Fright night

So it's time for the Boy's first Halloween - and I'm thinking: This will not be fun. After a howler of a ride home from work, I'm expecting his mood to spiral down. He doesn't want dinner, he just wants the candy from day care. He doesn't want to go home, he wants to go the the restaurant. He doesn't really know what the night is about, so I'm expecting him to get all nervous and cold as soon as we go out the door.

In my head, this will be dragging a cranky two-year old from door to door.

Wrong.
The Boy's into it. Big time.

"Trick or Treat!" he's yelling before we get to the first house. "Thank you, very much!" he says after getting the goods.

"I want 'nother HOUSE!" he declares after each stop. He's asking questions, meeting the neighbors - just generally being the charming ball of fun he usually is.

What was (I thought) going to be a hasty lap around the nearest few houses, turns into our block, the next block and the next block. The boy's hooked.

"Does this house have candy?" he asks.

"I think so, they have pumpkins out front-" I start.

"I see more pumpkins!" and he's pulling me forward, swinging his candy basket like a speed walker.

We start home and I'm asking him if he's cold. "I'm okay! More pumpkins! I see Jack-O-lanterns!" and soon we're passing our house and off down the street again.

It's only when the pumpkins run out that we start heading back.

Home. The the boy's tearing into his candy like an addict. What was I thinking? This was a great night out - the boy's still wearing his costume and smiling ear to ear. If more people weren't such fuddy-duddies - we'd probably still be out there.

---

The windout was less cool. I'm headed downstairs for a quick internet fix and I can see the area rugs are soaking wet.

What the?

I can hear *glub* *glub* from the downstairs bathroom, and then I see water all the way down the middle of the hall. Not deep, just enough to cover the floor - but it reeks.

Bathroom. Floor dry. WTH? I'm looking for the edges of the water. No way this came in from outside.

Baseboard are dry, room carpets dry. So where...?

I see the water trailing over by the water heater. No. Nonono...

I move the basement junk out of the way. Good. Not the heater. The big area rug has a dark spot in the middle of it - soaked. Right over the -

Cleanout valve.

I pick up the rug, and bingo. The small pit with the cleanout valve is overflowing with water. I get the wet/dry vac (a great invention - although the model I have from Sears would have to go down as one of the worst designed POS's in recorded history) and I'm clearing out the water.

Water gone, I crack the cleanout valve open and sure enough - Houston, this is the problem.

Two summers ago - Dad and I snaked this very cleanout valve because roots had grown into the main pipe out.

It's baaaaaaaaaAAAAAACK!

So, eight o' clock on a worknight - I gotta figure what the next steps are.

Last time, this clog took a 100' snake to clear. Last time, I had Dad's truck.

Mental list:
1) Rent 100' snake from the extortionists at Home Depot. Easy.
2) Find some way to transport said snake to my house. In the Honda? HA! Or on the Nissan's leather seats? Double HA!

Add to this I'm in the middle of user testing at work, so I have to be there if I'm walking in on bloody stumps.

Pretty sneaky there, Halloween... had me all mellowed out before you went in for the kill.

Plan B is to hit up Jen for the minivan and find some way to swap vehicles.

As if in mocking answer, I can hear the downstairs toilet bubbling up.

*glub* *glub*

Ah, Hell.

It's about freakin' time

...Finally, public debate about Iraq policy on a major network:

Gotta hand it to Letterman.

Election watching for fun and profit

The Washington Post is running a game where you pick the winners and losers of the midterm election.

It's called Midterm Madness, and the best guesser stands to win... well, a measly $100 bucks (Jeez guys, you'd think you could spring for something a little jazzier. Hell, even shoe stores give away iPod Nanos these days... )

Anyway, make yer picks, take yer chances. It may be the only fun you get out of the midterms.

Recharge

Okay, it's been awhile since I've just put something up for fun.

So here goes:

Scoreline - October 22, 2006
Reading: 0
Arsenal: 4
Henry 1, 70 (pen), Hleb 39, Van Persie 49

Oh, this was a beautiful thing.

1) My TiVo picked this game up when there's virtually no chance I'd have spotted it myself. Christmas in October!
2) Arsenal were in fine form and beat the stuffing out of Reading without really trying that hard.

Henry and the Spanish boy-wonder Fabregas teamed up for an early back-breaker. Reading staggered around punch-drunk before deciding to fight on.
Sadly for them, at that moment the Spaniard teamed up with Hleb and Rosicky to pull off a clinical give and go: two nothing - Gunners.

