen gave birth to a 4lb 11oz boy.
[…]
Helen's boyfriend Mark Askew, 41, said: "She was at work until the Friday before Christmas and we'd gone out doing the normal things, like going for a drink, Christmas parties and socialising.
"When I got a call to say we had a baby boy it was amazing."
Whistleblowing in the Wind
Guest-blogging at BradBlog yesterday, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds made a passionate plea to America’s intelligence officials “to make yourselves available as witnesses and to serve the true supervisor of us all: the Constitution.”
High officials have perverse incentives to hide what is done in their orders by the employees below them. It is indispensable that Congress reach deep inside the National Security Agency and other agencies, seeking out employees at the operational level to determine how the President’s illegal order was carried into action. To assure that this occurs, we need for people with information from the agencies involved to come forward and ask to be interviewed by Congress. The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition calls on people with knowledge of unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens to contact NSWBC and let us know that they are willing to provide congress with information and testimony. Anonymity, if desired, will be scrupulously honored.Meanwhile, as someone who did the right thing, and got her ass handed to her for it, appeals to others to similarly do the right thing, irrespective of the personal consequences, in an attempt to unearth the truth, the Justice Department has opened an investigation—not into the administration’s pernicious activities, but into who leaked the information.
The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, said the inquiry will focus on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks…Fabulous. Nice to see the wheels of justice turning so smoothly as they crush the truth tellers in their path.
The Justice Department's investigation was being initiated after the agency received a request for the probe from the NSA.
It’s Cold in the Shadow of the Cold War
The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and administration sources.GST? Fair enough; I guess KGB was already taken.
The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved.
GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in the world.
…"Everything is done in the name of self-defense, so they can do anything because nothing is forbidden in the war powers act," said one official who was briefed on the CIA's original cover program and who is skeptical of its legal underpinnings. "It's an amazing legal justification that allows them to do anything," said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues.
The interesting thing about this administration is that the majority of its members are leftover remnants from the Cold War—VP Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and National Security Advisor Condi Rice all got their respective starts in fighting the Red Menace, hawkish apparatchiks of the military-industrial complex one and all. (Tellingly, Rice’s most relevant credential when chosen as National Security Adviser was having served as a Soviet expert in Washington during the collapse of the Soviet Union.) For a little fun, you can trace the Neocon trajectory from Cold Warriors to Bush administration hacks here, which starts with roles in the Nixon administration and moves forward through six subsequent administrations.
And yet, these people whose political careers were built around defending democracy against the horrors of dictatorial communism seem resolutely determined to turn the American democracy into something as ugly and corrupt as that against which they once fought. They’ve become what they hated—which, considering their Cold War methodology seems a just fate. Unfortunately, they’re taking the rest of us down with them.
More from The Heretik and Linkmeister.
Frankly Speaking
Good characterization of the anti-gay crusaders who can’t give up the ghost in Massachusetts:
Massachusetss could face an "angry, divisive" fight if a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage reaches the 2008 state ballot, Rep. Barney Frank says.That full marriage rights were extended to the LGBT community in Massachusetts, and the entire state didn’t immediately implode, is homobigot anti-marriage crusaders’ worst nightmare. God forbid there might be actual evidence (beyond common fucking sense) that legalizing gay marriage doesn’t immediately compel the Apocalypse.
The congressman blamed backers of the initiative petition for trying to provoke a new fight despite a lack of controversy over same-sex marriage.
"Basically, they're the disturbers of the civic peace," the Democrat said in a wide-ranging Associated Press interview Thursday. "We now have social peace in Massachusetts. They're the ones who want to stir it up ... This is a non-issue in Massachusetts."
Question of the Day
Re: yesterday’s Important Pronouncements on Others’ Behalf…what’s your important pronouncement on behalf of someone for whom you are totally not a spokesperson?
Yesterday, I announced Bush is resigning. Today I think I’ll announce that Dick Cheney will soon be traveling to Sweden for a top secret sex reassignment surgery, and will heretofore be known as Dolly. He’ll make such a pretty lady.
Spinspeak
Huh?
Faced with angry complaints, U.S. officials defended an anti-terrorism program yesterday that secretly tested radiation levels around the country -- including at more than 100 Muslim sites in the Washington area -- and insisted that no one was targeted because of his or her faith.So what, exactly, are the particular semantics of this defense? That Muslims weren’t targeted for their faith, but for their faith’s gravitational pull on terrorists?
One official knowledgeable about the program explained that Muslim sites were included because al Qaeda terrorists were considered likely to gravitate to Muslim neighborhoods or mosques while in the United States.
"If you were looking [for] the needle in a haystack, that's the haystack you would look at," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. "You'd look at the [likely] targets and the places the operators were."
Look, I get the point some make that random screening is pretty useless. That a former vice president was screened at an airport is patently absurd. But profiling isn’t the answer, either, and I don’t even need to mount a passionate defense of civil liberties to back up that statement; I can just give you two names: John Walker Lindh, a white American who fought with the Taliban, and wouldn’t have been pegged by racial profiling; and Muhammad Ali Hasan, a Muslim of Pakistani descent who is so enamored of the president and his policies that he started Muslims for Bush, and would have been pegged by either racial profiling or a program designed to monitor Muslims, even though he’s as big a Bush-fan as you’ll find (though he, not so coincidentally, I imagine, doesn’t support the Patriot Act).
Neither random searches nor highly targeted profiling work, ultimately for the same reason—because they are both as likely to exclude the people we want to know about and waste time and resources on people we don’t need to know about. That’s why smart and effective intelligence-gathering, and court ordered warrants secured on the basis of that information, are so critical.
Flour Power
Shaker Skywind passed on this story with the question, “So what do you think—should she sue?”
When college freshman Janet Lee packed her bags for a Christmas trip home two years ago, her luggage contained three condoms filled with flour — devices that she and some friends made as a joke.Lee has now filed a federal lawsuit against city police, seeking damages for pain and suffering, financial loss, and emotional distress.
Philadelphia International Airport screeners found the condoms, and their initial tests showed they contained drugs. The Bryn Mawr College student was arrested on drug trafficking charges and jailed. Three weeks later, she was released after a lab test backed her story, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Thursday…
Airport screeners found the condoms filled with white powder in Lee’s checked luggage shortly before she was to board a plane to Los Angeles to visit her family. She said she told city police they were filled with flour. She said she made them as a joke and would squeeze them to relieve stress.
Police told her a field test showed that the powder contained opium and cocaine, according to the Inquirer. A lab test later proved the substance was flour — and prosecutors dropped the charges, the newspaper reported.
Lee’s lawyers, former prosecutors David Oh and Jeremy Ibrahim, say that either the field test was faulty or someone fixed the results.
Having given it some thought, I think anyone who’s been held in jail for three weeks on half a million dollars bond and threatened with a 20-year prison sentence, because the police lab made a pretty serious error, has a reason to sue. But at the same time, I don’t buy the condoms-cum-stressball story for a second, nor do I believe that someone smart enough for Bryn Mawr (or the Piddly Diddly Vocational School of Basket Weaving, for that matter) is naïve enough to have overlooked the potential drama the items could have caused. I have this sneaking suspicion that Lee thought she could sneak them past airport security and be left with a good story to tell about how lousy airport security is.
