Rusted Sky

At work, I'm now doing virus and spyware remediation. Luckily it's something that can be done pretty effectivly through remote access - and a lot of the stuff I've got to yank I can't remove if I'm actively signed onto the system. So I sneak in the back, so to speak, pull out the DLLs that our various antivirus and antispyware scans have located, and go on to the next system. Unless the DLL is locked open - in which case I set permissions on it so that the system and users can't access it, and then wait a day or two until the system's rebooted. Then I can remove it, since it wasn't loaded at startup.

So if I don't blog as much during the day (or the evening) it's because I've got something else going on. (Yeah, like cleaning off 150-200 machines a day.)

But hey, it beats working for a living!

J.

to the President's speech the other day, and oddly enough it didn't have anything I didn't already know.

There's not much of a point in going over it item by item. I'll freely admit that I think the calls of the Democrats for Bush to establish a timetable for a pullout of our forces in Iraq is the rankest opportunism. It'd be like telling a bunch of crack dealers that the police which have been infesting their neighborhood and ruining business for the last few months will be shifted over to another portion of the city on such and such a date. They lay low, because they know that it's business as usual once the cops leave.

And now the Democrats want us to have a pullout date.

I won't go into what happened in Viet Nam after the US pulled out. For a while, as long as there was sufficent support from the US the South Vietnamese held their own and even advanced a bit - then the Democrats cut the logistics cord.

South Viet Nam fell to the Communist North.

At a rough guess, based on the two million people who managed to escape and their reports, about a million, million and a half people were killed when the North took over.

Admittedly, I'm stretching a comparision here - there's no massive political movement looking to take over Iraq and Afghanistan - but there's the Islamic jihadist movement that'd love to impose their version of proper Islamic behaviour on those countries again, and you've got something of a nutcase running Iran who'd just love to try a takeover if we pulled out. (And who's fueling the 'insurgents' in Iraq with money and supplies.)

Either way you look at it, you're looking at tens of thousands - maybe hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis dead if we pull out. The terrorists, having won a victory, would attempt to consolidate and increase their attacks. Cutting off the fledgling Iraqi army from the moral and logistic support of the US (ande you know that'd be the next step, once the Dems managed a pullout) would leave it tottering. And there's too many bad actors in that neighborhood who would love to see that government fall.

I'm not a geopolitcal expert by any means, but anyone who's read much on the Arabic cultures comes quickly to understand the advantages of negotiating from a position of strength. We've 'won' over there - projected our force, freed Afghanistan, freed Iraq from slavery to Saddam. We've demonstrated we're strong, and we'll kick ass if forced.

But now the Democrats are screaming we should retreat. How do you think that'd play with the new government over there? THEY certainly aren't ignorant of history, as leading Democrats seem to be. THEY know without the .assistance of the US military they're well and truely screwed, and they see the Dems trying to turn this into a replay of Viet Nam - with a 'Peace With Honor' scenario - and the promise of future violence when funding's cut. Oh, it might be two or more election cycles, but the Dems HATE with a blind fury what Bush has managed to accomplish. And I don't think there's a Democratic leader that wouldn't gladly jettison the people of Iraq if it meant a gain of ten to twenty points in the polls.

So ask yourself - what's in the better interest here? Bug out of Iraq for short-term political gain and watch it all descend into a godawful mess that'll need to be cleaned up in a generation or two - and at a cost in lives that'll make the 2k expended to date (a number seen as insupportable by the Democrats) seem like a drop of blood in the dust? Or stay the course, get Iraq strong and on it's feet, and have them as an ally (along with Afghanistan) in that area, putting pressure on the other bad actors there?

BTW, take a look at this blog.

The Will to Exist ? Blog Archive ? Pulling out early and other lunacy

I watched Bush speaking on television last night. It was my first day off since arriving in theater one month ago.
Please, America, listen to the man.

The moment anyone puts a timetable on coalition forces leaving, we’ve lost the war. You can’t put a timetable on the good guys unless you can put one on the bad guys too. That’s ridiculous. You can’t put an exact timetable on training up the new Iraqi military and police forces. It would be irresponsible.

No one wants American troops to keep dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know, because I’m one of those troops and I would prefer not to die here. On the other hand, and this is what you won’t hear from most mainstream media, if I do die over here, I’ll do so with few regrets. I wouldn’t be dying for a lie, as so many minstrels of misery and mischief keep spouting.

It’s sad that so many Iraqis and others are dying over here. However, when you discover you have cancer the treatment is always the same - attack it at the source. You don’t wait for it to spread. And when is the last time you heard a doctor putting a limited timetable on cancer therapy? I can picture it in my mind. “Mr. Smith, we have seen some progress with your tumor. It’s shrinking. But we need to move on now. The timetable for treating you has passed. Good luck.”

That’s what some people are trying to tell Iraq just as hope is looming on the horizon. And that disgusts me.

Except, of course, how to lose gracefully, and how to ignore the screams of folks being slaughtered who needed your promised support, only to have it pulled away at the worst possible time. It would completely ruin our image in the ME - it'd show we don't have the stomach for a fight, and show we're untrustworthy as an ally of any sort.

It took us 40 years to face down Communism. And now we're facing the same sort of threat with Islamic fundamentalism - only we can nip it essentially in the bud. It's not easy, and it's not painless - and it must be done and there's no one else who can do it.

We either pay a little now, bleed a little now - or cut and run and abandon the gains we've made and then pay a lot and bleed a lot later. Think of 9/11, only with a nuke. We pull out - and it's a question of when, not if.

But hey, if it'd hurt Bush, some consider that's a small price to pay.

J.

The little guy's in the Cub Scouts - and we recently went to a Boy Scout Expo where a vendor was selling old handbooks. I got the little guy a Wolf manual from the early 70s, and I picked up a Boy Scout handbook and a Scoutmaster's handbook from the mid-60's. Looking through these, I noticed that there was a fair bit more info than in the current version of the Wolf handbook. I swung by the local Scout shop and picked up a current Boy Scout handbook, and started comparing.

Then I got on EBay and found a Boy Scout handbook from the early 40's. Boy, was I shocked.

The 1940's handbook had roughly 40 pages on various types of trees. 45 pages on animals and birds, and that wasn't in the 'extended scoutcraft' sections. There are much larger sections on American history and various subjects of scoutcraft and camping than there are in the contemporary manuals.

Admittedly, the '40's handbook was designed during the tail end of the depression. A pocket encyclopedia for a boy would be a justifiable expense - while these days the resources are so much greater. But I felt like I was looking at a Powerpoint presentation when I looked at the current Handbook as opposed to the much greater range info in the '40s handbook. Graphically, the current handbook was easier to read. Larger type, better line spacing, very liberal usage of graphics and pictures. But it felt like a great deal was left out.

Perhaps they're trying to compete with all the other distractions in society today - I don't know. Certainly the current handbook doesn't present Scouting to be much of a challenge, or so I see it. The theme in the '40s handbook was that the Scout needed to work, needed to prepare himself and help others. The theme in the current handbook... well, there didn't seem to be much of one.

It kind of makes me wonder if that's the reality of it - that the current version of Scouting's kind of a hollow shell compared with what they tried for in the '40s. Well, I don't see there's much of an alternative. Admittedly the values that Scouts are supposed to live by are pretty archaic, but I like the concepts and think Aaron wouldn't be hurt by learning them. So - we'll see what we see.

But I do feel it's not what it used to be.

J.

There's a certain group (which doesn't seem very large, folks seem to be bending over backwards to accomodate them) who don't like Christmas. And want it completely out of the social consciousness.

Hey, it's their choice - but I've got a problem when they try to use the First Amendment as a justification. The !st basically says the state shall not establish a religion, and make it a mandatory thing. (Having seen how well it worked in England, the Founding Fathers didn't want a replay locally.)

This doesn't mean that if you're offended by it, you have to have the government remove any and all religious symbolism - because having the symbolism (IE Las Cruces NM having to change their city seal because it has crosses on it, and someone objected) is not the same thing as dragoooning people into churches and forcing them to sit through 8 hour sermons. Or, to put it simply - unless the government requires you to attend religious services or swear to a particular religion, your rights aren't being if you happen to catch sight of a nativity set on a courthouse lawn. Or see "In God We Trust" on coinage or paper money.

Basically what we're seeing is what I'm referring to as the Tyranny of the Minority. Someone yells and screams loudly enough that they're offended, it doesn't matter how trivial the matter is, we're supposed to fall over backwards and remove the source of the offense and not even THINK that they're being intolerant of OTHERS rights and opinions.

Because, you see - if you're offended that trumps everything else.

Well, Foamy thinks differently, and he's not shy about saying so. NSFW, unless you've got headphones.

NEUROTICALLY YOURS CARTOON: NO CHRISTMAS FOR YOU

Merry Christmas!

J.

New Orleans Mayor Beseeches Residents To Return to Their City

ATLANTA, Dec. 3 -- Standing in a borrowed auditorium 425 miles from home, the mayor of New Orleans implored displaced constituents Saturday to keep faith, put pressure on Washington policymakers and come home soon.

"I miss y'all," Mayor C. Ray Nagin told more than 2,200 people temporarily living in the Atlanta area. "I want y'all back in the city of New Orleans. Red beans and rice just ain't the same without you. I want you back."

But in a three-hour session marked by tears and outbursts, the response was not encouraging. "Come home?" many yelled back. "To what?"

Damn, doesn't it just sound like a wife-beater trying to get the woman who abandoned him back to cook his red beans and rice and do his laundry? He'll promise everyhting - but in the end, it'll be the same old thing again.

J.

I had heard about them, vaguely - so I was suprised to find a link to this on Metafilter.

The Authentic History Center: 9/11 in Comic Books page 1

Go. Read.

It's easy to be cynical, it's easy to laugh and sneer at the emotions presented. (Heaven knows there's enough of that on the Metafilter thread) But there does come a time when you have to stop and look, and think about what you see. Think about the world that Osama Bin Laden wanted for Islam. Think about the most utterly excessive and completely intolerant aspects of Islam being spread worldwide. Think about the attacks on Spain, and on England, think about the veiled threat that France received from their riots, think about the Islamic terror groups in Indonesia.