Halftime.

At this point, Arsenal's crusing - the announcer is singing their praises - talking about how young this team is, how fluid their passing was, how Man U. had better be looking behind them -

-and then Henry, Hleb and Van Persie just score on an outrageous series of through passing and teamwork. Perfection - flat out. Reading's keeper is just standing there telling God that, if he had to end the world, now would be a good time.

-But it doesn't end. Fabregas is a holy terror, and charges into the box ony to be cut down by the now hoplessly demoralized keeper.

Penalty. Henry. Goal.

Four nothing and I swear Arsenal just spent the last ten minutes playing keep away. Reading had a few swipes at net - but it was written: Today Reading shall sucketh.

I know - the world says, who cares. A top of the table team buries a first time visitor to the Premiership - but hey - they did it with style. And they enjoyed themselves doing it.

Great to see.

The right level of outrage

In reviewing the past few weeks of posts, I'm more than a little conscious that I'm beating a drum most of us are tired of hearing.

I'm aware that better blogs are doing this, and doing it better in front of a vastly larger segment of the population - and still I just can't stop.

These are the conversations I don't get to have - and by putting them here I hope to spare the people I know in some small way, as well as simply get these thoughts out of my head.

Things are bad, and it's worth saying so.

I'm not up to saying all the things that are cruising around in my head, but thankfully many others are doing so.

First, Keith Olbermann - has once again demonstrated the right level of disgust with the current state of a county he clearly loves. I'd referred to it below, but here's the video of the full comment: "Beginning of the End of America."

Second, a statement by Kevin Tillman, surviving brother of Pat Tillman - who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004.

"Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world."

Read the full piece, After Pat's birthday. Raw and direct, just like a soldier.

These people get it. They are, to varying degrees, on the outside looking in. I'm just hoping that their message finds its way to all people who need to hear it.

Things gotta change.

"Not with a bang, but with a whimper"

I've been trying to sift through the coverage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, to determine if it truly was the end of habeas corpus - or if there was just an ad absurdum argument taking place.

A literal reading of the act makes it sound as if the Military Commissions only apply to alien unlawful combatants. Defenders of the law would stress this as a protection of the rights of U.S. citizens.

As it happens, that's beside the point.

Let's assume the full force of this law applies only to aliens (i.e. non-citizens), who have been declared 'unlawful combatants' by Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush - or competent tribunals they establish. What then, is the risk to you or I?

E got it immediately, but I took awhile. Here's a clue, the relevant language from the act:

1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.

Do you see the weak spot?

Think for a minute.

If you're still scratching your head, Keith Olbermann spells it out in his commentary "Beginning of the End of America."

"And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant”—exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?"

Yeah. Let's say a 'competent tribunal' decides you are an 'alien unlawful combatant.' Shortly thereafter, you're nabbed and thrown into a cell. What are your options?

I'd call my lawyer, my family...

You get no calls, no contact with the outside world.

My friends and family, they'd get lawyers - they'd sue!

How? How would they even know you were being held? The Government doesn't have to admit they even have you, since habeas corpus doesn't apply.

After all, you're an alien unlawful combatant.

But I'm not!

And you can tell your captors that, over and over again.

But nobody's listening. They don't have to.

Circling the drain

While listening to the increasing flood of partisan loyalists blame anyone but the current administration for the North Korea debacle, I saw this little analytical gem from Obsidian Wings.

Clinton vs. North Korea nukes, circa 1994:

(Fred Kaplan, Washington Monthly)
"Bill Clinton, a president not known for hawkishness, nearly went to war against North Korea in the spring of 1994. Five years earlier, during the presidency of George Bush's father, the CIA had discovered the North Koreans were building a reprocessing facility near their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

It was this reactor that, when finished, would allow them to convert the fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium. Now, barely a year into Clinton's first term in office, they were preparing to remove the fuel rods from their storage site, expel the international weapons inspectors, and withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (which North Korea had signed in 1985).

In response, Clinton pushed the United Nations Security Council to consider sanctions. North Korea's spokesmen proclaimed that sanctions would trigger war. Clinton's generals drew up plans to send 50,000 troops to South Korea--bolstering the 37,000 that had been there for decades--as well as over 400 combat jets, 50 ships, and additional battalions of Apache helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles, multiple-launch rockets, and Patriot air-defense missiles. Beyond mere plans, Clinton ordered in an advance team of 250 soldiers to set up logistical headquarters that could manage this massive influx of firepower.

