Ross Judson: Spiral Dive
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Thursday, October 30, 2003 |
As Simple As Possible, But No SimplerBucketHead: I'm not going to fisk, but I'm going to take issue with a number of points you raise. Your general tone is "path of righteousness".We are having an effect on certain terrorists, but new recruits are banging on their doors, and overall I suspect terrorism is largely unabated. I think that there just aren't all that many people in the world willing to commit suicide for their beliefs. There are some, but not that many. The rarity of events lik 9/11 is statistical evidence for this. America's Army is NOT exterminating terrorists at the moment. They are engaged in a low-intensity battle against resistance forces, after having exhausted the regular forces invading a teeny-tiny country. Yes, there are some terrorists in the mix, and we hear about the car bombs and so forth. 99% of the conflicts with American forces are run-of-the-mill insurgents. You can't call them all terrorists. Some of them are pissed-off natives who don't want the US in their country. Some of them are Baathists. It's a mixture. The bottom line is that most of the strength of the military is engaged in nation-building at the moment. By most reports I've read, resources have generally been shifted away from pursuit of terrorism, and towards political change in Iraq. This is single-issue, silver-bullet foreign policy. A very great number of eggs are in a single basket. There are so many eggs in the basket that, yes, in the absence of other fiscal responsibility, there are serious threats to the economic stability of the country. Nobody thinks the 7% growth rate is anything more than a single exceptional quarter. Most predictions go for around a 4.5% quarter next time, which is still very good, but more in line with history. Do you not see that the debate has everything with what the US may _legitimately_ do in the world? If a nuclear bomb had detonated in NY, and was traced to Saddam Hussein, the entire world would have been behind the US in removing him. They probably would have lead the way. This is instead a forceful war of political change...cynical and expensive. It is by no means a "war of revenge". There is no direct connection between Hussein and 9/11. Are you arguing that you believe there to be a solid connection? One that was known BEFORE the war was initiated? You are certainly willing to trade on the idea, to make your political points. Do you or do you not believe it? What evidence do you have? You have no business using it as an underpinning to debate otherwise. So what does $300 Billion buy us? Quite a lot. Our yearly medicare budget is around $250 Billion. The interest on the national debt is around $175 Billion (due to rise dramatically). $300 Billion is a rather incredible amount of money! Of course, prior to the war, Mitch Daniels (long since fired as White House budget director) explained that the war would cost around $50 Billion. It is simple, and deceitful, to throw round numbers like "1% of GDP". The government doesn't have anywhere near a large percentage of GDP to work with; the federal budget is around 25% of GDP, I think. With the huge deficits Bush has created just around the corner. we will be spending, on interest, enough money to do an Iraq every year in short order. There are so many absolutes in what you write. "Terrorists are created not by our actions, but by the failure of their societies". So our actions have no effect? I think they do. I think our actions matter greatly. I think Bush's snubbing of the UN has had an effect. His abandonment of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process has had an effect. The trashing of Kyoto has had an effect (we can argue all day long about whether it would work or not, but symbolically it was a tremendous blow to multilateralism). I'll retract the NASCAR remark, with regards to YOU. I stand by it as far as this Administration goes. And I stand by it for most people I've met in favor of the war. Their thinking hasn't gone much past, "punch me, and get punched". "tit-for-tat" is one of the winningest strategies for the Prisoner's Dilemma, a well-studied game theory example. I gather, in your world, that there need be no foreign policy more sophisticated than tit-for-tat. tit-for-tat is a conservative position that attempts to engender cooperation, rewarding cooperation where it exists, and punishing it where it does not. There are strategies that can beat it, but it's pretty good all around. We aren't playing tit-for-tat, because we just took the first punch. We chose the path of non-cooperation, of unilateralism. Finally, you state that "It is sadly common for those who are protected to resent those who do the bloody work of protecting." Do you believe that you are somehow identifying with more firmly, and are showing more solidarity with our armed forces? I do not recall you have been on any secret missions to Iraq. Men with guns, you can't handle the truth, and all of that. You are not on the wall with a gun, and neither am I. There are men (and women) doing that. Do you imply that those who disagree with Bush policy resent our soldiers, who protect us, and who follow orders? 9:33:06 PM |
