High Entertainment

This campaign -- for a political junkie like me -- has been a lot of fun.  I've been anticipating these few days before the Iowa caucuses for some time now and, so far, the candidates are delivering -- well, at least the Republicans are anyway.

I always thought Giuliani would have to survive some serious hits to win the nomination.  After all, he is on his third wife, who was his mistress while he was mayor of New York.  He is estranged from his children.  Video footage exists of him dressed in drag, kissing Donald Trump.  (I'm still waiting for Mike Huckabee to use that in one of his ads).  His close friend and former chief of police, Bernie Kerik is in all sorts of trouble with mob ties.  He has no real foreign policy experience.  Well, all of that has come out, plus Shag-gate where we find out that Giuliani hid the fact that he was using city money to protect his mistress with NYPD escorts.  He now claims that everything was "transparent."  Right... that's generally the way people handle their mistresses -- with transparency.  I'm sure wife #2 knew what was going on.

It appears that Giuliani's strategy to overcome his growing pile of scandals is to say "9/11" as often as possible -- even if it has no relevancy to what he's saying.  (Actually, that was his original campaign strategy, too.  It's just become a little more desperate lately.)  Like today, for instance, in response to John McCain questioning his national security experience, Giuliani responded, "Well, all of us have our different experiences that we rely on.  I would say that my experience goes back well before Sept. 11."

I'm not sure how 9/11 gives Rudy national security experience.  To whatever extent Rudy was involved in national security on 9/11, he did a really shitty job.

Then there's Mitt Romney.  Romney, as you are likely aware, is a former governor of Massachusetts.  Now, in order to be elected governor of Massachusetts as a Republican, one has to take some rather liberal positions -- and Romney did.  Now, just couple years later, Romney has positioned himself so far to the right, an average person could easily mistake him for a rabid dog during his speeches.  Mitt is against evolution, global warming, taxes, stem cells, jihadists, big government, and hippies.  Oh, and he really hates Mexicans -- er... immigrants.  Unfortunately for Mitt, he was for most of those things about two weeks ago -- and there's video evidence.  All of this has culminated a vociferous "anti-endorsement" editorial from the Concord Monitor where the paper calls him a "phony."  Not to be outdone, the Union-Leader blasted Romney for making a "string of demonstrably false claims."  Ouch.

It's getting interesting going into the final few days.  The Republican "first tier" has 5 members: Giuliani, Romney, Huckabee, Thompson (sort of), and McCain.  McCain's out of money, Huckabee doesn't know anything about Pakistan...  My prediction: a 5-way tie for last place.  As Bill Kristol said the other day, this thing has a chance to go to the convention.  Of course, Kristol also thinks that Dick Cheney will emerge as the candidate and then beat the Democrat in November.  I don't see why not... Cheney is beloved by all and is always honest with the American people.  (A side note: evidently, the New York Times was so impressed with Kristol's bold prediction that they have decided to hire him.  I predict that Benito Mussolini will emerge from the depths of hell and storm the GOP convention.  Can I have a job too?)

Yikes

Orwellian/Rovian Scary Misinformation Campaign of the Day:

The War is Over!

It just seems wrong of her now to be dating your clock radio.

- Alan Shore

Robertson and Giuliani

Pat Robertson, who, in 2001, said that we were attacked because "God Almighty is lifting his protection from us" due to abortions, and the lack of Christian religion in our government and schools has endorsed Rudy Giuliani for President.

Of course, Rudy is a long-standing pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, relatively secular politician who is twice divorced.

c/o Huffington Post

My only question is this: which one of these guys is the bigger hypocrite...?

Waterboarding

Waterboarding.

In the U.S. Senate, they have been debating whether or not it constitutes torture over the past few weeks. Well, it hasn't been much of a debate, actually. Our soon-to-be U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasky has refused to say whether or not he believes it to be torture. Of course, it clearly is. To any sane person, forcing somebody believe they are drowning is torture. Period.

