We call him "Lil' Elvis"

And now you know why.

Filed under: cats

It's all Tenet's fault

The official war apologist talking points in response to David Kay’s flat assertion that Iraq had no weapons or programs on the eve of war:

• Clinton signed the Regime Change bill!
• Kay said the CIA said there was no pressure—it’s all Tenet’s fault!

Right. Except that Clinton didn’t start a war—he signed a bill that said we’d like to see Saddam gone, but aren’t going to do anything about it. Anyway, you hate the guy; stop hiding behind his skirts.

And the idea that mean old Mr. Tenet shoved the dirty weapons intelligence down poor Georgie and Dickie and Donnie and Paulie’s throats and forced—just FORCED!—them to go to war with their sloppy, sloppy work is so absurd as to threaten the fabric of spacetime itself. Because mean old Mr. Tenet would have had to go back in time to 1992 to start the shoving process, because that’s when Wolfowitz first started pushing the government to invade Iraq.

And yes, when you have information that is threatening but vague and uncertain and you depict that information as concrete and certain and urgent, that is a lie. When you are the president of the United States and you do that, then you have subverted democracy by denying the governed the opportunity to give their reasoned consent. And then when you blame the bad result of your bad action on your employees, you reveal that you are not just a liar, not just a closet autocrat, but a coward as well.

Filed under: politics/war

What happened and what's next

Once upon a time, I was an enthusiastic supporter of Howard Dean. I went to meetups—if you know me, you understand what it means that I would seek out the company of 50 strangers in a bar. I donated money. I wanted him to win and thought he was the best hope of the Democrats and the nation.

Now, not so much, and I’m clearly not alone. Dean is the same guy, and I don’t know anything about him now that I didn’t then. Why, then, do I not count myself among the the good Doctor’s supporters anymore? Because he did his job.

Last year, like Dean, I wanted to know why Democrats were acting more like boiled noodles than an opposition party. Why they rolled over for Bush’s idiotic and counterproductive war, tax cuts, education policies, Medicare plan, and so on and so on. They displayed no courage, no heart, no brains, and Dorothy was nowhere to be found. Until Dean came along.

He was the frontrunner for so long not because of who he is, nor the specifics of his message, nor the internet fundraising (though that helped), but because he talked nasty about Bush and didn’t apologize. He was the only Democrat running as a Democrat, and the only promise he made that counted was: I will stand up to George Bush and I will not be afraid.

Ok, so it took me a while to figure all this out. It took John Kerry and John Edwards and Wes Clark a bit less long, and they are all singing Dean’s tunes now. This is a good thing. It gives Democrats a genuine choice. I like Dean, personally, but his appeal is clearly limited and his personality polarizing. A lot of people were willing to overlook those flaws when the other guys were looking more like soup than candidates.

I think Josh Marshall and TAPPED are correct that today’s Trippi chucking is incomprehensibly stupid and looks like the beginning of the end. But I’m not upset, because even when Dean the man is out, Dean the message will still be running.

Filed under: politics/2004

New Hampshire

I have few coherent thoughts about New Hampshire, except: was it really only a month ago that Dean led Kerry 45–15? And: how long before the press front-pages Kerry haircut “stories” again?

Anyway, in lieu of cutting commentary and scathing wit, here is a nice soup recipe.

Piña Colada Soup

It’s a coconut milk soup with pineapple. Get it? This recipe will make a total of 4–6 extremely filling servings. It’s vaguely Thai in flavor; feel free to add some curry paste if you want to make it spicy.

Ingredients

• 1 quart stock (chicken or vegetable)
• 1 can coconut milk
• 3/4 cup pineapple chunks
• 1 small red onion, sliced into half moons
• 1/2 cup sliced carrot
• 1/2 cup sliced celery
• 1 yellow pepper cut into thin slices
• 2 teaspoons grated ginger
• 4 kaffir lime leaves
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped lemon peel
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 1/2 tablespoons salt (roughly!)
• 1 packet of ramen-like noodles per serving
• cilantro and green onion for garnish
• pepper

