Jargon Watch: Escalation Surge

There's a new way to characterize the throwing of good troops after dead. At least, according to Condoleezza Rice:

In a heated exchange with [Sen. Chuck] Hagel, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, Rice disputed his characterization of Bush's buildup as an "escalation."

"Putting in 22,000 more troops is not an escalation?" Hagel, a Vietnam veteran and longtime critic of Bush's Iraq policy, asked. "Would you call it a decrease?"

"I would call it, senator, an augmentation …"

(source)

Thanks to Frank Rich [T$], for pointing this out.

Krugman on Purges

Paul Krugman's op-ed in yesterday's NY Times is a must read. Even if you don't usually read Krugman, read this one.

In his column, Krugman summarizes the Bush Administration's latest trick for heading off anticipated investigations: firing U.S. Attorneys viewed as potentially hostile, and replacing them from an apparently limitless stock of toadies.

Krugman also calls attention to an unnoticed clause, slipped into the Patriot Act during the last Congressional session by Arlen Spector. This clause does away with the erstwhile requirement that Congress approve interim appointees to these positions.

Krugman refers to TPMmuckraker: "… which has done yeoman investigative reporting on this story." For your convenience, here are some links:

• The post Krugman quotes
  
  
• More TPMmuckraker articles on this matter

As Krugman says:

The broader context is this: defeat in the midterm elections hasn't led the Bush administration to scale back its imperial view of presidential power.

On the contrary, now that President Bush can no longer count on Congress to do his bidding, he's more determined than ever to claim essentially unlimited authority -- whether it's the authority to send more troops into Iraq or the authority to stonewall investigations into his own administration's conduct.

The next two years, in other words, are going to be a rolling constitutional crisis.

New! The iRack!

From the AP:

The Pentagon has drafted a manual for upcoming detainee trials that would allow suspected terrorists to be convicted on hearsay evidence and coerced testimony and imprisoned or put to death.

Count on the Democrats to, at best, submit a non-binding resolution condemning the environmental impact of smoky fires. You know, when the witch-burning really gets going.

Thanks to teh l4m3 for pointing this story out.

Half Life

An excerpt from today's "help get this money out of the African bank" spam:

In an account that belongs to one of our foreign customer who died along with his entire family in a concord plane crash in the year 2003 in paris that almost took the whole life of the pasengeres on board.

Almost took the whole life?

Jargon Watch: Blink Tanks

It sez here:

blink tanks--blogs that function as online think tanks

My first thought: New one on me. I like it!

My second thought: Wait. Won't the right will use this to attack, linking every lefty blink tank to blink in the sense of backing down from a confrontation, a la Kruschev blinked ?

Maybe I'm out of the loop on this term. I see that there is a "blinktank.org," with the admirable goal of hosting "the opinions of all, from the left and the right, in the form of well argued, well researched papers."

The home page goes on to say, "we now hope to be up and running by October 2005 (sorry for the delay)!"

To make matters even worse, this is the top result returned by Googling "blink tank."

Guess I missed this one, coming and going.

What's the moral of this story? All together now …

Don't blink, you might miss it.

Surge Thought for the Day: 2007-01-18

Can a single man force a nation to fight a war it does not want to fight, expand a war it does not want to expand--possibly to other countries? If he can, is that nation any longer a democracy in any meaningful sense? Is its government any longer a constitutional republic? If not, how can democratic rule and the republican form of government be restored? These are the unwelcome questions that President Bush's decision has forced on the country.

--The Nation

JG on JK

It is with no small amount of visceral distaste that I link to a post on the National Review's site, especially when I'm not going to flame it, but I have to admit, Jonah Goldberg's piece on John Kerry is pretty good.

Laugh line:

… and despite enormously impressive hair; he is near the bottom in all the important rankings of serious candidates.

And when I say near the bottom, I mean if he claws his way up a bit, he'll be at the bottom.

Smart line:

[In 2004,] Democrats figured Kerry was the most "electable," forgetting that electability is often cover for spinelessness and, in voters, is usually based on the hope that someone else will like the guy even if you don't.