Even taking her at her word, however, it was a pretty dumb maneuver. Sometimes there are consequences for dumb maneuvers. Hers were exacerbated by the faulty test. If it was a genuine error on the part of the police, maybe she ought to just chalk it up to a lesson learned about packing bizarre pseudo-contraband. If the test was manipulated, I lean toward suing. Of course, I don’t know that there’s any way to prove that, unless she sues.
What do you think?
Saved by a Soldier
I’ve spent all day at the unemployment office, finding out that there are no jobs in three counties that match my qualifications (which I already knew) and taking the most absurd standardized tests in the world, sitting next to a meth addict whose leg was bouncing around like it was on fire. A waste of a day, which would have been more productive had I spent it in my usual way—reading job listings, sending out resumes, and blogging, which at least engages my mind, as opposed to tests with questions like “If you purchase three widgets that each cost $1.99 including tax, what is your total?” Not only am I not exaggerating, I also got issued a calculator to figure out the answer.
The day may have been a total waste had a guy not sat down across from me and starting chatting me up. It turned out he’d just returned from a two-year tour in Iraq. He’d done street patrols; dangerous work. “Back in one piece,” I commented, and he nodded sagely. “I made it a priority to stay alive,” he said, with the kind of halting assurance that betrayed his understanding how little difference that actually makes. He kindly indulged my urge to pepper him with questions—in fact, I think he was quite pleased to be asked—and gave me some interesting insight into what it’s like over there and what’s happening.
I asked him when he thought we’d be out of Iraq, and he said he thinks there will be a reduced presence for at least a decade, and that we’ll never be completely out; he compared the situation to Korea. I asked when he thought troops would start coming home in significant numbers, and he said a few months. When I said, “In time for mid-term elections?” he said no, that had been the plan for a long time, not in any kind of defensive way, just very matter-of-factly. I asked him about the Iraqi troops’ training, and he said there were lots of well-trained troops; he’d worked with them. The biggest problem, he told me, was getting the Iraqis to do patrols on their own, because they wanted to protect the American soldiers by surrounding them. They were, he said, grateful.
We talked about lots of other stuff, too—he had seen the disgusting camel spiders, and other horrible bugs and lots of lizards...and horrific things he didn’t talk about. He told me about how most of the car- and suicide bombers were coming in from Iran and Syria, and explained how they got into Iraq. He told me about the weather, about the food, about the outsourced cooks who use too much pepper and serve too much rice, about MREs, about the pleasure of warm meals, about how much more he’d get paid to do the same job as a civilian. He told me about the elections, and the possibility of civil war, and I listened.
“We had a civil war,” he said. “Even after we got our government working. And how long did that take?”
“I think we’re still working on it,” I said, and he agreed.
I need to brush up on my Weezer
| Your 2005 Song Is |
 Beverly Hills by Weezer "My automobile is a piece of crap My fashion sense is a little whack And my friends are just as screwy as me" You breezed through 2005 in your own funky style! |
(hat tip The Green Knight)
Anti-Gay Psychoanalyst Charles Socarides Dies
Link.
I have to say, as a queer person who came of age in the early days of the Internet and well into the era of cable television and mass media, this guy caused me some problems in my teen years.
I'm someone who likes to make fully informed decisions, and even as a young teenager who recognized that I was a lesbian, I researched mightily to try to figure out whether I was suffering some affliction or was just different. North Alabama is not exactly a hotbed of gay-positive images today, so picture it fifteen-plus years ago. I'd see that 20/20 or Newsweek would be doing a piece on some gay issue, and this jackass would always pop up talking about curing gays (always men, which only made the issue more confusing for me).
Fortunately, even then I was able to understand that there is a difference between problems caused by a physical or mental disease and problems that may look disease-like that are caused by external pressures.
See, I didn't feel diseased. I just felt like me, with a lot of fear about my parents no longer loving me or the remainder of my high school years being filled with taunts or even violence. None of it happened, not a bit of it, despite the efforts of men like Charles Socarides to permanently marginalize people like me.
He leaves this world as an object of derision, his work viewed as a painful throwback. This time and place, for all of the trouble and uncertainty of it, is far better than the one that Socarides labored to build. God bless his soul, and may whatever was broken in Charles Socarides be fixed in the next world.
Lawn Jockeys
So... just foreign telephone intercepts, y'say? Just bombers of weddings and commuter trains?
Despite all the news accounts and punditry since the New York Times published its Dec. 16 bombshell about the National Security Agency’s domestic spying, the media coverage has made virtually no mention of the fact that the Bush administration used the NSA to spy on U.N. diplomats in New York before the invasion of Iraq.
That spying had nothing to do with protecting the United States from a terrorist attack. The entire purpose of the NSA surveillance was to help the White House gain leverage, by whatever means possible, for a resolution in the U.N. Security Council to green light an invasion. When that surveillance was exposed nearly three years ago, the mainstream U.S. media winked at Bush’s illegal use of the NSA for his Iraq invasion agenda.
Um... aheh... yeah, well then there's that, right?
“As part of its battle to win votes in favor of war against Iraq,” the Observer had reported on March 2, 2003, the U.S. government developed an “aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the e-mails of U.N. delegates.” The smoking gun was “a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency -- the U.S. body which intercepts communications around the world -- and circulated to both senior agents in his organization and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency.” The friendly agency was Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters.
Back in March? of 2003!??! Why are US media outlets sleeping on this story? How much grass has to grow under their feet before they're just lawn jockeys for the White House?
These sound an awful lot like impeachable offenses to me.
Cross-posted @ yelladog
hands in the cookie jar
Looks like the NSA has been caught with their hands in the cookie jar--the electronic sort. Now, most sites use cookies to remember info and it comes in handy, oftentimes. However, the NSA has these things called "rules" that they're supposed to follow when it comes to cookies on computers and privacy. Surprise, surprise--they didn't. Of course, it was "an accident". From the NYT:
The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most files of that type.
The files, known as cookies, disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week. Agency officials acknowledged yesterday that they had made a mistake.
Sure. Sure it was a mistake. Uh-huh.
Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology (a privacy advocacy group in Washington) put it well when he said:
"Considering the surveillance power the N.S.A. has, cookies are not exactly a major concern but it does show a general lack of understanding about privacy rules when they are not even following the government's very basic rules for Web privacy."
So just what caused this "ooopsie" that the NSA broke strict federal rules? Why, it was software!
Don Weber, an agency spokesman, said in a statement yesterday that the use of the so-called persistent cookies resulted from a recent software upgrade.
Normally, Mr. Weber said, the site uses temporary cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, which is legally permissible. But he said the software in use was shipped with the persistent cookies turned on.
Because the NSA doesn't employ software engineers that (a) build custom stuff; or (b) aren't smart enough to know to check the upgrade for such things? Really? Seriously?
But it gets more twisted in that:
In a 2003 memorandum, the Office of Management and Budget at the White House prohibited federal agencies from using persistent cookies - those that are not automatically deleted right away - unless there is a "compelling need."
A senior official must sign off on any such use, and an agency that uses them must disclose and detail their use in its privacy policy.
Interesting, eh?
By the way, until Tuesday, the NSA site had created two cookies that don't expire until 2035. Damn software upgrades, they cause all sorts of "mistakes".
