Bricked

Recently, I've finally lost patience with Verizon Wireless.

We've had great service everywhere except in three specific locations:

The house where we used to live,
The apartment where we live now, and
The house we just bought.

Since we're off our contract, I made the unilateral decision to fire Verizon.

Since I wanted to keep our old numbers, I knew there would be some downtime.

The order for our new phones was supposed to be almost immediate. Then I found out it would be delayed - and I started worrying about Verizon cutting off our old phones when our new phones hadn't even been shipped.

I called the vendor who sold us the phones. They assured us that our order wouldn't ship until the 31st - which meant that Verizon wouldn't even be asked to drop our service until then.

We're going out of town this weekend, so this would be perfect.
Satisfied, I hung up and went back to work.

Then I get an email. "Your new phones have been activated. You will get an email confirming their shipment and tracking number shortly."

I check my Verizon phone. No service.

It's a brick.

I check the tracking number and the new phones went standard overnight FedEx. They'll arrive Monday (when we're out of town).

Arrrgh!!

How often do you get mad at a vendor for shipping you something earlier than they promised?

We're sans phone coverage for a road trip in the winter. Not the end of the world (we used to do this all the time, not too long ago)

But still... rrrrgh!

If you're trying to reach us - you won't get us by cell. At least until Tuesday.

Nothing to see here, folks...

...unless the Pakistani government cannot be trusted that is-
(h/t to TPM

Pakistan's interior ministry said Friday that Benazir Bhutto died from hitting her vehicle's sunroof when she tried to duck after a suicide attack, and that no bullet or shrapnel was found in her.

Okay, the crazy light is officially lit.

We'll see how long this story stays the official line.

You also have to love this:

An autopsy was not carried out at the hospital "because the district administration and police had not requested the hospital authorities (for this)", the report said.

Yeah, because if a major opposition candidate is assassinated, the LAST thing the authorities will want to know is the cause of their death. Trivial detail really.

It's only an emergency when you're not doing what I want

digby has an excellent point.

I missed this in the coverage of the President announcing he'd veto the war funding bill Congress just passed.

This is the same bill that he insisted Congress pass before Christmas because otherwise the DoD would have to "shut down bases" and start furloughing civilian workers.

I'm sure there's a consistent rationale behind all of this behavior, other than "I want what I want, and I'll say whatever it takes."

-I just can't think of what it would be. Hmmmm...

The last resort of the incompetent

...is violence.

Benazir Bhutto seconds before her assassination.
Photo: John Moore - Getty Images

I had been wondering how it was that Benazir Bhutto had managed to return to Pakistan. Not only was she not stopped at the airport (like Nawaz Sharif was back in September), but she was able to move about the country.

I figured she had backers in the west that were telling Musharraf to back off.

The kind of backers that control whether or not Pakistan receives military aid.

Whatever the reason, Musharraf's administration allowed Bhutto to loudly call for his resignation, to appear before her followers and demand early elections.

It can't have been fun for Musharraf to just sit on his hands and watch.

And now she is dead.

You have to wonder what her backers are going to do now.

Mark Bowden: more macho than you

(H/T to digby's stand-in, dday)

When it comes to Mark Bowden, I say what I say about a lot of musical groups:

The early stuff was better.

I remember reading Bowden's early columns about Mogadishu. I was so riveted, I saved copies of every one to a word document in case they got taken off the site.

I still have them.

I've read the resulting book and his equally visceral follow up "Killing Pablo."

At the time, I thought both of them had a moral center.

Blackhawk Down was an indictment of open ended foreign policy, and the fatal consequences of not minding the store. A humanitarian mission was allowed to turn into a counter-insurgency. Don't do that to your soldiers, it said. Give them honorable missions and support them fully.

Killing Pablo had many messages, but one of the enduring questions raised was about Los Pepes, a vigilante group devoted to killing anyone related to, or partnered with drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Bowden advanced the theory that US intelligence was being passed on to Los Pepes, so that they could better find and eliminate their targets. I'd have to search for the exact citation, but I thought there was an implied disapproval on the part of Mr. Bowden. Criticism of the US being in any way complicit in gangland-style murders of corrupt businessmen seemed inspirational.

After all - the counter argument would be easy to make - "hey, these guys had it coming. We're just giving them what they deserve."

Well, it appears that Mr. Bowden is now making that argument himself - about waterboarding.

According to him, the ends justify the means.

I shouldn't be surprised. A good portion of the Pablo book exults in the extremes that the Colombian police are pushed to. Escobar was unthinkably powerful in his country, and the normal measures were not enough. There is an action-movie narrative present that is easy to get wrapped up in.

But Bowden asks good questions in Killing Pablo - Was Delta Force involved in the shooting of Escobar? Was there any attempt at arresting him or were the police simply looking to kill him?