Think about a response to them that'll get them off the backs of civilized people everywhere.

Let me know what you come up with.

J.

Well, why doesn't he just yell, "we surrended! We surrender!" and break down sobbing?

WOAI: San Antonio News - Dean: US Won't Win in Iraq

(SAN ANTONIO) -- Saying the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean predicted today that the Democratic Party will come together on a proposal to withdraw National Guard and Reserve troops immediately, and all US forces within two years.

Dean made his comments in an interview on WOAI Radio in San Antonio.
"I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."

And Dean wants to throw it all away.

Good lord, didn't they learn ANYTHING from Viet Nam except how to lose? Does it even matter to them how it'd look after we committed to rebuilding and protecting Iraq until it could stand on it's own that HE wants to bug out and leave them to the wolves? What does that say about the integrity and persistance of the Democratic party?

Man, the Democrats are pulling out all stops - there's GOT to be a loss in Iraq at this point. If there isn't, they've painted themselves into a corner that they can't get out of by the next election. So, we've got to lose.

Forget what it'll do to hearten the insurgents and Iran and Syria - that's not important. Forget what happened to the people in South Viet Nam after we pulled out, and what would likely happen in Iraq. We HAVE to lose. Because if we DON'T, then the Democrats will lose face.

This really could be the death knell of the Democratic Party. I can't believe Dean is calling for this. I can't believe he'd be so stupid.

J.

DNS Root Name Servers Explained For Non-Experts - ISOC Member Briefing #19

Enjoy!

J.

Ticked off at Yahoo? Fuming at idiotically low bandwidth and teeny storage allotments??

$2.99 a month for a domain name, 5 GB (not a typo) space and 250 gb (again, not a typo) bandwidth.

I've used these folks for a while, and their hosting packages are constantly getting larger. My current package (the "Business" package) has 20 GB storage and 1 Terabyte a month bandwidth. I don't anticipate ever using that much - but it's hard to tell what might happen.

James and Linda, I know you've been having problems with Yahoo. Bellman, I know you'd likely want to get off Blogspot.

So, take a look. These guys are pretty hospitable when it comes to web sites.

J.

Comments closed due to spam

Senator "I've got Kennedy's Hand Up My Ass Like A Sock Puppet" Kerry can go piss up a rope.

365 and a Wakeup: New Set of Wheels

J.

When you're bidding on something on EBay, it pays to read the entire listing before you bid!

eBay: XBOX 360 PREMIUM Edition BOX DIY (item 8236595474 end time Nov-24-05 02:26:45 PST)

J.

NASA seeks help from private rocketeers - The New Space Race - MSNBC.com

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - With the space shuttles due to retire, NASA is looking for private companies interested in taking over the potentially lucrative business of flying cargo and crew to the international space station.

The U.S. space agency issued a long-awaited announcement Tuesday for firms interested in handling delivery services now provided by the three shuttles, which are due to stop flying by 2010.

“Certainly this is an opportunity for the new space companies,” said Jim Banke, head of Florida operations for The Space Foundation, an industry trade association. “They’ve been lobbying NASA hard for something like this for years.”

And get into production.

Well, it should be interesting. NASA sure waited until late in the game to ask for help from the private sector, though...

J.

One of the hallmarks of the so-called 'reality-based' community is that certain things aren't questioned. Wilson told the truth, Bush lied, ect and so on.

Shrinkwrapped takes a look at conspiracies and conspiracy theories, and has some interesting observations.

ShrinkWrapped: Conspiracy Theories: Fantasy, Delusion, or Reality

As I have suggested, from the Psychiatric point of view, the rogue CIA conspiracy has the motive, means, and capabilities on their side, and only requires a small cadre of committed, like-minded souls. The Bush lied conspiracy has a difficult time finding a motive that is not inherently contradictory, has a difficult time with the means and capabilities (if they could fake the intelligence, why wouldn't they have simply brought in some WMD to "discover" in the Iraqi dessert?), and is burdened by requiring such a high number of conspirators as to be functionally impossible.

J.

It'll probably be a while before we find out.

Man reportedly killed at Miami airport - U.S. Security - MSNBC.com

MIAMI - A passenger who claimed to have a bomb in a carry-on bag was shot to death on a jetway after an American Airlines plane arrived at Miami International Airport from Colombia, according to officials and broadcast reports.

Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Doyle said after the plane had parked at the gate, a passenger indicated there was a bomb in the bag. The passenger was confronted by air marshals but ran off the plane, Doyle said.

A team of air marshals pursued and ordered the passenger to get on the ground. The passenger complied, then was shot when apparently reaching into a bag, Doyle said.

J.

They're getting this 'election' thing down. At least, judging from this report....

Pajamas Media - Iraq the Model goes deep inside the Iraqi election

Kind of puts the lie to that old "We can't do it!" meme the Dems have been trying to spread, I think.

What a bunch of losers.

J.

About fissures within the Democratic party. I found this thread (via dbsoxblog) over on Daily Kos that kind of reinforces that - though you've got to get down into the comments, and I realize that Kos isn't exactly a central Democratic site and certainly those on it aren't all Democratic leaders... though I did find the comment by the Iowa Green Party Secretary interesting as it points out the anger of a number of Democrats who saw Kerry as the lesser of two evils... but barely.

According to this rather interesting thread,

The word came down from Washington Democratic HQ...stop Dean. Pure and simple, and the Democratic leadership here did their level best.

Kerry was the handpicked candidate of the national party. Kerry/Edwards was the marriage made by McAwful.

Face it...the national party wanted Dean as much as they wanted Bush. They were afraid of the Deaniacs. He was a rule-breaker, and that is something that you didn't do in the Democratic party of 2004.

Of course, it's all political opinion and commentary over on Kos. The original post was about how Kerry hogged the limelight doing a quick rebuttal to Bush's speech. It'll be, um, interesting to see how it all plays out in 2006 and 2008.

Here's the top of the post.

Daily Kos: Kerry bogarts the limelight

Enjoy...

J.

Um, yeah.

Welcome to Ugly Christmas Lights.com!

Happy Holi--- oh, never mind that.

Merry Christmas!

J.

And one that's worth considering.

Is Wal-Mart the Answer to France's Problems?: The Naked Economist - Yahoo! Finance

I recently found myself asking a fairly bizarre economic question: Would the disaffected youth torching cars in France be happier if they could get jobs at Wal-Mart? If you think I'm kidding, I'm not.

France and the United States have two distinct "flavors" of capitalism. The U.S. has the more "Wild West" version. Our economy is relatively unregulated compared to a place like France. We promise our citizens fewer benefits than the French. We offer our workers and firms less protection. Our government meddles less in how businesses operate and our overall tax burden is significantly lower.

The French have the more coddling flavor of capitalism. Citizens receive more benefits from the state, such as guaranteed health care. Workers have far more expansive benefits: Longer maternity leave and vacations, higher minimum pay, and the government has capped the workweek at 35 hours. Perhaps most significant, French workers have extraordinary job protection. Once hired, they're hard to get rid of.

The French have effectively banned McJobs by requiring employers to be more generous. The unfortunate result is not middle class comfort for all. Often, it's no jobs.

Companies That Can't Fire Don't Hire

The reason has to do with an economic concept called "marginal product of labor", which is a fancy way of saying that firms will not voluntarily pay you more than you're worth. If Wal-Mart believes that you add $5.15 an hour to the bottom line by stocking shelves, and you demand $8, the manager will politely point to the exit. If you don't have any skills that are worth more than $5.15 an hour to some other employer, you won't use that exit. You'll take what Wal-Mart is offering. McJobs tend to pay workers what they're worth, which, sad though it may be, is not always a living wage.

The French alternative -- admittedly oversimplified -- is to require that firms pay low-skilled workers more, whether their productivity justifies it or not. If an employee adds $5.15 an hour worth of value to a firm, the government might require the firm to pay him $10. As you can imagine, firms are not keen on paying someone $10 an hour for $5.15 worth of work, not even in France. The best business decision in that case is to hire no one at all.

French policies compound the problem by making it hard to get rid of workers once they're hired. The result, to stick with the retailing theme of the column, is like a department store that doesn't allow returns. True, no merchandise will come back. But consumers will be much more cautious about what they buy in the first place. Overall sales may well be lower.

The wierd thing about the two systems - once you get into a job in France, you've darn near got it for life. Very much like a union-supported job in an auto or aircraft plant - doesn't much matter how badly you perform, you'll have the job for life... juntil your plant closes because it's not competitive.) The unions approach the French system - yet industries which have tried implementing the French methods (like the steel industry - my father in law worked for a steel mill near Sharpsville, PA, and one year had a 3-month vacation with pay... and another two years later... and then the plant closed because it wasn't economical...) tend to have problems. The pay's great, for a few, until the business folds.

Wallmart doesn't pay well - yet it pays a lot of people. A LOT of people. And if you dont' like working at WallMart, you can either learn and move up in it (my brother said he's had opportunities, but turned them down) or take the skills you've learned and go elsewhere that pays more.

Funny thing is - nobody's locked into a minimum wage job. There's no government agency that comes along and slaps you on the head and forces you to keep a job that doesn't pay well if you want to boogie onto something a bit more fiscally rewarding. (Used to work in a bookstore for near minimum wage - enjoyed the people and the job but I finally looked at where I was and how much I was getting paid, and thought that this just didn't cut it. So I found a better paying job.)

If you've got the skills, and the drive, you can end up doing pretty well in the job market. If you've got the drive and aptitude, you can learn the skills. If you've got the drive, but no aptitude, you can find something you're good at. If you've got no drive - you end up at WallMart cleaning toilets.

The unemployed in France don't need handouts, they need jobs. But it'll take a major revision of the French capitalist philosophy (as well as their labor laws) to get them those jobs. As it is, in France there's apparently no bottom rung to the ladder of success. And you can't climb that ladder without getting on it.

J.