Years ago, I was swimming in my Aunt and Uncle's pool. I was in the deep end and decided to swim across to the other side. So, I dove under and kicked off. When I got to the other side, I had been under water for a little longer than I normally do, so I headed up to get some air. But one of my cousins inadvertently got between me and the surface. He delayed me getting some oxygen by only a matter of seconds, but those two seconds are vividly implanted in my mind. I don't remember anything else from that day. I couldn't tell you what the occasion was or even who all was there, but I remember the sensation for a split second that I might not be able to get to the surface for air. It was not a sensation that I care to relive.

Of course, it shouldn't even be up for debate whether intentionally triggering the natural human drowning panic reflex is torture. The only reason that this is an issue is because George W. Bush needs waterboarding to not be torture so that he hasn't been breaking the law since 2003.

Bush's actions don't surprise me, as they shouldn't surprise anybody. He has shown his colors. What is surprising is the behavior of the Democrats in the Senate. 34 years ago, Richard Nixon appointed Elliot Richardson to Attorney General. The Democrats, suspecting foul play, insisted that Richardson appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate break-in as a condition of Senate confirmation. John Dean, Nixon's White House Counsel, discusses the parallel:

Nixon’s Attorney General had been removed (and was later prosecuted for lying to Congress) – a situation not unlike Alberto Gonzales’s leaving the job under such a cloud. Nixon was under deep suspicion of covering up the true facts relating to the bungled break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, not to mention widespread rumors that he had engaged in abuses of power and corrupt campaign practices. Today, Bush is under even deeper suspicion for activities far more serious than anything Nixon engaged in for there is evidence Bush has abused the laws of war, violated treaties, and ordered (or approved) the use of torture and political renditions, which are war crimes.

Since Judge Mukasey’s situation is not unlike that facing Elliot Richardson when he was appointed Attorney General during Watergate, why should not the Senate Judiciary Committee similarly make it a quid pro quo for his confirmation that he appoint a special prosecutor to investigate war crimes? Richardson was only confirmed when he agreed to appoint a special prosecutor, which, of course, he did. And when Nixon fired that prosecutor, Archibald Cox, it lead to his impeachment.

Before the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee completely cave-in to Bush, at minimum they should demand that Judge Mukasey appoint a special prosecutor to investigate if war crimes have been committed. If Mukasey refuses he should be rejected. This, indeed, should be a pre-condition to anyone filling the post of Attorney General under Bush.

If the Democrats in the Senate refuse to demand any such requirement, it will be act that should send chills down the spine of every thinking American.

Of course, the Democrats aren't demanding a special prosecutor. They aren't even demanding that he say whether or not he believes that waterboarding is torture. This pathetic display by the party thrust into power in 2006 by a public disgusted by the Bush presidency is indeed chilling. If Charles Schumer can't grow a backbone, how can we reasonably expect rank and file Democrats to find one?

I'll let Keith Olbermann take it from here:

How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.

- Al Gore, May 26, 2004

Nauseating Programmer Joke of the Day

re·cur·sion [ri-kûr'zhum]
n. See recursion.

c/o a dork from ubuntu

hehe

Red Sox fans sure took notice fast. After their team won the title for the second time in four seasons, they stood behind the visitors' dugout at Coors Field and chanted: "Don't sign A-Rod!"

Update:

I hope A-Rod signs with San Francisco. That way, as he approaches Barry Bonds's home run record, even his home team fans will boo him. Either that, or the Tampa Bay owner could sign him in a bout of insanity and A-Rod would be banished to a perpetual 90-loss team and 20 trips every year to Yankee Stadium.

A-Rod

Couple things...

First, A-Rod, as always, shows utmost class when his contracts are up. This time he even upped the ante by announcing that he was opting out of the largest contract in the history of mankind (and turning down the Yankees' offer to pay him even more) during game 4 of the World Series.