So, I guess I am really am surprised at this new column.

Here's Bowden's case. Let's see if we've heard any of this before:

Think back to those pictures of workers crouched in windows high up in the burning World Trade Center towers, choosing whether to jump to their death or be burned alive. This was in part Abu Zubaydah's handiwork.

Torture is okay because of 9/11. Check.

[Zubaydah] was supervising ongoing plots to kill hundreds if not thousands of people. He was, for obvious reasons, disinclined to share this knowledge.

Torturing bad people is okay. Check.

Subjected briefly to waterboarding - less than a minute, according to published reports - [Zubaydah] became cooperative and provided information …

Torturing people works, and this guy was only tortured a little bit. Check.

It is not torture in the traditional sense of inflicting pain; it inflicts fear, intense, visceral fear, without doing physical harm. It is a method calculated to straddle the definitions of coercion and torture, and as such merely proves that both methods inhabit the same slippery continuum. There is a difference between gouging out a man's eyes and keeping him awake, and waterboarding falls somewhere in between….

Besides, it's not really torture at all. It's "torture light." Check.

With prisoners like these, defiant and dangerous, the only right question to ask is, What works?

We can and should do bad things to prevent worse things. Check.

Bowden then follows this all up with this plaintive little gem:

The interrogators who waterboarded Zubaydah were breaking the law. They knew they were risking their careers and freedom. But if the result of the act itself was a healthy terrorist with a bad memory vs. a terror attack that might kill hundreds or even thousands of people, it is a good outcome. The decision to punish those responsible for producing it is an executive one.

And there it is, the most clichéd and obvious line - and therefore the most offensive shell in Bowden's broadside:

These torturers are noble, because they are willing to do things that are wrong. Spare them.

Mr. Bowden - from one who has enjoyed your work in the past - your column is full of it.

• "Because bad things have happened" is not a reason to torture.
• "Because I know this person is bad" is not a reason to torture.
• Only torturing a little - is still torture.
• Convincing a person that they are suffocating for any length of time - is still torture.

Bowden argues that factual information has been gained from torture - why else to cultures keep returning to this tactic? he asks. If it didn't work, we'd have stopped by now?

Yes, what other reasons can there be?

White settlers of America were horrified to discover that the Apaches would torture their prisoners slowly to death on the assumption that the captor would gain spiritual stature as the captive lost it. The student would prefer not to think that a primitive people was thus showing us what was once universally true, and came from instinct. It would help if mankind were the only animal that tortured its prey: We could persuade ourselves that only a social history could produce such an aberration. Unfortunately, cats torment mice until the mouse turns cold, and killer whales play half an hour of water polo with a baby seal before they finally put it out of its misery by eating it. We can do better than the cats and the killer whales, but it might be a help to admit that the same propensity is widespread and could even be there within ourselves.

Effectiveness, according to Mr. Bowden is the only possible reason.

Yet couldn't it spring from a sense of being the injured party? From an unquenched need to finally be dishing something out instead of merely taking it?

Any chance we just want to revel in inflicting pain on our enemy of the moment until they say exactly what we want to hear?

Nah, that couldn't be it, surely.

After all, we're better than that.

I'm only here for the scrabble...

When I criticize Facebook, I know I'm at a disadvantage for not having used it - but I gotta wonder:

• Why
• the hell
  
• does anyone
• put up
  
• with it?

Dog pile on the rabbit

via TPM - New Hampshire's Union Leader is stepping up to bash Mitt Romney as well.

Granite Staters want a candidate who will look them in the eye and tell them the truth. John McCain has done that day in and day out, never wavering, never faltering, never pandering.

Mitt Romney has not. He has spoken his lines well, but the people can sense that the words are memorized, not heartfelt.

...
In this primary, the more Mitt Romney speaks, the less believable he becomes.

Perhaps in an attempt to head off the rebuttal Romney's campaign offered to the Concord Monitor's rejection of his candidacy, the Union Leader isn't just saying that Romney has no convictions - they are claiming he is not conservative enough.
Incredibly, they are offering John McCain as a man who has convictions and won't "lie to get elected."

I don't know where they get the stones to say that.

• This is the man who has done an about face with the religious right - just in time to run for president.
• This is the man who denounced torture of detainees, and then voted in favor of the Military Commissions Act, which denied them habeas review and allowed the president to narrowly define torture.
  
• Then he voted against an amendment which would end the President's power to create new military commissions by 2012.

Yeah, Romney's a phoney, pure and simple.

But McCain's reputation for straight talk is well past its sell-by date, too.

I'll wait for the first conservative editorial that runs with that observation, but I'm betting I'll wait a long time.

Hey plastic-man, they're onto you!