The Dems have given way too much face time to the more, um, radical in their party. Unfortunately, whether it's really appreciated or not, what the visible folks in the party say is going to be taken by the vast majority of the electorate as the Democratic party line - especially if the media takes it and runs with it. And, because the pronouncements by Kerry and Dean were newsworthy in a way that the successes in Iraq aren't - they grabbed it and ran like a shoplifter out of a diamond store.

Now the spin is that neither Dean or Kerry meant what they actually said, and their remarks have been taken out of context. (Hi, Rawb!) Unfortunately, the framework of their remarks is readily available on the web - their complete remarks are up for everyone to see.

This is a real problem when you depend on being able to, if necessary, say you didn't say something you actually said, and this problem's rapidly approaching FUBAR status. The method chosen for dealing with this tactical (um, maybe strategic in its implications) mistake, the typical "My remarks are being taken out of context! I didn't say that!" has a severe drawback in this case - the record shows that, indeed, they DID say the things they're saying in the context as presented. They can't say they didn't, and retain credibility.

The biggest problem with the Democratic party (and to a much lesser extent the Republican party) is that they're not really appreciative of the power of the communications network that's sprung up since they lost power. Dean made some movement in that regard, with his grass-roots organization, but has apparently forgotten that there's too many people all too willing to report on his EVERY word - and the cooperative editing that the news broadcasts are all too willing to provide as a smokescreen can be quickly shown to be less than complete or accurate by a simple check of on-line transcripts or recordings.

Having a very accessable record of your statements is a good thing, when you want your statements on record to be accessable... but not so good if you have to back and fill and try to parse what you said in its' entirety into something completely different.

Because once you say it, you can't take it back.

DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2005?

The DRUDGE REPORT has learned from a top GOP operative that the Republican National Committee will provide state parties with a web video prior to release tomorrow afternoon that shows a white flag waving over images of Democrat leaders making anti-war remarks.

The ad is in response to the controversial comments Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean and 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry made earlier in the week.

A Democratic strategist who had the web ad described to her said, “This is way over the top but we have no one to blame but Dean, Kerry and others who continue to pander to the anti-war activists within our party.”

The web video advances the Republican contention that the Democrats only have a “retreat and defeat” message on the war in Iraq.

The video highlights the effect Democrats can have on the morale of U.S. soldiers.

One Republican strategist familiar with the ad said, “The Democrats, especially Howard Dean have a way of trying to turn the tables and say ‘that’s not what I meant’ – its just those ‘evil Republicans’ This video will make them crazy – it reinforces what they really believe with what they actually said – and that is devastating for the Democratic Party.”

Developing...

And they can't get away with saying they didn't say something... when the record is crystal clear that they did.

This is a serious, serious mistake.

J.

At least, in Iraq? This analysis makes me think there's a good possibility that the Battle For Iraq may be very close to finishing - if not completed. But this will be a MAJOR victory in the War on Terror. Wrechard's comments are key.

The Belmont Club: Baghdad county

Victory when it came, was both greater and less; more partial and more complete than expected. It did not take the European form of parades down the Champs Elysee, followed by a return to old and establish ways of governance. What the destruction of the Ba'athist regime did was reanimate long suppressed local and ethnic interests and channel them into competition through the ballot box -- with the occasional recourse to violence. Tremendous forces have been unleashed which critics of the war will point to as signs of an incipient civil war, but which supporters of OIF will describe as a newly liberated society feeling its way forward.

Whether OIF has wrenched events in the Middle East from their old tracks and put them on a better route remains to be seen. What is less debateable is that OIF has subtly changed America. The Armed Forces have acquired capabilities they never had before. Bill Roggio in Patrolling Haqlaniyah describes three-tour veterans who can talk politics with Iraqis. For many individual Americans Iraq is now something less than home and something more than a foreign country. For America as a whole, one thing that no politician will dispute in 2008 is that aside from being a European and Pacific power -- which it has been since the end of the Second World War -- the US is now a part of the strategic landscape of the Middle East and Central Asia.

And now, for something COMPLETELY unrelated - a victory dance! Well, maybe it isn't so unrelated - as it's a victory of technology...

J.

Why not download a movie to watch?

Public Domain Movie Torrents with PDA versions

Hey, they've got "Plan Nine from Outer Space"! Hmmm. Let me go get a bag of popcorn...

Enjoy!

J.

It's pretty bad when the wave of the future (IE militant Islam) is reduced to selling phone cards to keep going.

AsiaMedia :: INDONESIA: Terrorists 'selling phone cards'

Jakarta --- Terrorists in Indonesia are facing funding problems and are resorting to selling mobile phone vouchers to raise cash after money from Saudi Arabia was cut off last year, National Police chief Gen. Sutanto said on Monday.

Sutanto said that the funding from a terrorist cell in Saudi Arabia was disrupted after security authorities arrested last year a man identified only by his initials, "AS," who had been receiving the funds from couriers.

"They (terrorists) now face difficulties in obtaining money to finance their operations with the arrest of this man. We've cut their access to money," Sutanto told the House of Representatives Commission III on legal affairs.

It's a catch-22 - in order to bomb folks, you've got to get money. To get money, you've got to get a job. You get a job, folks know where they can find you. Folks can find you... so can the police. But you need the money in order to finance your operations...

Sucks to be a terrorist these days. No Saudi love any more, and though your religion says you're supposed to be on top - you've got to sell phone cards to keep going. Wonder how long it'll be before they go "You know, this just isn't worth it." And then turn to telemarketing?

J.

Busy day yesterday- we've been wanting to put tile up on the walls over the counters in the kitchen. We'd found the tile we wanted - but there was a slight problem finding a 3" liner tile we were looking for. We toyed with various ideas, and finally found what we wanted at a small tile shop.

So yesterday was tiling day. I'd started the prep work, carving out the tiles that were to go around the various outlets and such. It took a good while to get everything cut out properly, and even then I made a couple of mistakes. Nothing that a quick modification with a Dremel tool and a tile file couldn't take care of - but it was annoying, anyway.

Finally, after all the prep work (and prep work is key when it comes to doing something like this) I started mixing the mortar that'd hold the tiles to the wall. The instructions on the bag specified a half-inch electric drill. I had a 3/8ths Craftsman drill that I figured would do the job... and I was wrong. Overheated windings in a drill motor make such an interesting smell...

But the stuff got mixed in the end, then slathered up on the walls, and tile placed. This is the first time I've done tile work like this, and it ended up looking pretty darn sharp. Now "She who decides these things" is looking at the bathfroom floors upstairs. That'll require tearing out the old tile and will be a decided pain in the whatever. But... um... could be....

Anyway - regarding a job like this - if the instructions on the bag recommend a half-inch drill - 3/8ths may be CLOSE, but it ain't close ENOUGH. And for heaven sakes, buy yourself a good Dremel tool and a carbide bit for it. The Dremel Sue got me last year for Christmas has been VERY handy for all sorts of things, from cutting drywall to caring out holes for a telephone/cable jack in the wall, to last second chunking out of tile notches so it'd fit properly against cabinets. I could have done the job without it - but I'd have needed some VERY creative work with a tile nipper, a tile saw, and a carbide saw blade. The right tools make the job a LOT easier.

J.

Here's a campaign ad from the '04 elections. One of the things that's struck me over the years is how fast Democrats forget their campaign promises after election to office. It's kind of like they put them up on a shelf, and forget about them until they're needed for the next election, at which point they're brought down, dusted off and fresh batteries are put in, maybe a fresh coat of topically relevant paint applied, and then they're used until the day after the election. Then, they're shelved again.

Over the years, I haven't seen that so much with Republican candidates. They might not make flashy promises (usually) but they tend to get more accomplished (usually) than the Democrats who get elected.

Just an observation, for whatever it's wortth.... Democrats are fine when nothing's really going on, when there's no crises, no issues facing the country. When there ARE problems, they're all speech and no action.

J.

Tookie Williams, in case you haven't heard, is the founder of the 'Crips' gang. Since he murdered four people, and got caught, and got tried, and got convicted, and got sentenced to death, It's hard to understand just how a thug who started an organization which caused so much violence and death could be considered for clemency - yet some in Hollywood have taken up the banner of clemeny for him.

I don't understand the passion that some folks have for murderers. There's been some argument that he's turned himself around, that he rehabilitated himself on death row.

Well, that really helps the folks he killed, doesn't it? And the folks who've been terrorized by the Crips, the murder victims of gang warfare, and all the baggage that's gone along with the whole gang scene.

But now, there's apparently threats of violence if he's killed.

NBC 4 - News - Council Members Urge Calm Over 'Tookie' Williams Decisions

With less than four days to go before Williams' scheduled Tuesday execution, sporadic-yet-credible threats of civil unrest have prompted the council members and representatives from the city and county human relations commissions to ask religious leaders to emphasize a message of peace during weekend services.

"We picked up information that led us to believe that there were some planned and intentioned acts of violence that could occur in the wake of the decision or the execution planned for Stan "Tookie" Williams," Robin Toma, executive director of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, said during a news conference at City Hall.

Toma declined to list the affected communities or elaborate on the threats.

Councilman Bernard Parks said he spoke earlier today about potential civil unrest with Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Earl Paysinger of the South Bureau.

The Crips street gang, founded in 1971 in South Central Los Angeles, went on to become one of the most violent and widespread in the United States.

Family members of Williams' victims say he should be put to death for his actions.

But Williams's supporters say he has reformed because he spent much of the past 24 years writing children's books and teaching at-risk youth about the dangers of gangs. Supporters also have nominated him for Nobel prizes, for peace and in literature.

"For those who believe in redemption, they should remember that for the past 13 years, Mr. Williams has been talking about peace, not violence," Councilman Herb Wesson said. "I think the biggest tribute they could pay to him is to ensure that whatever happens ... they should be respectful to how he lived his life for the last 13 years."

But, IMHO, not enough to gain a commutation to life in prison. When your past catches up to you - the best thing to do is face it square on. Apologize, and take your punishment.

And in this case - the punishment is death.

J.

Yet, it looks like I'm going to be embroiled in them. We have three guys (of which I'm one) which work separately from the main group. The other two guys kick ass at their jobs - me, I'm their slacker supervisor (heh) who also has to clean out spyware and viruses on from 80-250 machines a day. We stay fairly busy - we're good at what we do.