Question of the Day
Recently, rewatching Sideways, I was thinking that few directors manage to capture what life really looks like as well as Alexander Payne (with help from his fantastic production designer Jane Ann Stewart, who worked with him on Election and About Schmidt, too). Granted, not all films are meant to look like real life, but of those that are, Payne's are near-perfection. It makes his characters that much easier to empathize with, though I'm not a great deal like any of them.
I started thinking what characters I am like, and which films feel the most familiar, which brings us to the QotD: What film feels most like your life?
I'd love to be able to say something cool, but I think the reality is that Bridget Jones is probably as close as it gets. I am, in truth, a goofy thirty-something with a penchant for disaster who can't quit smoking and bumbles from one catastrophe to the next, my inner monologue a most useful tool for making even the most dreadful things manageable. And I also happen to be madly in love with a cool-headed man who inexplicably loves me just as I am, even my wobbly bits.
I do, however, know where Germany is.
Meme of Fours
Gordon asked for volunteers to carry on the Meme of Four, so here goes…
Four jobs you've had in your life: Graphic designer, operations manager, restaurant concept development project manager, marketing director.
Four movies you could watch over and over: Giving me the opportunity to add four more to the list started by the seven times seven meme…Magnolia, Napoleon Dynamite, The Bourne Identity (and — Supremacy), and About a Boy.
Four places you've lived: Portage, IN, Lake Barrington, IL, Chicago, IL, Edinburgh, UK
Four TV shows you love to watch: Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, CSI, and Law and Order.
Four places you've been on vacation: London, The Highlands, NYC, DC
Four websites you visit daily: Raw Story, Memeorandum, BBC, Reuters
Four of your favorite foods: Sashimi, Chicken Pastilla, Chocolate, Billy Goat Cheeseburgers
Four places you'd rather be: The Queen’s Arms in Edinburgh with Mr. Shakes and his mates, Harry’s Velvet Room in Chicago drinking martinis with Miller, a second-hand bookshop in Notting Hill with my Londoner Andy, Trader Vic’s having brandy manhattans with Spudsy.
(Mannion came up with his own list of dosey questions.)
Important Pronouncements on Others’ Behalf
Sully Speaks
Continuing on today’s theme…In response to conservative Jeffrey Hart’s earlier mentioned editorial, Andrew Sullivan mounts a rousing defense of “the yahoo-ization” of the Right:
Of course the bastions of intellect and high culture in the U.S. are primarily located in the Blue States, and most of our intellectual mandarins tend to be Democrats and liberals. But this is hardly a change from the 1950s, before the South-Sunbelt shift took place, is it? Conservatism of any stripe has always been a minority view among the American intelligentsia…Well, who am I to argue with a great conservative thinker like Sully?
He also offers a stirring explanation of how “the business of governing” is associated with an “exhaustion and corruption of intellect.” Seems to me, most of the brain-dead dodos on whose behalf he’s offering up this dubious apologia were intellectually bankrupt from the get-go; in fact, I seem to remember Bush coasting to victory (twice-ish) on the premise that he wasn’t one of those yucky egghead-types—and he certainly hasn’t disappointed by proving otherwise.
Breaking News
We’ve declared war on Brazil.
And speaking crudely, why the hell is the Chicago Transit Authority turning down the offer of discounted oil from Venezuela, and opting instead to raise prices and eliminate transfers for cash-paying customers? Come on, CTA—get it together. (Hat tip to Cernig for passing that one along.)
Quote of the Day
"Yeah, but I don't think it should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you. And people have different points of view and they can be discussed at school, but it does not need to be in the curriculum.''
— Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), when asked by the Miami Herald whether he believes in Darwin's theory of evolution. (Via Political Wire.)
Good idea. A lot of people think “receive” is spelled “recieve,” too, and that “a lot” is a single word without a space. Just different points of view. We probably ought to take those off the spelling lists, lest we offend anyone’s delicate sensibilities by actually trying to educate them.
Inherit the Dumbassery: state law edition
Given the education-related posts here today, I figured I'd add this one in the mix.
The lights are dimming and the next production of Inherit the Dumbassery is set to run in the state of Utah. This time, Utah State Senator Chris Buttars has produced a bill that would enshrine this special version of dumbassery into state law.
So sayeth Chris
What I have wanted to do all along is stop opinionated teachers from teaching human evolution as fact. Scientists disagree on the origins of humankind. Young students should have a fighting chance to appreciate the difference between theory and law.
First: “Opinionated teachers”? Really, WTF?
Second: “Fighting chance”? Dramatic, much?
Third: Chris here needs to understand the fact that “theory” in science is not some hunch or wild guess. Let’s try this once more—with feeling!
In science, a theory is “an explanation that binds together various experimentally tested hypotheses to explain some fundamental aspect of nature”. For an idea to qualify as a scientific theory, it must be established on the basis of a wide variety of scientific evidence. Its claims must be testable and it must propose experiments that can be replicated by other scientists.
Anyway, onto what the bill says…
(1) In order to encourage students to critically analyze theories regarding the origins of life or the origins or present state of the human race, consider opposing viewpoints, and form their own opinions, the Legislature desires to avoid the perception that all scientists agree on any one theory, or that the state endorses one theory over another.[...]
(3) The curriculum requirements described in Subsection (2) shall require that instruction to students on any theory regarding the origins of life, or the origins or present state of the human race, shall stress that not all scientists agree on which theory is correct.
Jesus wept.
The students of Utah are being sucked into an intellectual black hole by idiots who don’t know their heads from their asses.
(cross-posted on expostulation)
Woe is We: More on Education
Someone at USAToday is really fretting over the gender divide on American campuses. They just ran an article in October on the topic, and now there’s another one today. But this time it’s not just about men versus women; it’s about the horror of middle class white men falling behind.
Jacqueline King is a researcher who carefully sifts data for the American Council on Education in search of trends that colleges and universities might find helpful. One recent discovery jumped out: Over the past eight years, the percentage of middle-class males on campus shifted dramatically downward. Even more surprising, the sharpest drop occurred among white males.Actually, it’s not surprising at all. America’s anti-intellectual streak referenced in my earlier post on gifted children being left behind (and also discussed at length here, here, and here) has decidedly conservative roots. Just today, at Tapped, Yglesias references a Wall Street Journal editorial by conservative (and professor of English emeritus at Dartmouth) Jeffrey Hart, who notes that with the GOP’s “center of gravity” having “shifted to the South and the Sunbelt…the consequences of that profound shift are evident, especially with respect to prudence, education, intellect and high culture.” (Yes, that’s a conservative making that point; not some latte-swilling, sushi-sucking, limousine liberal.) And perhaps more pointedly, anti-intellectualism has become inextricably linked with conservative fundamentalist Christianity. As the slightest bit of knowledge can undermine its teachings, many of it purveyors have realized it’s best to keep the flock ignorant. With white males comprising a significant part of the solid conservative base, it’s not remotely surprising that as anti-intellectualism takes further hold within the conservative ideology, its adherents would eschew higher education in greater numbers.
Add to that the fact that often men without a degree can make just as much or more money than women with a degree, and the sense of entitlement of which many white males refuse to let go, and there’s even less reason to be surprised. Surely one’s shock should also be minimized by even a passing glance at the failure that is No Child Left Behind, which can leave even determined students who value their educations struggling.
King and other researchers can't pinpoint precise explanations. But taking a hard look at why boys increasingly lack the verbal skills to succeed would be a good place to start.Yeah, well, go see the president and his super plan to leave no child behind while celebrating ignorance at every available opportunity.