The Death Of Journalism.According to Bill Moyers, it may be at hand. I haven't seen much lately that leads me to believe otherwise. There are still a few signs of life out there, where ethics haven't been bent and folded enough times to disappear entirely...It's a sobering interview. Everything involving television is for sale. I wonder how long even NPR can last; its ad content has slowly been creeping upwards too. It occurs to me that I have heard entirely too many times that we "shouldn't be spending public money on NPR". Here's the thing, for those of you on the right. There are things that you think government should spend money, and there are things that I think government should spend money on. On your side, we've got big guns and a military, invasions of other countries, huge jails for mostly black people who can't afford Rush Limbaugh's lawyers, corporate welfare, tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, and government funding of religions. I think it's worth noting that we're actually spending money on all that stuff. On my side there's an R+D budget, health care, serious funding for educational institutions, we keep our progressive taxation system progressive, taxes can certainly go higher, and we keep important programs like NPR and NASA and yes, even the NEA. Here's the thing: The right's pet expenditures are an order of magnitude higher than the left's. The old canard about "free-spending liberals" just doesn't hold water any more. We all know exactly who the free spenders are now. So the next time you want to knock off the NEA, maybe I get to pick one out of your list. You too can play amusing budget games! Try this budget simulator. I pretty much balanced the budget on the first try. It's not even hard to do. You just have to have your priorities straight...and get rid of the stupid tax cut that got us into this deficit mess in the first place. Plus nuke agricultural subsidies. I can't for the life of me figure out why a single mom struggling to make ends meet in the inner city should be forced to give part of her income to Archer Daniels Midland. Old budget was $3274.734 billion ($2292.807 billion in spending, $981.927 billion in tax expenditures and cuts). New budget is $2914.09 billion ($2253.16 billion in spending, $660.93 billion in tax expenditures and cuts). You have cut the deficit by $360.64 billion. Your new deficit is $-3.63 billion. 3:10:12 AM |
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Wednesday, October 29, 2003 |
Timing is Everything.It's strange when someone scrupulously avoids kicking you when you're down, even when you're down a long time, then takes aim when you get back up. Maybe they don't know...but then again, how could they? It is what it is. A few shots are fair, even justified. It is not something to be angered by. Eventually you decide -- what rules you...love, hate, revenge, sacrifice, curiousity...you choose what defines you. Or maybe it chooses you; the abyss and all that... All I can do is move forward and make up for lost time... 2:14:25 AM |
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Tuesday, October 28, 2003 |
Reader's Note.I am leaning a little left to play a part. Pay no attention. :) 10:15:27 PM |
Sacred Cowlike America.A little fodder:
Ah. I feel so much better! Why do I still like it here so much? I don't know! Maybe it's the women. Maybe it's the fact that with a little bending and twisting, this country could be so truly excellent. I have a pipe wrench around here somewhere. 10:14:48 PM |
US Whacks OffAh, Power Rangers Foreign Policy! As resident contrarian, please allow me to differ. Greatly. 10:03:50 PM |
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Monday, October 27, 2003 |
White House Disallows Search For "Iraq".This utterly bizarre. Whoever runs the White House's web site has supplied a robots.txt file (which is used to direct web search engines) that prevents indexing of much of the content that is related to Iraq. In other words, if you go searching for "Iraq" and "White House" on Google, you won't be getting any hits on the White House's site. If you are trying to make debate go away on a certain issue, this is a way you might quiet it down. Reducing the ability of the average citizen to search for what has actually been said and written by the White House makes sense in a scary kind of way. Altering the robots.txt like this may also limit the capability of "Wayback"-type engines, which show the web as it was, not how it now is. I'd like to think that this tactic does not have formal acknowledgement in the White House, and that it is the act of a some crank (who should be fired).
