Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Hope is on the way...

...for all of you whose next breath hangs on my every blogging word. The insurance check for the robbery has arrived and the new laptop is on the way. Hopefully this will result in more frequent posts.

This morning on the way to work I'm listening to the Underground Garage on Sirius and Husker Du's 'Dead Set on Destruction" comes on. I think this was off Candy Apple Gray. In my end-of-year post, I proclaimed 2005 for me as a year of pre-punk, punk, and post-punk. It was a big miss on my part not to have included more Husker Du in 2005 as they are a perfect exemplar of the post-punk sound. I had a Tandy 1000HD computer in college that was pretty much good for one thing - Jack Nicklaus Golf. A great weekday combination was Husker Du's Candy Apple Gray, Jack Nicklaus Golf, Red Man Golden Blend, and cold beer.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

The Truth About Dubai

Last December, U.S. News provided the lowdown on Dubai:

From Egypt to Afghanistan, when terrorists and gangsters need a place to meet, to relax, maybe to invest, they head to Dubai, a bustling city-state on the Persian Gulf...Dubai also serves as the region's criminal crossroads, a hub for smuggling, money laundering, and underground banking. There are Russian and Indian mobsters, Iranian arms traffickers, and Arab jihadists. Funds for the 9/11 hijackers and African embassy bombers were transferred through the city. It was the heart of Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan's black market in nuclear technology and other proliferation cases. Half of all applications to buy U.S. military equipment from Dubai are from bogus front companies, officials say. "Iran," adds one U.S. official, "is building a bomb through Dubai." Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents thwarted the shipment of 3,000 U.S. military night-vision goggles by an Iranian pair based in Dubai. Moving goods undetected is not hard. Dhows--rickety wooden boats that have plowed the Arabian Sea for centuries--move along the city center, uninspected, down the aptly named Smuggler's Creek.

While the UAE supported the Taliban, they don't recognize Israel.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Port Controversy

I find it a bit inconsistent that the President, who's willing to break laws in the name of National Security and doing everything he can to protect the homeland from terrorists, now adamantly supports a state-owned company from a country with 9/11 complicity to own some of our very vulnerable ports.

Defending his decision, he says, "I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company. I am trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to the people of the world, `We'll treat you fairly.'" Well, Great Britain, headquarters for the company that now owns the port, was not complicit the the planning and execution of 9/11. Great Britain is not located in the most unstable part of the world. While the current UAE government may be pro-Western, how can we be sure they will be on our side in ten years? Or ten months? I feel pretty comfortable that the British government is pretty stable.

Most of the bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia are very pro-Western, but would we sell them a railyard or an airport?

I'm all for free-trade and globalization and the democratizing effect they have on the world, but this seems real damn risky. I am sure that it is an overstatement to call the UAE the fox and our ports the henhouse...but it's not that much of an overstatement.

My second area of confusion is that Bush usually doesn't come out so forcefully on something until it's been politically vetted. I don't see anybody saying anything good about this. It looks like a bipartisan loser. How is Rove going to spin this into an election year plus for Bush like he did with the domestic wiretapping scandal?

Academic Political Correctness

Free speech seems to be under fire lately. The greatest example is perhaps the cartoon furor, but I'm particularly disturbed by the resignation of Larry Summers as president of Harvard. To me, this is political correctness gone awry. Summers was skewered because he suggested that innate gender differences may be why there were fewer women professors than men. I think this sounds like an excellent topic for further research, especially at a noted research institution as Harvard. I don't think anyone can claim that there are not "innate gender differences" between men and women. Short of the ability to discuss this in a university setting and research it, how could we ever address it? If anyplace should be a bastion of free speech, it should be the university, and this action bolsters the argument that universities are held captive by the p.c. left.

Friday, February 17, 2006

Cherry-picked Intelligence

Very revealing (and long) article from the former Middle East Chief of the CIA. The nut of it - what we already knew - intelligence was manipulated and cherry picked to support decisions already made. I particularly liked this bit:

[T]he greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments concerned not WMD, but the relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. The enormous attention devoted to this subject did not reflect any judgment by intelligence officials that there was or was likely to be anything like the "alliance" the administration said existed. The reason the connection got so much attention was that the administration wanted to hitch the Iraq expedition to the "war on terror" and the threat the American public feared most, thereby capitalizing on the country's militant post-9/11 mood.