I don't think Kerry was spineless so much as muddled, but I sure did hate that "electability" aspect of the 2004 primaries. I mean, I know we're all (blog)pundits now, but still. Hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils in the actual election, but vote your conscience in the primaries.

Of course, I don't agree with everything Goldberg has to say in his piece. For example:

In 2008, the election won't be a referendum on President Bush …

Will, too!

Pardon that schoolyard response, but the 2008 election will be nothing but. Every Democrat will have plenty to say about how we need to fix all of the damage that Bush has done. The eventual nominee will doubtless attempt to portray his or her Republican counterpart as right out of the Bush mold. And every non-right-wing voter who isn't enamored of the Democratic nominee will frequently be thinking, "Bush's party or the other one?" Right up to the moment of truth in November.

It's kind of funny to watch Goldberg trying to plant this seed already, that his side has nothing to do with W (anymore). You know how much he's sweating. Absent a miracle in Iraq or a Republican candidate that I can't think of, the election of 2008 will be all about his boy George.

And rightly so.

Mossberg on Vista

The WSJ's venerable tech writer, Walter S. Mossberg, has reviewed the latest version of Windows. He doesn't harsh on it completely, but nothing he said made me feel any less disinclined to get it.

Here's the headline:

Vista: Worthy, Largely Unexciting

Here's the upshot:

There are some big downsides to this new version of Windows. To get the full benefits of Vista, especially the new look and user interface, which is called Aero, you will need a hefty new computer, or a hefty one that you purchased fairly recently. The vast majority of existing Windows PCs won't be able to use all of Vista's features without major hardware upgrades. They will be able to run only a stripped-down version, and even then may run very slowly.

In fact, in my tests, some elements of Vista could be maddeningly slow even on new, well-configured computers.

Some additional warnings, in case you haven't already heard them elsewhere:

… Vista isn't a breakthrough in ease of use … Nearly all of the major, visible new features in Vista are already available in Apple's operating system … despite Vista's claimed security improvements, you will still have to run, and keep updating, security programs … it will still force you to spend more time managing the computer than I believe people should have to devote … Even if you buy the Home Premium or Ultimate editions, Vista will revert to the Basic features if it detects that your machine is too wimpy to run the new user interface … I wouldn't even consider trying to upgrade a computer older than 18 months, and even some of them may be unsuitable candidates …

There are other reasons to be dubious about Vista, as I noted last month.

I am not usually one of the Web's most vociferous Microsoft bashers -- in fact, my aging Win2K machine is still my main computer -- but everything I have read about Vista over the past few months has only increased my irritation with that company. When this machine dies, I'll be running Ubuntu full time.

Ne Plus MKULTRA

From "Mind Games," an article in this past Sunday's WaPo Magazine:

In 2005, a group of MIT students conducted a formal study using aluminum foil and radio signals. Their surprising finding: Tinfoil hats may actually amplify radio frequency signals.

A tip of my own tinfoil hat (now that I'll be removing it, of course!) to Jinnet for the link.

This is by turns an entertaining and saddening article. It's beyond a cliché to say that the Web lets like-minded people seek each other out, where before they might have been feeling hopelessly lonely. As has also probably been noted by at least one other person, usually this is good, and sometimes … not so much.

I know what Bad Santa would say:

However, from reading the article, it seems that not everyone who hears voices can be treated successfully, given the current state of the pharmacological art. So in this sense, it's nice that tormented people don't have to feel alone.

On the other hand, hanging around with a bunch of people with the same hang-ups as you tends to make you ever-so-much-more you, and it seems to me that people with shared neuroses are sometimes made worse by mutual reinforcement. (cf. the White House, Fox News watchers, and the blogosphere).

I am undecided about the {good|bad}ness of support groups for people convinced that the government is beaming stuff into their brains.

---

Note:

The date for the next meeting of The Ditherer's Club has not yet been determined.

Significant Figures

Have a look at David Leonhardt's article in the business section of today's NY Times.

It's a summary of recent analysis on the financial aspects of Bush's War. You probably already have a vague sense of the expense, but Leonhardt's piece helps make it more concrete. The lowest cost estimates come in at over $1 trillion. And counting.

