...and with charity toward none?

"We will mete out to [them] the measure, and more than the measure, they have meted out to us!"
-Winston Churchill, July 14, 1941

Imagine you are the incoming Speaker of the House this coming January.

A majority of voters across the country has voiced their opinion that the previous Congress has done its job poorly, when it has bothered to do it at all.

As the new speaker, you will be assuming a position whose power has, for the past six years, been used to crap all over you and your followers.

Some items of note:

• Being muzzled by the "super-majority rule." The former speaker ruled that he would not allow legislation to the floor unless a majority of the republicans favored it. This meant your legislation (even if you have a majority of House members in favor of it) did not make it to the floor unless your majority included most of the GOP.
• Being excluded from hearings, with your fellow Dems being told to their face "Why are you [even discussing this bill]? You won't be in the room when the decisions are made."
• Being given copies of legislation at midnight and being told you will be voting on it the following morning. When you attempt to delay the vote so you can get time to read the bill, the Capitol Police are called to evict you from the premises.
• Bi-partisan "Hearings" that last only long enough for the photos to be taken, before being swiftly gaveled so the real hearing can be held off-camera and without the presence of the minority party.
• Being asked to participate in the drafting of the Patriot Act - getting headlines as you vote your bi-partisan work product out of committee, only to learn it was discarded in favor of one written in secret by the majority party alone.
• Blatant re-writing, side-stepping or ignoring Judiciary Committee rules on nominations to maximize the power of the majority party.

And on, and on, and on...

So now, here you are. Holding the gavel of your former oppressors.

You have been charged with: drafting tougher ethical standards and enforcement protocols; investigating government activity on pre-war intelligence, Katrina, Iraq contracts, wiretapping and a host of other issues.

The question is: do you use the tactics of your predecessors to get this done?

Before you reflexively say "No, I'll be big about this," think about these items carefully:

1. The members of the GOP who you invite into your oversight hearings may very well try to sabotage your actions in the hope of protecting their own misdeeds or those of their party or financial backers.
2. Minority party members given free reign to amend bills can poison-pill needed legislation, denying you the ability to draft the bills you were sent to Congress to write.
3. Embracing the GOP in the spirit of bi-partisanship will essentially compound the advantage their strong arm tactics gave them. For six years, they have brushed you aside and took what they wanted. Now, as your party begins to try and undo some of the harm, you're going to set them up with the access and power they denied you for six years and hope they act responsibly?

Then again, if you adapt the tactics of your opponents - do you run the risk of becoming just like them?

What do you do?

The sound of the other shoe dropping...

And there it is... AP and NBC call Virginia for Jim Webb.

The Dems own the Senate folks. All over but the concession speech.

Waterworld

Of the three items that were waiting in the wings to go wrong - the water heater stepped up to the plate a few days ago.

Last year, one of the valves started dripping - then stopped.

The day after I got the sewer straightened out, E noticed a puddle of water near the water heater. I'm thinking it is just water from where I mopped up - but it's still there a day later.

Plus, it's bigger.

So we call the plumber. In my decidedly-out-of-synch-with-recent-events mind, I'm thinking we're replacing the bad valve. I dry up the water and put a bucket under the spigot to see how fast the water is coming out.

Next day, the water is on the floor, not in the bucket. It's obvious that the water isn't coming out of the spigot, it's flowing out of the bottom of the water heater itself.

This is a bad sign. A sign that reads: "Hello, I am your hot water heater - and I am now dead."

So, here we go. E waits for the plumber who charges us eight bills to get the old one out, the new one in, and a few fees just because he's got us over the barrel.

I know. You're saying, "You got rolled."

Yeah, but we're not in a position to shop around. Time is short and this needs to get done. Like, now. We still have to get the furnace looked at, and buy meteor insurance.

I'm over it. I'm already bracing for the next thing.

A margarita and a police state…

"You may be looking at four or five public polls a week that talk about attitudes nationally, but that do not impact the outcome... [the polls] add up to a Republican Senate and a Republican House.

You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math, I'm entitled to the math."
--Karl Rove, October 24, 2006

A former co-worker of mine had bet a margarita that there wouldn't be elections this fall.

She'd said, "if I win, I get a margarita and a police state!"

(It's just one of those lines that is destined for greatness.)

Well, the results are flowing in and she'll owe somebody a margarita, but all things considered - I think she'll gladly pay up. Hell, I'd reimburse her.

MSNBC is predicting the dems get the house 233-202, and even factoring in their margin of error, it means that the White House can start practicing saying, "Speaker Pelosi," right about now.

VA, MO, TN, and MT senate races are still up in the air. The odds don't favor the dems, and there's still the possibility that DINO Lieberman will jump ship if the senate splits down the middle.

Even so, a worthy result from a country that seems seriously pissed off.

I don't expect the Dems to be brilliant, virtuous, and pure - but I do expect them to be adversarial and conduct oversight - something the current rubber stamp majorities seem to have forgotten how to do.

Rock on.

R.I.P. Max

It's official: The Maxima is totaled.

We'll be looking for vehicle number two as soon as we figure out:

1) How much we're getting for dead Max.
2) What the heck we want to replace it with.

Slippery slope

If you think that the GOP-controlled congress didn't invent partisan railroading of legislation, you're right. They've just perfected it. So says Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi:

In 1977, when Democrats held a majority in the House, eighty-five percent of all bills were open to amendment. But by 1994, the last year Democrats ran the House, that number had dropped to thirty percent -- and Republicans were seriously pissed. "You know what the closed rule means," Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida thundered on the House floor. "It means no discussion, no amendments. That is profoundly undemocratic." When Republicans took control of the House, they vowed to throw off the gag rules imposed by Democrats. On opening day of the 104th Congress, then-Rules Committee chairman Gerald Solomon announced his intention to institute free debate on the floor. "Instead of having seventy percent closed rules," he declared, "we are going to have seventy percent open and unrestricted rules."

How has Solomon fared? Of the 111 rules introduced in the first session of this Congress, only twelve were open. Of those, eleven were appropriations bills, which are traditionally open. That left just one open vote -- H. Res. 255, the Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Act of 2005.

In the second session of this Congress? Not a single open rule, outside of appropriation votes. Under the Republicans, amendable bills have been a genuine Washington rarity, the upside-down eight-leafed clover of legislative politics.

Irrespective of who runs Congress, we can't let this trend continue.

Flat tire karma

On at least three occasions, I've been driving along - lost in my own head when I see some other driver, honking and waving.

What's your problem, buddy?

Then I'll see them pointing downward and mouthing a word. They'll start rolling down the window - and it's evident that this isn't road rage - they're genuinely trying to get something across to me.

So, I roll down the window.

"Hey, your tire's low!"