New Hampshire's Concord Monitor has Mitt Romney's number but good. Their editorial board has gone on the record about why he should not be president (h/t to TPM)

If you followed only his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, you might imagine Romney as a pragmatic moderate with liberal positions on numerous social issues and an ability to work well with Democrats. If you followed only his campaign for president, you'd swear he was a red-meat conservative, pandering to the religious right, whatever the cost. Pay attention to both, and you're left to wonder if there's anything at all at his core.

...

[New Hampshire residents] talk about our ability to see the candidates up close, ask tough questions and see through the baloney. If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we'll know it.

Mitt Romney is such a candidate.

'couldn't have said it better myself. They guy is an unprincipled puppet. If he thought drop-kicking puppies would get him the presidency, he'd be out punting the smallest breed he could find.

Army of one

My last employer gave me five weeks off every year, with the option to accrue up to six weeks.

My current employer gives you three weeks PTO (which includes sick leave). Also, they don't rate Christmas Eve as a paid holiday.

Sickness, sick kids and moving have me in the hole on PTO.

So here I am.

The upsides to being at work today:

• I get the parking spot closest to the building.
• No interruptions. Phone and email might as well not exist.
• Web apps that haven't been taken down for the holidays are blazingly fast.

But the lights keep switching off, the vending machine coffee is indescribably bad-

Despite this, some work is actually getting done.

I've never had to work on Christmas Eve before – and I can't say there's much to recommend it. But – nobody bugs you.

Only in Mississippi

This is old news, but it is starting to freshen up a bit. The most recent developments involve ex-Senator Trent Lott, so perhaps this story is worth another look.

Emptywheel got me started on this one, so here's the best summary I can come up with:

In the months following hurricane Katrina, homeowners insurance claims were being denied en masse. Insurance companies justified this on the basis that the destruction of their homes had been attributed to flooding, which is not covered by homeowners insurance.

Incensed homeowners argued that their houses had been destroyed by wind as well as water. Surely, they argued, their insurance covered the portion of damage caused by things other than rising water?

What happened next is highly contentious – but the allegation is that insurers (most notably State Farm) pressured inspectors to rule water in and rule wind out in their damage assessments.

The result is that angry homeowners who had lost their homes became angrier still.
And then things get interesting.

I'll let the New Orleans Times Picayune do the talking here:

Mississippi suffered its greatest damage from Katrina in well-heeled sections of coastal communities where residents were most equipped to fight back. Sen. Trent Lott and Rep. Gene Taylor were among the plaintiffs in Mississippi, pushing Congress to repeal insurers' federal anti-trust exemption and investigate their post-storm claims practices before a national audience. Mississippi's legal system also allowed high-profile tobacco lawyer Dickie Scruggs, Sen. Trent Lott's brother-in-law, to threaten punitive damages, and allowed the state's attorney general, Jim Hood, to hire extra lawyers on contingency to press his criminal investigation.

So, now we have Dickie Scruggs, civil litigator extraordinaire, suing State Farm. Scruggs forms the Scruggs Katrina Group (SKG), a consortium of litigators to bring a massive suit against the insurers – to bring money back to aggrieved homeowners.

At this point, most of us are still cheering. "Yea! Get those no good insurance bums! Stick it to them!"

There's more:

Two whistleblowers enter the picture. (also via nola)

Hood's efforts were aided by Cori and Kerri Rigsby, two sisters from Ocean Springs, Miss., who worked for a State Farm contractor that managed teams of adjusters. The whistleblowers bolted with 150,000 pages of documents that they say shows that State Farm defrauded policyholders by manipulating engineering reports to deny claims. The Rigsbys turned them over to Scruggs, Hood and Dunn Lampton, the U.S. attorney in Mississippi.

So, the Rigby sisters claim to be appalled at what they are seeing, and flat out steal their employer's documents and hand them over to a litigator. Standard whistleblower M.O.

The Atty. Gen of Mississippi is investigating insurers in the state, and is also using these documents to bolster his case.

In January of 2007, State Farm agrees to settle. Checks are sent out to the homeowners.
In April, Nationwide Insurance agrees to settle.

Score one for the little guys!

Except… this is Mississippi.

A dispute between members of SKG over legal fees gets ugly and (gasp!) it ends up in court. Struggs is accused of bribing the judge to to rule in his favor.

The bribe was reportedly offered via an intermediary – an attorney named Timothy Balducci. Apparently, the judge reported the bribery attempt to authorities (genuine gasp!) and played along so that authorities could get their man.