How big is a trillion? Perhaps this'll help:

1 million seconds = about a week and a half

1 trillion seconds = more than 30,000 years

Fork It Over, People

From the I-Saw-It-On-The-Internet-So-It-Must-Be-True Department:

I just entered this blog's URL into a tool available on the Business Opportunities Weblog.

Results:

My blog is worth $3,951.78.
How much is your blog worth?

Of course, DailyKos still has me beat. By a factor of about 2000.

It's All Becoming Clear Now

(Emph. mine):

The committee's rules, called marketing orders, are very strict as to the shape and uniformity of Florida tomatoes that can go to other states during the season, from Oct. 10 to June 15. Flavor is not a factor because, in the committee's view, it is too subjective.

If everyone agrees that supermarket tomatoes are horribly bland, is it still "subjective?"

At any rate, it's nice to hear that there might be an improvement coming. The NY Times has the story.

Reading Recommendations: 2007-01-17

Special censorship edition

• Wires Reject Handout Photo Of Bush Speech

  The reason for all of those low res pix of Bush in the papers, the day after the speech. Paranoia is at a new high at the White House, it seems to me.
  
  Thanks to Eat The Press for the link.
  
  On a related note, you heard that none of the broadcast networks aired the Democratic response, right? I admit that I didn't watch Bush's speech, and would probably have been equally unimpressed by Dick Durbin's response, but still. It's an awfully troubling precedent.
  
  

• Dr. Spocko Nerve-Pinches Disney Over Outrageous SF Radio Show

  Following a hint from Betmo's recent comment under my first Tucker post, I came across this story. Apparently, Spocko is a blogger who had been documenting the heinous sputterings aired on the radio station KSFO. Disney/ABC prevailed upon the blogger's ISP to kill his site, claiming that the audio clips that Spocko posted were some kind of copyright infringement. (To my mind, it's hard to believe any sane person would want to control ownership of this kind of hate speech, but never mind that.) At any rate, Spocko's ISP killed Spocko's site. <sarcasm>(Gutsy move, 1&1.)</sarcasm>
  
  [Update: I wrote the above paragraph on 13 Jan, and followed by noting that the MSM hadn't picked up on the story. After double-checking Google News today, I see that the NYTimes ran an article on 15 Jan.]
  
  Meantime, the good news is, Spocko has a new host, and the audio links work.
  
  

• Federal Way schools restrict Gore film: 'Inconvenient Truth' called too controversial

  Another link courtesy of Eat The Press.
  
  BTW, Federal Way is a city. The article doesn't make this clear, probably because if you read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, you're assumed to know this. The point is, Federal Way is not some business running charter schools -- it's a city whose school board is running public schools.
  
  Excerpt:

  "Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."
  
  Hardison's e-mail to the School Board prompted board member David Larson to propose the moratorium Tuesday night.
  
  "Somebody could say you're killing free speech, and my retort to them would be we're encouraging free speech," said Larson, a lawyer. "The beauty of our society is we allow debate."

  
  
  What did you learn in school today? Condoms = Al Gore. The Bible = the best source for climatological information. Banning movies = encouraging free speech.
  
  We're doomed.
  
  

Tucker Update

Tucker Carlson's video store meltdown has made the WaPo. Kind of a lame article, and on page C3 on a Saturday, but still. It's another body added to what I hope will become an enormous pig pile on top of Carlson.

Thanks to EarlG for catching this.

Don't know what I'm talking about? See my earlier Tucker post for a summary, and then head on over to the source for the latest.

Jargon Watch: Weimarization

I just came across the term Weimarization in Michelle Goldberg's interview [S$] with Chris Hedges:

There has been a kind of Weimarization of the American working class …

From the context of the article -- Hedges has a thesis that the leaders of the Christian Right are equivalent to fascists -- and my weak grasp of history leavened with a quick Googling, I understood Hedges to mean a condition where a class of people feels uneasy about life, and is consequently susceptible to manipulation, especially through appeals to fear, by another group who seeks power.

Google only returns about 300 hits for this term, as of post time. How do you interpret the term?