However, the two guys had to go on vacation this year for varying reasons. And they had subs come in from the main group, who treated their work as a holiday from their regular jobs doing service calls. This lasted a week.

It took two weeks to clean up the resulting problems from their mistakes.

We didn't say much of anything about it at the time - one of the guys was a friend of the boss out here, and made comments about how he wanted to get one of the regular guys fired (presumably so he could take over the job), and we all discussed things afterward and figured there wasn't any point in getting into a pissing contest with the main group - but now our contract's come up for examination/renewal, and there's talk about rotating out the two guys who really know the job and replacing them with inexperienced ones.

This isn't a good thing, not with the contract coming up. It wouldn't be a good thing at any point - because it would really mess things up trying to get the job done. But we're always under examination here - and to suddenly start botching up the job wouldn't do much to make for a happy customer.

So I find myself in the really uncomfortable place of having to explain to management why something the boss seems to want is a bad idea. I'm collecting numbers and such to support it - but I sure wish I didn't have to.

*Update* - It went better than I expected. Apparently the talk of rotation is just that. We'll see what happens, but for now, things aren't going to change.

J.

Today in Iraq, their third vote has started. This is to elect a government that'll run the place for 4 years. And understandably, because after each vote the 'insurgents' have lost ground, there's a great deal of concern within the Fundamentalist Islamic community that their power (such as it is) and influence (such as it was) will be further eroded.

Too damn bad for them!

Gina Cobb: Voting Underway in Iraq: And Thugs Say "Stop" in the Name of Allah

Voting has begun in the history-making parliamentary elections in Iraq. It is a day for Iraqis to celebrate.

But someone is not happy. According to reports, "Five Islamic militant groups, including al-Qaida in Iraq, issued a joint statement that rejected any reconciliation with Iraq's U.S.-backed government and said Thursday's elections are religiously prohibited."

"The Internet statement, which could not be authenticated immediately, said taking part in the election contradicted God's law, saying the only rules Muslims should follow are those in the Quran."

J.

(Specifically, my Have we won? entry, the Bellman (who is now Jason) said the following....

As usual, I hope you are right, but I'm afraid you aren't. It's almost impossible for either you or I to know the reality of what's going on in Iraq. For every story I put up, you can find a counter, and vice versa. But here's what I see:

* A multi-faceted insurgency made up of folks with lots of different motives.

* No real desire on the part of even the happy, optimistic Iraqis to live in a democratic, contiguous Iraq.

* An administration that is only just now admitting that large portions of their strategy were flawed (why just now?).

* An administration that feels that it should be allowed to torture people in the War on Terror, but is willing to lie to our citizens and our allies about it.

Speaking of torture, did you see this?

-Jason (I've dropped "The Bellman" moniker as it was confusing with the name of the site.

I'm not going to address your comment point by point - instead I'm going to go for a much broader view. As you know, I've got 23 years active and reserve time under my belt, and I've been watching the world and how the US relates to it for about 30 years (since I got into the AF in '74, in fact.) I've also read a good bit of military history, specifically American conflicts in the 20th Century, and there's been two different patterns since about 1940 which, again painted broadly, run like this.

First (WW2, Korean war to some extent, Gulf War 1, Gulf War 2) We're aware of a problem. We or an ally get hit, and we ramp up and fight until they're defeated or a stalemate's imposed as an end-game. Mistakes are made, but they're overcome and the result is victory.

Second (Korean war to some extent, Somalia, Viet Nam, Bosnia to some extent) We're aware of a problem, we get drawn into something that our leaders decide we need to fight in, yet there's not a complete commitment to making sure the problems get solved that started things in the first place. Mistakes get made - and instead of overcoming the mistakes and proceeding on to victory, the mistakes are used as an excuse to stop what we're doing, or scale it back drastically.

There was never a war that no mistakes were made. There's a rather interesting book called "Hitler's Mistakes", which, oddly enough, details practially every economic, strategic and tactical blunder that Hitler made. The author of the book, in the afterword, was being interviewed and asked about Allied mistakes - he laughed and said (as I recall, it's been a few years since I read it) that the Allied mistakes were every bit as serious and outnumbered Hitler's - but we had more resources to recover from them.

I've really got to unpack all my books some day. I hate not being able to find things.

The point I'm trying to make is that war is a messy business. The moral line involved in the European bombing campaign shifted from a 'we're going to try to bomb railyards and factories and try to leave the population untouched' at the beginning of the war to a "Flatten it all and make the rubble bounce" philosophy that targeted cities. I figure you're probably familiar with the Dresden firestorm. And we won't talk about the first firebombing of Tokyo, which had a higher death count than Hiroshima, or the subsequent ones where they lost count of the dead.

Yet it's hard to argue that we shouldn't have gone into WW2 the way we did. We had no real beef with Hitler, aside from him chewing up and swallowing chunks of Europe, and looking at England for dessert. We had no real beef with the Japanese - despite the fact they were digging into China and looking to expand an empire. The world today would be vastly different if we hadn't done what we did during WW2, whether it's seen as morally objectionable 50 years later or what.

Of course, broad pictures depend on many, many little details, and not everything's going to go right by a long shot. I think you're fixating on the negative, and taking that as the whole. Think of Abu Ghraib - less than a dozen guards, doing stupid stunts on one shift - and the media fixates on it for months. Think of the patient work - rebuilding of water pipelines, rebuilding the electrical and sanitation infrastructure of Iraq, rebuilding and stocking hospitals, building schools and clinics - heck, getting the Iraqi stock market going, opening internet cafes and amusement parks - and it's ignored, ending up as a half-paragraph back behind the sports section.

The 'half-empty glass' way of thinking can be taken too far. The "I, We, They've) made a mistake, so it's all bad" attitude isn't healthy, either personally, locally or internationally. And it's getting kind of late, so I'll close this out.

But one last thing...

You and I seem able to talk to each other, though we're on differing ends of the ideological spectrum. I don't know if you see the folks to the right of you as 'evil' or not - but our national political discourse has been severely hampered by folks without ideas foisting off the belief that if you don't believe the same as me then you're automatically evil. I've noticed, over the years, that such reflexive name-calling isn't a sign that you're right - it's much more a sign that you're wrong. Whenever you start looking for evil intent in the media, in politics, in interpersonal relationships, you're heading for trouble. (And no, I don't see the media as evil - just badly biased and reporting what they think fits the desires of their target audience. I don't see Democrats as evil - just power-hungy and exceedingly short-sighted. I did have one girlfrinend who was almost evil, but she was a pathological liar, a thief, and abusive as all hell. Saddam, however, for what he did to his people I'd consider evil.) But when folks knee-jerk and reflexivly think 'evil' when faced with an opposing opinion, you need to examine your own precepts to make sure they're sound and solid.

J.

The Opinionated Bastard: Iraqi Poll

A visual representation of the latest Iraqi polling data...

Enjoy!

J.

Looks like Santa got new wheels!

J.

I think we're heading into the end game in Iraq. The situation's pretty damn good, believe it or not. The insurgents are a deadly nuisance, but they stand essentially no chance of affecting the results of the elections. The people of Iraq have gotten the hang of democratic processes, and seem to be embracing them. They don't particularly seem to want to get back into a dictatorship-style arrangement - at least right now.

At this point, all that remains is taking out the local zone bosses (IE Saddam, Zarqawi, and al-Zawahiri). The next zone, however, could be a real killer if the zone boss there gets nukes.

J.

Who'd sign onto a losing team?

DoD News: DoD Announces Recruiting and Retention Numbers for November

Couple of notes here - the Reserve forces normally come from active duty folks who don't want to be full-time. And if I recall correctly, they usually had no problems meeting their goals in peacetime. But with fewer getting out, (as shown by the Active Duty retention) what you're seeing are likely folks off the street enlisting.

Reserve retention's higher too. I'll have to dig down and see if I can find some of these releases for pre-9/11.

But it's wierd. We're losing, right? So why are folks signing up to be on the losing team?

J.

For the printerly ept out there...

If I were looking to get a Hubble TIFF blown up to, oh, about a 4x5 foot size - what should I expect the cost to be?

Just curious - discuss amongst yourselves...

J.

Michael Yon : Online Magazine: A tribute for service members and families

Many people say this is the most important photograph of the Iraq war. Some have called it "a national treasure." The image most completely embodies my experience throughout Iraq.

MSNBC Stories here and here and here and here.

CNN News here and here and here.

Atlanta Indymedia has nothing.

San Francisco Indymedia likewise. But they support Tookie Williams.

Nothing on the front page of Daily Kos.

Nothing about it on MetaFilter. - Whoops - now there is.

Fox news has a fair number of stories here, here, and here.

And Solidarity is shown at Purple Finger For Freedom

J.

I sell stuff on EBay. (Yes, Rawb, I'm a filthy capitalist. Get over it. (grin)) I'm the whole deal - buyer of stuff that I find in remainder bins at the BX, markdowns at Wal-Mart, the administrative staff that puts the stuff up for auction, the accountant who keeps track of the money coming in and going out, the guy who packs and ships the stuff...

Wait a sec, I'm oppressing myself, filthy capitalist businessowner that I am, keepin' the workers down and hardly paying them anything at all. Come to think of it, I haven't paid my buyer or the accountant or the administrative staff anything, and I barely put gas in the car for the guy who ships stuff. Gee, I'm really oppressing the workers. They'd better not organize, that's all I'm gonna say...

Anyway, with time becomes pretty apparent (based on one bozo who bought something from me who paid pretty slowly, and who never paid others at all) that the EBay system, as well as many other systems in our economy and our social structure, are based on a trust which may not be earned or appropriate - but is nevertheless assumed to be there until demonstrated otherwise. The trust is that the buyer who wins is bidding in good faith, and will pay promptly, and the seller is describing the goods accurately, and will ship promptly when paid.

I've managed to get quite a few things through EBay I'd have had a hard time finding elsewhere. Conversely, I've shipped stuff worldwide that I wouldn't have expected to sell to places that I'd be hard-pressed to find on a map. That I could trust someone in France to pay for a book, or someone on the East Coast of Australia to pay for a DVD set is pretty amazing to me. Even more amazing is getting the things there in mere days instead of the weeks, possibly months that it would have taken at the turn of the century.