10:49:27 AM |
The Way of Terrorism.This morning we find the NY Times and just about every other paper covering a serious round of terrorism in Baghdad. There are at least 200 wounded, at least 34 dead. Virtually all of them are Iraqis. This is not, in any shape or form, "resistance" fighting. What resistance murders dozens of its own people to make a "point" against an occupier? If "collaboration" is given as a reason, it is a fiction. The vast majority of the dead are regular Iraqi civilians, not police or anyone else who could be termed a collaborator. I find the events of the past two days to be one of the strongest indicators we have yet seen of Iraq's former government being involved in terrorism. That they have shifted to this tactic so quickly, and with deadly effects, speaks volumes about who they are, and what they were and are prepared to do. If new elements in Iraq are responsible for these atrocities, we need to root them out. The Iraqi people don't need foreign elements blowing them up, while they're trying to rebuild a society. 10:28:48 AM |
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Sunday, October 26, 2003 |
Halo is Freakin' Great.Oh yeah -- finished it this weekend...yes I am a slow older guy playing an Action Game. I haven't played one in a very long time. It was just a boatload of fun...highly recommended. Good creepiness, great diversity...and the end is a blast...total nail-biter! It's Not Just Another Action Game! 10:38:29 PM |
Not Even a "Weapons Program".First the story was "They Have WMD". Then the story became "They Have Weapons Programs". I wonder what's next, given the incredibly detailed reporting in today's Washington Post, about the findings of the Kay teams. Read it; you owe yourself that. Seriously -- how do they spin this one? My best guess is that they're going to abandon the terrorism and WMD lines of thought entirely, and simply focus on "we did the right thing". Was it the right thing to do? I don't know...in a relative sense, in Iraq -- yes. In the long run they'll be better off IF the Islamic Nutscases(tm) don't find a way to corrupt the emerging government. The question is, what else could we have done with $200 Billion? Could we have done more good elsewhere? American's security was never at risk, vis-a-vis Iraq. So what we've done is engage in a fantastically expensive piece of nation building. Bush claimed during the election that he was against nation building. How, then, did he end up doing so much of it? Of course, nobody is going to accuse him of nation-building in Afghanistan (remember Afghanistan? We blew it up too). 10:24:11 PM |
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Saturday, October 25, 2003 |
Debating Dean.Dean, you wrote "The list goes on, and any one of them alone was sufficient to justify our action". It's hard to believe you just wrote that. Here is the main reason for going to war: Someone _attacks_ you. An army shows up, in one of your cities. You kill them. That is the ONLY completely justifiable, slam-dunk, "it's ok" reason for war. What you are talking about are levels of political BS. Do you seriously believe that, isolated from the other points, violating the oil-for-food program is a trigger for war? I don't think you do, but that's what you just wrote. There were good reasons to liberate Iraq, and there were good reasons, at the time, to do the same thing in any number of countries around the world. Based on the criteria you've provided for going to war, we could be in a war almost anywhere in the world, if we felt like it. We don't. The real question is not whether Iraq deserved freedom from Hussein. The real question is why we picked Iraq, as opposed to other countries, where we might have done more good with a lot less money? The Administration _selected_ Iraq, out of a list of countries where an active military policy could create change, to implement long-standing neo-conservative policy. The answer to the selection question was, at the time, "because Iraq support and supplies terrorists, and because Iraq has WMD". We now know, with reasonable certainty, that neither of these things is true. My opinion is that the White House went fishing in the murky waters of intelligence, and fashioned justification out of selective inclusion. Creating a liberal straw man who simply says "no justification" may be an entertaining exercise for you, but that person pretty much does not exist. Every time you say "there WERE valid reasons for going into Iraq" what you're really saying is that you DON'T CARE about truthfulness before a war, and that the ends justify the means. And to bring this thing around full circle: If we're not in a war because we've been attacked, we'd better be pretty damn airtight in our reasoning. Bush took a gamble and he lost. The bet wasn't on the outcome of the war -- that was a foregone conclusion. The bet was that evidence justifying the incredible size of the expenditure would show up. All that being said...the goal of a democratic Iraq is a worthy one. I believe that an open debate on the question of whether military intervention was the best way to achieve it is appropriate. 11:48:35 AM |
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Friday, October 24, 2003 |
Nationalized Health Care == Deficits?Think again. Via Slacktivist (always an outstanding read), This CBC report shows just how darn good my native land is doing in financial terms at the moment. And who's running the show up there? The Liberal Party, more or less the equivalent of the Democrats... National Health Care doesn't break the bank. There is a hybrid system that could work here in the US -- just have all local governmental agencies (County Of Fairfax) for example, add a clause to their contracts that states that any resident of the county can join the plan the government workers get. Joiners have to pay the full costs themselves, of course...but it's a good way of avoiding the individual insurance costs, which are nuts. It's instant freedom for those who will no longer be tied to an employer or plan... 1:05:50 PM |
God Has A Sense Of Humor.I knew it! Yes! One of my pet theories is that God put us here, in this universe, to do something he doesn't expect...he creates a Universe that, at its base, has crazy little random things happening that basically mean you can't know what's going on. He wants to be surprised! And of course...every once in a while he surprises us.