The interview is well worth reading, by the way. My in-line characterization of Hedges's thesis should not be taken to mean that he thinks the flocks of the churches are all fascists, but he does have a pretty dim view of some of the pastors. He has considerable credibility, having graduated from divinity school before becoming a reporter, and his beat has included many of the world's most troubled spots over the past couple of decades.

Thanks to Scott Rosenberg for the link.

---

Update: There is a bio of Hedges and a list of some of his recent articles on Truthdig. This one builds on the theme of Salon interview, focusing on the military. Pretty scary.

When It Says Libby, Libby, Libby …

… on the label, label, label …

From the Consider The Source Dept., courtesy of the NYT:

Pressed about his former aide's honesty, Mr. Cheney replied, "I believe he's one of the more honest men I know."

Fragment of the Day: 2007-01-14

From an interview with Neal Stephenson, the beginning of an answer:

Let me just come at this one from sort of a big picture point of view.

(the sound of a million Slashdot readers hitting the "back" button...)

The whole interview is really, really good, especially his thoughts on the bifurcation of the writing profession.

Thanks to Alastair for the recommendation.

Sign of the Day: 2007-01-14

From OddThinking:

On the topic of signs, I did like the warning sign in a gift shop:

Unaccompanied children will be given an espresso and a puppy.

You Can Relax Now, Rightwingnuts

It looks like Speaker Pelosi's sinister plans to impose San Francisco values on the entire country aren't going so well. Evidence of surrender from today's NYTimes:

Thirty girls signed up for the cheerleading squad this winter at Whitney Point High School in upstate New York. But upon learning they would be waving their pompoms for the girls' basketball team as well as the boys', more than half of the aspiring cheerleaders dropped out.

I mean, so much for the success of the gay agenda.

Knock, Knock (Rakoff Edition)

I sent an email to KK, who I know groks the knock-knock (ask him about the interrupting cow, sometime). Maybe you do, too. Here's an excerpt from the email:

First:

Knock knock

Who's there?

Control Freak, okaythisisthepartwhereyousaycontrolfreakwho?

And second:

A man is reading the paper on a Sunday afternoon when there's a knock at the front door. Answering it, he sees there is no one there. Spying a snail on the front step, he picks it up and throws it back into the flower beds. Ten years later, another Sunday, another newspaper, another knock. He answers the door. No one there, but a snail, who says "What the fuck was that about?"

These are from a blog that Rakoff kept while at the Woody Allen Film Fest. I haven't read it very closely, as much as I like Rakoff's other work. As ETP, who pointed me to this blog, says: "There has been less neurosis in one place at one time, we thinks."

Jargon Watch: Rightosphere

I just finished listening to this week's edition of On The Media, where I heard a word new to me: rightosphere.

This is a good word, in that it almost doesn't need to be defined. Assuming you've heard of blogosphere, I mean.

It's evidently pretty new: Google returns only about 10,000 hits at post-time.

The obvious next word to consider, of course, is leftosphere. This is currently at about the same level of mention. (For comparison's sake, blogosphere returns about 20 million hits.)

You can watch these two compete at Googlefight.

BTW, I came across the delightful Googlefight site thanks to Wordzguy, who is one of my new favorites in the linguisphere.

Ah, crap. I thought that last neologism was mine! But Google shows seven hits already.

I gotta get moving. I still don't even know how to pronounce noosphere.

The Axeman Cometh?

According to the New York Observer, the New York Times is considering eliminating the position of Public Editor.

I admit that I long ago stopped reading the columns by the current PE, Byron Calame. I found him dull and he never seemed to write about anything I wanted to read about. Jack Shafer said the same thing, only much better, last May on Slate. However, I did like Calame's predecessor, Daniel Okrent, who was the first to hold the job, and I read his column and blog regularly.

More to the point, I think the position itself is crucial. To be sure, there are any number of media watchdogs, spread across the political spectrum, who help keep the Times honest. But having someone on the inside is a valuable addition for us readers. From the Times's perspective, having a Public Editor improves credibility and gives the paper a good way to defend its editorial decisions. It's a good channel for addressing readers' concerns, much more focused than just accepting Letters to the Editor.