Procedure

1. Put the coconut milk, lime leaves, lemon peel, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and ginger in a big, heavy pot over medium-high heat. Bring to low simmer, reduce heat, and leave simmering while you do all of the other slicing, chopping, and continuous reloading of election returns. Let it simmer for at least 20 minutes to reduce and concentrate the flavor.
2. Add the stock, stir to mix. Turn heat back up to and bring it all to a low simmer, then turn the heat back down.
3. In another pot, boil enough water to cook the noodles. I recommend that you cook the noodles fresh each time you serve the soup—assuming you’re going to serve some tonight and refrigerate the rest. Anyway, prepare the noodles according to the package directions, drain, and set aside.
4. Heat a skillet, preferably nonstick, over high heat. Add a little canola or vegetable oil. Fry the onion until it is lightly carmelized. Pop the onion into the soup bowl. Repeat with carrots, celery, and pineapple.
5. Add the sliced yellow pepper to the soup, and bring it all up to a low simmer. Add lemon juice. Check for seasoning—I had to add another teaspoon of salt, but your mileage will vary. Take out the lime leaves.
6. Put a serving’s worth of noodles in each bowl, along with a bit of chopped cilantro and green onion. Ladle soup onto noodles.

Was it a hearty dose of Piña Colada soup that put the fire back in John Kerry’s belly? Did a tragic lack of Piña Colada soup lead to the brain malfunction that resulted in someone coining “Joe-mentum”? Only the flinty sales-tax avoiders and state-owned liquor store proprietors of New Hampshire know. And they ain’t tellin’. Nope.

Filed under: politics/2004

See, hear, speak

Monkeys got nothing on these boys. When it comes to ignorance of evil, they are second to none. Why, the very words “Dick Cheney”* are meaningless to them!

• Rejected alternatives:
  – Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man
  – Santa Cruz Operation
  – Martha Stewart
  – global variable
  – Little Green Footballs
  – Bennifizzle

Filed under: cats

NY Times removes head from buttocks

Glory be. The mighty New York Times has finally gotten wind of the fact that Iraq hasn’t had Ws-o’-MD or programs to produce them since the original Gulf war. All it took was the guy running the search quitting and saying so.

David Kay, who led the American effort to find banned weapons in Iraq, said Friday after stepping down from his post that he has concluded that Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons at the start of the war last year.

The Times is still weasling around here a bit, though, because what Kay actually said was:

“I don’t think they existed[.] What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don’t think there was a large-scale production program in the ‘90s[.]”

No weapons, no programs, nothing. Remember: I’m not saying that. The guy Bush appointed to find the weapons is saying that. And quitting, because he didn’t find any.

So once again, war apologists, riddle me this. We invaded a country that possessed neither WMD nor active WMD programs. We have so far spent over 100 billion dollars on this invasion. We have suffered 10,000 troops incapacitated or wounded on top of 500 dead, and will have 100,000 or more pinned down in a guerrilla war for who knows how long. We’ve reduced our military’s power, effectiveness, and flexibility for years to come, without eliminating a serious threat—because there was no serious threat posed by the country we invaded.

Please don’t mention the fact that Saddam is a big fucking jerk; everybody knows that and it’s completely beside the point. There are a whole lot of big fucking jerks running countries out there, many of whom are (directly or indirectly) culpable in so much more human suffering than Saddam that they are not even going to be in the same circle of Hell when they all get there. At least one of them also has, or is very close to having, nuclear weapons.

If the latent threat posed by North Korea were to flare up, our ability to deal with it would be hampered by the fact that 100,000 of the people who we might need to do the dealing are in Baghdad and can’t leave.

So then the riddle. If the Iraq war did not eliminate a threat consonant with its costs and risks, how did it make us more safe?

Filed under: politics/war

Iowa

Well, I bet that took everyone but Michael Whouley by surprise.

It’s quite a troubling result for me as a strategic Dean supporter. By strategic I mean that my support is, or was, predicated on a bit of liking the guy, plus a lot of liking his fight and his organization.

But Iowa. Holy cow. Fight? Dean got rolled by bad press engineered by his rivals, and never found an effective comeback. Organiztion? 18%? Not good enough. Kerry and Edwards brought in the new voters. Dean didn’t. Dean failed a major test—and that’s the best you can spin it.

So, what now? Dean still has great strengths: broad organization (if, apparently, not all that effective) and money.

Edwards won’t get my vote in the primary season under any circumstances. Too inexperienced, and an unapologetic supporter of Bush’s war. No thanks.

Clark has been my second choice for a while. Good guy. Decent fundraising—but he opted in, meaning his campaign will go dark sometime in June as he hits the primary season money limit. If he had uncapped money and a working organization—and any experience in politics—with his resumé and TV skills, he’d be unstoppable.