The assistance director got nailed twice. I think that perhaps God is not particularly fond of this particular piece of theatre... Update: And now this!
Seems to me like the big guy is a little pissed off at the moment.
12:45:04 PM |
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Thursday, October 23, 2003 |
Spam Throttle.I've written on this before, but it's worth repeating: My feeling is that the internet as a whole is going to evolve towards a trusted/untrusted scenario. Big vendors like AOL and MSN will be "in the club", so to speak -- their mail systems will "trust" each other, and accept email at full speed. Other systems, particularly those connecting for the first time, will be untrusted. Those systems will be severly limited in the number of emails that will be accepted. A Bayesian filter can be applied to the email coming in from any new connection. The filter doesn't stop the email; rather, it builds an approximation of how much spam is coming in over that particular connection. The odd false positive isn't going to hurt, that way. As the system gains trust, which can happen only by having time elapse and by having a low spam percentage, trust will gradually accrue, and email traffic will be permitted to have progressively higher volumes. The beauty of this situation is that you still accept email from just about anywhere, but you don't _trust_ that source, until that source proves itself. It doesn't take very much to implement a solution like this. Any organization that failed to implement it or have a strong anti-spam policy would find itself being on a lot of untrusted lists, and unable to send very much email. Simply being a transfer point for spam will also get you untrusted, which means that you'll have to pay attention. 5:38:59 PM |
Terri Schiavo.In response to Dave's comment: Consider this possibility: The court system got it right. I've read medical opinions on this case, which state that the statistical probabilities of coming out of a coma like that are essentially nil. She will never come out of it, and that's that. In addition, the behaviors that are described as "lifelike" are the hallmark of her condition. Scans of her brain show that there really isn't much left of it, in a physical sense. Most of it has atrophied, except for the autonomic systems. So the court may have gotten it right. That being said, I completely do not understand why the trust fund would revert to her husband. If the trust fund was established to handle her care and feeding and it is no longer required, it should revert to an appropriate charity. I can't understand why he gets it. I get the sense that he just wants her dead so he can have the money. That part is obvious. But it's not the real question. If you set him aside completely, and even set her parents aside, and look simply at the medical situation, what is the right thing to do? The answer is probably exactly what the court ended up deciding...that removing the feed tube is the only humane thing to do. She once was a person. She isn't any more. And dude? You need to be a little more careful about slinging around the old "Nazi" insult. That's a pretty big gun to pull out. Are you sure you want to get into that? I'll let it go. For those that didn't realize it, the entry in question was about El Presidente's habit of executing people like crazy in Texas. I just found it ironic that a Bush governor would intervene in a case like this, where there is a difficult balance of ethical issues, and not give a crap about the twenty or so innocents that, if you know anything about probability, have been executed in Texas under GW's "leadership", which apparently consisted of not even reading the clemency petitions put before him. Given the known error rate of our court system vis-a-vis capital cases, we must do better... Yes, I realize the double irony of writing about the errors in the court system in a post that asks that you consider that the court got it right. 5:08:15 PM |
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Wednesday, October 22, 2003 |
Opposites Attract.From the Post:
Here's tomorrow's headline, in advance:
I guess it was worth the flip-flop, in order to get that most excellent "Gain Power To Override Courts" Power Card for Magic the Gathering. 1:57:27 AM |
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Sunday, October 19, 2003 |
Roger Simon's Hair Trigger.Roger Simon smacked Gregg Easterbrook pretty hard. Now Gregg is out of a job at ESPN. Here's the "offensive" paragraph that Gregg wrote, on violence in Hollywood films:
It occurs to me that when we fire someone for being racist, that person should actually _be_ racist. Or anti-semitic, or whatever. It doesn't seem like there's a single person who knows Easterbrook who will say that he is anti-semitic. He worships in a church that is co-located (and even commingled) with a Jewish congregation. I read his paragraph about ten times. Each time I read it, I got the same message -- should Jews not hold themselves to a higher standard, given their history? What is wrong with the reading comprehension of you rabid reactionists? I'll tell you what it is. You saw the words money and Jew somewhere close to each other in a paragraph, your internal red lights went on, and you weren't able to read the entire thing. You weren't able to apply any form of tolerance in this situation. Let me simplify the paragraph, because you, Mr. Reactionary, don't want to: "Two wrongs don't make a right." Is it anti-semitic of me to say that perhaps Jews ought to hold themselves to a higher standard when it comes to tolerance? Show the world, by example, what tolerance means. Show them that what has happened in the past is wrong, and that there is a better way. These days, the cry of racist, in a context like this, is more or less like an accusation of sexual misconduct. Your brush is out; you've painted with it. How about you get off your hair-trigger, high horse, and think about what you write before you wreck another man's career in the name of tolerance and goodwill? I wonder if your entire set of previous writings would withstand an intimate parsing for anything that could be interpreted to be, say, sexist? Or perhaps racist in any way? Am I an anti-semite too? Funny -- I've never considered, from the time I was a child, Jewish people to be any different from anyone else in any way. I still don't, except that I know about some terrible events in history that have directly affected the Jewish people. 9:31:25 PM |
CalPundit On Progress In Iraq.We don't have much to go on -- so far we've either had to believe media reports (which come in all shapes and sizes), or the Administration's "everything is peachy" outlook. Kevin Drum gives us a few ideas on how to parse the situation. As always, he's worth reading. 6:20:48 PM |
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Saturday, October 18, 2003 |
Used To Be Worth Reading.I am referring to Andrew Sullivan, of course. He's basically retreated from the debate, and pretty much just relies on the "well, you're just a damn liberal" defense:
Cripes. Why don't we look at them, one by one? I am not sure I can defend myself against a charge of being under a "guise of objectivity", otherwise...
In other words, the statements are factually correct, and arguable only in their degree. What Andrew is really upset about is the very first sentence: The words "running into trouble". I guess he doesn't think the media should be able to draw mean conclusions like that...those words trigger his accusations. What follows them, fact, fiction, or opinion, doesn't matter to him. Remember it whenever you read that kind of crap. 11:19:33 PM |
My Mendacity.I wrote:
RDB wrote:
Dear RDB: Call me a liar? You are a dick. Plain and simple. "Bush's Private Little War of Political Change": Bush: He is the guy in charge, in case you hadn't noticed. Private: The publicly stated reasons for the war (WMD, terrorism) are not the real ones. Little: There's little in the way of combat, death, or anything much else. Except dollars, of course. Please see any text on World War I or II, if you'd like to see an example of a large war. War: We attacked them with military force. We occupy the country. Political: There was no immininent threat from Iraq, and no military threat. Terrorism is a social crime, not a military threat. Change: The regime change in Iraq is an attempt to change the region for the better. The merits of this approach are quite debatable, even as the goals are admirable. Feel free to expand your post to something beyond "you are a liar, Ross". Pick a word, any word, and disagree. Otherwise, crawl back into your hole. Close the lid (tightly, like a bug jar). 10:44:53 PM |
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Friday, October 17, 2003 |
Too Tired To Dream.It's early, this night...moonless, sirens, intermittent rain...I am too tired to do anything. So I sit at the computer, exercising the mental nano-muscle that is all I need to surf the net. I don't find anything. The thing about patterns is, they repeat. I'm not sure how to recharge, right now...everything remains undone. The halfway mark in any run is hard. You know there's as much ahead as there has been behind, and that what's behind wasn't easy, not at all. I need to sleep. I need this night to be over, and I need some daylight. Within I have a little coldness, a little anger. There is a sheer weight to wasted time. Repeat after me: Half full. It's the past, and it's even distant. But so are a lot of other things. 9:22:40 PM |