I know cutting staff is the new black for staying in the black at newspapers across the country, but I can't believe the cost of one staff position is going to break the bank for this paper. Hell, charge us another buck a year for TimesSelect if you're really hurting that badly. I'll pay it gladly.

I get the sense from the Observer that Keller doesn't like Calame personally, and perhaps this whole thing stems from that. If so, I hope time and input from interested parties will cool Keller down. In any case, I hope he reconsiders.

If you want to weigh in, you can:

• Send Keller an email at executive-editor@nytimes.com
• Visit the Times's feedback page
• See "How to Contact the News Staff" for more contact info.

Thanks to Rachel Sklar for calling this to my attention.

Reading Recommendations: 2007-01-13

• Unveiled Threats: A Bush appointee's crude gambit on detainees' legal rights

  A WaPo editorial, responding to "Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs." Stimson had done a radio interview the day before, urging businesses to drop associations with law firms involved in representing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
  
  Thanks to Kevin Drum for the link.
  
  

• Shifting the Terms of Debate: How Big Business Covered Up Global Warming

  First of a seven-part set of articles by Aaron Swartz (links at bottom of each page to continue). The entire set is not about global warming. It appears to have been renamed, and was earlier called "Shifting the Terms of Debate: Right-Wing Think Tanks in Action." The entire set of articles is not really just about that, either. Evidently, this is sort of an organic thing, which Swartz has added to several times. A bit of a piecemeal approach, with plenty of interesting parts.
  
  Update 2007-01-18: Aaron straightens me out, in the Comments.
  
  

• Surge and destroy: Bush's escalation folly

  Scott Rosenberg's article is the best response to a supremely dumb idea that I have yet read. (NB: This was written well before Bush's latest speech, and many others have since published similar points of view. Blame me for not posting this link earlier.)
  
  

• Rock of Ages, Ages of Rocks

  Steve Benen brings us up to date on another front in the war on science. Turns out the age of the Grand Canyon is now classified. I am not making this up. Well, I may be exaggerating slightly -- I have equated de jure with de facto.
  
  

• The mousetrap

  Remember that great book, Innumeracy? Here's something else from John Allen Paulos, published in The Guardian on 8 September 2005: a clever refutation of creationism Intelligent Design.
  
  More Paulos articles, on a range of topics, can be found at his web site. ABC news also has an archive of his "Who's Counting" columns. He's good.
  
  

• Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists

  Following a link from another Paulos article, I came across this gem by Tom Owad. Owad carried out a slightly tongue-in-cheek experiment in data mining and wrote up his procedure and results. The result is both fascinating and creepy. Among other things, it's a great illustration of the problem of false positives that Paulos warns about in his article. There's a bit of geekery in Owad's article, which I enjoyed, but if murky-looking Linux commands are not to your taste, just skip over them. You'll still find it easy to follow his approach and get his points.
  
  In an ideal world, all members of Congress would be required to read these two articles, and then immediately afterwards, reconsider the Patriot Act. In the meantime, I call on all of us, in an act of civil disobedience, to salt our wishlists with terms tempting to the NSA.
  
  

Tucker Carlson: Now Even More Unbelievable

I just read a story describing how a friend of a friend was fired from his job. The reason? He sassed Tucker Carlson.

Apparently, Chuckles had posted something on his blog about Carlson opening an account at the video store where Chuckles worked. Carlson came into the store ranting about the post and Chuckles responded with a couple of wisecracks. Employment termination ensued.

It probably won't amaze you to hear that yet another rightwing gas bag who makes a very comfortable living saying obnoxious things about other people is singularly unable to take any guff in return. It might amaze you, however, to read about the level of pettiness to which Carlson stooped.

The comments on Chuckles's blog are filled with scorn for Carlson, and that's as it should be -- it is to hoped that this episode comes to the attention of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, and that Carlson gets put under the spotlight for his ridiculous overreactions. One might even dream of MSNBC realizing that Carlson should be shown to the sidewalk himself.

It seems to me, however, that there is another party in this mess who deserves some blowback as well: Chuckles's former boss. I'd like to know how you could be so weak-kneed as to fire someone because Tucker Carlson tells you to.

---

Thanks to Brando for calling this to my attention.

Tinpicking: What's The Difference?