But, secondly, I want to know why George Steinbrenner didn't expect this? There's a reason that A-Rod creates mortal enemies of the fans of every team he leaves (or spurns, like Boston). Now he has earned the ire of the largest fan base in baseball. Good luck with that, A-Rod. Future trips to Yankee Stadium are not going to be very pleasant for you. Might want to sign in the National League.

On the bright side, though, this is great for the Rangers who have been paying a chunk of A-Rod's salary. Jon Daniels now has an extra $10 million to work with for the next three seasons. Here's hoping they don't screw it up.

(aw hell... they're going to screw it up... never mind)

Perhaps I should expand on the preceding post.

I just got back from a week-long trip with some friends to Colorado. I have been with my family to Colorado every summer since 1989 except for 2003 -- late July to early August. When my Dad told me he wasn't going to go this year, I decided that I, with my own "income" and all, would just go myself. The mountains are an excellent relaxing agent. I know that I am at my best in the "real world" in the immediate weeks after I get back. I highly recommend spending a week in Ouray, Colorado if you need to get away. It's not very expensive and it's the prettiest place I've seen in the continental US.

I had never been to Colorado during the fall before, and I was really surprised by how pretty the Aspen trees are. They are bright green during the summer, but they turn almost fluorescent yellow in October. From a distance, they almost make it look like the surrounding pine trees are on fire.

Fake looking Aspen Trees

Same area, Autostitched together

On our last day in Ouray, we drove down the Million Dollar Highway, (aka US 550), to Silverton. Silverton was also once a mining town, but now serves a gift shop at the top of the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, albeit a very pretty one with very old buildings. Buildings that once were saloons and brothels, now sell T-shirts and postcards. We rode the train down to Durango -- an unbelievably scenic ride, especially in fall foliage. I highly recommend putting down the $45 and making the trip. I took some movies from the train that I will post after I've had some time to edit.

They use coal-powered stream engines, built in the 1920s

A shot taken from the train

The Animas River, from the train

Our luxurious cabin was about 10'x10' and provided electricity, but no plumbing and no bedding.

Luxurious!

More to come later. I'm tired of uploading pictures.

The Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad

Perhaps the finest way to get yourself covered in soot.

Posted from my iPhone.

30-3

My baseball team, the Texas Rangers, is 18 games back in the standings. And that's after their comparatively strong play after the All Star break. In the first few months of the season, they were historically bad in several facets of their game. So, being an avid baseball fan, I am very happy that, for the first time this season (to my knowledge), the Rangers did something that was clearly the most important sporting news of a particular day: they did something that hasn't been done in 110 years.

That, and they caused ESPN's Tim Kurkjian to make this phone call:

The Internets are Too Slow!

I've been using computers now for about 15 years. My first computer was the powerful (ok...not really -- even back then) Macintosh LC II. The LC II featured a mighty 80MB hard drive, a 16MHz Motorola 68030 processor, and 4MB of RAM, expandable to 10.

Since then, almost every facet of computing has increased in speed/size etc... at an incredible exponential pace. I currently run a computer with two processors, each running at 2GHz, over 250 times the clock speed of my LC II -- and, due to other advances in processor technology, is effectively much more than 250 times faster. This weekend, I configured a server with 4GB of RAM, or 1,024 times as much as my LC II had. And, at my office, I have a network attached storage unit that has 1TB of storage space, or 13,107 times the capacity of my old 80MB drive.

The speed of Internets connections followed a similar path -- at least for awhile. I first started using the Internets in the mid 90s. My first connection was to an ISP called OnRamp over a 14.4kbps modem. 14.4kbps begot 28.8 which begot 56k. Soon after, I got my first broadband connection through Marcus Cable, later Charter. While that was a nightmarish experience due to Marcus/Charter's total lack of competence, it was certainly fast when it worked.