Latest from the Farsi Fuehrer

The Persian Pogromist said:

We must believe in the fact that Islam is not confined to geographical borders, ethnic groups and nations.

So kind of a Catholic missionary thing? Share the love with the world? Mein Mullah continued...

It’s a universal ideology that leads the world to justice...We don’t shy away from declaring that Islam is ready to rule the world.

Ah. Okay, then. Fundamentalist Iranian Islam ruling the world. People, this intransigent fellow is about to get the bomb. Like I said here, the Chamberlain at Munich moment is nearing.

Cratering

Hopefully some of you wise financial types were smart enough to short RadioShack stock. If the humiliating CEO Resume scandal and response from the eunuchs on the Board of Directors wasn't enough, fourth-quarter earnings were so far in the toilet as to necessitate a "turnaround plan." It would require Jacques Cousteau, two Bathyspheres, a gross of underwater light cannons, and an Ohio-class nuclear submarine to see my stock options.

Defining Centrism

Political eggheads should read this article. It is an analysis of the American electorate that addresses the notion of the American center (of which I am a member). The main point of the article is to further stratify "independents" into three categories: independent leaning democrat, independent independent, and independent leaning republican. It turns out that over the last fifty years these "leaners" have been reliable votes for the side to which they lean. Therefore the true size and importance of the independent vote is grossly overstated. Looking at the last election, it is patently obvious that the "turnout the base" strategy worked better than the "appeal to the center" strategy.

Here's an interesting observation from the study:

Democratic-leaning independents are usually more partisan in their voting behavior than are weak Democrats. Or perhaps, on reflection, this is not so surprising after all. Remember, some components of the traditionally Democratic base, such as union members and blacks, tend to be socially conservative, while many college-educated independents turn up their noses at partisan labels but are consistently liberal in outlook.

As much as I'd like to claim membership in the ranks of the "true" independent," I think this is probably where I fit in.

The most salient point made in the article is about marketing, but justifies what, I think, all of us already know. All stripes of Republican are more brand loyal and ideologically aligned with the GOP than Dems are with their party. While the overall number of Dem and Dem leaners is greater than that of the GOP, the lack of message and ideological consistency among Dems reduces turnout...and loses elections. After six years, Bush, who rode into office as a "uniter," has shown to be a singular polarizer of the country and the world. It's hard to imagine what can unite Democrats if the Bushian ability to polarize has failed.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Beak boy Update

I commented on the men's skater who wore an orange glove to represent a swan's beak in the gay sport thread. Well, I think the men's two-man luge has some major competition. Turns out beak-boy is American Johnny Weir. I encourage all interested parties to read this article. A sampling:

"I don't like to be called a jock," Weir told NBC. I don't really see that Johnny Weir needs to lose any sleep over that particular concern. But he continued: "That makes me think of spandex-covered football players. It's not - not me. I'm in rhinestones and velvet, not spandex."

Nobody understood what the single red glove was all about. Johnny Weir wore that glove during his figure-skating short program Tuesday. When asked what it meant, he explained that the glove was the beak. And he was the swan. That explained it all right. Weir also announced that he named the glove "Camille." It's a good name for a glove.

No Money in Blogs

Here's a brief but interesting article on how to spot the end of a trend. The trend in question here? Making money off blogs. One category of trend-enders:

The Gullible Latecomers: In the end stages of any investment mania, the clueless and the greedy flood in. You know things are really poised for a fall when people who have no management experience and feeble business plans somehow manage to raise cash for ventures. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Pajamas Media. Last November, the collection of right-wing blogs (with a few lefties thrown in for laughs) grandly announced the closing of a $3.5 million round of venture capital financing. Roger Simon, the screenwriter-turned-blogger who is the CEO of the enterprise, promised "to change the way people report and access news and commentary." I don't know. It looks to me like a bunch of blogs with their own logo.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Olympic Survey

My experience with the Winter Olympics has been limited to a couple of women's hockey games, the Bode meltdown in the downhill, and snippets of other silly sports like Nordic Combined. I really enjoy watching the women's hockey because the game is a tick slower than the NHL and, therefore, allows you concentrate on the entire ice and see plays develop rather than just following the puck.