And inevitably, no article on education would be complete by pointing out how this will affect women’s marriage options.
Some campus populations already are two-thirds female, affecting campus dynamics in ways that eventually will ripple throughout society. More women are getting opportunities once denied to them, but more men face a bleak future in a world that increasingly demands education for success. Educated white women, meanwhile, will have increasing difficulty finding suitable mates, a problem that black women complain about now, as do many women on those female-dominated campuses. Men and women alike will have to worry about their sons' futures.Men and women alike will have to worry?! Good lord. If only we could go back to the good old days when girls were kept dumb and easily married off, and dads didn’t have to give a damn.
I blame this all on the rejection of whalebone corsets.
Homeland Insecurity
House Dems have compiled a report charging the Department of Homeland Security with some significant security failures. This will undoubtedly be cast by the GOP as a partisan maneuver, but the list of gaps isn’t exactly nitpicky.
The Homeland Security Department officially opened its doors in March 2003. It was created in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to bolster protections of potential domestic targets.So the administration prioritized monitoring radiation levels at Muslim sites over screening for radiation entering the country, and engaged in vast, untargeted data mining operations in the hopes of catching something, while easily identifiable high-risk targets, like, say, a bunker at a chemical engineering firm from which 400 pounds of explosives and 2,500 detonators can be stolen with nothing but a blowtorch, go unprotected. Smashing.
Since then, according to the report, the department has failed to:
_Compile a single, comprehensive list prioritizing protections for the nation's most critical and potentially vulnerable buildings, transportation systems and other infrastructure.
_Install monitors at borders and every international seaport and airport to screen for radiation material entering the country.
_Install surveillance cameras at all high-risk chemical plants.
_Create one effective network to share quickly security-related intelligence and alerts with state, local and private industry officials.
_Track international visitors through a computerized system that takes their fingerprints and photographs as they enter and exit the country.
Gifted and Grifted
An op-ed in the WaPo highlights perhaps the most serious flaw with Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program: As schools are compelled to direct their time, attention, and funding almost exclusively toward increasing the proficiency of low-achieving students, the education of gifted children is sacrificed in the process.
The act's laudable goal was to bring every child up to "proficiency" in language arts and math, as measured by standardized tests, by 2014. But to reach this goal, the act imposes increasingly draconian penalties on schools that fail to make "adequate yearly progress" toward bringing low-scoring students up to proficiency. While administrators and teachers can lose their jobs for failing to improve the test scores of low-performing students, they face no penalties for failing to meet the needs of high-scoring students…An inevitable consequence of the program, this was, in fact, precisely what I predicted when I first heard about the idiotic NCLB plan—because it’s exactly what happened to me throughout my education. By the second grade, I was reading on a college level, but, in the absence of a gifted track, an ad hoc solution of independent study was proposed; I spent most of my day off in a corner by myself, with a box of ancient workbooks. I’d read a story in one workbook, answer questions about it in another, then use a third to grade myself. Over and over, working my way through the workbooks. When I got bored with that, I could do the same thing, except using audio tapes and answering questions from laminated cards.
Not surprisingly, with the entire curriculum geared to ensuring that every last child reaches grade-level proficiency, there is precious little attention paid to the many children who master the standards early in the year and are ready to move on to more challenging work. What are these children supposed to do while their teachers struggle to help the lowest-performing students?
Only during math, art, and music did I have the opportunity to interact with my classmates (who regarded me as a “stuck-up” alien). Once a week, I got to meet with a speech therapist to work on fixing my sibilant S, which I actually looked forward to; in hindsight, it was just a thrill to get some attention for a change.
High school, where there was an honors program, was slightly better—but there was no honors track for some required classes, like health or government or geography. I’d read the entire textbooks by the end of the first week, and spent the rest of the time in class with a novel tucked inside my notebook. And I remember pretending to be worried about a math or chemistry test, just because everyone else was, even though I never had to study. I liked school, but I spent much of it quite bored, and I imagine I wasn’t the only one.
Boredom, however, is the least of the problems that can occur as a result of inattention. It can also actually retard gifted students’ progress.
[S]tudents achieving "advanced" math scores early in elementary school all too frequently regress to merely "proficient" scores by the end. In recent years the percentage of California students scoring in the "advanced" math range has declined by as much as half between second and fifth grade.Even more disturbing: As many as 20% of high school dropouts are gifted. In some states, since the institution of NCLB, the rate of progress for high-achieving students in low-performing schools has begun to decline. Commenting on the op-ed at Washington Monthly, Paul Glastris notes:
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand why this is a frightening trend, presuming it's real and widespread. How is America going to compete with the rest of the world if our brightest kids--the ones we will be relying on to create new technologies and new industries in a knowledge-based economy--stop progressing?Already, the attack on science—from conflating non-scientific beliefs like Intelligent Design with science, to the reluctance to fund new technologies like stem cell research—is creating a very real threat of a national brain drain, as scientists are given increasing reason to look elsewhere for better institutional opportunities. Our immigration policies have made American study an impossibility for many of the world’s best and brightest, who now choose Britain, Canada, or Australia instead. And now many of our own brightest students are being, well, left behind. A nation full of slack-jawed morons will find that scientists aren’t the only intellectuals who seek out a new home—and as goes intelligence, so goes future industry, and so go jobs.
Sure there are morally compelling reasons to focus on low-performing students. But let's not kid ourselves--there's a moral price to be paid for ignoring the potentially high-achievers.
Imagine what a train wreck it would be if a C-student is elected president.
Oh. Right.
Brush Clearing and Bullshitting
The usual agenda for a Bush vacation:
In Crawford, Texas, where Bush is spending the holidays, his spokesman, Trent Duffy, defended what he called a "limited program."John at AMERICAblog notes that, if that’s true, his explanations about warrants becomes moot. Wiretapping people with “a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings, and churches” would be quickly approved by any court in the country, and adds:
"This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner," he told reporters. "These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings, and churches."
But there's a larger question. If Bush is now telling the truth about who these people are, then pray tell, what the hell was Bush doing letting hundreds if not thousands of people "who have a history of blowing up trains, wedding and churches" run around free inside the US for the past 4 years?Of course, the whole issue is that these people probably weren’t in the US. I mean, I’m pretty hip to the news. I remember trains being bombed in Madrid and London, and hotels, including one hosting a wedding, being bombed in Amman. (Churches? Don’t know where that came from.) But when is the last time you remember hearing about a commuter train, wedding, or church getting blown up in the US?
Crickets…
This goes back to the issue of monitoring American telecommunications switches, through which, at the behest of the government, American telecom companies have been rerouting increasing amounts of international traffic, thereby allowing the NSA to eavesdrop on calls which both originated from and connected to locations outside the US. Globalization of the telecom industry means that many international-to-international calls are routed through the US, in addition to large volumes of international internet traffic. Neither party has to be on US soil for their communications to end up there.
That these switches were the source of the data mine undermines the assumption that those monitored were all in the US—and the claim that it was a “limited” program.
Question of the Day
President Bush is spending part of his Christmas holiday reading about the post-presidential years of Theodore Roosevelt and the lives of U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.Heh. Boy, Reuters is getting snippy.
Bush is reading “When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House,” by Patricia O’Toole, and “Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground,” by Robert Kaplan while on vacation at his Texas ranch, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.
