Do NOT follow that link

CNN's 4th most popular story was too much for me.

You got the balls for a quagmire?

Froomkin disects Cheney's interview with Jonathan Karl.

In 1991, Cheney predicted invading Iraq would guarantee a quagmire. Karl asked Cheney what it was like to be so right. Cheney answered.

Froomkin asks:

"So if I read this correctly, Cheney is saying: Yes, it's a quagmire. But after 9/11 we needed to prove that we weren't weak. Is that now the official White House position?"

Mini Speakers

There's a TV at the gym hanging from the wall when you enter. A 40" flat-panel. It's not viewable from any part of the gym except the front desk. I would suppose that the bored staff watch it, except that every time I walk by it, there's this same commercial playing.

The setting is a downtown area. People are walking around listening to their iPods. They are wearing big old fish bowls on their heads, to symbolize how the iPods are disconnecting them from their surroundings. It's subtle. Some people are just waiting for the bus, but one couple is trying to make out. Of course, the fish bowls are preventing them from actually kissing. Then one guy suddenly is holding a different form of an MP3 player: one with little speakers on it. He takes the fishbowl off his head, smells the fresh air of the city, and triumphantly smashes the fish bowl on the ground. He thrusts his tiny speakers up into the air over his head and everyone around him looks up amazed. They remove their fish bowls and cast them aside, removing their iPods as they do so. The couple that was trying to make out remove their fish bowls, too, and finally kiss. Awwww. Everyone in the city starts dancing in the streets as the camera pulls back and the screen fades to black.

This is the dumbest commercial I have ever seen. If people wanted to listen to their music through tiny little speakers, they would be doing so already. Really, though, if people wanted to listen to their music out loud, they wouldn't use tiny little speakers, they would use big old boom boxes. And people did used to do bring their boom boxes everywhere they went -- but because they weren't keeping their music to themselves that everyone else in the world pressured them to stop doing it. Why would tiny speakers be any different? Other people's music is annoying. Ever ride the bus and hear a guy with headphones turned up too high? I tap that guy on the shoulder and tell him to turn it down. Now imagine that guy with little speakers, bobbing his head in satisfaction as he spreads his perfect taste in music with total strangers. Death metal, without the base, with the screetching sound of the symbols and the upper notes of the guitar, and a singer's unintelligable voice.

Painting

Yesterday, Pants and I painted one of the two small bedrooms in our house. The old color was this bright yellow. Because we're putting the house on the market in a few months, we want to repaint everything in a neutral color. We've been using this one paint color called "bone." It's off-white, kinda greyish. When I rolled the first patch of paint onto the yellow wall, my eyes played a trick on me. Against the old yellow paint, the new grey paint looked purple. One of those color-wheel things: yellow is the oposite of purple. It wasn't until the whole room was painted that we finally realized we'd been using purple paint.

Bet

A friend of mine recently won a bet he had with himself. The loser had to cut a 1" square of skin from a part of his body, and the winner was free to do whatever he wanted with it. He's been under a lot of stress you see. I guess that ended. Currently, he's having a piece of skin grafted over a recent wound. It's convenient the patch is exactly the right size for the wound; it's unfortunate that to commemorate his victory, he had the patched tanned first.

Kagan

I read through several pages of reader comments in response to a recent editorial by Kagan on Bush's proposed 20K troop increase in Iraq. On the second page, there was one post which could have been read to either say "I disagree with Kagan" or "I agree with Kagan." I couldn't quite tell. All of the others were from very angry readers who wanted to see Kagan's fat lips wrapped around an apple while he roasts on a spit.

The basic gist of Kagan's article, if you don't feel like reading it, is that the Dems are wrong to criticize the surge/escalation because they don't have a better plan for winning in Iraq. Implied in Kagan's editorial, but deftly unsaid, was that the surge would accomplish what Bush has promised: stability in Bagdahd. Many of the responders noted that we had been trying for stability in Bagdahd for some time and that little has changed to suggest that this year we'll get it.

It's funny to me: Kagan criticized Hillary for proposing a cap at the current level of 137K troops because he sees that number as arbitrary and lacking a justification. Kagan doesn't take up the responsibility, however, of justifying an expansion by 20K troops that to me seems just as arbitrary and without justification. Does that feel intellectually dishonest to anyone else?