Snapped out of driving coma, I'd thumbs up and pull over and stare at the latest manifestation of neglecting my car.

The simple act of flagging me down saved me some dollars and possibly worse.
These people were nice.

I'd like to thank them - but, of course, they're just gone.

---

It was this spirit of indebtedness that got me typing today - at home on Friday afternoon.

Rewind. 7:48 am. Taking the boy to day care.

I swing onto Hwy 51, southbound and I'm behind some guy in a sedan. His car is throwing a lot of white smoke, but this is a cold day and that's what cars do when they've just started up in cold weather.

Then I notice that sedan guy's car is smoking on the left, away from his tailpipe. I'm right behind him so I just keep watching his car. It looks like the smoke is coming from his wheel.

I look closer. It is. His car is leaning heavily towards his left rear tire. I see a chunk of rubber come off and roll onto the shoulder.

Sedan guy is blissfully unaware.

I'm coming up on my turn, so I pull into the left turn lane. Sedan guy is slowing up, still smoking - still clueless.

I'm just about pulling even with him, trying to think of what's the fastest way to tell him about his tire. I reach for the horn and-

-and I plow right into a Ford Focus in my left turn lane.

Ford goes forward to smack into a pickup. I turn to see the boy's okay. "What was that?!" he asks.

No airbags popped, so I can see our hood is pushed up like a bubble. The guy in the Ford gets out. I try to do the same and the damn door is jammed. I kick it open and ask if he's okay. He is. So's the driver of the truck.

Ford says "Wow, that was fast."

I start to ask what was fast when I see the cop. It's been less than thirty seconds since impact. Yeah, that was fast.

I fork over my drivers license, and get back in the car with the boy. He's good, just wondering what happened. "I want this car to move," he says. I explain as best I can.

He asks to hear Tchaikovsky, so I fire up the iPod. So long as he has music, he's good.

I stay in the car. No point talking with the other drivers. What would you say, anyway? The cop writes me a citation, and is generally a nice guy.

My front end is ruined - but the car will move. Never fails, does it - just yesterday Jen was telling me how nice this car rode. Kiss of death.

I call into work and tell them I won't be in. The car limps to day care, and I go home to deal with the insurance types.

---

So here we are, at home. The car's off to the garage - no word on if it's totaled or not.

We're a one car family again.

Dammit.

Electric Eel

It sounds stupid, but one of my favorite memories involves snaking a sewer pipe.

No, you read that right.

Two years ago, my dad had come up from Mississippi to help me finish my basement before my son was born.

*****

There – you see what I just did? I described what happened the way dad would have. “I helped my son finish his basement.” Yeah, anyone who knows me knows that’s a load. Fact is, I’m pretty much useless when it comes to tools. Dad didn’t help me. I tried to help him.

The basement project pretty much followed a lifelong pattern of home and auto repair with my dad. He’d invite me to help him work on something, and I’d spend the next few hours holding the light while dad did everything. I know my dad was trying to instill in me the same fascination he had with fixing things – but the fact is, he’d never let you do the work.

You’d start turning a bolt, and he’d finish it. Before you pounded a nail, he’d “get you started.” He didn’t mean anything by it, but dad couldn’t bear to see things done badly, so letting me learn by screwing things up wasn’t much of an option. No second chances, just the certain knowledge that as soon as things started getting close to difficult – dad would take over.

Most of my life, I really hated going into the garage.

*****

Anyway, back to two years ago. Dad’s decided that we need more room in our house before the baby is born, so he takes it on himself to load up his truck with hardware and drives across the country to spend two weeks in my basement putting in a guest bedroom, a second bathroom, and the office I’m sitting in now.

Me being me, I didn’t manage to get time off from work, so dad’s working alone in the day while I’m at work.

*****

There, did it again – didn’t I? My last job, I had boatloads of time off. I could get out of work practically whenever I wanted. Fact is, given the choice of being a hero at work, or holding the light for dad at home, I chose work.

*****

Back in the basement, two years ago. I’m at work and dad calls me.

“Son?”

“Yeah?”

“I hate to bother you, but I did something… I can hardly believe I did something so stupid. Can you give me directions to the hospital?”

I’m like – well, what do you think I’m like? “You want me to call an ambulance?”

“No. No. I shot myself in the hand with the nailgun.”

At that moment, I have a vision of my dad, hand nailed to the wall, straining to reach the phone. It turns out dad, being my dad, has managed to fire a nail through the center of his left hand and miss every bone. He’s back to work in less than three hours. And if it hadn’t been for the VA hospital being such a collection point for useless people, he’d have been back in less than two.

Dad didn’t quit. Ever.

Where was I? So, I get a Friday off so dad and I can work on the big project – the plumbing for the second bathroom. E’s sister and brother in law are stopping by, so it’s going to be a busy few days.

The original plan was to find the main sewer pipe, then expose it by cutting out sections of the concrete floor with a special saw. We’d break up the cut sections and then make trenches to lay the new pipes for the toilet, sink, and shower drains.

At first, things went well.

The concrete saw was a Sears POS electric saw with a special blade to cut ‘crete. Dad figured you could wet a sponge and hold it against the side of the blade while it turned to keep it from overheating and (better still) keep the concrete dust from filling the entire basement.

Works like a charm. Loud as hell, but zero dust. Dad’s cutting a section out over where we’re going to tie into the main drain pipe, I’m keeping the sponge on the blade.

Four cuts later, we heave a square section of floor up and start looking for the drain pipe. I scoop out a few buckets of fill gravel and we get our first disappointment:

A second concrete floor six inches below the floor we just cut through.

So, we widen the hole we just cut, to make room for using the saw on the floor we just found. Enter disappointment number two.

The saw dies. Sparks. Smoke. Fire.

Great.

Dad only brought the damn thing as an experiment, he’d left his good saws at home. So, we’re back to the jackhammer and the sledge. This is a helluva lot more work. Dad pounds through the second floor, and we start digging for the drain pipe again.

Disappointment number three arrives: No drain pipe.

We’d drawn a straight line between the stack and the cleanout valve and assumed the pipe would continue on that straight line. Wrong.

Now we’ve cut through two floors and have nothing to show for it. Dad goes route one and begins to cut two holes right next to the cleanout valve to find the angle that the drain pipe takes from there.

Two jackhammer sessions later – we find the pipe. Instead of the straight line we’d originally assumed, the drain takes a thirty degree bend towards our neighbor’s house. Our first hole was off by about four feet.

To tie in, we need to buy more pipe, pound two more holes through the floors, and dig through about two feet of clay.

Dad’s unfazed and gets started. Jackhammers being imprecise tools we soon have cut a huge pit in our basement floor – that leads to a smaller pit in the second floor.