The book about Teddy Roosevelt is about the former president’s African safari and his attempt to re-enter politics after he left the White House in 1909.
“Imperial Grunts” is an account of the daily lives of U.S. elite forces as told by journalist Robert Kaplan, who toured with several of the units in various countries.
Asked whether there was any significance that Bush, who has three years left in office, was reading a book about the post-White House years of a former president, Duffy replied that Bush is a “history buff” and “avid reader.”
“The president knows full well that he’s got a lot of time left in this second term and he’s going to accomplish big things, as he’s talked about repeatedly,” Duffy said.
In addition to reading, Bush is also spending time on two of his favorite pursuits, clearing brush and biking.
The question is: What book should Bush be reading? A few come to mind, but I think I’ve got to go with this one.
Appropriately Blunt
Joe in DC at AMERICAblog:
Reuters lays out the stark choice:That about sums it up.
The domestic-spying order has set off a furious debate over whether the war on terrorism gives Bush a blank check when it comes to civil liberties and whether the president, in fact, broke the law.
In other words, are we a dictatorship or a country where there rule of law reigns? Let's have that debate.
Political Eavesdropping
The NSA was spying on diplomats, too:
President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitored private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show.If the spying was done with a warrant, it’s legal, though is a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. What’s more notable is that this information was released in March 2003, but the American press didn’t think it was worth covering.
Two former NSA officials familiar with the agency's campaign to spy on U.N. members say then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice authorized the plan at the request of President Bush, who wanted to know how delegates were going to vote. Rice did not immediately return a call for comment.
The former officials said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also participated in discussions about the plan, which involved "stepping up" efforts to eavesdrop on diplomats.
In an article for Counterpunch, media critic Norman Solomon noted that the U.S. media barely covered the U.N. spying.Superb.
"Nearly 96 hours after the Observer had reported it, I called Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale and asked why not," Solomon writes. "'We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting,' Smale replied. She added that 'we could get no confirmation or comment.' In other words, U.S. intelligence officials refused to confirm or discuss the memo -- so the Times did not see fit to report on it."
The Washington Post printed a 514-word article on a back page with the headline "Spying Report No Shock to U.N," while the Los Angeles Times emphasized from the outset that U.S. spy activities at the United Nations are "long-standing," Solomon wrote.
Solomon says his research turned up only one story which took the spying seriously -- a Mar. 4, 2003 piece in the Baltimore Sun.
Clenis!
As is their wont, Bush defenders have decided to discuss Clinton’s alleged misdeeds regarding warrantless eavesdropping instead of Bush’s. (Joe Conason’s latest column discusses the issue and explains the difference between then—1994, btw—and now.)
For a moment, let’s hypothesize that Clinton did exactly the same thing Bush did, but just didn’t get caught. (That’s not true, but let’s just say it, anyway.) Here’s the thing: I don’t fucking care. And it’s not because I love Clinton (because I don’t), or because he’s a liberal (which he isn’t), or any other reason in the same neighborhood as blind allegiance to the Clenis. It’s because he’s not the president anymore! And he hasn’t been for five bloody years! And I don’t give a tiny drip of dogwank what any former president did or didn’t do when it has nothing to do with what the current president is doing now. What Clinton did about wiretapping in 1994 has about as much to do with what Bush is doing about wiretapping now as pickled pigs’ feet have to do with supernovas. As it happens, I don’t care what Bush Sr. or Reagan did about wiretapping, either.
Give it a rest already. Yeesh.
The Sanctity of Mail Order Marriage
Amanda’s got an interesting post on how a new act—the International Marriage Broker Act—has been attached to the Violence Against Women Act in an attempt to help protect women who find themselves in a violent marriage after marrying an American man through a mail order bride service (and how it won’t help nearly as much as providing equal opportunities to women throughout the world would).
Mr. Shakes came to America on a fiancé visa, the same provision of the immigration code under which mail order brides emigrate. We decided to do our visa application on our own, although the traditional way is hiring an attorney who, for a sum starting around $1,500, will put together the entire package for you. It was a huge undertaking; the paperwork is voluminous and the forms can be confusing. I had to do a lot of online research, and in the process, unavoidably came across legions of mail-order bride sites, brokering relationships on the back of misogynist assumptions (of both the foreign brides-to-be and the American woman to whom they are meant to provide an “antidote”) and a significant status disparity between the two parties. It was disturbing stuff.
One of the requirements Mr. Shakes and I had to meet as part of the visa application was proving we had met in person at least once in the previous two years. No problem for us; we traveled back and forth as often as we could. But the requirement wasn’t designed for couples like us; it was designed for men who were importing mail-order brides, women they had never met face to face at all. The requirement, however, doesn’t do much for legitimizing these marriages. The marriage brokers advertised quite plainly on their sites that, after choosing a bride, men could make a quick trip, have a dated picture taken with her, and that was that. Some of them even included in their fees the option of having one’s pictures taken with multiple women—in case Choice #1 didn’t work out, Choice #2 could be seamlessly substituted.
Not all men treat mail order brides as chattel. I did see personal websites of couples who went through marriage brokers and seemed to have developed a genuine relationship. Usually older men who, by their own admission, were awkward or shy or unattractive, and who felt a mail order bride was their best hope. Younger women who, by their own admission, just wanted a better life, and felt like they hit the jackpot by meeting such a wonderful guy. Stories of their wedding, her job hunting, their children’s births. Pictures of happy families.
But those are by far the exception and not the rule. Those guys aren’t marriage brokers’ bread and butter. Their bread and butter are angry, bitter misogynists, hostile toward independent women, in search of a compliant, submissive wife-servant, all wrapped up in a beautiful, exotic package. That her friends and family will be thousands of miles away is just the cherry on top—all the easier to control you, my dear. Mail order marriage is a business, with enviable profits, and the brides are product. A mail order bride is as likely to meet a man she loves as a hooker is to be swept off her feet by Richard Gere.
In most cases, sadly, mail order marriages are little more than legal human trafficking, a state of affairs that most brokers barely bother to try to spin otherwise. Thousands of women enter the country this way every year, and yet when was the last time a Constitutional amendment was proposed to criminalize this farce of marriage?
I can't imagine that the sanctity of marriage advocates really believe these are healthy marriages. Instead, I suspect they just don't have much interest in preventing a practice that sublimates women more handily than anything their 30+-year push to legislate deference has managed to accomplish.
Blue Tribune
Chicago is, to put it mildly, a fairly quirky political town. It has a well-known history of corruption, which hasn't actually faded into history. Chicagoans assume City Hall is corrupt, no matter who (or whose son) is occupying it; they expect regularly scheduled stories about kickbacks and nepotism—and they don’t particularly care, as long as the trains are on time. Corruption is regarded as the price of running the Windy City well, and so there’s a high tolerance and forgiving attitude about the occasional scandal. (The governor’s mansion is a different matter with a different set of expectations altogether.)
Another bit of oddity is that even though Chicago is a resolutely blue town, the Chicago Tribune is a conservative paper. So it’s rather startling to see a column by conservative Steve Chapman (former writer for The American Spectator, The Weekly Standard, and National Review, among others, and Alito apologist) bashing the administration:
President Bush is a bundle of paradoxes. He thinks the scope of the federal government should be limited but the powers of the president should not. He wants judges to interpret the Constitution as the framers did, but doesn't think he should be constrained by their intentions.Ouch. And it just gets worse.