Stupid VPN.Is down, I have a ton of stuff to check in, and I can't. So I will just go to bed, which I should have done about three hours ago. But I am stupid that way. 2:45:31 AM |
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Wednesday, October 15, 2003 |
China In Space.I think it's pretty cool that they finally gotten someone up there...it's a real milestone for them, and I suppose for mankind. It's a bit worriesome in the sense that seeing Chinese improve their rocket technology brings mixed feelings. But check this quote from the article:
Thank God we're through with all that Space Nonsense here in the US! We certainly don't need anything like a $2 trillion long term effect on the economy, right now. We have all the jobs and technology we need, thank you very much. There's no way we'll learn anything new, or anything applicable to our modern times. No, we better keep our feet right here on good old Mother Earth, where we belong. Is this country trying to do anything? China is. No, I don't count deceptive wars against tyrants. Let China have its day. 1:49:04 AM |
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Sunday, October 12, 2003 |
Just Doing My Part, Ma'am.Thanks to a good friend for pointing out that we can all do our part for America! Since the President is having a lot of trouble narrowing down Plame's "outer", we can all chip in with an affadavit! Write yours today!
Oh man! I feel so patriotic and all that now! Sweet! The investigation can now proceed... 11:16:34 PM |
Eliminating NullPointerExceptions.Every reference in Java is either null, or valid. In the development stage of many applications, and even during production phase, we can still see a lot of null pointer exceptions being thrown. This is usually due to failure to check a return value from a function call. The null result is often returned from a function to indicate "I couldn't", or "that object was not available". It is very common to want to return this result, and exceptions shouldn't be used to signify it. We don't want to incur the overhead of generating an exception. It would be interesting to be able to mark a method as "returns null", in the same manner that we can throw an exception. The compiler can then check to see if the value returned is checked for null, before being used. If the value is returned from the function, that function must be marked the same way, forcing callers of it to check, or declare to throw. Yes, we can always put the null value into a class, and there are more convolutions of this principle that could get at that... It is an interesting idea, nonetheless. Extending it further, we can note that we might declare multiple return paths for any function, and the calling of that function becomes like a switch statement, where the type of the result directs the path of execution, much like a type-inferring language like Haskell or ML. And maybe that is what I really want. For now, though -- enforced null checks! 4:01:23 PM |
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Saturday, October 11, 2003 |
I Can't Sleep.Too many thoughts...have coded a pretty AttractorPaint Java2D Paint implementation...need to figure out how to improve the color balances and make it go fast. It's pretty cool -- you can give it any number of points and line segments, each associated with a color. It then interpolates between the point being painted and the lines and points you give it. You can set up nice color washes and other cool stuff...still, the math isn't right, it's too slow cause there's too much interpolation calculation. When I say slow I mean it takes around a third of a second for a fairly big square. That is stunningly faster than I expected it to run...but GradientPaint runs real fast, and I need to get it up to that speed...the goal is to create a beautiful background painting system for Piccolo...one that can create washes of color and variations, and even animate those...see the point behind using Shape was to be able to animate the color attractors with Piccolo, and then have a constantly shifting colored background. Maybe pooters will be fast enough two or three years from now. 5:22:00 AM |
Guilty Until Proven Innocent.This just makes me really sad. Captain James Yee, who by all accounts has had a normal military career, including West Point, was tossed in jail over a month ago, on charges:
Let's look at a little typical "String Him Up!" reaction, at the time:
Now let's see what's actually happened, a month later:
So let me get this straight. We've gone from "sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage" to forgetting to put a classified file in the right kind of envelope before carrying it somewhere. Please note that nowhere does it say that Yee did not have the right to view the materials; he did, and he had clearance. This is why we have a system that is supposed to assume innocence, until proof of guilt. Sensing's comments above are, well, non-sensical. If a Christian man of the cloth were caught with having classified materials in the wrong kind of envelope, I suspect he would not be threatened with the death penalty, hauled off to jail, and made into an example by a significant portion of the starboard side of the blogosphere. Bottom line is -- this guy didn't do anything wrong. Classified material gets mishandled constantly. Most of it goes unnoticed, and the very vast majority of times someone does notice, a quick word or two sets procedure straight, and everyone goes about their business. Captain James Yee, West Point Graduate, combat veteran, military chaplain, is owed an apology for the destruction of his career and reputation, by panicked little minds bent on the focus of hatred, dissatisfaction, you name it. It's just wrong. 5:14:31 AM |
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Friday, October 10, 2003 |
Hurling Crap At The Wall.Sigh...yet another goofy post from yet another "team player" trying find any way he can to blame the Wilsons for their own outing. Apparently they deserved it! 1. What exactly is illegal about an individual in this country making a political donation? 10:44:11 PM |
Before and After.I don't know why I bother. A self-congratulatory round by the GOPers on Dean's World And for those of you still confused by the notion of "before" and "after", please feel free to read a complete timeline of events, with hyperlinks to every major article and item: http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2003/07/the_valerie_pla_9.html July 14: Novak's column fingering Plame as CIA. Aug. 26: Frog march comment by Wilson. You will note that the "frog march" comment in question occurred AFTER the column. Repeat after me: Before! After! Now we all understand. Just because this didn't hit the mainstream press until the CIA requested an investigation doesn't mean the situation hadn't already started. It started July 14. Painful, obvious revisionism won't do. Really, the best defense, if you care to make it, was that the leaker simply wasn't aware that he was leaking classified information. That's even believable. The second major criticism that is repeated over and over again is that Wilson is a loser and is unqualified for the job. GOPers: If you say that Wilson was unqualified for the Niger investigation. Why don't you give us a short list of what you believe to be adequate qualifications for the job? Then compare your list to this, which is part of Wilson's BIO:
Ambassador Wilson was a member of the U.S. Diplomatic Service from 1976 until 1998. His early assignments included Niamey, Niger, 1976-1978; Lome, Togo, 1978-79; the State Department Bureau of African Affairs, 1979-1981; and Pretoria, South Africa, 1981-1982." Let's see...served for three years in Niger, extensive experience in the African sphere...Iraq connections, etc... Wouldn't you be looking for someone who was familiar with both countries, both cultures? 10:08:11 PM |
You Win Some, You Lose Some.Perfidy quotes recent Andrew Sullivan. Once upon a time I figured Sullivan was a must read. Quotes like "Nope, the pacifists and anti-war crowd are on the side of the tyrants - now as so often before" are such absolute bullshit that he isn't on my A-list any more. I pretty much consider anything he says to be worthless. There are plenty of other conservative sources that are far more thoughtful, and don't make such obvious mistakes. I did think it might be useful to write Sullivan and let him know that, in the vast constellation of probable give and take in our democracy, a little horse trading is sometimes necessary to unstick the stickiness. We need to figure out which of our positions we'll be willing to give a little ground on, in order to get something else that we really want. So maybe this time around we'll just stop carping on Gay Rights issues, and give that one up to the Church-State integrators in his party. Maybe in return they'll give us some kind of National Health Care, because we're asking nice. You win some, you lose some. Unless it's your issue, right Andrew? Then all of a sudden you really, really care. Keep in mind that a significant chunk of your party thinks you should be in jail. Keep in mind that it is also an official plank of your party's platform. For you to be in jail. Enjoy the freedom, for now. 3:46:43 PM |