Assloads of work later, we tie into the drain pipe using a single y-connector. We’re bushed, but happy. It is now time for the fifth disappointment.

*****

They say you usually have problems with plumbing when you have company over. This isn’t mere irony at work – a slow drain might be able to cope with the water output of your family, but have a few people over and suddenly your water output spikes and your slow drain suddenly can’t cope with the volume. Things back up – just when you’re entertaining your guests.

Now, I told you that E’s sister and brother in law were visiting, right?

I’m helping dad in some menial way when we notice that there is water in the lower pit. At first, we assume that this is just seeping out of the ground. Then we realize that the water is rising, and the surrounding ground is clay.

Cue disappointment number five, and it’s a doozy. The y-connector that we’ll be tying into the new basement has a temporary cap on it, so we can still run water in the rest of the house.

To see if the water is coming out of the ground, or out of the pipe, we take off the cap. Out pours gallons of water. Gallons of the previously mentioned “after” water. Any hope that this might have been a fluke vanishes when, upstairs, I can hear E flushing the toilet, and we get to see that water make its way into the pit.

The main drain we just tied into is plugged, and we are seriously screwed.

*****

Wait a minute? This is a good memory? Yeah, it is. Not because my dad and I are standing in a pit of sewerage, but because of what came next.

At this moment – the whole project is up against it. If something we did collapsed the main drain pipe – we’re done, and the professionals can start charging by the hour.

We do a few tests to get a feel of what we’re dealing with.

At this point, I do in fact mean “we.” Dad’s in scramble mode, and isn’t worried about running the show. He needs this to work and so do I. We’re bouncing ideas off each other, testing this, testing that. From here on out, we’re a team.

Overnight, the water level goes down. We rent a 50’ plumbing snake from Home Depot and go to town. As the only male in my family to actually read directions, I discover a number of gotchas in using this particular device. Dad grunts his approval and we get started. We tag team on the snake and run it out. Twenty feet. Thirty feet. Forty feet. Fifty.

No breakthrough. Disappointment number six, right on time. Whatever is stopping the water, it’s more than fifty feet from the cleanout valve.

We take back the 50’ plumbing snake and get a 100’ snake made by Electric Eel. It’s a beast, and we dent the wall getting it downstairs. I get the bit on and we go to town again. We trade off leading the snake and running the motor but we’re both swapping glances between the water in the pit and the amount of snake we have left on the coil.
Fifty feet left, forty, thirty…

..with just over twenty feet left, we see the water in the pit move, then drain out. Dad and I just look at each other and cheer. And there it is: that moment of being on a winning team with my dad. Having actually contributed to a winning effort – with my dad. He’s high-fiving me and we’re yukking it up. For once, dad’s saying ‘thanks for the help’ and meaning it. For once, I got to be useful and not just hold the damn light.

Unprecedented. Just thinking of it makes me smile. We won.

*****

That was two years ago. The current drain debacle is, I am fervently praying, more of the same. Roots in the pipe snarling things up. Seen it before. This, I can handle.

The complications start when I realize that I don’t have dad or dad’s truck. M volunteers his SUV, Ms. No-H hers, and Jen offers the minivan.

Problem solved, I hit the depot. I go right to the beast I remember and check out.
The guy’s like “need some help loading that?” I say no, I’ve done it before.

Wheeling the snake out to the van I realize this was a mistake. Picture an object that, because of its mass, you are physically unable to budge.

Reduce the weight of that object by one pound, and you’re right where I was that evening. It weighs a fricking ton. I blow out some vertebrae and get it into the van, and bounce it down the stairs to start all over again.

I get out the operating instructions the rental guy gave me. Might as well be sure. They turn out to be instructions for using a buff sander. Thanks for nothing, Home Depot.

I get the uber-mag light from upstairs so I can check the water level in the cleanout. First thing you do with a flashlight is flip it on when you pick it up, right? It’s working. I snap it off and go downstairs.

I point the flashlight into the cleanout and flip it on. It goes on, then dies almost instantly. I go to the bucket of batteries I keep for such emergencies and (wonder of wonders!) I have enough D cells to fill up an uber-mag.

Small problem. Unscrewing the battery cap, I find that the old and dead batteries have leaked and aren’t coming out of the flashlight without a fight. Two screwdrivers and a dangerous amount of pounding later, I give up and throw the hunk of junk onto the downstairs guest bed.

I fit the bit on the snake and get started. The snake with one person is more of a hassle. Think of a motorized garden hose reel in reverse. You feed out the snake using a foot pedal, but if you get too much slack out you can have it whip around like a dropped fire hose. It’s tearing into my office hands, so I look for work gloves and strike out. E loans me some latex gloves – which at first seem like a good idea.

Then the latex catches in the spinning snake. It peels off my hand and loops around to cinch down on my fingers like a slipknot. This happens to both my hands in about as much time as it takes to say it. I tear the gloves to shreds and let their scraps go down into the cleanout – still snagged on the snake.

I run out about fifty feet of the snake and wonder if I’ve made any headway. The water in the cleanout valve seems lower (thanks to a working micro-mag) and I decide to try flushing the downstairs toilet to see if the water level rises to the same level as yesterday.

Soon as I flush, I know I’ve made a bad mistake – the downstairs toilet is backing up and is just about to overflow. I whip off the tank cover and reach for the float to stop the water flow-

-and accidentally grab the flush chain instead. The toilet now has flushed a second time, and two bowls of filthy water still have nowhere to go but over the sides and onto the floor.

I get the wet vac (another Sears POS) and try to salvage things, but it gets the rugs, the baseboards it’s a disaster.

I check the cleanout, no change in the water level. This wasn’t from a backup in the main line – this was just a clogged toilet. Nice.

Without a working main drain – I’ve got a wet vac full of disgusting water in the basement. No way I’m taking this up a flight of stairs, so it has to sit here until I break through.

If I break through.

Back to the snake.
It’s around 9pm, and I’m beat. I’ve run out fifty feet of snake and have nothing to show for it but a foul mess in the bathroom.

I start the snake up.
Sixty feet out.

There’s still standing water in the cleanout.

Seventy feet.

Here I’m hopeful, since this is where we broke through last time. No change in the water line.

Eighty feet. No change.

Ninety.

I’m looking at the few remaining coils of the snake, thinking this is it. The water level’s maddeningly unchanged, and there’s nothing left to do but press on.

Bam!
The snake hits its end. One hundred feet played out, and still no change in the water level.

That’s it. I’m screwed. I’m out the rental, I’m beat, my hands are worn raw, I’m covered with filth, and I still have to call a plumber. Plus, no shower, no bathroom until this gets done.

Son of a bitch.