In general, the Winter Olympics appear to be specially designed for gay white people. In this vein, I ask you, the readers, to render an opinion on the gayest Winter Olympic sport. Feel free to comment as anonymous if your afraid of the political correctness police.

Cheney Update

The personification of evil has finished his on-air mea culpa with sycophantic right-wing house organ Brit Hume (I reserve the right to update this characterization after I see the interview...but I'm not expecting much.) Reports say that Cheney confesses to drinking one beer at lunch. Please. The only people that say they had one beer are people that had a shitload of beers and just got pulled over. He was hammered.

The new rumor is that he is having an affair with the third hunter.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Drunk Cheney Conspiracy continued

From the LA Times article:

The Secret Service said it had turned away one sheriff's deputy at the ranch the night of the accident because arrangements had been made for Cheney to be interviewed the following morning, Associated Press said.

Right. If I'd shot someone, I'm sure I could make an appointment with the cops.

The party of 11 hunters set out in two trucks Saturday morning, driving around the mesquite-dotted property and shooting quail until about 12:30 p.m., said Anne Armstrong, co-owner of the ranch. Then they broke for a lunch of antelope, jicama salad and camp bread, washed down with Dr. Pepper.

Nothing goes with jicama and antelope quite like -er, uh- Dr. Pepper?

Conspiracy Theory Bandwagon

This is too delicious...I can't resist. I think there's a good chance Cheney was drunk or had at least been drinking. I know I would have been drunk out hunting birds on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in South Texas. I've been around enough rich Republicans on Saturday afternoons (at A&M football games) to know they're not above tippling. Anyhow, that's why they waited 14 hours before he met with cops. If this cat Whittington drops dead, Cheney may be in an intoxication manslaughter jackpot unless all the witnesses perjure themselves.

Search Engines in China

I confess being conflicted over the kerfluffle with internet companies and the repressive Chinese government. The nut of the deal is that Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Cisco and others are censoring content as the price of doing business with the booming economy. For example, I entered "Tibetan independence" on Yahoo's China site and, predictably, I don't know what I found because it was in Chinese...but I have it on good authority that I would have been redirected to only articles from the state run press. Ditto for Tienanmen, Falun Gong, Democracy, etc.

So the question is: should U.S. companies be complicit in Chinese repression? Yahoo is reported to have turned over emails that led to the jailing of political dissidents. On the face, I would say no. However, on the flip-side I believe "sunshine is the best disinfectant" and if we can incrementally inject some information into Chinese culture, it's bound to spread.

The real answer may be one of nuance. I hear Google only agreed to the censorship provided they appended a message at the bottom of the results page that says the content had been filtered. Thoughts?

Friday, February 10, 2006

Bring it on, bitch

At one of these protests over cartoons, the leader of Hezbollah said, “Today, we are defending the dignity of our prophet with a word, a demonstration but let George Bush and the arrogant world know that if we have to ... we will defend our prophet with our blood, not our voices."

Fuck you, buddy.

How can this knucklehead call the world "arrogant" as he seeks to impose upon us his backward, tyrannical worldview. One of the things I dislike about Bush's government is its arrogant interventionist execution of poorly thought-out airy-fairy plans (plans that are generally designed to meet political ends.) But the U.S. has some skins on the wall and, ulitimately, we're the straw that stirs the drink.

Here's your quagmire

After three years and $16 Billion, you can still only count on four hours of electricity per day in Baghdad. Compare this with 16 to 24 hours before the war, based on a report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq (not the so-called liberal media). It gets damn hot in Texas in the summer and if I could only get four hours of electricity, I would be clamoring for some accountability. To make matters worse, 20% of Iraqis have sewers and only 32% have drinking water. I might as well just light my tax dollars on fire.

Anyone with a cursory knowledge of Maslow's Hierarchy should be able to wrest lasting control of this place. These people don't want democracy, they want toilets and air conditioning. Why can't we improve those things first and then worry about self-actualizing concepts like freedom and democracy.