Again, the trust is built into every level of our society. We trust that the people supporting us will do their jobs. That planes, ships, cars, the water, power, and gas will work as expected. That the food we buy will be safe and wholesome. Every day is filled with so MANY different transactions that are taken on trust that it's incredibly EASY to overlook and ignore the entire trust infrastructure. It's been established for quite a while, and is transparent to most people. However, it's possible to take advantage of that trust without giving in return what's expected of you. And if you get enough people who do that, the system falls apart.

But what is, really, the basis of setting up a trust system?

I'm thinking there's two things. First - there's money. (Aagh! Evil capitalism again!) A company which puts out a bad product, whether it be moldy cheese, contaminated gasoline, crappy cable service, sub-par electrical service and the like will quickly lose customers, especially if there's any alternative. It's notable that when market (or central governmental) forces remove competition the quality and availability of goods and services tends to diminish. The seller needs to have a product the buyer wants, at a quality the buyer will accept, at a price the buyer finds reasonable.

It might seem like public utilities would be no exception to that since they're essentially monopolies, but they're so regulated by the state that there's virtually no way they can get by with putting out a bad product. They have a vested interest in putting out good stuff, because the alternative is a hellacious amount of lawsuits.

Second, for the vast majority of businessfolk, there's a desire to do the right thing when they sell something. They WANT the customer to be happy, because a happy customer will come back and spend more money whereas if the customer feels ripped off they'll go elsewhere. (I've heard it likened to the difference between skinning a sheep and shearing a sheep. You can shear a sheep many times, and the wool grows back. You can only skin him once, and you won't get much more wool than a regular shearing.) Plus, your reputation's important. A grocery store can't survive if it sells foods that make the customers ill. A store that sells shoddy goods won't make much money, because folks will know they shouldn't buy there if they want anything other than the cheapest goods.

On EBay, it becomes pretty clear through the feedback ratings if someone's being abusive of the community trust. In fact, on the feedback page you find "Why leave feedback? Your feedback lets other eBay users know what your experience has been with this buyer." If you've had a bad experience, you can tell others. If the experience was good, again you can tell others.

This doesn't mean folks don't game the system - you've undoubtedly heard stories about folks scamming others on EBay - but it's at least SOME indicator of trustworthyness.

If you're honest, and the vast, vast majority are, then there's no problem. It's when your ethics get a bit shady that things get unpleasant.

As far as a square deal goes, I'm pretty much dedicated to customer satisfaction. I sent out a couple of packages to customers and got things mixed up - ended up buying an item and having it shipped to one person, and giving a refund to the other - and told them to keep the mistakes. That seems to me to be the honest way to deal with folks - do what's right and proper by them. In the latest round of auctions I sent out the wrong game - the buyer contacted me and I sent him the right game the next day, and told him to keep the wrong game also. (He, in turn, felt the way to deal squarely with my quick response was to pay the priority mail shipping on the right game.)

I believe that people are more honest than not. Our media puts great emphasis on the criminal, on the bad, and it erodes that general trust in our fellow man. But trust can be built between people by treating them honestly, by acting in an ethical manner, and if you're selling something, making sure you're giving good value for the money.

J.

Reality sometimes requires you discard the ideas you approach it with.

Reporting from Iraq ? Blog Archive ? The view from on the ground

Think about everything you’ve heard about the conditions in Iraq, the role of U.S. forces, the multi-layered complexities of the war.

Then think again.

I’m a journalist. I read the news everyday, from several sources. I have the luxury of reading stuff newspapers don’t always have room to print. I read every tidbit I could on Iraq and the war before coming.

Everything I thought I knew was wrong.

Maybe not wrong, but certainly different than the picture in my head.

I’ve listened to the soldiers and Parrish about the missing pieces of the puzzles that don’t reach home. My selfish, journalistic drive immediately thinks “Perfect. A story that hasn’t been told. Let me at it.”

But I have a slight hesitation; I need to keep balanced. I can’t be a cheerleader, even if I have a soft spot for the hometown troops, especially after the welcome they’ve shown me. I still need to be truthful and walk the centerline and report the good or bad.

But then I realize it’s not a conflict of interest. If I am truly unbiased, then I need to get used to this one simple fact; that the untold story, might in fact, be a positive one. It takes a minute to wrap my mind around it, as a news junkie that became a news writer. The great, career-making, breaking news stories usually don’t have happy endings; they usually revolve around disturbing news, deceit and downfall. Nasty political doings. Gruesome crimes and murders. Revealing secrets.

But I’ve come upon something that is none of those. Not this aspect of it. There are politics to this war and controversies and investigations. But there is another side.

I'm glad another one's figured that out.

J.

Editorial: Voice of the People

It was the voice of the Iraqi people that was being heard yesterday, not the bomb blasts of the terrorists. What little violence there was as millions crowded toward their local polling stations only served to demonstrate how incoherent and pointless are the efforts of the men of violence to change the country through further bloodshed.

President Jalal Talabani had asked Iraqis to treat election day as a day of celebration and celebrate is what most people did. Whatever his or her political views, virtually every voter who was asked agreed that this was a momentous day, which well deserved the often party-like atmosphere that gripped the heavily patrolled, traffic-free streets. Time and again Iraqis told inquiring journalists that this was the moment when they took control of their country, the beginning of the end of the US-led occupation and — though this was generally voiced more cautiously — the beginning of the end of insurgent violence.

Good for the Iraqi people!

J.

IRAQ THE MODEL

I asked an election official about the problems they faced. He answered laughing:

“Iraqis are like sweet fruit, and their sweetness lies in their big hearts and meeting them at the voting station yesterday was enjoyable like eating a good plate of sweets! They cast their ballots while I enjoyed the Iraqi symphony of patriotism”.

It was a day of happiness for Iraqis and a day of loss for the strangers who thought their camels brought them to a land void of patriots.

It is a day we will await to come again for four long years…to do the right thing again or to correct the mistake if we did one yesterday.
Anyway, I believe we left a mark on the face of history, a purple mark that will not be forgotten easily.

God bless Iraq and Iraq’s friends throughout this world. It wasn’t our day alone; it was your day too.

J.

This is for the King Kong movie. Take a look at the take on 12/14 and 12/15.

Daily Box Office - Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Down 35%. That's going to hurt. Of course, it could always go up some for the weekend.

But I'm thinking the monkey missed the vine.

Is it just me, or is there just very little original, worthwhile work coming out of Hollywood these days?

J.

Sunni alliance hail Iraq election as success

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The main Arab Sunni alliance that contested Iraq's election said on Saturday it was a success despite some violations, fuelling U.S. hopes that peaceful politics will help pave the way for a troop withdrawal.

"The election process succeeded ... Thank God there were only a few cases in a huge country where there is death and violence."," Adnan al-Dulaimi, leader of one of the parties in the Iraqi Accordance Front, told a news conference.

The U.S. military and rebels have warned that a truce during Thursday's election that allowed Sunnis to vote did not mean attacks aimed at removing U.S. troops would end.

But U.S. President George W. Bush was buoyed by the millions of Iraqis who turned out to vote and he hailed them for "defying the terrorists and refusing to be cowed into not voting".Now the counting's underway. We'll see in a week or two just what the new Iraqi government's going to look like. But good on them!

J.

Just a little present to all my faithful readers...

GROW ORNAMENT ver.0 Flash Game Planet___EYEZMAZE

J.

But all things considered it went off darn well.

MDJonline.com - Marietta, Georgia

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi authorities tallied millions of ballots Friday and received some complaints about the conduct of the parliamentary election, including allegations of "violent interference" with voters. The election commission said none of the complaints involved fraud.

Officials said it could take at least two weeks until final results are announced for the new, four-year parliament because all the complaints have to be investigated. Preliminary results might be available in less than a week, they said.

Although violence was low on election day, the U.S. Marines said a mortar attack Friday killed an Iraqi soldier and four children playing soccer in a schoolyard that was a polling station in the western Euphrates River valley town of Parwana. Two children were injured.

J.

But doesn't it seem just a trifle odd that this was exposed the day after elections in Iraq?

Bush says he authorized eavesdropping in U.S. - U.S. Security - MSNBC.com

Without identifying specific lawmakers, Bush said congressional leaders have been briefed more than a dozen times on the program's activities.

The president also said the intelligence officials involved in the monitoring receive extensive training to make sure civil liberties are not violated.

A closer reading of the article reveals:

Since 2002, the agency has been conducting some warrantless eavesdropping on people in the United States who are linked, even if indirectly, to suspected terrorists through the chain of phone numbers and e-mail addresses, according to several officials who know of the operation. Under the special program, the agency monitors their international communications, the officials said. The agency, for example, can target phone calls from someone in New York to someone in Afghanistan.

Warrants are still required for eavesdropping on entirely domestic-to-domestic communications, those officials say, meaning that calls from that New Yorker to someone in California could not be monitored without first going to the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court.

A high-value secret like this would be a great weapon of last resort in the political arena. Especially when you (or your party) apparently signed off on it. Maybe they're figuring that everyone's going to be so ticked at Bush that they aren't going to be wondering about the 'congressional leaders' that signed off on it, or be looking to see whether it was REALLY illegal. (From reading, the NYTimes article doesn't say that.)

Sigh.

One of the really bad things about a counterterrorism operation is that if you're sucessful, it's got to be buried deep. Really, you DON'T want the enemy to know what happened. Think of the whole WoT as a feedback mechanism. Enemy attacks, defenders defend, if the attack is sucessful the enemy will try to repeat it, if it fails they try to figure out what failed so next time it will suceed. If you're the defender, you try to learn from the enemy's tactics so you can anticipate them and block them. A successful attack means you've failed. And you don't want them to know HOW an attack failed - because then they can adjust their tactics accordingly.

And now, another defensive tactic has been compromised.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I'd rather not know about the sucesses of the intel community. Giving out the information about what's been attempted and how attempts were stopped doesn't make us safer. Instead, there's every chance that the terrorists would use that information to avoid the mistakes that got them stopped in the first place.