Now, I don’t want to get too maudlin about this, but right about then, I was comparing the previous experience with the snake with this one. After everything going wrong, dad and I were able to beat this damn thing.
– Yet here I am, two years later, alone – having succeeded only in making things worse.

I sat down on the stairs, and just stared at the snake.

I thought about all sorts of things. Like what dad would do. What he would think of his son just sitting on the damn stairs. What he’d think about him going into his own head instead of getting busy doing something useful.

Screw it. I thought. What else is there to do? There’s no more goddamned cable.

True, but - when you operate the snake, you typically stand between the drain and the coil of snake cable. I’m not a big guy, but I do have a pretty big wingspan.

Like a sleepwalker, I got up and pushed the snake cart until it was right next to the cleanout. That gave me about five more feet to run down the drain.

I ran it out. What the hell?

And, swear to God – the water level dropped.

I just sat down again and smiled. Then I reeled it in and did it two more times with larger bits – just to make sure.

I’m not my dad, and I will never be my dad – but every once in awhile I can be a glimpse of the man. And I can be proud of that moment.

Baby wipes and hand sanitizer

So.

Main sewer pipe is backed up. This I can cope with. Most times the drain isn't totally plugged, and so long as you send no more water down the pipe - you can maintain the situation until you have time to snake out the pipe and really solve things.

My completely unscientific measurements make it seem like we've got just about enough room for a single toilet flush. So, no showers in the am - but, at least we've got enough breathing room to go to bed.

We do.

---

A lot of people don't think about their water softeners much. Give them salt once in awhile, but other than that - they're pretty much just another tube shaped object in the basement gathering dust.

We don't pay them much attention, because they usually don't demand any. Most are on timers to run at 3am, so most folks aren't even awake to hear them when they do their only job.

A propo of nothing, it's 3:43 am as I write this. 'kay?

For the uninitiated, water softeners pass your hard water over these nifty little things called zeolite pellets to remove dissolved minerals by reverse osmosis. I know this only because I just looked it up.

Why did I look this up at 3 in the Goddamned morning?

Because of this little item at the end of end of the howstuffworks.com entry:

"The remaining brine plus all of the calcium and magnesium is flushed out through a drain pipe. Regeneration can create a lot of salty water, by the way -- something like 25 gallons (95 liters)."

Yeah. 25 gallons, and my drain has enough room for one toilet flush.

Softener runs, brine flows, basement cleanout valve barfs out gallons of what I'd charitably call "after" water.

Luckily, E got up in the night and noticed this whole debacle, or we'd have woken up to an even bigger mess.

Which brings us to now.

The water main is shut off to stop the water softener from dutifully sending the rest of its 25 gallons of brine down the drain. There is no water, and I'm typing this only because I've been using the Baby wipes and hand sanitizer that E gave me.

Frick, Frick, Frack.

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.

“Congratulations…Admiral Piett...”

At my old job, I had a boss I'll call H who was universally unpopular. Their behavior was so bad that I ultimately ended up making a formal complaint to upper management. Shortly thereafter - although certainly not as a direct result - upper management sat my boss down in a room and ordered them to sign a letter of resignation. My boss didn't, they walked out - fully expecting to be fired. Even left me a voicemail saying I was to blame.

Upper management being spineless types, they chose not to fire H. They just waited, hoping that enough time would pass so that this would become a de-facto resignation. Having read the rules as well, H returned weeks later on the last day they could have been allowed to continue working. H then proceeded to stick around for several painfully uncomfortable months. A few days before a huge go-live date, we find out that H is leaving for a better job. In a building where everyone seemed relieved to be rid of them, H insisted on having a farewell "party" with cake and speeches.

Weird, but - End of story, right?

Not quite. Some time later, I get a call from H inviting me to come work with them.

I'm thinking, no way - this is some bizarre payback scheme... but H goes out of their way to show me the job specs, prep me for what it will be like - even sets up an interview with a headhunter.

I gave it a shot. Tuned up my résumé, put on a clean shirt - took a chance. The headhunter was a total pro. If it's revenge, it's mucho bizzaro and elaborate as hell. I roll the dice.

Nothing. For a year. Not even a phone call.

I'm like whatever, all that fretting over a big change - for nothing. So, one year later I run into H in the grocery store, and they are not their usual surly self. They gush over my son, chat me up... I'm lost. I make nice and forget about it.

Next week, I get an email from H telling me that I should apply again, H's employer is hiring. H talks me up to the bosses, puts me back in touch with the headhunter.

I'm like, whatever; put my on-file resume in the mix. Hang up. What's for lunch?

Next day, headhunter calls me back; you have an interview - tomorrow.

Uh...? Okay, might as well polish up the skills on a suicide mission.

At the interview, I'm hired on the spot. In forty-eight hours I go from nonprof lifer to corporate stringer.

--And I work with H.

H is not my manager, I've made sure - but any fears of payback go out the window on my first day. H makes me a welcome sign - shows me the ropes. Takes me to meetings, assists me on projects, tunes up my reports. In short, H is a spectacular co-worker.

In corp-world, H is a star. H is the Boss' stand out staffer - the go-to person for important projects.

It's like they're a different person.

Months pass, infrequently I see the occasional shade of the former H that I remember from my old job. Sullenly staring at their notes in meetings. Talking in low hostile tones.... But it passes - and life goes on. Most days, you don't have time to think about that stuff anyway.

Week ago, I get called in to help H on a project. I'm like "sure, I owe ya."

H is on the project from hell. Combative stakeholders, insane timeline, wandering scope, and no backup.

H is stressed and is reverting to patterns I've seen before. H's decisions are picked apart by our team manager, and now there's no one in H's corner.

I go to H's project meetings and they are pure poison. Bureaucratic infighting on top of raw nerves. I help out in a limited fashion and thank the heavens that I can move on to safer projects.

That was last week. Yesterday, I get an IM from H saying they've been bounced off the project lead. Now, I'm lead. H's employment status is being re-evaluated in three weeks. As in: fired, but given time to look for work first.

Delayed firings never seem to last, and this one is no exception. After a particularly frustrating day, H goes splenetic in email and next thing they're bowing out of a 4 o'clock meeting with me. H says the one thing a contractor never wants to say, "I have to meet with my account rep." (i.e. I'm fired.) Gone. As. Of. Now.

I get a courtesy call from the boss to formally let me know the situation. She's upset, she genuinely seemed to like H.

I'm pretty conflicted. Two years ago, I'd have been cheering. Now, I just feel ill. H flamed out, and appears to have had ample opportunity to save their job - but it was just a total shitstorm, they were left hanging, and I’m thinking anyone could have cracked.

In any event, I'll have ample opportunity to test that hypothesis. After all, I'm on the doomsday project. As lead.

Nothing to worry about though, the boss likes me -
I'm a star.