I want to compliment a tiny matter. Please pardon my neologism. I couldn't think of an antonym for nitpick.

I was just reading Jeff Atwood's post, Keeping Time on the PC, which talks about the inaccuracies of the clocks built into computers. (Believe it or not, it's quite interesting.)

At one point, he says (emph. mine):

There's a clever PC time drift graph on this webpage derived from the difference between JavaScript time on the client, and the server time the webpage was sent to the client.

Thank you for not saying "differential," Jeff.

I have a special loathing for people who use differential when they mean difference. This is even worse than utilizing utilize instead of using use. It's as bad as saying "The boss met with Joe and I" or "The student was disinterested in the lecture."

To my mind, differential should be reserved for discussions involving a particular aspect of calculus or a specific part of a car's rear axle. The error probably started with suits and sales dweebs. Whatever the origin, it has infected all manner of telepundits and spokesdrones. For the past few years, differential seems to have been the sole page in the Power Word of the Day calendars belonging to TV sports commentators; e.g., "If they kick a field goal here, there's still a four-point differential in the score."

There is a difference between accepting our language as a living thing and insisting on precision. Kudos to Jeff for getting this right.

Spleen vented. Thank you for your attention.

Is It Still That Bad?

Yes. It's still that bad.

I wrote earlier about the worth of other people making me read a news story for a second time. Here's another example.

Actually, in this case, the commentary made me read the story for the first time. I didn't even make it past the headline of this one, this morning. I thought: bad. It turns out: worse.

I don't mean to step on Steve Benen's final line, but really. Who could help but think of a certain chocolatey dessert from the get-go?

As one minor consolation, I think I now understand Virgil Goode's recent misanthropy. I don't excuse it by any stretch, but at least I now see why an apparent raving lunatic is raving.

Because he's just following orders.

A Base-ic Joke

KK sent me a link to a math joke today, and that link led me to some others, and boy, did I have fun!

Here's one I particularly liked:

Q: Why do mathematicians confuse Halloween and Christmas?

A: Because OCT 31 = DEC 25.

(Explanation in the Comments.)

More Blog-elytizing

You know how I love the blogosphere, and I hope you'll pardon my preaching, but here's another example of what makes it great.

I usually start my day off with a look at the web edition of the New York Times. Sometimes, for whatever reason, some of the front page stories don't seem as important to me as they must have to the editors of the Times.

Take, for example, today. One of the lead stories was an article headlined "Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in '06, Bush Team Says." I read it, sort of, experienced MEGO, and moved on. Just another dutiful piece of stenography summarizing administration pre-spin before the big "new way forward" speech, I thought.

Later today, my Bloglines notifier pinged me, and among the new posts was The Washington Monthly's take on the article. This post, in turn, quoted another post, the second one by Josh Marshall.

One of Marshall's lines not quoted by the WM was his opening sentence:

I don't know if the basic gist of the New York Times piece on what happened in Iraq in 2006 will get picked up.

Marshall was exactly right, at least in my case. I had missed it entirely, but as soon as I read his words, the original Times article came right back: it does, in fact, document the Bush Administration's latest search for a scapegoat for the Iraq mess. The Times was too polite to beat me over the head with this, so I'm happy that others didn't hesitate to employ the required club.

We all know the value of hearing competing points of view on any issue. It's a bit more subtle, but I find it equally important to hear others' reactions to a particular story. It's hard to read everything as critically as I'd like.

Thanks, bloggers.

---

Update: Josh Marshall posted a link to Greg Sargent's post, which details Bush's abrupt turnaround on the new scapegoat. I can't have too much sympathy for a guy who was such a corporate stooge, but it does hurt a little to watch Casey getting the bat.

Image Uploading Problem Solved

I haven't been able to upload images for a short while, so I finally had a look at the Blogger help pages. Following suggestion #4 on "Troubleshooting picture upload problems," I cleared my browser's cache and cookies.

It worked! Now you I know.

Note to self: RTFM -- always good advice.

Make Your Own Tin Can Label!

Thanks to Jinnet, I came across a fun little site where you can make your own label for a tin can.

Here's mine. Click the image to zoom.