I soon fired Charter and switched over to August.net DSL around 1997-98. I was getting 1mbps and it was really nice. And then came Sprint ION. Sprint's ill-fated ION service was a DSL/IP telephony combination that was in beta testing. We ran our phones over the DSL line and the data was totally uncapped. In 1999, I was getting over 7mbps (nearly 500 times faster than a 14.4kbps modem) and I was getting it for free thanks to the money-hemorrhaging folks at Sprint.

But, then, suddenly, the advancement in speed stopped. I have never, in the 7 years since Sprint cancelled the ION program, had an Internets connection as fast as I had in 1999. I'm close -- my Time Warner cable service gets me over 6mbps. About 40 feet to my north, the fine citizens of Plano, TX have access to Verizon's FiOS service which offers a 15mbps package at a reasonable price. So, there has been a little progress, but nothing like similar progress in computer hardware technology.

Business Internets service is even more backwards than the residential realm. My business has the incredible misfortune of being just out of the reach of the cable network, so our options are DSL -- and crappy DSL at that -- or a T1. T1s are absolutely ancient technology. They costed about $1,500/month in 1997, and they cost about $700/month now. Running at about 20% as fast as my old Sprint ION service, T1s are very reliable and very, very, very slow. More than one Internets salesman has tried to convince me to buy a T1 for my office, arguing that their superior reliability somehow justifies their brobdingnagian cost, but I would sooner set my hair on fire than pay for a T1. So, we settled for SDSL, at 1.5mbps -- shared by the entire company. This is, in fact the only time I can think of when I have ever yearned for the superior technology of something 8 years in the past.

So, there you have it. The Internets have stalled. I accepted that fact, and moved on -- until a few months ago when I received a phone call from one of my business partners. Said partner offices across the street (where cable service is available, much to my chagrin) and recently moved here from Sweden. He was calling to complain that his Internets connection was slow. I had him run a speed test and he was getting 2.6mbps which was about right for his 3mbps DSL service. So, I walked across the street figuring that he probably had a massive spyware infestation causing his computer to run slowly. But, instead of spyware, I discovered that, unlike just about every other person that I work with, this guy actually understood what 2.6mbps meant. He told me that, back in Sweden, he had a 100mbps connection and that 2.6mbps was painfully slow.

100mbps!!?? Surely he was talking about his internal network ethernet speed.. Nope, he insisted; 100mbps is fairly common over there -- and not expensive either. Suffice to say, I had a hard time believing him. If Europe had Internets connections 66 times faster than my office DSL, surely there would be some fuss about it. People would be picketing in front of Time Warner headquarters, demanding faster Internets. There would be riots! I mean, think of the fantastic competitive disadvantage America would have if Europe was light years ahead in Internets speed.

Well...it's true. In Japan, you can pay $10/month to get 100mbps. I pay $45/month for my 6mbps. Apparently, the telecom industry pocketed the money that it would have taken to improve our infrastructure and, decided to deliver crappy service instead. Imagine that. Europeans have enough bandwidth to view 4 uncompressed high definition video streams simultaneously while we are stuck with YouTube.

So, spread the word, all both of you who read my blog. People need to know about this. It's totally unacceptable.

Bourne

After watching The Borne Ultimatum the other day, my friend Brian and I noted the obvious sequel set-up at the end of the movie. We've been compiling a list of potential names for the fourth Jason Borne movie.

The Bourne Mundanity

The Bourne Monotony and its DVD release, The Bourne Redundancy

The Bourne FATALITY in which Jason Bourne adds moves from Mortal Kombat to his repertoire

The Bourne Ambiguity in which Jason Bourne struggles with his sexuality.

The Bourne Senility

The Bourne Infidelity

The Bourne Polygamy in which Jason Bourne overcomes infidelity

The Bourne Liquidity in which Jason Bourne converts his assets to cash

The Bourne Frivolity

The Bourne Endoplasmic Reticulum in which Jason Bourne studies cellular biology

The Bourne Again Identity in which Jason Bourne finds religion

The Bourne Infertility in which Jason Bourne becomes the face of erectile dysfunction

The Bourne Quietude in which Jason Bourne must conduct a series of frenetic car chases inaudibly

Fair and Balanced

President Bush Thursday:

Uh...first of all, I thought the Scooter Libby decision was a fair and balanced decision.