They did. Balducci appears to have rolled over big time – as authorities have released transcripts of his comments (via the WSJ):

…it ain’t but three people in the world that know anything about this … and two of them are sitting here and the other one … the other one, uh, being Scruggs … he and I, um, how shall I say, for over the last five or six years there, there are bodies buried that, that you know, that he and I know where…

Transcripts that include words like "um" and "uh" indicate that the conversation was recorded. We know Balducci's not talking about literal bodies, but it can't be good news for Scruggs.

Neither can this (via Insurance Coverage Blog's David Rosmiller):

One thing that shocked me was one of the entries in the notes of Brian Ford, an engineer [whose engineering report has been advanced as evidence of State Farm's dismissal of reports that supported claim payments]

…Now I have seen some of Brian Ford's redacted notes before. ...But Judge Robert Walker on December 12 required Ford to turn over the unredacted notes, and wow, there was a lot of stuff missing from the redacted version.

[in the unreduced version] Ford's notes recount an apparent conversation between Special Assistant Attorney General Courtney Schloemer and an SKG attorney: "they agreed that a criminal conviction could help civil cases." If you don't believe me, you go read it for yourself, that's what it says!

An assistant to [Mississippi Atty. General] Jim Hood discussing with a private litigant the potential indictment and conviction of the other party and how that might aid that litigant. If the Ford notes accurately reflect what happened, that is outrageous.

So, you have SKG attorneys meeting with assistants to the state attorney general coordinating criminal prosecutions to benefit SKG.

As in "Hey, you threaten the insurance industry with jail if they don't settle. We'll hold the line on a deal so we get millions of dollars."

Hood's office even went so far as to claim Scruggs was a confidential informant for the AG in order to stop contempt charges against him (related to not turning over the Rigby documents).

Scruggs is in hot water, Atty. Gen. Hood is in the mix; isn't there anyone just doing the right thing?

Those principled Rigby sisters, perhaps?

Perhaps not. Via Rosmiller's blog

-they went to work immediately after leaving [the State Farm Adjuster firm] in June 2006 as "consultants" to Scruggs, with no specific duties, at annual salaries of $150,000 paid from SKG funds

We finally arrive at Trent Lott, brother in law to Dickie Scruggs.

Remember how he just sort of resigned from his job? No real reason. He just felt like one year into his six year term was the perfect time to do something else.

Looks like Trent was lighting up the phones about how mad he was at State Farm. This by itself is understandable. But when powerful people get angry, they are afforded options that you and I simply don't have.

I haven't seen enough information to know for certain that Mr. Lott was pulling strings for his now-indicted brother in law –but he was talking to Brian Ford. So much so, that Ford took down these notes (via folo):

9/25/06 TRENT LOTT CALLED
- CALLED TO THANK ME FOR MY HELP
- TRENT WANTED TO PUT A TEMPORARY PERSONAL TRAILER ON HIS LOT. CITY SAID - “RAISE 9′, PUT UP A RETAINING WALL, GET INSPECTIONS. VERY FRUSTRATING & RUNNING PEOPLE OFF. … SO THEY WILL JUST STAY IN DR. THOMPSON PLACE AFTER IT IS FIX UP. ONLY PROBLEM IS, DICKIE SCRUGGS STAYS THERE TOO.
- TRENT HAD JUST TALKED TO CARY [sic — Kerri?] RIGSBY - STATE FARM WHISTLE BLOWER …
- FEDERAL LAW EXEMPTS INS. CARRIERS FROM ANTI TRUST LAWS (THEY CAN COLLUDE). THEY GET TAX BREAKS. AS CHAIR OF THE SENATE INSURANCE COMMITTEE, I AM GOING TO CHANGE THAT.
. . .
- TRENT WOULD FORGO HIS $ TO GET S.F.

This by itself, is nothing. But Mr. Lott is talking to the Rigbys, talking to a key witness in the early litigation, is living with Scruggs – and he hates State Farm with a passion.

Ya s'pose he might have acted on those impulses?

Ya s'pose he might have left fingerprints when he did so?

I dunno either. But I gotta tell ya, I feel like getting some munchies and sitting down to watch what happens.

Just in time for the holidays

Foreign Policy weighs in with a list of ten news stories we've all missed. (h/t to CJR)

Among them:

#2 US-Mexico Border Fence Gets Cut in Half

In the run-up to the 2006 U.S. midterm elections...[Congress] passed the Secure Fence Act, authorizing the construction of 700 miles of double-layered, reinforced fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. Lost in the shuffle was the fact that Congress had only earmarked enough money to build 370 miles' worth of wall. Give it another budget year, the barrier's strongest backers said, and the rest of the cash would surely make its way south.

But they might want to check with the chief of U.S. Border Patrol, David Aguilar. The military industry's National Defense magazine reported that at an April press conference, Aguilar suggested that the physical fence will indeed stop at the 370-mile mark.