When did we stop being America?

I was reading the declassified excerpts from the NIE on Trends in Global Terrorism, and got distracted by a small thing that has bugged me for years.

From the declassified key judgments:

...We judge that al-Qaida will continue to pose the greatest threat to the Homeland and US interests abroad...
We assess that the operational threat from self-radicalized cells will grow in importance to US counterterrorism efforts, particularly abroad but also in the Homeland...
...[groups like Jamaah Islamiya and Ansar al-Sunnah] pose less of a danger to the Homeland than does al-
Qaeida...

Homeland.

When did we re-brand this nation as "the Homeland?" As in: the-completely-fabricated-proper-noun, Homeland.

When did "America" become inadequate to describe where we live? Why do we suddenly need to refer to this nation as anything other than its given name?

Nevermind the fascist overtones this re-branded pretender implies. Ask yourself, what need is this word filling? Precision? Imprecision?

Department of Homeland Security.
Why in Sam Hell couldn't we have a Department of Domestic Security?

There are bigger fish to fry in the world, but its just another symptom of an ideology moving to sneak into our thoughts by taking over the language.

Estate tax? Death Tax.
Eavesdropping? Terrorist Surveillance Program.
Torture? Interrogation Techniques.

Don't think of America in the same way, this seems to suggest - think of it our way.

Sorry, but I live in America. The "homeland" can bite me.

Bait and switch

On Friday, President Clinton agreed to be interviewed by Fox News' Chris Wallace. The interview was supposed to focus on Pres. Clinton's recent fundraising efforts to combat global issues like poverty, resource scarcity, and sectarian conflict. His nonpartisan group got people like Rupert Murdoch talking to progressives about issues that are more important than ideology.

Pres. Clinton expected to be asked about his foundation's global initiative. Since he was on Fox News, he was instead grilled on why he "didn't do enough" to get Bin Laden.

Understandably, he felt set up. The full video isn't up yet, but he clearly was angry with the interviewer.

I would expect Fox News (being the partisan bullhorn that they are) to break up and cherry pick this interview to make whatever hay they can - but the full transcript reads rather well for Pres. Clinton.

Case in point:

WALLACE: Do you think you did enough sir?

CLINTON: No, because I didn’t get him.

WALLACE: Right…

CLINTON: But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try and they didn’t…I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke… So you did FOX’s bidding on this show. You did you nice little conservative hit job on me. But what I want to know..

WALLACE: Now wait a minute sir…

CLINTON:…

WALLACE: I asked a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate question?

CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of. I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked: Why didn’t you do anything about the Cole? I want to know how many you asked: Why did you fire Dick Clarke? I want to know…

WALLACE: We asked…

CLINTON:…

WALLACE: Do you ever watch Fox News Sunday sir?

CLINTON: I don’t believe you ask them that.

WALLACE: We ask plenty of questions of…

CLINTON: You didn’t ask that did you? Tell the truth.

WALLACE: About the USS Cole?

CLINTON: Tell the truth.

WALLACE: I…with Iraq and Afghanistan there’s plenty of stuff to ask.

CLINTON: Did you ever ask that? You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch is going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers for supporting my work on climate change. And you came here under false pretenses and said that you’d spend half the time talking about…

WALLACE: [laughs]

CLINTON: You said you’d spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7 billion dollars plus over three days from 215 different commitments. And you don’t care.

Full transcript (rough as of 9/23)

Sen. McCain: Why do you settle for headlines instead of results?

The popular image of Sen. McCain is the conservative maverick. Plain-spoken, direct, he's the guy willing to break with his president if his principles led him elsewhere.
I was one of the many impressed by his championing the 2005 McCain amendment barring prisoner abuse. He went up against the President, and won the day.

Except he didn't, he got the photo op - and very little else:

"The McCain vote, of course, garnered front-page coverage around the country and on the networks. "President Backs McCain on Abuse," declared The New York Times.

What was mostly missed, however, were two key facts. First, the amendment, worthy as it was, wasn’t as strong as advertised. It contained no enforcement clause: soldiers or CIA agents couldn’t abuse prisoners, the bill stated, but it didn’t provide for any penalties if they did. The amendment, in other words, was mostly a statement of principle, without teeth.

What’s more, McCain’s amendment was undercut by another little-noticed amendment that was passed as part of the same defense appropriations bill. Sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham, Carl Levin, and John Kyl, the amendment — which was combined with McCain’s measure to become the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) — states that testimony gained through "coercion" can be used in military tribunals. Unlike the McCain amendment, which merely reaffirms existing laws, the Graham-Levin-Kyl measure muddies what had been clear waters. The amendment’s portion of the DTA also severely restricts detainees’ access to U.S. courts and strips them of the right to habeas corpus. It limits detainee cases to a single hearing in front of an appeals court, at which detainees have no clear right to present the facts of their case."
-Eric Umansky, CJR

Now Sen. McCain's back in the papers - having once again locked horns with the White House. The papers sign his praises, and rhapsodize about how he's standing on principle again.
And now, once more - we have to ask: what did you accomplish, Senator?

"...Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects. He will do so by issuing his own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions in an executive order and by relying on questionable Justice Department opinions that authorize such practices as exposing prisoners to hypothermia and prolonged sleep deprivation. Under the compromise agreed to yesterday, Congress would recognize his authority to take these steps and prevent prisoners from appealing them to U.S. courts. The bill would also immunize CIA personnel from prosecution for all but the most serious abuses and protect those who in the past violated U.S. law against war crimes."
-Washington Post Op Ed

"On other issues, the three rebel senators achieved only modest improvements on the White House’s original positions. They wanted to bar evidence obtained through coercion. Now, they have agreed to allow it if a judge finds it reliable (which coerced evidence hardly can be) and relevant to guilt or innocence. The way coercion is measured in the bill, even those protections would not apply to the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.

The deal does next to nothing to stop the president from reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions. While the White House agreed to a list of "grave breaches" of the conventions that could be prosecuted as war crimes, it stipulated that the president could decide on his own what actions might be a lesser breach of the Geneva Conventions and what interrogation techniques he considered permissible. It’s not clear how much the public will ultimately learn about those decisions. They will be contained in an executive order that is supposed to be made public, but Mr. Hadley reiterated that specific interrogation techniques will remain secret.