I’ll be surprised if Iowa doesn’t vault Kerry back into the lead in New Hampshire. I’ll be surprised if he keeps that lead for too many days. In the eyes of a hostile press, he still has problems—stiff speaker, looks French, can’t eat a sandwich like man—but he’s shown that he’s capable of outmaneuvering a smart competitor, and manipulating that same press to vent its hostility elsewhere. And he opted-out, so he wouldn’t necessarily spend the summer lying in the dirt while Bush kicks him in the head over and over and over again. If he wins New Hampshire, he could take the whole game.

If Kerry, Clark or Dean busts from the pack and looks like a clear winner, I’ll join the bandwagon. Better to end the infighting as soon as the result is inevitable. Until then, call me strategically undecided.

Filed under: politics/2004

Bedtime for prof-zo

Cliché of the week: it’s always bedtime when you’re a cat.

Filed under: cats

Credibility quiz

Whom do you find more credible?

A. SCO, via their Notice of “Compliance” with IBM‘s motion to compel them to tell us all exactly what it is they are suing over.

16. Our engineers have reached the conclusion that parts of Linux have almost certainly been copied or derived from AIX or Dynix/ptx. In those cases, confirmation of this opinion would require access to more current versions of AIX and Dynix/ptx.

B. Hamburger aficionado Wimpy.

I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

The rest of SCO‘s statement appears to confirm that they are, in essence, suing IBM for developing for Linux some of the same technologies IBM developed for AIX. IBM owns AIX, but SCO appears to believe that since AIX is a UNIX-derived operating system, everything that IBM has ever done to, with, around, near, because of, or in spite of AIX belongs to SCO.

Novel theory, to say the least. My fearless prediction: suit dismissed without prejudice. IBM patent suit goes forward. SCO dies by the sword.

Filed under: technology/linux

Etiquette quiz

You are driving your fancy, high-priced silver car on a residential street. You make an illegal left turn, nearly striking a pedestrian in the crosswalk. The pedestrian addresses you angrily. What is the proper response?

A. Drive on as if nothing had happened.

B. Pull over and apologize for your inability to read road signs, obey traffic laws, or see people 5 feet in front of you.

C. Stop in the middle of the street, roll down your window, and scream gibberish, obscenties, and epithets at him! It’s not you who is wrong! Impossible! You have a fancy silver car! You are a big man! Something as silly as a little traffic law doesn’t apply to you—and if you’ve endangered the life of an innocent bystander, why, he had it coming! And who is he anyway? Nobody! Certainly not a big man like you! Frankly, you’d be doing him a favor. When will he have another opportunity to be so close to greatness? To be run over by such an important man—with such a nice car! You gave him the chance of a lifetime, and what did you get? Grief! Some people.

Jackass.

Filed under: notes

The power of green cheese

It’s greater than we thought. The mere mention of green cheese can repeal the laws of physics, economics, and common sense.

The moon has one-sixth the gravitational field of Earth, so moon-based
aircraft could launch from there more cheaply.

Yes, and they are much cheaper to build and operate, too! No pesky wings or fuel required! On the moon, you see, aircraft fly just as well without such mundane accoutrements. Air. Craft.

Even the often-silly-on-science Gregg Easterbrook has detected the (I promise never again to call it) lunacy of the Bush plan:

[A] Moon base would not only not be useful to support a Mars mission—it would be an obstacle to a Mars mission. Any weight bound for Mars can far more efficiently depart directly from low-Earth orbit than a first stop at the Moon; a stop at the Moon would require huge expenditures of fuel to land and take off again. The landing, in turn, would accomplish absolutely nothing—any mission components on the Moon would have been sent there from Earth, which means they could have departed directly for Mars from low-Earth orbit at a far lower cost.

I want to humans go to Mars and come safely home again in my lifetime. Bush’s plan, although it uses the word “Mars,” will make that goal less attainable. If you have been paying attention to anything that has happened in this country over the last 3 years, this is no surprise.

Filed under: science

Their eyes were watching Sony

Did I say posting would be "light"? Sorry, I meant posts would be as hard to find around here as WMD in Iraq or honesty, integrity, or decency in the Bush Whitehouse. But enough politics and bloggery. On to the cats!

Greetings from Beelzebub, Jessie, Mork, and our very special guest, Macintosh, latte-sipping left-wing freaks from the hippie-infested highlands of Northeastern Vermont. Now that I've escaped their influence, expect posting to return to its usual intermittency.

Filed under: cats