The other thing that bothers me is that Kagan acts as if an anti-escalation stance is somehow just Politics with a capital P because its evil. Dems feel like they can gain power by pressing the Iraq issue. But wait. That's exactly what happened. They gained office because the public voted on the Iraq issue! The current congress better reflects the will of the American public. Who the fuck is Kagan to suggest that their anti-war agenda is impure? Its called Democracy.

It's fitting that he included the word "Delusion" in his title.

Spring Shed

More old pics from my cell phone. This is my siberian husky in spring; this picture was taken after I pulled fur off of him for 10 minutes. I wasn't feeling very attached to the fur, so I just let it fall on the ground. He didn't mind me pulling hair off. He does this every year.

Same species

I took this pic on my cell phone two years ago while crossing campus. These animals could have grandchildren together.

csh

I stumbled onto a cool little page giving examples of fun things you can do with csh. I wish I'd found it years ago.

Three unneccessary judges

Last night the wife and I watched Tuesday's American Idol -- it was TiVo'd. This is the beginning of the season, so they're auditioning tens of thousands of singers. They were in Minnisota so the usual 3 judges were joined by Jewel, making a panel of four. Of the thousands of auditioners, many many of them are terrible and have no hope of winning. There are some who have no hope for anything. Many sing out of key, meekly, and in a narrow range. (Interesting note: 9 times out of 10 a guy who can only sing in falseto but lacks a mid-range and a bass, or a girl who can only sing deeply but lacks a mid-range and a saprano will describe themselves as having a great range.)

They're reactions to being told they should not be singing are mixed; some have set their hopes on winning this competition and becoming rich and famous and I assume loved, so that when they get cut they shatter.

There are also several whose reactions border on violence. They debate the judges, tell them "you only heard one song," and leave the room yelling obscenities.

This is the part everyone tunes into, of course, the "drama" that surrounds these whirling tazmanian devils of failure. Of course the producers know this and edit the shows to include the dramatic failures and exclude those who solemnly and gracefully accept that they will not win the contest. But since these people never make it into the show, we can only assume they exist; we can be certain that there are many vith violent delusions of grandeur.

There was something I noticed in watching last night that makes this explitive-flinging croud all the more amusing: the judges always agree. There was never a case of a border-line singer being given two thumbs up and one thumb down. In fact, of those given the golden ticket to Holywood, I was iffy on half of them, thinking they were pitchy or their voice went thin in the high notes... I would have expected the judges to be split.

But not once was their dissent amongst the judges. Their bar was low but way higher than most could get to. And the judges agreed on exactly where that bar belonged.

So effectively, there was a single judge up there, and three unneccessary ones. Why? Why hire 3 judges? Why go the next step further to hire a fourth guest judge?

I think it's because of the delusionals who protest and yell and scream and shake their fists at the judges. If there were only one judge telling a delusional that their voice is made for the deaf, then the bodyguards in wings (we never get to see them, but you know they are there) would have to step in and break up dozens of fights. The unneccessary judges are there to provide saftey; saftey in numbers. I could probably take Simon, but I don't think I could take Simon and Randy, and certainly not if Paula were there scratching at me. I'm not sure the presence or absence of Jewel would make much of a difference for me. She probably knows how to fight, but she's only 100 pounds.

White Whale

Garrison Keiler had a funny article on Salon. (To read, you have to obtain a "site pass" by watching an ad.)

Power

Slate has a good article on Bush's power trip. I read it yesterday while surfing Sullivan's website, but I would have read it on my own anyways...

revision and retirement

Hitchens has decided that the civil war in Iraq was inevitable -- that Saddam would not have been able to keep a lid on the boiling tensions between Shia and Sunni factions -- and that our presence in Iraq now as the pot begins to boil over is a good thing. There you have it, a revisionist explanation for why we invaded: to put ourselves in the middle of a religious struggle.

Meanwhile, Bush is considering a new strategy (or soda) called "Surge." The idea is that we need to provide security for the Iraqi people; that democracy cannot emerge in the presence of excessive violence.

WAY TO GO YOU FUCKING IDIOT. We could have used some security in Iraq immediately after we invaded, don't you think? You know, fill a power vacuum before allowing insurgents to get a good footing?

ITS TOO LATE, BUSH, YOU FUCKED IT UP.

Abizaid agrees. He's retiring.

