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.
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."
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.
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.
| 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! |
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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?
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.)
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
[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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