Did he just say "fair and balanced?"

Bush was responding to a question posing whether he was discouraged that a member of his administration had intentionally leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent. It's worth watching his response...take a look: (courtesy of Talking Points Memo)

So, clearly he has acknowledged that somebody in his administration did, in face, leak Valerie Plame's identity. Makes you wonder if he forgot about the time when he said this:

I don't know if anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action.

...or the time that White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said this:

The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in [the Plame leaking], they would no longer be in this administration.

When Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence, there was a large portion of the media that cheered the decision. They said that there was "no underlying crime" and that, because Libby wasn't the original leaker, he shouldn't have to go to prison. Both of those assertions are very dishonest. The people saying that stuff must believe that, because the general public doesn't really know what's going on, they can just sweep this under the rug and get back to pretty missing white girl stories that bring in their ratings.

Let's review the Plame scandal from the beginning:

1) In his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush said that Saddam Hussein had been trying to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger. That discovery, Bush said, was one of the main reasons that he wanted to invade Iraq. Problem was, it wasn't true. Further, Bush knew it wasn't true when he said it -- or at least the State Department knew, and had known for 6 months. The CIA had determined that the documents upon which the President's statement was based were "obvious forgeries."

2) The man who lead the CIA investigation to Niger to investigate the alleged yellowcake purchase was Joseph Wilson, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Upon hearing the State of the Union speech, Wilson wrote an Op-Ed piece that was published in the New York Times. Wilson, apparently, didn't approve of the President telling bald-face lies in his State of the Union address.

Robert Novak,
Douchebag of Liberty

3) Shortly thereafter, Douchebag of Liberty Robert Novak published an article that, among other things, revealed the fact that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson was a (now formerly) covert CIA agent. Turns out, someone in the Bush administration leaked her name to Novak and to a few other journalists.

So, in retribution for daring to point out a major flaw in the State of the Union speech, the Bush administration responded by ruining the career of Wilson's wife, revealing classified information to the public, and destroying all of the connections and contacts she had made while acting as an undercover agent. So, again...no underlying crime. I wonder what George H. W. Bush thinks about this whole mess...

I could go on ... and I will later, but you (all both of you) probably aren't still reading. To be continued.

Garland's "Finest"

Mark Teixeira vs. Michael Young

Teixiera:

"You never hear teams that win World Series with Scott Boras clients on their rosters complain," Teixeira said. "When I was drafted out of Georgia Tech, Scott Boras told Tom Hicks that I was going to be a big-time hitter for his team. I think that worked out pretty well.

"When it comes to me, I think the Rangers should be thanking Scott Boras every day. I was about five hours from not signing and going back to school."

Young: (subscription required)

Michael Young didn't get into the All-Star Game and still went into Jim Leyland's office to thank him for being selected and being there. "I'm sorry I didn't get you in," said Leyland. "Stop it," said Young. "I'm honored to have been here."

You can't win in professional sports without talent, and, unfortunately, the world's best athletes are not always the world's best human beings. I don't mean to pile on Mark Teixiera...there are certainly worse things in this world than a little arrogance. Still, though, Michael Young is a refreshing reminder that talent and class can, in fact, coexist in the same person.

a blog...

I am proud to announce my creation of an exciting new medium on the "internets," a series of tubes, called a web log, which I will call "blog" for short.

These "blogs" will revolutionize the way people interact, thrusting the world into a new age of hyper-modern communication. They will become an important force in American politics by allowing the people to hold their politicians and the traditional media to account in real time.

This blog marks the beginning of that revolution. And I'm going to get right on it as soon as I finish this game of Starcraft.



- President George W. Bush



- Senator Ted Stevens (R, AK)