Padilla

I've been disgusted by the descriptions that surfaced a few weeks ago about the detention of Jose Padilla. I am shocked and appauled. Horrified. Padilla faced no charges for years -- no indictment -- and instead was detained as an unlawful combatant on suspicion of plans to detinate a dirty bomb. The indictment that was finally delivered makes no mention of this dirty bomb. The reason? The only evidence against him are toture confessions.

Great job, Bush.

So while Bush has obtained no admissible evidence against Padilla, he's abused him so thuroughly, Padilla remains only the shell of a former man barely able to control his own body.

Salon has a great article contrasting the successful prosecution of a right-wing domestic terrorist threat in Tennessee and the miserable failure of a prosecution of Padilla.

From Salon:
"Given the chance to prosecute Jose Padilla in the way that countless prosecutions had been successfully conducted before, the Bush administration chose instead to go a new route, assuring us all the while that only they knew how to keep us safe. In that, they seem to have failed."

Gordievsky: Russia has become a terrorist regime

Powerful opinion piece by a former KGB agent.

Clown

Scaramela was a charlatan.

Kovtun was not poisoned Nov 1

The half life of polonium 210 is thirty days in humans. Now, thirty five days after Litvinenko's Nov 1 poisoning, a Russian business man, Kovtun, falls seriously ill and into a coma* from Polonium 210 poisoning. Fishy? You bet. Why would someone fall drastically ill so rapidly so long after an initial exposure to Polonium? After all, Litvinenko was hospitalized only hours after he first fell ill. Do you think the timing of Kovtun's hospitalization could have anything to do with the British arrival in Moscow?

*Kovtun's layer says he is not in a coma. Why is there a discrepancy? Why would the hospital say otherwise?

The Russians will say "Oh, look, Litvinenko poisoned another man but poisoned himself in the process, case closed. Everyone go back to your business and forget about this incident."

Litvinenko

A lot of my readers* have been emailing me asking why I haven't yet blogged about Litvinenko's poisoning.

(*All of them in fact. No one reads this blog.)

I have been following this case like a hawk, of course. I'm decidedly anti-Putin and I see the connection between Litvinenko and Politkovskaya as further evidence against Putin. (Can you believe that fucker dismissed her assasination by noting that her work as a journalist was inconsequential?)

So, the story for those of my readers who haven't been following it*:

(*Again, an empty set)

Litvinenko stumbles into a London hospital after a shitload of vomiting. 10 days later, he's lost all his hair. Litvinenko accuses the Kremlin of beging behind his apparent poisoning. Doctors struggle to identify whatever it is that's killing him. They fail; it kills him. They detect Polonium 210 in an unnatrually high concentration.

Polonium, it turns out, isn't available to anyone who doesn't have a nuclear reactor.

The Britts then start combing London for more of this Polonium and find it in minute traces everywhere Litvinenko has been.

His timeline is here.

Some of the controversy has revolved around Mario Scaramella who met Litvinenko for lunch at a sushi bar on the day of his poisoning. Scaramella has been accussed of being behind the poisoning, which he vehemently denies, since the two were friends and on the "same side" in the investigation into Politkovskaya's murder -- and because the topic of the conversation was a hit list from the Kremlin that Scaramella had gotten wind of... Scaramella was on it. Scaramella also says that Litvinenko did not eat anything

Today, Scaramella was found to have some amount of Po 210 in his system. (Traces or lots? Don't know.)

The rest of the controversy has been over the meeting that Litvinenko had with two former KGB agents in a London hotel on the day of his poisoning. It's a classic case of "you done it" -- Just like the dioxin poisoning of Ukranian candidate Victor Yushchenko two years ago.

Polonium 210 was found both at the hotel where Litvinenko met the KGB agents, and at the sushi bar where he met Scaramella afterwards. I'm no genius, but seems to me like the poison simply followed Litvinenko around with him -- he shed some at the hotel and then later he shed some at the sushi bar. This clears Scaramella's name.

Russian Mafia

The poisoning of an outspoken critic of Putin,Alexander Litvinenko, seems related to the assasination of an outspoken critic of Putin, Anna Politkovskaya. An italian man has turned emails over to Scottland Yard describing a well organized plot to kill Litvinenko by the Russian Mafia.

I'd put money on Putin being behing the whole thing.

Boycot OJ

Blood money buys Simpson's book.

Don't buy it.