This doesn't strike me as a good thing.

One of the things I found bizzare was a foolish interview while Osama was being hunted in the early days of the WoT., pre 9/11. He was using satellite phones and the location of the satellite phone could be tracked. So we were narrowing the search box - and then some bozo mentioned in an article written after an interview with Osama that satellite phones were being used to track him. Oh, yeah, like Osama would never read that article.

So he ditched the sat phone. Made it harder for him to track. That's a classic example of how one offhand bit of information made it much harder for folks fighting in the WoT. Freedom of the press is a good thing - but that freedom doesn't mean it's a good idea for them to blab out everything they know about a subject, especially when such knowledge has a good chance of hurting instead of helping. Of course, I also suspect that 'hurting or helping' depends on how you view your alignment on the WoT. You might nominally see unrest and the rise of Islamofacism in the ME as a bad thing, but if you see Bush as being the ideologically greater of two evils, you're going to be somewhat conflicted on what to address with a higher priority.

And since it looks like Iraq's going to be okay at this point, why not release something you think might hurt Bush? No downside to it - aside from damaging your own credibility... So why not?

UPDATE! Looks like there was a reason it was released after all - there's a book coming out.

DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2005?

On the front page of today's NEW YORK TIMES, national security reporter James Risen claims that "months after the September 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States... without the court approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials."

Risen claims the White House asked the paper not to publish the article, saying that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny.

Risen claims the TIMES delayed publication of the article for a year to conduct additional reporting.

But now comes word James Risen's article is only one of many "explosive newsbreaking" stories that can be found -- in his upcoming book -- which he turned in 3 months ago!

The paper failed to reveal the urgent story was tied to a book release and sale.

J.

A little bit of analysis...

Iraq

Al Qaeda was humiliated during the elections, after having proclaimed that voting was against Islam, and that good Moslems should rise up and prevent this abomination. About 70 percent of eligible voters turned out, and there were few incidents of violence. The word on the street was that al Qaeda had called off its anti-democracy campaign. This bothered al Qaeda so much that they issued a statement denouncing it. But al Qaeda claims that they did attack the voters rang hollow. The Sunni Arab community had decided to either vote, or not try and fight those who were. In areas where al Qaeda still has a presence, local tribal or Mosque based militias put out armed guards to keep al Qaeda away from the polling places. These guys are usually shooting at government or American troops. But on election day, they were left alone by Iraqi troops, as everyone turned out to protect the voters from Islamic terrorists.

Toward this end, it was interesting to note that some Sunni insurgent groups declared a “cease fire” during the election, and others declared that they would attack anyone attempting to interfere in the voting. While some extremists among the Shia Iraqis would undoubtedly prefer to exclude the Sunni Arabs totally from government – feeling that after generations of Sunni Arab domination of Iraq “it’s payback time” – the chances of establishing a relatively stable government are likely to be dim unless there’s significant Sunni Arab acquiescence.

This relentless progress of democracy is causing quite a commotion throughout the Arab world. While it is fashionable to denounce the American presence in Iraq, and what the Americans were doing, the Arab language buzz on the net is going in unexpected directions. Because of al Jazeera and the Internet, young Arabs everywhere are not only able to observe what it happening in Iraq, but to discuss it with young Iraqis. These discussions are not noted much in the West, because they generally take place in Arabic, and often via email and listservs. The non-Iraqi Arabs are impressed at the proliferation of media in Iraq, and the eagerness of Iraqis to vote, and make democracy work. The economic growth in Iraq is admired, and is already attracting entrepreneurs from other Arab countries. The more cynical non-Iraqis believe that it will all come to nothing, and that another Saddam will eventually emerge and shut down all this democratic nonsense, as is the case in most of the Arab world. But the pessimists appear to be in the minority. Arabs are tired of dictators, economic stagnation, the corruption and living in a police state. Moreover, there’s a nimble quality in Arab thinking that allows them to simultaneously blame the Americans for going into Iraq, and praising the result.

Dang. I should have set certain end-points with Jason over that case of beer...

J.

So why do I have such a hard time keeping from laughing when I look at it?

Take a peek.

Heh.

J.

Well, slap a bacon strip bandage on before you bleed all over the place!

Happy Monday to ya!

J.

If you're of certain political pathologies. Since it's back behind a registration window, I'm putting the whole thing up here. Basically, there's a lot of work to be done but folks are starting to realize that maybe the US ain't the bad guy after all.

Our Friends the Pakistanis

Support for the U.S. is surging in some parts of the Muslim world.

BY HUSAIN HAQQANI AND KENNETH BALLEN
Monday, December 19, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

So much for the popularly peddled view that anti-Americanism in the Muslim world is so pervasive and deep-rooted it might take generations to alter. A new poll from Pakistan, a critical front-line in the war on terror, paints a very different picture--by revealing a sea-change in public opinion in recent months.

Long a stronghold for Islamic extremists and the world's second-most populous Muslim nation, Pakistanis now hold a more favorable opinion of the U.S. than at any time since 9/11, while support for al Qaeda in its home base has dropped to its lowest level since then. The direct cause for this dramatic shift in Muslim opinion is clear: American humanitarian assistance for Pakistani victims of the Oct. 8 earthquake that killed 87,000. The U.S. pledged $510 million for earthquake relief in Pakistan and American soldiers are playing a prominent role in rescuing victims from remote mountainous villages.

Released today, the poll commissioned by the nonprofit organization Terror Free Tomorrow and conducted by Pakistan's foremost pollsters ACNielsen Pakistan shows that the number of Pakistanis with a favorable opinion of the U.S. doubled to more than 46% at the end of November from 23% in May 2005. Those with very unfavorable views declined to 28% from 48% over the same period. Nor is this swing in public opinion confined to Pakistan. A similar picture is evident in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Again that's largely because of American generosity in the wake of a natural disaster. A February 2005 poll by Terror Free Tomorrow showed that 65% of Indonesians had a more favorable opinion of the U.S. as a result of American relief to the victims of last December's tsunami. If these changes in Pakistan and Indonesia influence thinking in other countries, then we could be looking at a broader shift in public sentiment across the Muslim world.

While support for the U.S. has surged, there's also been a dramatic drop in support for Osama bin Laden and terrorism. Since May, the percentage of Pakistanis who feel terrorist attacks against civilians are never justified has more than doubled to 73% from less than half, while the minority who still support terrorist attacks has also shrunk significantly. There's been a similar increase in the number of Pakistanis disapproving of bin Laden, which rose to 41% in November up from only 23% in May.

The important point is that direct contact with Americans on a humanitarian mission, including military personnel, has a positive impact on how Muslims view America. In Pakistan, 78% of those surveyed said that American assistance has made them feel more favorable to the U.S. America also fared much better in the opinion of ordinary Pakistanis than the other Western countries that also provided aid, or even local radical Islamist groups that made a much-publicized effort to provide earthquake relief.

That doesn't mean there isn't still more work to be done. The Muslim "street" is still not sold on specific American policies, with the poll finding the Pakistani public now opposes current U.S. policy in the war on terror by a larger margin than in May. But the overall message from Pakistan, pointing towards a potential trend in the Muslim world in general, is a positive one. By cutting out the middlemen who all too often portray a poisonous image of the U.S., direct American engagement in humanitarian assistance not only ensures its aid reaches those in need, but can also play a powerful role in marginalizing the foot-soldiers for bin Laden and other supporters of extremist Islamic causes.

Mr. Haqqani is director of Boston University's Center for International Relations and author of "Pakistan Between Mosque and Military" (Carnegie, 2005). Mr. Ballen served as counsel to the House Iran-Contra Committee and the speaker of the House, and is president of Terror Free Tomorrow, a nonprofit organization in Washington.

J.

As I've said, I think this is a jusifiable use of the Presidential authority.

Attorney general: Domestic spy program legal - U.S. Security - MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Monday joined President Bush and other administration officials in defending the president’s secret order to allow domestic spying without a court order, telling NBC News that Bush has constitutional and congressional backing for “very limited, targeted” surveillance.

The president, as commander-in-chief, has certain authorities under the constitution, Gonzales said, and those were expanded by Congress to include electronic surveillance a few days after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The president’s use of that authority is “consistent with law in my judgment,” he said, adding that he had met Sunday night with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., and other senior lawmakers to explain the authority.

I sincerely wonder at times just whether some folks in Washington have played their political games inside the Beltway for so long that they have no real concept of how their posturing and preening for the cameras affects events outside the Beltway. And I'm struck, once again, at how little Bush really plays those games. He strikes me as someone honest and genuine, trying to do the best he can in a killer of a job.

And I think that's one thing that's lost on a lot of the media wonks. When you get to a point where you're automatically looking at any statement to try to figure out the spin in it, you've lost something pretty important when it comes to actually reporting on what's going on.

Also, one thing I found funny - especially in light of me mentioning Operations Security (OpSec) in my post Interesting timing... where I said...

One of the really bad things about a counterterrorism operation is that if you're sucessful, it's got to be buried deep. Really, you DON'T want the enemy to know what happened. Think of the whole WoT as a feedback mechanism. Enemy attacks, defenders defend, if the attack is sucessful the enemy will try to repeat it, if it fails they try to figure out what failed so next time it will suceed. If you're the defender, you try to learn from the enemy's tactics so you can anticipate them and block them. A successful attack means you've failed. And you don't want them to know HOW an attack failed - because then they can adjust their tactics accordingly.

Honestly, are the reporters there just culturally inbred? Do they think getting the story trumps all, over national security? Why not just ask for a complete catalog of all possible responses to enemy tactics in the WoT?

One last thing on intercepts like this -

On Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said disclosure of the eavesdropping could jeopardize terrorism investigations.

“The more we get the exposure of these very sensitive programs, the more it undermines our ability to follow terrorists, to know about their activities,” she told Fox News.

And, to sell a book for one of their reporters, the NYTimes blew open the details on OUR getting information from folks who weren't practicing much in the way of communications security at all. That's hurt our intelligence gathering ability, to promote a book that'll be in remainder bins by June. Way to go, NYTimes. That's like letting Germany know we had a working Enigma machine and codebooks around 1942. The terrorists will find other methods, we'll find other ways - but we'll lose time and likely information that would be useful in spoiling an attack.