These moves sent a signal to the North Koreans that the president was willing to go to war to keep the fuel rods under international control. And, several former officials insist, he would have. At the very least, they say, he was prepared to launch an air strike on the Yongbyon reactor, even though he knew that doing so could provoke war.

Fast forward to 2002 - Bush vs. North Korea Nukes:

(Kaplan, again)
The CIA got wind that North Korea may have been acquiring centrifuges for enriching uranium since the late 1990s, most likely from Pakistan. By September 2002, the conclusion was inescapable...

On Oct. 4, Kelly flew to Pyongyang to confront North Korean officials with the evidence. The North Koreans admitted it was true.

For almost two weeks, the Bush administration kept this meeting a secret. The U.S. Senate was debating a resolution to give President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq. The public rationale for war was that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

If it was known that North Korea was also making WMDs--and nuclear weapons, at that--it would have muddied the debate over Iraq. Some would have wondered whether Iraq was the more compelling danger--or asked why Bush saw a need for war against Iraq but not against North Korea.

The Senate passed the Iraqi war resolution on Oct. 11. The Bush administration publicly revealed what it had known for weeks about North Korea's enriched-uranium program on Oct. 17."

You heard that right, the Bush administration sat on news of an actual WMD program so that it wouldn't distract people from approving a war against suspected WMD programs.

Swinging around to 2003, we see Cowboy Diplomacy at work. Bush has declared that the United States and South Korea "will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea."

The pose having been struck, this President apparently believed his job was done:

"U.S. spy satellites detected trucks pulling up to the site where the fuel rods were stored, then driving away toward the reprocessing facility. When Kim Il Sung threatened to take this step back in 1994, Clinton warned that it would cross a "red line." When Kim Jong-il actually did it in 2003, George W. Bush did nothing.

Specialists inside the U.S. government were flabbergasted. This was serious business. Once those fuel rods left the storage site, once reprocessing began, once plutonium was manufactured, the strategic situation changed: Even if we could get the North Koreans back to the bargaining table, even if they would agree to drive the fuel rods back, we could never be certain that they'd totally disarmed; we could never know if they still had some undeclared plutonium hidden in an underground chamber. (Even before this crisis, the CIA estimated that the North Koreans might have built one or two bombs from the plutonium it had reprocessed between 1989 and 1994.)"

As hilzoy asks, "Do you feel safer now?"

Update:
US Intelligence confirms North Korea's detonation was a nuke. So much for conspiratorial optimism.

Update II:
And North Korea appears to be preparing for another detonation.

Far better to be at the right hand of the devil, than in his path

I've keep reading about how GOP congressmembers appear to be breaking with the administration, and I have to say - I've stopped believing it.

I've long suspected Sen. Graham of being a mole in some of these GOP rebellions; loudly trumpeting his colleagues independent stance, before subverting it from within. But as Glen Greenwald points out, the problem is much bigger than that.

When it comes to evaluating an independent's record in Congress - there's one scorecard that doesn't lie: the voting record.

If you're an independent - if you truly go your own way - there will be breaks from you and your party on the issues you care about.

Any indepent GOP senators should show their stripes on the issues that matter.

Ready? Let's see...

• Vote to confirm John Roberts to the Supreme Court:
  Republicans (56-0) -- Democrats (22 -22)
  
• Cloture vote on Sam Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court: Republicans (54-0) -- Democrats (19-25)
  Remember all that hand-wringing GOP senators in front of the microphones? Yeah - they all voted party line.
  
• Vote on Authorization to use military force in Iraq:
  Republicans (48-1) -- Democrats - (29-21)
  You're wondering who the 1 holdout was? McCain? Snowe? Warner? Specter? - Wrong. it was Sen. Lincoln Chafee of R.I.
  
• Cloture vote on Bankrupty Bill:
  Republicans (55-0) -- Democrats (14-30)
  Credit lobby says "jump!" - GOP asks only "How high?"
  
• Cloture vote on nomination of Priscilla Owens to appeals court:
  Republicans (55-0) -- Democrats (25-18)
  
• Torture/detention bill:
  Republicans (53-1) -- Democrats (12-33)
  And what GOP'er was the maverick this time? Was it any of the GOP posers you've been seeing on the news lately? No - it was Chafee again.
  
  Also from Greenwald:
  
  "Genuine Republican independence in the Congress is a myth. It doesn't exist. They have spent the last five years as a pitifully obsequious appendange to the Bush agenda."

Forget about all this talk of GOP independents. They're just people who would love to be thought of as independent - at least until November 8.