Even before the compromises began to emerge, the overall bill prepared by the three senators had fatal flaws. It allows the president to declare any foreigner, anywhere, an "illegal enemy combatant" using a dangerously broad definition, and detain him without any trial. It not only fails to deal with the fact that many of the Guantánamo detainees are not terrorists and will never be charged, but it also chokes off any judicial review."
-NYT Op Ed

"Let's assume for the sake of argument that there ought to be a series of interrogation tactics that fall short of grave breaches but that ought still not to be permissible. That sounds right, indeed. But, the problem [with this deal] is [its] complete deferral to the President on this determination. There were other ways it could have been done, including legislative oversight, judicial determination (i.e. like a FISA court review), or some interrogation "body" that would assess the use of such tactics in specific circumstances. It didn't have to just go to the President; Congress could have equally allowed presidential tough tactics but still reserved some oversight over the use and consistency of those tactics (that fall short of a grave breach).
It is this concession to the President that is mind-boggling in almost all respects because the hold-outs could have given the President the less than grave tactics without giving him the sole authority to determine what they were."
--Juliette Kayyem

McCain has run into the Administration's buzz saw more than a few times, and he keeps coming away with little more than headlines.

So the question is, is that all he wants?

The one cat I'll miss...

On a more frivolous subject - Today the navy retires the F-14 Tomcat.

As a kid, this was the plane I dreamt about growing up to fly. I remember my dad telling me about planes that could shoot down the enemy at a range of 200 miles. "Never even see the enemy," dad would say. He was talking about this bird.

The truth was a little more modest:
A Tomcat with six AIM-54 Phoenix missiles and a AWG-9 radar system could track two dozen targets while engaging six of them at better than 100 miles.

The targets would need to be bomber-sized, and the only test of this had results that were always charitably interpreted - but still! It was a cool bird, swing wings and then there was VF-84 paint scheme which was multiple shades of kick-ass.

It was a movie star (Final Countdown, Top Gun, Executive Decision) it was....

...it was pricey. It cost Thirty-six million per unit. A full salvo for an F-14 cost over two million.

..and it was old.

Still, it was the plane I was stuck on as a kid, and while it's had a good run - it's still a bit sad to see it sent off to the boneyard like any other relic.

One more icon crossed off the list.

Beyond, there be dragons

Sam Gardiner, Col. USAF (Ret.), lecturer at the National War College, and frequent commentator has published a paper on Iran through the non-partisan Century Foundation. His observations are not encouraging. In addition to believing that something is in the works, he is not optimistic about the military option:

"When I finished the 2004 Iran war game exercise, I summarized what I had learned in the process. After all the effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers. "You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. You have to make diplomacy work." I have not changed my mind. That conclusion made sense then. It still makes sense today."

We torture

Maybe this was the article that ruined my mood for today, but it is an excellent piece of work- the kind that should happen more often: A look back at the media coverage of a huge story.

The story is America's treatment of detainees. There's good and bad in the way journalists and editors did and didn't cover the story - but the end result of all of this is a realization I'd been fighting off for some time.

The article is Eric Umansky's Failures of Imagination, and it is quite the read.

There weren't bad apples in the torture scandal, there was bad policy. Immoral policy. And there has been precious little coverage and virtually no oversight.

The Detainee Treatment Act and the McCain Amendment of 2005 are revealed for the hollow farces that they are, and time and time again we are shown how easily the press is stonewalled, misdirected, or flat-out lied to.

Air raid

I try not to be an alarmist. This is my playpen, I post what I want here - but I genuinely try to post stuff that is sourced enough to be credible. If it's editorial, I'll just link to it.

Josh Marshall over at TalkingPointsMemo.com has posted something that is downright scary. Not "ooh, I have shivers" ghost-story crap - but honest-to-Jehovah scary:

Quite a bit has come out in the last week or so pointing to the conclusion that the Bush administration is making serious preparations for a major military strike on Iran. The tea leaves are always difficult to analyze because you have to weigh the fact that a strike is totally irrational against the fact that the administration is led by folks whose irrationality has been demonstrated again and again. The one piece of data that makes me think they're really going to try it, however, is the news that Don Rumsfeld has apparently put Abram Shulsky (head of what was once the 'Office of Special Plans' (OSP)) in charge of a new DOD outfit, modeled on the OSP, to stovepipe bogus Iran intel from the likes of Manucher Ghorbanifar straight to administration leaders.
That tells me that fundamentally Condi Rice is just window-dressing, like her predecessor Colin Powell, that the Cheney-Rumsfeld Axis remains in place and in charge and that we'll probably be at war with Iran before too long unless someone can stop them.

Now, there are always alarmists out there - and this is the internet for crying out loud - but there's more than Mr. Marshall's bad vibe.

Time magazine is reporting that the U.S. Navy is getting orders that look like something is up.

The first message was routine enough: a "Prepare to Deploy" order sent through naval communications channels to a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two mine hunters. The orders didn't actually command the ships out of port; they just said to be ready to move by Oct. 1.
But inside the Navy those messages generated more buzz than usual last week when a second request, from the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), asked for fresh eyes on long-standing U.S. plans to blockade two Iranian oil ports on the Persian Gulf.

Posturing is part of statecraft, we could be doing this to ratchet up the pressure on Iran (memo to the President: good luck with that), and as stupid and wasteful as that would be - I sure hope that's the case.

If we move on an Iranian Port for real - that is an act of war. We'll call "quarantine" or some safe for TV term, but it would be an act of war.

I don't believe in October surprises, not from this President. But I genuinely fear that he is so sure of himself (again) that he will (again) do grievous harm to America.

Who in the heck likes corn?

Consumer reports has an interesting article about Ethanol fuel - specifically, E85.

The ethanol myth
Despite the avid support of the Bush administration and major American car companies, E85 is unlikely to fill more than a small percentage of U.S. energy needs. ...

-E85, which is 85 percent ethanol, emits less smog-causing pollutants than gasoline, but provides fewer miles per gallon, costs more, and is hard to find outside the Midwest.
-Government support for flexible-fuel vehicles, which can run on E85, is indirectly causing more gasoline consumption rather than less.
-Most ethanol is being blended in a 10 percent mix to reduce smog-producing emissions and stretch gasoline supplies.

Worth a read.

Yard sale

After Katrina hit, my mom's neighbor, T had an unwelcome visitor: a yacht had landed on the back of his house. It had appeared the night before the storm, tied up to the dock across the bayou.

The storm surge had lifted it off its moorings and over the 15-foot pilings and onto T's house. His house was pretty much gutted, so the boat didn't really add to the damage - it just added hassle.

T had originally expected (as most would) that the owner would come to claim their boat. They didn't. Turns out, this boat wasn't your run of the mill flotsam. The owner didn't own the neighboring dock, didn't have rights to moor it there and - this is the kicker - the owner had it insured up the ying-yang.

After checking out the boat, T figured out why: the boat was a total mess, and likely had been for quite some time before the storm. In fact, this boat wasn't even from the area: it had sailed into the bayou only the night before and tied up under cover of darkness.

This owner was only too happy to cash out and walk away.