#4: Waiting on the Iraqi Navy (emphasis added)

In November, the U.S. Navy held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a military installation on top of Iraq's Khor al Amaya oil terminal in the northern Persian Gulf...

Pentagon officials insist that those fearing a permanent U.S. military presence needn't worry. Not only will the facility house British and Australian sailors as well as Americans but the U.S. military will hand the base over to the marines of the Iraqi Navy as soon as they are ready. Nevermind that, as the Wall Street Journal reported, their patrol boats today consist of "rusting hulks," and the Iraqis currently stationed on the terminal only recently trained with live ammunition for the first time.

#5 The Cubans Are Coming

...while everyone has been reading the tea leaves in Havana, more Cubans have been quietly fleeing to the United States than ever before. According to a report by the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, nearly 77,000 Cubans crossed into the United States in 2006 and 2007. That's more than twice the number of refugees who arrived on Florida's shores during the summer of 1994, when more than 38,000 Cubans fled the island after Castro opened the ports to all who wished to leave.

#7 Thai Junta Gives Itself a Raise

...the Bangkok Post noted "strong suspicion across the country that the generals are padding the military budget for no other reason than because they can."

Although Thailand has long been an important U.S. ally, the Thai military brass are apparently happy to listen to anyone who will write a check.

(yeah, we're buddies. Wonder how much we paid the junta to stash Abu Zubaydah?

If that didn't boost your spirits in time for the holidays, I've been reading about another cheery bit of news from the Gulf Coast.

More on that later.

A senseless and empty thing

This was going to be a review of a radio show.

Today I listened to perhaps the worst episode of This American Life I've ever heard. It was about chickens, so you know it was pointless. Worse, each essay was rooted in the kind of elitist left-wing crapfest that –

Skip it.

That's what I was going to write about. How normally This American Life can be so brilliant (like their episode about Nauru) and then suck so immeasurably. I was going to call it "The exception that proves the rule."

Great, eh?

Then I went to the next episode, called "How to Rest in Peace."

-and then I spent an inordinate amount of time in a gas station restroom trying to get my collective sh!t back together.

The intro was a woman whose father was murdered when she was 10. She detailed her feelings of isolation – resenting our murder-as-entertainment culture, any number of straightforward observations about her experience with her dad's death.

She related an encounter with the mother of a murdered child – a woman who had devoted her life to pursuing her child's killers. This mother wanted to help this woman find the killers of her dad.

The mother's mindset, while perfectly understandable, is portrayed as being completely alien to the narrating woman's experience. She had no interest in pursing her father's killer. In fact she hoped that it would be impossible – so that she would be free of that obligation.

The way she put it – her dad's murderers, in jail or at large, had no bearing and no relevance when it came to how she felt about her dad.

This was the intro.

I extracted the obvious parallels from her story – but whatever. It's just a show, right?

Act I was Jason Minter. A man who was investigating the horrifying murder of his mother.

I can't do justice to the story, so if you haven't heard it – go to their website and listen.

Essentially, when he was six and his sister was three - his mother and another woman were murdered in the next room during a botched break-in and robbery. The killers were caught and will spend decades in jail.

The story is related realtime since (of course) Jason is making a documentary about his life.

The horror of this particular crime would have washed over me a few years ago. I would have lapped it up like the people vilified earlier in the show for hosting a murder-themed party.

I just cannot get past what this man was doing. He was re-investigating a solved crime. His reaction to visiting the crime scene cannot be overstated. He has no emotion, and he desperately wants some. His sister cries, but he does not. Even when confronted with crime scene photographs of his dead mother – shot in the head – his reaction is muted and self-conscious. He knows he should be emotional – realizes that he isn't, and he expresses his curiosity about it.

That is not how I am these days.

I remember when my grandfather died. Specifically, when my father called to tell me – I felt absolutely nothing. I was that way for days. It was like someone had told me the score to a sporting event that I couldn’t care less about.

"Oh."

I truly thought something was wrong with me. Right up until the funeral. Dad's reaction at that funeral, well that was the end of any stoicism I might have had.

This man was trying to reach that point – where he could feel something about what had happened. Something beyond the clinical recitation of facts. Something to hold on to.

Mr. Minter had a theory that there was some hidden motive in the death of his mother. That the monstrous crime that had irreparably damaged his family's lives had originated in something other than random chance.

This is where I started losing track of things.

I think this is the problem I've had for two years plus.

On the day I was hired, my boss had said, "things happen for a reason."

My boss is a good person, optimistic. I like them.

-But when they said that, I had the most visceral impulse so say something. More than an impulse, really a vision of what I would say and exactly how I would say it.

"In my experience," I would say, "there are things that are immune to all reason."

These words have reappeared on countless occasions in my head demanding to be said. There has been no real opportunity to say them, and surely there never will be. They would always be inappropriate and this blog is perhaps the only venue where they can be let out.