He attacked Al Gore for trusting government instead of the people, but he insists anyone who wants to defeat terrorism must put absolute faith in the man at the helm of government.
His conservative allies say Bush is acting to uphold the essential prerogatives of his office. Vice President Cheney says the administration's secret eavesdropping program is justified because "I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it."
But the theory boils down to a consistent and self-serving formula: What's good for George W. Bush is good for America, and anything that weakens his power weakens the nation. To call this an imperial presidency is unfair to emperors.
What we have now is not a robust executive but a reckless one. At times like this, it's apparent that Cheney and Bush want more power not because they need it to protect the nation, but because they want more power. Another paradox: In their conduct of the war on terror, they expect our trust, but they can't be bothered to earn it.When the Trib gets this itchy, you know Bush is in trouble.
Jesus: Savior, Quantum Tunneler, All-Around Pretty Impressive Guy
Christmas Quote of the Day, courtesy of Chemist's girlfriend's grandmother:
"See, I was raised Methodist, and I know quite a bit about all that Biblical stuff, and I know that the only way Jesus could have gone away those three days and then reappeared is if he somehow found a black hole. He finds the black hole, and (schooop!) he's gone, and then three days later it drops him (plop!) back down."
And a very close runner-up:
I don't know, but all I'm saying is, Sean Hannity is one of the most brilliant minds in America today.
I had to fake a coughing fit to cover the laughter after that one.
Statehouses Up For Grabs
A Wall Street Journal piece previews the challenges for Republicans in next year's gubernatorial races. "Republicans hold 28 seats overall, including 22 of the 36 up for election. In pivotal states such as Ohio, Florida, California and Colorado, they are girding for battles."It’s the math, is it? Well, okay…I guess I can see that.
"Republican gubernatorial struggles are only somewhat related to the party's other national problems: President Bush's weakened standing, policy setbacks, intraparty bickering and ethics scandals. At least eight Republican governors aren't seeking re-election because of term limits or other reasons." Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), chairman of the Republican governor's association, "predicts Democrats could win between three to six of those seats."
Said Romney: "The math is not in our favor this cycle."
1 terrible GOP administration
+ 1 out of control GOP Congress
= FU2
Customer Disservice
I just got off the phone with my girlfriend Miller, who is just one of my absolute favorite people on the planet, and just had her second run-in with obnoxious retailers in as many weeks. The first was when she made a call to a shop in Florida she came across online, which makes specialty wallets. She was looking to get a Pulp Fiction-style “Bad Ass Motherfucker” wallet for someone, and her order was rejected by the proprietor, who told her, “Ma’am, I just can’t produce an item with those kinds of cuss words on it.”
Miller, who has never had much interest in politics, and is by no means a radical lefty, went off on a tear about conservatives that scorched the phone in my hand, although I think she was really most offended by the fact that someone had the temerity to use the term “cuss words” in adult conversation.
Today, she told me about purchasing 8 wine glasses at Crate & Barrel, to which she had received a gift certificate from her employer. She brought the glasses to the counter to ask if they would hold them while she finished her shopping, so they wouldn’t get broken, and was told no by three rather snooty cashiers.
“No?”
“No, we’re not doing that today. We’re too busy.” (Said the three cashiers at one counter, none of whom were assisting any customers.)
“Fine, I’ll just buy these then.” No further sale.
She was then told, upon requesting a box, that they “aren’t boxing today.” Apparently, the management had given their staff the ability to refuse holding and boxing purchases because they expected to be quite busy, but failed to consider that at least some of their staff would not have the common sense to realize some items—such as $100 of fragile flutes—still necessitate boxing for transport.
After noticing that Miller was the only customer for miles (and being on the receiving end of a gobsmacked, “Are you serious?” from said customer), one of them finally offered to box the glasses for her.
“And the irony is, it’s Boxing Day,” I said.
Wah wah wah.
485 Children Still Missing 4 Months After Katrina
And FEMA’s at the center of the controversy. Again. Go read Scout Prime, who’s got the story.
I’d like to think this isn’t as bad as it sounds, but recent history does not bode well for such hopefulness.
Powell the Disappointer
Continuing his slide into disgrace and eventual irrelevance by chipping away at his own backbone out both sides of his mouth, Colin Powell has decided to come out as both sort of for and sort of against the administration’s secret spy program. Or, perhaps more accurately, clever enough to acknowledge it wasn’t lawful, but hackish enough to defend the administration, anyway.
"My own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants," Mr. Powell said. "And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it. The law provides for that."Mr. Shakes—bring me a neck brace, stat! I’ve suddenly got a nasty case of whiplash.
But Mr. Powell added that "for reasons that the president has discussed and the attorney general has spoken to, they chose not to do it that way."
"I see absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorizing these kinds of actions," he said.
Asked if such eavesdropping should continue, Mr. Powell said, "Yes, of course it should continue."
Powell also noted he had not been told of the program while he was serving as Bush’s Secretary of State, which is, of course, no surprise at all, considering that Powell was never part of that particular in-club. The only thing that I find surprising is his insistence on remaining even remotely loyal to the Bushies. I’ll never understand why an honorable man who dedicated his life to serving this country would compromise both his own personal integrity and the fate of the nation by becoming a useless hack for this particular collection of bandits.
I’ve Been Tagged…
…by Coturnix with the seven times seven meme. So here goes.
Seven Things To Do Before I Die
1. Live life well.
2. Make sure Mr. Shakes feels loved and appreciated every day.
3. Never pass up an opportunity to tell someone I love that I love them.
4. Read as much as I can.
5. Write as much as I can.
6. Become fluent in several more languages.
7. Run for president and win. (Of the Morrissey fan club*—what did you think I meant?)
Seven Things I Cannot Do
1. Vote for a conservative.
2. Give up caffiene.
3. Act—I’m a total plank.
4. Play Rachmaninov—my hands are too small.
5. See anything but blobs without my glasses (or contacts).
6. Juggle more than two items.
7. Play any sport extremely well.
Seven Things That Attract Me to...Blogging
1. The people involved in blogging—other bloggers, commenters.
2. Another excuse to write.
3. Reading lots of interesting stuff every day.
4. Catharsis.
5. Exchange of ideas.
6. Helps me improve my paltry programming skills.
7. Endless possibilities.
Seven Things I Say Most Often
1. Babel.
2. Wev. (My shortened form of “whatever.”)
3. Fuck.
4. Totally.
5. Get stuffed.
6. What? (Because I’m deaf in one ear.)
7. HAHAHAHAHAHA! (Approximation of my loud horse laugh.)
Seven Books That I Love
1. The Complete Works of Shakespeare
2. A Tale of Two Cities
3. The Secret History
4. A Prayer for Owen Meany
5. Beloved
6. Parts Unknown
7. Life of Pi
Seven Movies That I Watch Over and Over Again
1. Lord of the Rings trilogy (cheat)
2. All the Star Wars films (cheat)
3. Garden State
4. Harold and Maude
5. Love Actually
6. The Indiana Jones films (cheat)
7. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Seven People I Want To Join In Too
1-7. Anyone who wants to—and if you do, let me know in comments!
-----------------
* I'm not really in the Morrissey fan club.