Toss 'em all out.

Memo to Speaker Hastert

I love the Washington ritual of mea culpa:

"I am taking responsibility..." Now that my transgressions are out in the open.

"...ultimately the buck stops here." But before it does- look over there!

"I'm sorry..." That this ever made it into the papers.

"When Republicans found out about the explicit messages, Republicans dealt with it immediately, and he is gone." The creepy emails and drunken visits to the page dormitory, well they didn't seem odd at the time. And he assured us that it was all perfectly innocent. Who'd have thought a pedophile would lie?

"Someone did have those messages. There are reports that a Congressional aide was a source. The Committee should help find out who had the messages and why they were not turned over sooner." And when I find out who leaked this to the media, so help me...

Boiled down, Hastert's statement suffers from the weakness of most Washington apologies:

Taking responsibility
- consequences
= lip service.

Nice try, Denny - but the buck hasn't stopped yet.

When it has, you'll know.

Foley Artists

Wonder why people are seeing cover-up in the Foleygate mess? Check out this little under-reported tidbit from Glen Greenwald:

Howard Kurtz, the media critic for both CNN and The Washington Post. On Monday, Kurtz reported that someone whom he described as "a strategist for Rep. Mark Foley" and "Foley's former chief of staff" had attempted, on behalf of Foley, to negotiate a deal with ABC, whereby ABC would agree to conceal the content of the IMs in exchange for an exclusive interview with Foley. This is how Kurtz "reported" the incident:

On Friday afternoon, a strategist for Rep. Mark Foley tried to cut a deal with ABC's Brian Ross. The correspondent, who had dozens of instant messages that Foley sent to teenage House pages, had asked to interview the Florida Republican.

Foley's former chief of staff said the congressman was quitting and that Ross could have that information exclusively if he agreed not to publish the raw, sexually explicit messages.

There was no reference whatsoever to the key fact in that story -- that the person negotiating the deal for Foley was actually Tom Reynolds' current Chief of Staff, Kirk Fordham.

--Yeah, that's right. On September 29th, the current Chief of Staff to Tom Reynolds (R - NY) was trying to cut a deal to keep a lid on this scandal. Tom Reynolds is the current chairman for the National Republican Congressional Comittee.

For those of you keeping score, the NRCC is in charge of maintaining a Republican majority in Congress.

Mr. Greenwald rightly chastizes Howard Kurtz for presenting this fact in such a deceptive fashion. The right label for Kirk Fordham isn't "a strategist" for Foley, but "Chief of Staff for Tom Reynolds" - his current job!

I missed this, and I've heard this blunted description repeated in major media outlets. What a crock. Reynolds is rightly going down in flames.

Read the full Greenwald post, it's worth it.

Rashomon

The H situation got a little clarity on Friday - after I compared notes with some of my co-workers.

Seems H's exit was a lot more pathetic than I originally thought. They were sending email out to other departments begging people to say nice things to H's boss so H wouldn't be fired.

No one said anything in H's favor, and the fact that H acted so unprofessional probably made the decision to terminate a whole lot easier for management.

I got some personal clarity on an issue that was bugging me for a long time - why on earth would H have helped me get a better job, after I went out of my way to get H canned at the last one?

I was relating the backstory to another co-worker and was in mid brain-barf when they wrote something on a piece of paper and passed it over to me. They'd written three words and two symbols on it:

Guilt
+
Indebtedness
=
Control

It rang so true, I just burst out with "Oh, My God!"

Control!

That was it. H had been manipulating me by treating me better than I had treated them. It had worked, too. I'd been on their side on a number of things when I shouldn't have. Said measured things when I might have spilled out the whole sorry backstory.

H had told me that they were doing great at work - truth was a little more modest. The boss liked H, that was true. Most everything else was bunk. I'd repeat that bunk, and suddenly H had some kind of "rep." I'd sung their praises to lots of people, in and out of work. I'd default to an ally on pretty much anything.

We were always able to work together, that was true - and I really wanted to believe that H had found a place they could excel in. But it's abundantly clear that nothing had changed, and I was getting played.

The third part of the story would only come from H, and I'll never get that side. But I have to say that I can turn that curiosity off without a second thought.

I'm just naive enough to assume people are being up front about things, and with H - that was clearly a mistake.

It was particularly telling that H's "please help me" email didn't get sent to me. H knew what I'd say at that point - the truth - because that's what I did at our last job.

So, two years of this crap ends right now. No guilt, no strings.

Free and clear.

Happy birthday to me.