And they are so inadequate as to be a joke.

When Mr. Minter meets with one of the men involved with his mother's murder, he gets a first person narrative that leaves little doubt that his conspiratorial theory about his mother's murder has no basis in fact.

When pressed, even Jason admits there's not much evidence to back him up. Still, it's easy to understand the allure of the idea that the crimes weren't just a random incident. Imagine going through life not just knowing, but really knowing that your life could implode in the worst possible way at any moment.

Imagine internalizing the notion that every little decision, like driving over the neighbor's house to drop off a friend could put you in the path of disaster.

He is clutching at threads.

Because however little comfort it would be, it would still be comforting to know that what happened to his mother was unavoidable. That it was deliberate and calculated. That is didn't just happen out of the blue.

He knows his theory is virtually groundless – and he pursues it anyway because it is better than the alternative.

I'm in a gas station when I'm hearing this. Buds in and pretending to read the newspaper.

I only have that meaningless alternative.

Yet somehow part of me is dying to do what this man has done. Pursue something that is a mystery only to me.

Dad's death was an accident. There are no killers to pursue, prosecute or execute. There are no motives or hidden agendas. No purpose.

He fell.

So I've been told.

The sum of what I know about that day was related to me in two conversations: the cell call from mom on the day he died – and eavesdropping on my mom telling grandma what happened.

Since asking mom for more detail is impossible – good God, how could you even begin that conversation? I'd imagine speaking to the neighbor who gave my dad CPR.

I've imagined speaking to the EMTs, as if they'd remember anything. Like this event would have had any effect on them. Just another in a long list of DOAs.

The entire time I'd been listening to Mr. Minter's story I'd been comforting myself with the thought that he's crazy. But I know the impulse, and were circumstances only slightly different – I could easily go down the same path.

It wasn't so long ago that a chance conversation with my mom had me writing judges in pursuit of my great-grandfather's treatment history and insane record.

The unpalatable truth is what I am dancing around.

Dad died doing something he'd done countless times before. Something he didn't have to do – if it hadn't been for the goddamned storm. If he'd waited for the county to do it, if he'd worn a goddamned helmet-

He died for no reason at all.

I am so unbelievably furious about this and there is no useful target to aim at.

I'm ignoring the show now, vacantly looking towards my newspaper.

The only alternative I can think of is to study the minutiae of dad's death to avoid the subject.

About the time I've worked through how I'm going to start asking which people for what information, I realize I need to get the hell away from people since I'm about to start looking like a crazy person.

Next thing I know, I'm in the bathroom, and somebody's jiggling the doorknob.

I don't have a windout for this - and there doesn't appear to be much in the way of solutions. But the purpose of this thing was always to allow me to scream into the void.

So I do, if only because it seems more rational than the other things I can think of.

I'm not a believer, but

Glenn Greenwald is saying things that are nice to hear. A whole bunch of Americans reared up, faced towards Washington and screamed "No!"

...both prongs of the White House's FISA demands -- increased surveillance powers and telecom immunity -- seemed to be an absolute fait accompli. It would all follow the same depressing pattern we've seen all year long whereby the President easily gets everything he demands from the Congress.

Thus, the usual roster of obedient establishment propagandists -- the David Igantius's and Fred Hiatts and Joe Kleins -- dutifully lined up (as always) to support the White House's demands, explaining condescendingly to the masses how Important it was for their Safety that telecoms receive something the masses would never get: immunity from having deliberately broken our laws for years. They further insisted that when the telecoms and high government officials broke our laws, it was only because they were acting patriotically, doing this all for our own Good (without mentioning that they were profiting immensely in the process). By that point, nobody other than blogs, the ACLU, EFF, and similar groups were paying the slightest attention to this lobbyist-led, bipartisan establishment scheme, which was well on its way to being implemented.

* * * *

But that's when something truly significant happened. The idea for a Dodd "hold" on telecom immunity spontaneously arose in several places on the morning of October 18, when the Cheney/Rockefeller deal was announced.

...
Without question, it was those efforts, spontaneously created and driven by blogs and their readers, which led directly to the principled stand Chris Dodd took yesterday in defense of the rule of law. This was not a process whereby some Beltway politician announced a campaign and then citizens fell into line behind it. The opposite occurred. The very idea for the "hold" originated among a few citizens, was almost immediately exploded into a virtual movement by tens of thousands of people, and was then made into a reality by a single political figure, Chris Dodd, responding to that passion by taking the lead on it.

Glenn links to a video of Sen. Dodd saying exactly that.

It's refreshing to think that deals that are only popular among the beltway crowd cannot withstand the spotlight of public scrutiny.

We ought to have more spotlights.