Run-of-the-mill business undergrads have heard that you can't manage what you can't measure. Here's a situation where we've got the measurement part down cold, but are failing to adjust in the management area. It's pretty clear that the civilian political leadership hasn't been up to the task, but these numbers suggest that the management on the ground has sucked as well. If this was a company, hopefully we'd have fired the CEO, but we damn sure would have changed strategy and tactics. This hasn't happened with the "stay the course" bunch.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Comparing Fundamentalists

In the midst of the great cartoon riots of 2006, I was discussing with a former commenter to this site the irony of these proceedings: these radical Islamists are protesting the portrayal of Islam as a violent religion with violence. The former commenter suggested that no religion makes itself such an easy target for stereotyping than modern Islam. I, of course, took this opportunity to rake Evangelical Christians over the coals. In the wake of this discussion comes this interesting column out of the Times of London which does a good job of comparing and contrasting the two groups (while buffaloing my contentions about evangelicals). Key point:

Far from commanding any special respect or protection from the State, religions must be exposed to relentless criticism, like all non-rational traditions and beliefs. Some religions will survive this contest between tradition and modernity, between reason and revelation, as Christianity, Judaism and Islam have done for centuries. Others, such as Marxism and Scientology, will fall by the wayside. In America, the Constitution, with its prohibition against the establishment of any state religion and its absolute defence of free speech, demands a robust competition between faith and reason and among the religions themselves. And in the end, as America’s surprising piety clearly shows, it is not just society but also religion that emerges stronger from the refiner’s fire of competition, criticism and even insult.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Thoughts on the King Service

As you know, I like nothing better than seeing Bush get gigged. This is exactly what happened today at Coretta Scott King's service, when a preacher and Jimmy Carter pretty much excoriated Bush to his face. Preacher Lowery said:

We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there / But Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here / Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor.

As much as I'd like to rationalize this as Mrs. King going down fighting, I think this was disrespectful to Mrs. King and too tactless by half. It did get a two minute standing ovation, and I'll be interested to listen to Ed Gordon tomorrow to hear the response in the black community and whether they anticipate any galvanic effect.

Two things...

I'm still without a laptop and probably will be for a while, so I'll be blogging during work downtime (which, unfortunately, has been rare of late). Two things have caught my notice today. First, I think Russ Feingold had a nice retort to the administrations "pre 9-11 mindset" talking point. He said:

This administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms somehow has a pre-9/11 world view. In fact, the President has a pre-1776 world view. Our government has three branches, not one. And no one, not even the President, is above the law.

Secondly, these Muslims that are rising up around the globe and burning embassies are really in need of a sense of humor. I'm afraid there will be a giant puss-out in Europe as they pull up the kid gloves with which the West treats the Muslim world. I admit I'm not the one to be commiserating with Muslims on the sacrosanctity of their holies, but at some point these folks need to stop being such titty-babies about every little thing. I would like nothing more than the world collectively telling them to get the chips off their shoulders and grow up. I thought Andrew Sullivan had a great point when he said:

One massive supporting pillar of Jihadism has been the West's refusal to treat the Islamic world as it would any other part of the world. If Chinese radicals were ransacking Western embassies because of a cartoon, and were backed by the Chinese government, we would be outraged, demanding apologies, severing relations, and so on. But when Muslims do it, backed by Islamist governments, we are supposed to take it on the chin, to "respect" their religious traditions, issue mealy-mouthed statements, etc. In many ways, this is the real offense: treating Muslims as if their violation of global norms, and thralldom to medieval conceptions of politics and religion, were somehow acceptable. They are not acceptable.

The Iranians, as usual, did not help matters. While President Ahmadinejad was planning his trip to the annual pariah conference - held in Havana this year - his state-run newspaper solicited the best holocaust cartoons from the readership. In my opinion the proper response would have been, "Whatever dude." The actual response...pompous rhetoric from the European analog of the Anti-Defamation League furthering the "fuck you, no fuck you" that's been going on between Iranians and Jews for quite a while now.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Burgle Blog Break

We got cold burgled the other day and our laptop was stolen. Therefore I'm in a limited blogging posture until this is remediated.

Takebacks

I wish this came as a surprise...

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.