He hadn't counted on two factors:
1) T (having lost his house and everything in it) was in a seriously pissy mood; and
2) T is an attorney.

T calls this guy's insurance company and assures them that the boat is overinsured. He then finds out that there's some law that allows him to claim the boat as his salvage (since it arrived on his land and wasn't claimed within X period of days). T doesn't want it, but can bring the guy's insurance settlement to a screetching halt just by filing a claim. Then he goes trolling for ways to sue this turkey for parking his boat on his property.

A year plus later, T's still living in a FEMA trailer, overhauling his house - but jerkwad boatowner finally ponies up the dough to haul the wreck off of T's yard. Plus damages. Plus, they had to haul it out via the bayou. And everyone got to watch and point.

Score one for the good guys.

A spade is a spade...

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) in response to a G.O.P. colleague remarking that Democrats are "tired of fighting terrorism."

The problem with the President's interview with NBC's Matt Lauer...

What genuinely disturbs me about his performance here is this:

He keeps hammering on two points, despite pointed, direct questioning.

1. I need to protect the country (or “your family”).
2. I don’t want to say things that will cause the enemy to adjust their tactics.

The first is just rhetoric and is just nonsensical in terms of responding to a question.

The second actually might have some merit, if the President demonstrated what he meant by it.

He could say, for example:

“If I told you that a specific tactic x was not allowed, it would tell our enemies that. Right now an interrogator can bluff a prisoner into believing that they will be subjected to this tactic – but as soon as I say that this technique is prohibited, and interrogator cannot even bluff using this tactic.”

But he doesn’t say that – he sticks to his talking points and leans into the reporter and makes the question about Matt Lauer’s family. “Don’t you want me to keep your family safe?” as in the classic salesman’s fake-out ‘question’ “Are you the kind of person who enjoys saving money?”

People who talk like that make you distrust them. You may answer their question, you may politely indulge them and let the matter drop. But you’ll remember what they said and what they didn’t. And you’ll think of them as dishonest.

A President with a good reason for withholding information should be able to convey this intelligently. President Bush just comes across as someone who has been handed a script and told not to deviate from it – no matter how foolish it makes him appear.

Well, mission accomplished, Mr. President.

You looked foolish, weak and dishonest.

Scramble, scramble...

This amazingly scrambly performance harkens back to the President’s “what’s the difference” interview with Diane Sawyer.

Did you ever…? I've never seen a President so bad in front of a camera.

Another K.O.

Apt commentary on America's literal and figurative open wound.

The obvious question

Where were you...?

Velvet glove

Here's the response from my local ABC affilliate:

The Path to 9/11 is a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources. The events that lead to 9/11 originally sparked great debate, so it’s not surprising that a movie surrounding those events has revived the debate. The attacks were a pivotal moment in our history that should never be forgotten and it’s fitting that the discussion
continues.

Clearly, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression. We are aware of that. We also know that [our city]has a reputation for being an unbiased community that supports all viewpoints and we will allow our viewers to make their own conclusions.

Thank you for your comments!

Even less than what I'd expected, but at least they were prompt. I mean really, this isn't a movie depicting events that happend centuries ago - about which there are competing theories.

These are events where the participants are still alive and are loudly denoucing ABC's depiction.

I told them this, but I'm probably only allowed one bite at the apple.

Nipping at their heels

In response to the recent coverage on how the movie The Path to 9/11 got so many things wrong, I wrote the following to my local ABC affilliate:

I'm writing to find out if your network's intent is to air the miniseries The Path to 9/11.

While there is little point in dissecting pure entertainment programming for its factual content - programming that purports to be factual and based on independent research ought to be held to its own standards.

The Path to 9/11, has been criticized as "inaccurate" by members of the 9/11 commission, as well as participants in the events the movie claims to portray.

The co-commissioner of the 9/11 commission has wondered how the movies writers, "could have misinterpreted the 9/11 commission’s finding the way that they had."

If this was your ordinary movie of the week, I wouldn't be bothering you about it - but this movie claims to depict events that will define our lives for decades. It is being distributed to schools - and it is factually incorrect.

Recent events have taught us that public opinion can be swayed by inaccurate statements, especially if they are presented forcefully and are shielded from critical analysis. Your role as a network is to inform as well as entertain. To air programming that misleads your viewers about 9/11, of all things, is surely something that you would avoid.

I'm asking you, as one of your viewers, to at least provide your viewers with the counterpoint to this movie. Tell them where experts see inaccuracies. Don't just tell them that parts have been fictionalized; show them where the fiction is.

If you at least do this, you can raise the level of debate on 9/11 above partisan finger pointing - and perhaps we as a nation can start talking about things more important than television shows.

I'll post their response if I ever get one.

It's that kind of day

Promise me

Things change, memory morphs into new things - and things that stay the same are seen from a new angle. My grandmother told me this story many times as a joke. "Isn't it funny what kids will say?" that sort of thing. It's just not the same anymore.

When my dad was a boy, he and my grandmother were out walking in town and they saw an elderly man trying to go up a flight of stairs. He was struggling, and had to stop repeatedly.

My dad and Gramma walked by, but my dad kept looking back at the man.

"What's wrong with him?" he asked.

"Nothing," Gramma said, "he's just old."

My dad looked back at the man and then at his mother. "I don't want to grow old, mom."

Gramma laughed, "Everybody grows old, that's just how it is."

Dad didn't let it go. "Promise me, promise me I'll never grow old!"

"Ok," she said, "I promise, you'll never grow old."

I don't believe in prophecy. Hell, I don't believe in much of anything anymore - but I just can't get that out of my head.

It's a year later, and I'm still in the goddamned car - wishing this was all some bad dream.

Olbermann throws down. "Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet."

I cannot add anything to the drubbing Keith Olbermann gave to Secretary Rumsfeld and to the administration - so I'll just link to it.

Mr. Olbermann, as a fellow American - I'd like to shake your hand.

"...plenty of blame to go around.." but, we'd rather you don't focus on our share

One year ago today, the gulf coast woke up to the notion that the Cat 3 hurricane that had been going to Texas, was now a Cat 5 storm headed for New Orleans. One year ago, we were told our government was ready: the supplies were prepositioned; emergency responders were poised and ready; and the coast would be taken care of.

Today, we all know what a complete load of bunk that turned out to be.

Six months after the disaster - there was still garbage in the streets and people living in tent cities. Aid agencies were asking for blankets so people could sleep warm for the first time in months. Those out of power blamed those in power, those in power blamed everyone (and therefore, everyone else). The administration would have you believe that their slice of blame is on par with what others deserve.

I'm sorry, but that's just not gonna wash with me.