Yes, the cynic in me would admit that this is temporary, and that Dodd can afford to make this stand because his is not a frontrunner. But look at the opposing sides and then look at the scoreline. This should be over already - it should have been a blowout.

As it is, we're going into extra time.

I know without checking this blog's Google stats that this blog had nothing to do with it - but bloggers and blog readers played a big part in making this happen.

It's a good thing. Virtual grassroots! Using the very infrastructure the Telcos provide us to deny them immunity for their past misdeeds.

Invigorating, but kinda makes Net Neutrality seem like a bigger deal, no?

Pulling up from the brink

Whaddaya know? Sen. Reid blinked.

I still can't figure how he would advance such a bill, or how his local newspapers wouldn't crucify him for doing it - but at least there's another month for opponents of telco immunity to gear up.

In January, I expect this same stupid bill to do the rounds again - if only because there appears to be some sort of Democratic reflex arc when the President says jump.

"How high? Mr. President, sir?"

Sen. Dodd will claim credit - and he's welcome to it.

Late Edit: From Sen. Dodd's remarks in the Senate via GG and ThinkProgress:

in place of the forthright argument and judicial deliberation that ought to be this country’s pride, two simple words from our president’s mouth: “Trust me.”

I cannot speak for my colleagues–but I would never take that offer, not even in the best of times, not even from a perfect president. I would never take that offer because our Constitution tells us that the president’s word is subject to the oversight of the Congress and the deliberation of the courts; and because I took an oath to defend the Constitution; and because I stand by my oath.

“Trust me.” It is the offer to hide ourselves in the waiting arms of the rule of men. And in these threatened times, that offer has never seemed more seductive. The rule of law has rarely been so fragile.

“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger…from abroad.” James Madison, the father of our Constitution, made that prediction more than two centuries ago. With the passage of this bill, his words would be one step closer to coming true. So it has never been more essential that we lend our voices to the law, and speak on its behalf.

On its behalf, we say to President Bush that a nation of truly free men and women would never take “trust me” for an answer, not even from a perfect president — and certainly not from him. […]

If this disastrous war has taught us anything, it is that the Senate must never again stack such a momentous decision on such a weak foundation of fact.

Rock on, Senator. Wish I lived in a state with a meaningful primary - I'd gladly vote for you.

---

Whatever machinations caused Sen. Reid to pull the plug - I'm hoping the media can shine an uncomfortably bright light on him in the interval.

Questions I'd like him to answer:

Sen. Reid:

• You had two versions of this bill - one with immunity and one without. Despite widespread opposition within your own party - you've advanced the bill that includes the immunity provision - how do you justify this decision?
  
  
• Your party was swept into power by an electorate that was clearly disillusioned with this administration. How do you respond to your constituents who question your willingness to acquiesce to a request from this same administration?
  
  
• You've upheld the holds on legislation for numerous GOP senators, how do you explain why you brought this bill to the floor, despite Sen. Dodd's publicly declared hold on the bill? Can you list another occasion when you've overridden the hold of a fellow senator?

With any luck, Sen. Rockefeller will get a similar grilling - as to why he's been such an advocate for immunity and the position of this administration.

I mean, with friends like these....

Leadership, as opposed to playing one on TV

Sen. Chris Dodd, whatever his shortcomings as a presidential candidate - has stood up to be counted on the FISA telco immunity bill issue.

From TPM:

On a conference call with reporters just moments ago, Chris Dodd's deputy campaign manager, Amos Hochstein, just vowed that the Senator will filibuster the Senate FISA bill containing telecom immunity later this afternoon for as long as he possibly can hold out.

"He will speak as long as he can," Hochstein said. "He will speak until he can no longer."

I'm not entirely certain how this squares with this afternoon's cloture vote of 76-10 in favor of ending debate, but Dodd has vowed to lead the charge against the current bill.

I would hope that this would put pressure on the other Democratic candidates to put their differences aside, go to Washington as a group and stop this bill. It would be an opportunity to actually DO SOMETHING and contrast themselves with the GOP field.

The house has voted against immunity, but I'm wondering if conference committee chicanery will get immunity in.

Somebody ought to call out Sen. Reid. Sit in his office. Pitch a fit and get on the news. This guy's backstabbing the very constituency that put him in power.

Arrrgh!

...for sale and doomed to quick destruction, if it should ever find a buyer

Sen. Harry Reid is selling us out.

As Glenn Greenwald points out - Sen. Reid is actually stacking the decks so that Telco immunity can pass the senate easily.

Sen. Dodd is going to filibuster this bill, with help from Sens. Feingold and Kennedy - but it's an open question as to how long this will last - and if the cloture vote will get through.

Call your senators. Email your senators. Tell them this bill must be stripped of any immunity provisions.