All so a reporter can earn a few bucks off commissions. Thanks a heap, bub.

J.

And you're either not sure what to get folks on your list, or you're not willing to spend a lot.

Why not give the gift of cookies?

There's two recipies I use. Both are fairly easy, though the second one can be dangerous - no more so, however, than a large boiling pot of thick chili.

Peanut Butter Sugar Cookies

Heat your oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together one beaten egg, one cup of sugar, and one cup of the cheapest store-brand peanut butter you can get. Cheaper peanut butter seems to work better, apparently because it's got more peanut and peanut oil in it, and fewer sugars and other ingredients. You WANT oily peanut butter for this. (A fork or spoon works best for the mixing, I've found.) This is your basic 1/1/1 batch - one egg, one cup sugar, one cup peanut butter. (Darn hard to remember, isn't it?)

Mix this all up and it'll form a fairly stiff dough - let it sit for about ten minutes, then grab a handful of it, roll it out into a fairly thin rope (about the diameter of your thumb) and pinch off about an inch. Ball that up, and place on a cookie sheet. Repeat, spacing the balls about two inches apart. Flatten the balls somewhat with a fork.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove, let cool and store. (Pay attention to the time limit - they get REAL chewey if you let them stay too long in the oven, almost like soft peanut brittle.)

This recipe scales up nicely - I find a 3/3/3 batch works pretty well. If you really want to freak out your friends, (or entertain some Cub Scouts) add about a quarter-cup of cocoa powder to the 1/1/1 batch, and the cookie dough looks like, well, let's just say it ain't brown Play-Doh, okay? Roll it out in a thick coil, put it in the fridge, haul it out for guests, and hilarity ensues.

I'll put up the other recipe tomorrow.

J.

Like this little gem.

House Resolution 612 - Expressing the commitment of the House of Representatives to achieving victory in Iraq.

Expressing the commitment of the House of Representatives to achieving victory in Iraq.

Whereas the Iraqi election of December 15, 2005, the first to take place under the newly ratified Iraqi Constitution, represented a crucial success in the establishment of a democratic, constitutional order in Iraq; and

Whereas Iraqis, who by the millions defied terrorist threats to vote, were protected by Iraqi security forces with the help of United States and Coalition forces: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That--

(1) the House of Representatives is committed to achieving victory in Iraq;

(2) the Iraqi election of December 15, 2005, was a crucial victory for the Iraqi people and Iraq's new democracy, and a defeat for the terrorists who seek to destroy that democracy;

(3) the House of Representatives encourages all Americans to express solidarity with the Iraqi people as they take another step toward their goal of a free, open, and democratic society;

(4) the successful Iraqi election of December 15, 2005, required the presence of United States Armed Forces, United States-trained Iraqi forces, and Coalition forces;

(5) the continued presence of United States Armed Forces in Iraq will be required only until Iraqi forces can stand up so our forces can stand down, and no longer than is required for that purpose;

(6) setting an artificial timetable for the withdrawal of United States Armed Forces from Iraq, or immediately terminating their deployment in Iraq and redeploying them elsewhere in the region, is fundamentally inconsistent with achieving victory in Iraq;

(7) the House of Representatives recognizes and honors the tremendous sacrifices made by the members of the United States Armed Forces and their families, along with the members of Iraqi and Coalition forces; and

(8) the House of Representatives has unshakable confidence that, with the support of the American people and the Congress, United States Armed Forces, along with Iraqi and Coalition forces, shall achieve victory in Iraq.

Final Vote Results for Roll Call 648

Yea - 279. Nay - 108, with 45 not voting.

But, 59 Democrats DID vote "Yea". Only 107 voted against it.

Make of it what you will.

J.

Or, as Yakof Smirnof would say "Reality! What a concept!"

Doc Sanity looks at the mechanisms that seem to be prevalent in certain communities of thought. It's instructive looking at her examples, and more than a bit unsettling - especially when I recognize some of the defense mechanisms I used a long time back. It's never pleasant to be reminded of just how damn stupid you were.

Dr. Sanity

Now, getting back to the concept of "self-delusion". When both sides are convinced that the other side is deluding themselves, it becomes extremely important that SOME ADULT SOMEWHERE examine the external reality and follow a process of reason to assess the truth truth.

Much as the Left (who as a group are heavily invested in the whole postmodernistic touchy feely thingy) would like to believe that they have exclusive rights to the truth, they have actually dealt themselves out of any contest for discovering truth by insisting that truth is relative. If it IS relative, they they must agree that I am as correct in what I think as they are.

OTOH, if truth is NOT relative, but exists outside of whatever one side or the other feels is true, then by all means, let's get down to the evidence which will prove which side is correct. I'm game.

It's an interesting article. I do think she's nailed it.

J.

Okay, at least there's precedent.

DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2005?

Bill Clinton Signed Executive Order that allowed Attorney General to do searches without court approval

Clinton, February 9, 1995: "The Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order"

WASH POST, July 15, 1994: Extend not only to searches of the homes of U.S. citizens but also -- in the delicate words of a Justice Department official -- to "places where you wouldn't find or would be unlikely to find information involving a U.S. citizen... would allow the government to use classified electronic surveillance techniques, such as infrared sensors to observe people inside their homes, without a court order."

Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, the Clinton administration believes the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes."

Well, that's odd. After all, the Democrats are shocked, SHOCKED at the idea of this - why would they allow THEIR Presidents to do it?

J.

My Way News

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden may no longer be able to run the militant network and has not been heard from for nearly a year, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday.

Rumsfeld said on a trip to Pakistan the Bush administration still considers it a priority to capture the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, who is believed to be hiding somewhere in mountains along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

"I think it is interesting that we haven't heard from him for close to a year," Rumsfeld told reporters en route to Islamabad.

I'm thinking 'hiding in the mountains' may become a line about on a par with pining for the fjords. "He's not dead! He's just hiding in the mountains!"

J.

Could it be he's going to try for President again?

AEI - Short Publications

Democrats have yet to realize that the political landscape has already changed. Senator McCain, according to a new poll by Zogby International, currently enjoys greater support than ever before, appealing across the entire political spectrum. This despite the fact that he too has put all of his stock in Iraq, and has been one of the war's loudest defenders. Just last month, Mr. McCain compared the words of Senator Kerry to those of Ms. Sheehan, and warned that if we heed their calls, America would "face consequences of the most serious nature."

What Democrats fail to realize is that as long as national security is on the front page--even if it's the war in Iraq--voters are unlikely to trust them. And this is entirely because of their perpetual defeatism. Claiming, in the words of Dr. Dean, that it "is just plain wrong" to think that that "we're going to win this war," is just plain idiocy. As Atlantic Monthly correspondent Robert D. Kaplan pointed out in the latest issue of The American Enterprise, much of the political left continues to think in a "1970s time-warp mentality." He was speaking, apparently, of the entire Democratic leadership.

Pretty soon, I think the Democrats are going to have to figure out whether they're for the country, or for their party. Because if they're willing to do anything they can to get GWB out of office, REGARDLESS of what it does to the country or the WoT, (I've seen calls for Bush's impeachment over PlameGate and over the current leaks from the CIA) then in my opinion they're putting the party first - not the country. And there's no way in hell I'll vote for a Democrat for national office, if that's the way they're going to act.

J.

Possibly the worst advice I ever got in my life was to NOT pursue a GI Bill education while I was still in the military. The ever-so-knowledgeable woman I talked to at the base educaton office around '75 told me that I'd have 20 years to pursue a degree after I got out. And, what with one job and another I wasn't exactly in a position to go for the normal classes that'd be useful in an undergraduate degree. (Not that I really had the self-discipline to go for it at the time.)

So, I basically blew off 8 years of my life. When I got out, I figured I had a good 20 years to use myGI Bill benefits. When I got stabilised after a few years (I had a few, um, problems that needed sorting out) I went down to the VA office in Atlanta to see what I could do - and I found out I had basically one year to get all the requirements for a 4 year degree due to the Viet Nam era GI Bill expiring.. Well, financially that just wasn't doable. I thanked them kindly, and left.

Moral of the story? If someone offers you a free paid education, TAKE the damn thing. If it's not a full education, take what's offiered. On-line training, certifications on programs and equipment you work with - whatever, it won't be wasted time. I really wish I could go back in time, find myself as I was exiting that education office, and tell myself that she was full of it - and that I REALLY needed to pursue the courses at LCCC, instead of just going for a couple that interested me and then dropping the idea when I got to Dyess.

Man, I get so ticked at just how stupid I was 30 years back sometimes.

J.

Well, the Department of Justice seems to think so. (Note: I had a bunch of exerpts here, but figured, well, if you're able to wade through all this and make sense of it you've probably already gone to look at it from other links - and if you already believe Bush is guilty and should be impeached for doing this, I doubt any exceprpts would persaude you ptherwise.)

Anyway, over at Power Line's "On the Legality of the NSA Electronic Intercept Program", they do an extensive review of the information released and come to the conclusion...

In fact, though, if one reviews the controlling legal authorities, it is hard to see what the fuss is about.

I realize this won't be sufficient for some, and since IANAL, and looking at all this is obtuse and opaque as anything - but that's because I'm not a legal scholar - it's still rather apparent that if it's legal per current case law, and allowed under the constitutional authority given to the President - then it's legal for him to do this. You might not like it, but it's legal.

J.

When your biggest worry is whether the overpriced cookware you wanted to get for your wife will arrive in time. If someone had told me in 1980 that would be my biggest concern at Christmas in 25 years, I'd have told them they were crazy. And if they told me I'd have a son, I'd have told them they needed to be fitted for a straitjacket ASAP.

It's always easy to tell yourself that things are going down the crapper, that everything's going to hell in a Wal-Mart sales basket. And it's tempting to get all gloom-and-doom at times - heaven knows I get that way myself. But sometimes it's important to step back, look at the things that you think are the Most Important Issues In Your Life, and realize that in the grand scheme of things they're pretty unimportant, and most of the import we assign to them isn't because of their actual relevance, but how we personally feel about the issue.