"...let's pretend that both Nagin and Blanco performed beautifully throughout the whole thing. Let'e pretend (and this is hard) that Nagin made all the right calls, ordered the mandatory evacuation at the proper time, and marshalled all of New Orelans' meager resources in preparing for disaster. Let's further pretend that Blanco was a model of foresight and was ready to be the grease that helped the enitre disaster machine run smoothly, cooperating fully with both Nagin and Bush. The only thing that stays the same in this scenario is the federal response.

New Orleans is still completely screwed."

Read more here.
(background - Mr. Brodedrick worked for the Feds, and he was worse than useless.)

Yeah. What about that?

A friend forwarded me an editorial written by a former colleague of mine. He's saying something that needs to be said over and over until the glorified stenographers who call themselves a press corps finally get the message.

This man was a Vietnam vet, and he has lost all patience with those who view their role as journalists as simply providing a bullhorn for right-wing character assassins.

He writes:

...I ask: How dare these cowards attack our veterans in these underhanded, vicious and deceptive ways? How dare this bunch of chicken hawks, so eager to propound wars like Vietnam and Iraq, yet never fight in them, deride those of us who served and who may actually know something about body bags, and travesty and death?

To the reporters and editorialists and nightly anchors I ask: Where is the analysis of these accusers? ...

Had I been smarter, better connected, more politically astute, I may have managed to stay home myself. But no chicken hawk, able to avoid war service for himself and his family, should question the service, the commitment, the dedication and the patriotism of those who have faced the fear and the fire and who dare to take part in the democracy they believed they were sent to protect.

Read the rest here.

National Security Archive FOIA Request Yields 9/11 Air Traffic Control Transcripts

Because more information is a good thing:

National Security Archive has posted the 9/11 Air Traffic Control Transcripts

1328:16+
UAL-93 *** (mayday) *** (hey get out of here) ***

1328:48+
UAL-93 *** (get out of here) *** (get out of here) ***

1329:14+
LOR-R [Lorain Radar - Ground control] United ninety three verify three five zero.

1329:20+
LOR-R United ninety three verify you're at flight level ah three five zero.

....[LOR-R repeatedly attempts to contact the UAL-93]...

1331:55+
UAL-93 *** please sit down. keep remaining seating. we have a bomb on board, so ***

1332:05+
LOR-R er uh calling cleveland center you're unreadable say again slowly.

1335:36+
LOR-R ah United ninety three if able * ah squawk trip please.

1336:51+
LOR-R [Cleaveland center announces that UAL93 is turning south and east and climbing].

1339:10+
UAL-93 ah this is the captain uh would like to all remain seated there is a bomb aboard and we go back to the airport and to have our demands so please remain quiet.

This is the last time UAL-93 appears in the transcript.

Controlled demolition? They beg to differ..

All dressed up and nowhere to go. I was going to post a long rant debunking controlled demolition as a reason why the World Trade Center collapsed – but somebody has nicely put it all in a single document.

I will post a few choice bits I found that tackle the notion advanced by conspiracy theorists, namely:

“…2,000 lbs of RDX-grade linear-shaped charges (which could have been pre-positioned by just a few men) could cut the supports at key points so that gravity would bring the buildings straight down.”
-Prof. Stephen E. Jones, Brigham Young University

Professor, meet a man who blows up buildings for a living:

“The explosives configuration manufacturing technology [to bring down those buildings] does not exist… If someone were to attempt to make such charges, they would weigh thousands of pounds apiece. You would need forklifts to bring them into the building.”
-Mark Loizeaux, Controlled Demolition, Inc.

Loizeaux goes on to say that the biggest commercially available charges can cut through steel that is three inches thick. The box columns at the base of the WTC towers were fourteen inches on a side. If big enough charges did exist, Loizeaux says, for each tower it could hypothetically take as long as two months for a team of up to 75 men with unfettered access to three floors to strip the fireproofing off the columns and then place and wire the charges.

“There’s just no way to do it… If you just put bulk explosives in file cabinets next to every column in the building, it wouldn’t knock those columns down. It would blow the windows out. It would trash the [building] and probably blow out two floors above and a floor below… but it wouldn’t knock the building down.”
-Mark Loizeaux, Controlled Demolition, Inc.

On to the really good stuff. It turns out yesterday, the folks over at Implosionworld.com (gotta love the name) have released a report on controlled demolition theories at the WTC.

Their verdict – the Controlled Demolition theory folks don’t have the faintest idea what they are talking about.

Read all about it. (PDF)

Where does the money go?

Damn fine idea if you ask me.

What do Friends of the Earth, the Family Research Council, Phyllis Schlafly and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force have in common? If you think not much, then you are partially wrong: They all love the new Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act. Introduced by senators Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the bill requires the Office of Management and Budget to establish and maintain a single public website listing the names and locations of all individuals and groups receiving federal funds, including the amount of federal funds received annually by program.

The idea of a transparency website -- replete with search engines that include subcontractors -- was born in May 2005 at a hearing on U.S. efforts to combat malaria. Officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) squirmed as Coburn revealed that 93% of the agency's 2004 funding to eradicate malaria had been spent on administrative and advice-giving services. In addition, not enough of these funds were spent overseas; too much was absorbed by high-paid U.S. consultants.

Read more

We can't make this stuff up

The New Bush Quiz is out.

The score to beat is fifteen.

That sinking feeling...

In plugging around for the previous post, I came across the following article on Vanity Fair:

9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes

Transcripts and audio from NORAD. Shows the chaos and confusion of that morning.

9:32:20
MAJOR JAMES ANDERSON: Have you asked—have you asked the question what you're gonna do if we actually find this guy? Are we gonna shoot him down if they got passengers on board? Have they talked about that?

Worth a read, and a listen.

Memo to 9/11 conspiracy buffs everywhere: Making movies is easy. Research is hard.

I've watched the internet film "Loose change," about 9/11 - and come away with the same sense of bewilderment that I first had when I read the JFK conspiracy book "Best Evidence."

Can't be... it just can't be...

Were I still the 17-year old twerp who read JFK assassination books, I'd still be wondering about 9/11. Thankfully, I have a cerebral cortex, and the curiosity to use it.

Loose change's slick production values give it the appearance of credibility. Quick cuts, edgy music. Interviews that ratchet up the sense of alarm.
Part of the wow factor of this movie is that it was made by total nobodies on a shoestring.

Nobodies on a shoestring don't usually have quality fact-checking.

The problem with going after these guys is you typically come off like you're as kooky as they are.

For what it's worth:

• When conspiracy theories go bad. by David Corn


• Popular Mechanics on 9/11: Debunking The Myths


• Fahrenheit 2777 by Michael Shermer


• State Department's refutation


• Line by line refutation of Loose Change movie (Not very professional, but not terrible either)