NSA Program: Vast Data Mine; Much Larger Than White House Admitted
It’s like a big cable-knit sweater that someone keeps knitting…and knitting…and knitting. The basics of the newest revelation: The NSA traced and analyzed internet and telephone communications both coming in and going out of the US by “tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system’s main arteries,” making the volume of information surveilled without warrants much larger than the White House has acknowledged.
American telecom companies have the NSA backdoor access to “streams of domestic and international communications,” so that they might, in addition to eavesdropping, find patterns in communications that might highlight suspicious activity: “who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages.”
This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom.Remember the ricin bust that happened in north London in 2003? The location of that bust was blocks away from the home of a close friend of mine, someone to whom I speak on a daily basis by internet and at least weekly by phone. Did communications emanating from that area or placed to that area subsequently get higher scrutiny? Were our conversations listened to? I hope our discussions of faucets and habitual recitation of Woody Allen lines provided some amusement.
[…]
A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists.
"All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared with them, and since 9/11, there's been much more active involvement in that area," said the former manager, a telecommunications expert who did not want his name or that of his former company used because of concern about revealing trade secrets.
Such information often proves just as valuable to the government as eavesdropping on the calls themselves, the former manager said.
"If they get content, that's useful to them too, but the real plum is going to be the transaction data and the traffic analysis," he said. "Massive amounts of traffic analysis information - who is calling whom, who is in Osama Bin Laden's circle of family and friends - is used to identify lines of communication that are then given closer scrutiny."
To be honest, more concerning to me than being listened to is the coercion and resulting complicity of telecom companies to aid the administration in its end-run around existing surveillance laws:
Coincidentally (ahem), one of the FISA court’s recent concerns has been their legal authority over calls outside the US that happen to pass through American-based telephonic switches.Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined.
The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches.
One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.
[…]Historically, the American intelligence community has had close relationships with many communications and computer firms and related technical industries. But the N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's operational capability, according to current and former government officials.
Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be significant. "If the government is gaining access to the switches like this, what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data," he said.
"There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."No wonder the Bush administration decided to render them impotent by virtue of exclusion from the process. Can’t have a court concerned with a little thing like the law get in one’s way.
(Crossposted at Ezra's place.)
"Hey Hey!!! I've been in Reno for six weeks. Did I miss anything?"*
Hi there, Shakers!
Long time, no post. But in a nutshell, here goes: the last two months have seen me A.) Quit my job, B.) Tell my former bosses to go fuck themselves, C.) Completely relocate to a new city, D.) Move in with my longtime friend in said new city, E.) Begin working with him on restoring/renovating our house, F.) Plan and design my only sister's first wedding, and G.) Attempt not to fall apart from the stress of all this.
So I've been a bit preoccupied.
But I did want to wish everyone here a happy and safe Holidays. I may be a bit biased (ahem), but this blog and it's readers are golden, baby. So this weekend, eat 'till you burst, drink 'till you pass out, enjoy any "party favors" you might prefer (heh, heh, heh...) and generally carry on and act like I do on a regular Tuesday night.
Oh, wait.
But seriously, everyone be safe; all commenters and contributors are expected to be back here next year (myself included) so don't go and do anything rash for the New Year's celebration. See a movie; King Kong is phenomenally entertaining (if a bit too long); Brokeback Mountain will move you and is hard to quit, and Memoirs of a Geisha is just sumptuous.
So until next year, folks, George Clooney's movie title says it all:
"Good night... and good luck."
*Extra credit to anyone who can spot the show that line came from, and extra holiday cheer to whomever can say not only the character who said it, but the episode it was taken from.
Happy Holidays
It’s getting a bit late in the day, and so before everyone disappears for the weekend and the holidays, I wanted to wish you all oodles of joy and best wishes. Whatever you are celebrating or not celebrating, I hope you enjoy yourself and stay safe and healthy.
(I’ll be around; in a theme continuing from Thanksgiving, we’re celebrating a week late this year.)
Much love,
Melissa
aka Shakes
Radiating Good Will
Not only does this seem very dubiously legal, but it doesn’t even seem like a particularly effective idea:
In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.Yes, but if a delivery man isn’t actually delivering anything, and just hangs about with no legitimate reason to be there, it’s called trespassing. If that’s the best defense they’ve got, it’s not much of one.
[…]
The nuclear surveillance program began in early 2002 and has been run by the FBI and the Department of Energy's Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST). Two individuals, who declined to be named because the program is highly classified, spoke to U.S. News because of their concerns about the legality of the program. At its peak, they say, the effort involved three vehicles in Washington, D.C., monitoring 120 sites per day, nearly all of them Muslim targets drawn up by the FBI. For some ten months, officials conducted daily monitoring, and they have resumed daily checks during periods of high threat. The program has also operated in at least five other cities when threat levels there have risen: Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York, and Seattle.
[…]
"The targets were almost all U.S. citizens," says the source. "A lot of us thought it was questionable, but people who complained nearly lost their jobs. We were told it was perfectly legal."
The question of search warrants is controversial, however. To ensure accurate readings, in up to 15 percent of the cases the monitoring needed to take place on private property, sources say, such as on mosque parking lots and private driveways. Government officials familiar with the program insist it is legal; warrants are unneeded for monitoring from public property, they say, as well as from publicly accessible driveways and parking lots. "If a delivery man can access it, so can we," says one.
Meanwhile, monitoring radiation levels does absolutely nothing to protect against the use of, say, C-4. And monitoring Muslims does absolutely nothing to protect against guys like this.
When, oh when, will it become patently obvious to the American electorate that these douchebags have no fucking clue about effectual national security or domestic civil liberties, and instead just randomly shoot buckshot everywhere and hope they hit something—and if an innocent bystander, or a dearly held right, is made a casualty in the process…oh, well. That’s the price of freedom.
Movie Recommendation
I watched a great movie last night: The Girl in the Café. It wasn’t a theatrical release; I think it may have just been an HBO movie. (I checked for the Netflixers among us, and yes, it’s available for rental.) The screenplay was written by Richard Curtis, who is probably one of the best television and screenwriters working today, contributing to Black Adder, Mr. Bean, and The Vicar of Dibley series, and writing the screenplays for Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, both Bridget Joneses, and Love Actually. He is a splendid writer of dialogue and has a keen eye for teasing out the most interesting bits of relationships of all sorts—romantic couplings, family ties, friendships.
Every time we talk about movies, his work comes up—usually Four Weddings and Love Actually, and so I wanted to mention The Girl in the Café. It’s got all the things fans of those films love about his work (and it also stars Bill Nighy, who played aging rocker Billy Mack in the latter), and has the additional draw of being a political film. Nighy plays a civil servant who works for Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, and as the story begins, they are preparing for the G8 Summit in Reykjavik. The lion’s share of the story takes place with the Summit as a backdrop, and I won’t spoil anything by giving away any more details than that.
I just adored it. And, honestly, I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in seeing a great, unabashedly liberal political film, too.
Dick
After a four-day overseas trip that took him to four countries in the Middle East, Vice President Dick Cheney really wanted to get his iPod charged for that long return flight to Washington.His plane? His plane?! Uh, no. Air Force Two is America’s plane. It belongs to the taxpayers whose money paid for it—not Dick Cheney. He might want and expect the American taxpayer to hand over to him every last thing their money has bought and paid for, and he might have had some serious success by way of Halliburton stock options, but he doesn’t own Air Force Two yet. It isn’t his bloody plane. And all of us, including him, would do well to remember that there’s a difference between America—and what it owns—and the administration. I hope this country will still be here long after the cretins currently at its helm are dead and gone.