So have a happy, I need to go bake cookies today. There are things that are important, and things that are Important, and things that are IMPORTANT - and today one of THOSE things is baking cookies with the little guy.

Enjoy!

J.
.

And for your present - Fingertime Free Games - Christmas Time Game

Hat tip to Z. over on The Bellman's Blog....

J.

NSA spy program broader than Bush admitted - U.S. Security - MSNBC.com

Apparently pattern matching was used to identify stuff of interest. And I'll admit I'm just kind of shrugging and going "So?"

My main job as a technician is troubleshooting. A large part of troubleshooting is pattern matching - you watch for things that have given you problems before, and then try to diagnose and refine your observations to get to the heart of the problem. I can look through a Task Manager process list and spot all sorts of stuff that I'm expecting to see - and I ignore it. It's the stuff that's out of the ordinary, that I don't recognize as belonging that stands out and warrants further investigation.

If that's what they're doing here, I don't have a problem with that. But what I find rather sad is how overblown the coverage on this is, while both releasing very little detail about what's going on, and not giving any idea about how useful it's been in the WoT - if at all. (Frankly, that's not information I'd even want to see blabbed out on the internet. As I posted in my comments a while back, I'm not going to assume that the enemy is stupid and unable to access the internet for information.)

One thing I'd like is to see some sort of idea that the NYTimes has a clue when it comes to national security - or do they even care about it, as long as they can get some headlines and coverage by other agencies?

J.

Go read the whole thing. It's shocking. Shocking, I tell you...

bRight & Early ? More Disturbing Secrets

Part of the story behind the story in the interception of communications going outside the United States is the changes in technology to both make and monitor those communications. With the sharp rises in cell phone and internet use over the past decades, the entire face of these exchanges has been altered. The administration is within the law, in my opinion, to use the means at hand to keep us all safer as I have posted on here. Last night I said that I think that those responsible for the leaks should be found and prosecuted. However there is one program that is being allowed to continue that truly disturbs me.

J.

Well, remember how the UN was critical about the US military actually doing something instead of setting up the usual infrastructure BEFORE any relief work could be done?

United Press International - NewsTrack - Overheads take up to 1/3 of tsunami funds

Up to about a third of the $590 million U.N. fund spent for the Indian Ocean tsunami relief may have gone to pay for overhead.

The Financial Times says its two-month investigation showed the money appears to have been spent on administration, staff and related costs. The $590 million was part of the United Nation's $1.1 billion disaster flash appeal.

The newspaper also found several U.N. agencies continue to refuse to disclose details of their relief expenditure in spite of earlier pledges of transparency by senior officials.

The flash appeal covered the money donated by governments to the world body in the first weeks after the disaster to fund the early aid work, the Times reported.

The newspaper said details of that appeal it obtained from U.N. agencies such as the World Health Organization and the World Food Program showed 18 percent to 32 percent of the expenditure related to staff, administration and other costs.

J.

PJM News - Even Twentysomethings Seek Eternal Youth (6774968/AP)

CHICAGO, Dec. 24, 2005 (AP Online delivered by Newstex) -- Forget "40 is the new 30." Now even twentysomethings are joining the quest for eternal youth by using anti-aging products and wrinkle treatments.

Some young adults say they want to reverse the effects the sun has already had on their skin. Others already are feeling social pressure to retain their fresh-faced looks.

"Instead of starting when you're 40 or 45, you might as well start now," says Joanne Katsigiannis, a 24-year-old from suburban Chicago who's been using anti-aging products for about two years.

Like a lot of people her age, Katsigiannis once spent hours at tanning booths and out in the sun without using much sunscreen. She thought she looked better tan, until she realized her skin was starting to scar.

Personally, here's what I'd like to see in, oh, the next 10 years.

1. A treatement for presbyopia that's affordable and reliable. There's some work being done, but not all that much. I'd prefer a biological/biotech fix to one that's dependent on surgery, but would go with either.
2. Rejuvenation/reactivation of hair cells in the inner ear, to get back the frequency loss that comes with age. I'd prefer to avoid a hearing aid if possible - but there would seem to be some pretty severe hearing loss in the male side of my family (which may or may not be genetic) after you hit the 60s. I've been using earplugs and hearing protection for years, but I'm still noticing a diminuition of clarity and sharpness.
3. Osteoarthritis isn't much fun. Pallatives are okay, but a cure/rollback of the damage would be better.
4. Skin repair (and general organ functions) could stand some progress. And while we're at it, loratadine works okay but how about a biotech fix so I can erase the sensitivity to a lot of the stuff I'm allergic to? (And I don't mean allergy shots, either - all those do, as near as I can figure, is desensitize you to a specific allergen and the shots are both expensive and risky. How about a way to dial back my histamine reactions without having to pop loratadine for the rest of my life?)
5. Hair: Looks like mine's holding in there, but it's getting kind of gray. I'd like to get it back to the same color I had in my 20s. Heck, I imagine a lot of folks would just like to have hair. Again.
6. Regrowth of limbs or organs. Hey, starfish can regrow, why not people?

Guess that'll do it for now. Anyone have any pet projects they'd like to see?

J.

To Serve Man: A Cookbook for People

Enjoy! (Heh)

J.

Ordered a holiday meal for the folks from these people - The Cajun Turkey Company - Cajun Style Turkey’s, Hams & Specialty Meats!!

They got the address wrong and shipped stuff to the wrong place, the turducken I ordered was backordered and they didn't bother to tell me, the food was packed improperly and was completely thawed by the time it got there. They might have a good physical store, but I'll not use them for mail order again, and wouldn't recommend them to others.

J.

But... ow.

FileCabi.net - Video - "You Go Owned" 5 Minute Compilation

Just, oh... ow. Stupid human tricks - don't try them at home. PLEASE don't try them at home.

J.

Chicago Tribune | Judging the case for war

Did President Bush intentionally mislead this nation and its allies into war? Or is it his critics who have misled Americans, recasting history to discredit him and his policies? If your responses are reflexive and self-assured, read on.

On Nov. 20, the Tribune began an inquest: We set out to assess the Bush administration's arguments for war in Iraq. We have weighed each of those nine arguments against the findings of subsequent official investigations by the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee and others. We predicted that this exercise would distress the smug and self-assured--those who have unquestioningly supported, or opposed, this war.

The matrix below summarizes findings from the resulting nine editorials. We have tried to bring order to a national debate that has flared for almost three years. Our intent was to help Tribune readers judge the case for war--based not on who shouts loudest, but on what actually was said and what happened.

The administration didn't advance its arguments with equal emphasis. Neither, though, did its case rely solely on Iraq's alleged illicit weapons. The other most prominent assertion in administration speeches and presentations was as accurate as the weapons argument was flawed: that Saddam Hussein had rejected 12 years of United Nations demands that he account for his stores of deadly weapons--and also stop exterminating innocents. Evaluating all nine arguments lets each of us decide which ones we now find persuasive or empty, and whether President Bush tried to mislead us.

Well. I'll let you figure out what you think on it. At this late date, it's water under the bridge. One thing for sure, Bush will never get elected again.

J.

Not all wireless routers are created equal, it would seem. I had a cheap Airlink+ 802.11B/G router that did fairly well for the last year or so, but I noticed when someone was trying to call in or out (We've got Vonage VOIP) while any net access was going on, the audio results were rather choppy for the folks trying to talk. I figured it was just a limitation on the broadband connection itself, not able to handle the data rate.

However, I've not been terribly pleased with the Airlink. The range wasn't much inside the house, and I'd gotten a Hawking antenna to replace the stock one. That helped, some - but every so often I had to reboot the router because one of the house systems couldn't tap into it. Finally I got fed up with it and went to WalMart, picked up a Linksys WRT54G, and installed it yesterday.

All of a sudden, the audio problems with Vonage aren't there any more. The speed's a bit better, but I won't know if I've got the reboot problem for a couple of days. My hunch is that I won't have it - but we'll see.

Cheaper isn't necessarily better when it comes to routers. (Or PCMCIA 802.11G cards, but that's another story.)

J.

Not often you get a tourist-eye view of a country like Libya...

LA Weekly: Features: In the Land of the Brother Leader

“Do Americans know much about Libya?” he said.

“No,” I said. “Not really.”

He wanted to teach me something about his country, but he didn’t know where to start. So he recited encyclopedia factoids.

...

“And Qaddafi is our president,” he said. “About him, no comment.” He laughed, but I don’t think he thought it was funny.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Comment away. I don’t live here.”

He thought about that. For a long drawn-out moment, he calculated the odds and weighed the consequences. Then the dam burst.

J.

First, there was Moveon.org.

Now, there's Move America Forward.

Compare and contrast. Enjoy! (Well, if you can...)

J.

Couldn't come up with a title for this one.

PJM News - U.S. Justice Department opens probe into leak of Bush's domestic spying (6813051/AP)

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30, 2005 (The Canadian Press delivered by Newstex) -- The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President George W. Bush's secret domestic spying program.

The inquiry focuses on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said.

The Times revealed the existence of the program two weeks ago in a front-page story that acknowledged the news had been withheld from publication for a year, partly at the request of the administration and partly because the newspaper wanted more time to confirm various aspects of the program.

Instead, folks shrugged. "Tap the bad guys? What's wrong with that?" seems to be the general consensus. And truth be told, I don't have a problem with it, nor with the persistent cookies that the NSA apparently puts on folk's computers when they access the NSA web site.

We won't talk about the persistent cookies on the DNC web site.

J.

IRAQ THE MODEL - 'cause you sure won't get much but the daily 'leads 'cause it bleeds' stories out of the MSM.

J.

DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2005?

BEIJING Chinese President Hu Jintao reiterated China's strong commitment to peaceful development in his New Year Address broadcast Saturday to domestic and overseas audience via state TV and radio stations.

"Here, I would like to reiterate that China's development is peaceful development, opening development, cooperative development and harmonious development," Hu said.

"The Chinese people will develop ourselves by means of striving for a peaceful international environment, and promote world peace with our own development," Hu said in the address broadcast by China Radio International, China National Radio and China Central Television.

J.