Since it is his plane, the vice president's iPod took priority and was plugged into one of the only working power outlets on Air Force Two, frustrating reporters who were trying to file stories.
There’s an Easier Way…
I would like to officially call a moratorium on television commercials that use the “There’s an easier way…” premise. They drive me berserk.
I think the concept started in the marketing of cleaning products. And many years ago, they were tolerable. The stock harried housewife would be using some old-school cleaning product to scrub some surface, and then she’d be given the new product, only to declare it so much easier, then throw her old product in the garbage. Fair enough.
Now the concept is used to sell everything, and, in what I can only assume is an attempt to be “funny,” the marketing geniuses behind these adverts show someone doing something in a way no one does them. Instead of the stock harried housewife using an old-school cleaning product, it’s now the equivalent a woman lighting a cigarette with a blowtorch and setting her kids on fire. “There’s an easier way—ABC Lighters!” Or a man looks at his pictures of his son’s soccer games, but the album is, sadly, just full of CDs holding digital images, rather than any pictures. “There’s an easier way—Joe’s Pharmacy digital prints!”
No one was lighting cigarettes with a blowtorch or putting CDs in a photo album before ABC Lighters or Joe’s Pharmacy got the technology to print digital pictures. No one was finding themselves unable of detangling wet hair, or shaving, or brushing their teeth, or applying lipstick without smearing it all over their faces, or taking out the garbage, or drinking hot beverages without spilling them, or doing any one of a number of everyday things without the task resulting in some catastrophe before the miracle products to prevent such tragedies came along.
The actual commercial that finally broke this camel’s back was advertising a laser level. Better than this other stinking laser level that left its users with a crooked mantel. To demonstrate how crooked the shelf was, and thereby how crappy other laser levels are, the bowling ball the couple has put on their mantel rolls off the tilted shelf into their aquarium, which then shatters on the floor. No one puts a bowling ball on a mantel!!! And neither of them make a move to try to catch the ball; they just stand there and watch it happen. It’s so absurd that it drives me bonkers every time I see it.
Enough. Find a new hook. I am declaring “the easier way” dead.
Friday Blogrollin'
Stop by and say hello to…
(new home of Gary, who previously
authored American Regression)
Thoughts That Get Stuck in My Head
Marginal Notes
Healthy Policy
Daily Dissent
The Refugees
Meanwhile, Back at the (Exploding) Ranch...
Rumsfeld Says U.S. to Cut Iraq Troop Levels
FALLUJAH, Iraq - Just days after Iraq's elections, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Friday announced the first of what is likely to be a series of U.S. combat troop drawdowns in Iraq in 2006.
Rumsfeld, addressing U.S. troops at this former insurgent stronghold, said President Bush has authorized new cuts below the 138,000 level that has prevailed for most of this year.
Rumsfeld did not reveal the exact size of the cut, but the Pentagon said the reductions would be about 7,000 troops, about the size of two combat brigades. The Pentagon has not announced a timetable for troop reductions, but indications are that the force could be cut significantly by the end of 2006.
My, what interesting timing. Those in-the-crapper approval ratings are finally starting to make you bastards nervous, eh? Or is there another reason that you're suddenly getting your shit together?
That could include substantial reductions well before the November midterm congressional elections, in which Bush's war policies seem certain to be a major issue.
Ah.
Well, at least we can feel confident about this, right? After all, you guys are always insisting that everything's hunky-dory in Iraq, and now that the elections are done, it's a virtual paradise, right? Those purple fingers were the magic wands that made everything there all better, right? Right?
Iraquis March, Say Elections were Rigged
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Large demonstrations broke out across the country Friday to denounce parliamentary elections that protesters called rigged in favor of the main religious Shiite coalition.
In Baghdad, unknown assailants kidnapped a Sudanese diplomat and five other men as they left prayers at a mosque, a spokesman for Sudan's Foreign Ministry said. An Iraqi Foreign Ministry official said he had not heard of the abduction.
As many as 20,000 people demonstrated after noon prayers in southern Baghdad Friday, many carrying banners decrying last week's elections. Many Iraqis outside the religious Shiite coalition allege that the elections were unfair to smaller Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups.
"We refuse the cheating and forgery in the elections," one banner read.
Sheik Mahmoud al-Sumaidaei of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a major Sunni clerical group, told followers during Friday prayers at Baghdad's Umm al-Qura mosque that they were "living a conspiracy built on lies and forgery."
"You have to be ready during these hard times and combat forgeries and lies for the sake of Islam," he said.
The U.S. military said two soldiers were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Baghdad Friday. No other details were released. At least 2,163 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Well, Fuck.
(Like the circles that you find...in the cross-posts of your mind...)
Stock up on Dramamine
Because the frantic spinning on this baby is sure to make you sick as a dog. (Bolds mine)
Alito Argued to Overturn Roe in 1985 Memo
WASHINGTON - Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote in a June 1985 memo that the ruling that legalized abortion should be overturned, a position certain to spur tough questioning at January's confirmation hearings.
We can only hope. I'm crossing my fingers for very tough questioning, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe we'll luck out and he'll never make it that far.
In a recommendation to the solicitor general on filing a friend-of-court brief, Alito said the government "should make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade and would welcome the opportunity to brief the issue of whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled."
The June 3, 1985 document was one of 45 released by the National Archives on Friday. A total of 744 pages were made public.
The memo contained the same Alito statements as one dated May 30, 1985, which the National Archives released in November — but with a forward note from Reagan administration Solicitor General Charles Fried acknowledging the volatility of the issue and saying that it had to be kept quiet.
Well, gee, why would they want to be so sneaky?
In paperwork released earlier from Alito's time in the Justice Department's solicitor general's office, he recommended a legal strategy of dismantling abortion rights piece by piece. And as part of an application for a job as deputy assistant attorney general, Alito said the Constitution does not guarantee abortion rights.
Uh-huh.
In the memo, Alito focused on a woman making an informed choice and states rights.
"While abortion involves essentially the same medical choice as other surgery, it involves in addition a moral choice, because the woman contemplating a first trimester abortion is given absolute and unreviewable authority over the future of the fetus," Alito wrote. "Should not then the woman be given relevant and objective information bearing on this choice? Roe took from the state lawmakers the authority to make this choice and gave it to the pregnant woman. Does it not follow that the woman contemplating abortion have at her disposal at least some of the same sort of information that we would want lawmakers to consider?"
Consistent with his previous writings, Alito said these arguments would be preferable to a "frontal assault on Roe v. Wade."
"Informed" choices. Uh-huh. "Objective information." Yeah. So who gets to write this "objective information" and "inform" women?
You know what? Whoever this person is, I bet he has one of these on his bumper:
(Yes, "he." You don't actually think they'd let a woman near this, do you?)
I love these "less government" Republicans that have no problem with government control over the bodies and choices of women.
In his memo, Alito said the government, in its argument, might be able to nudge the court and "to provide greater recognition of the states' interest in protecting the unborn throughout pregnancy, or to dispel in part the mystical faith in the attending physician that supports Roe and the subsequent cases."
Say. No. More.
(Cross-Poster, wider than a mile... I'm crossing you in style someday...)