We lose this one, and any public inquiry into what is being done ends. This administration and the telcos get away with it.

Glenn posts a comment that I'd wish I'd written from holly-go-lightly:

...here the Senate stands, poised to grant immunity to telecommunications companies for profiting from the warrantless and lawless spying perpetrated upon the law-abiding citizenry; here the Senate stands, poised to usurp the judiciary, the branch of government responsible for determining whether the laws of the land have been broken and meting out punishment where appropriate; and here the Senate stands, poised to usher in its own irrevelancy -- and, worst of all, in exchange for nothing: no promises that this flagrant lawbreaking will cease, no testimony to be offered in the course of real and rigorous investigation.

...

You who purport to lead, yet cower like beaten dogs before the President, as if he were king. You who vote upon legislation you likely don't even read. You who coif your hair into absurd, unmoving helmets and whiten your teeth and don designers suits and appear on TV, daring to tell me you represent my interests. You who pass pointless, meaningless resolutions condemning commercials and congratulating professional sports teams for winning while Americans go hungry, while Americans go without healthcare, while Americans work two jobs to make ends meet, while Americans die in Iraq and Afghanistan. You who swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution and flatter yourselves by conflating your re-election with the interests of your country and constituency. You who fret about keeping your powder dry until the are barracks overrun.

...

And so here is the Senate in all its majesty. Where are the Patrick Henrys, the Benjamin Franklins? God save America from her greatest enemy: a pack of pathetic, self-serving cowards.

Damn right.

Dead to rights

Years ago, I published a parody website that got me in trouble with my former employers. The essay that got me in the hottest water was a story titled "Unpleasant Subject Avoided at All-Staff Meeting." The story had a firm footing in reality, but the joke was that the article did just what it lambasted management for doing; it didn't mention the unpleasant subject.

I think this subtlety eluded management at first. When I finally 'fessed up to management about writing the article, I'd pointed out the joke and instantly felt the tension go out of the room. The managers had been mad at what they'd thought I'd said, instead of what I actually had. I got a sheepish grin instead of a tongue-lashing.

Later, I was invited back by the same manager to sample (of all things) some music that took a similar tack of generic-language humor. It was a CD by a group called Da Vinci's Notebook. There was a lot to love on the CD, but the priceless bit was a parody of pretty much all ballads ever written called Title of the Song.

Title of the Song is a description of all the stereotypical ingredients of a love ballad – set to music. A brilliant and thorough skewering of the entire genre.

I laughed my butt off in the manager's office – it was hilarious. I duped a copy to my work computer and listened to it for the rest of the day.

Eventually I swapped computers and lost my stored copy – but I assumed I'd be able to get a copy in any store or on iTunes.

And I couldn't – these guys had no web presence – at least not then. Totally pissed me off. I'd have bought the CD if I could find it. I'd given up on finding them. Obviously - I quit too soon.

Today, Sivacracy has found them – and you can hear the music online or even watch the video. I'd do the audio first, their lyrics and delivery are better than the visuals.

Here's hoping their musical send up of Disney, "Kingdom of the Sky" is out there as well.

Thanks, Siva! I'd totally forgotten about these guys.

Late edit: I clearly should have Google-ed these guys before now. Watch this video (Not Safe for Work)

Where does the money go? (encore)

You wanna know where the government is spending your tax dollars?

Look it up.

Yeah, the long awaited project of a searchable database of Federal spending is a reality - as of today.

SoooooO, for example - how much money did we spend on Blackwater in FY2007?


Yeah - that's a good thing. Kudos to the people who made this happen.

Now all we need is a similar website to track earmarks.

Shine the light, and watch the cockroaches run....

I know how you feel, kid...

Black bag job

If you want to assess how good or bad a particular moving experience is – all you need to do is look at the moving boxes. When people schlep their stuff from place to place, what they use to do it says a lot about how things are going.

In our case, our boxes chart a kind of life cycle.

In the beginning we had new boxes.
They were purchased in bulk. Two sizes, with packing paper and a tape gun. Sharpies were always available, and were used to write detailed descriptions of their contents.

Things like:

Kitchen. Pottery & drinking glasses. Fragile. This side up.

This would be written on more than one side of the box, so that some label would be visible when the box had things stacked on it.

Subsequent boxes in this happy stage would be similarly labeled, before being lovingly stacked in nice straight columns.

That was last week.

With the deadline for getting out of the house fast approaching, expedience trumped any desire for clear labeling.

Kitchen stuff
Cmp Rm
Flurgen Blurg

Break it if you want, who cares which side is the top and we might have copied the label onto the side – maybe.

In due course, the packing paper was used up – we began using newspaper, plastic bags, bath towels, and finally - loose clothing from the floor.

Then the box supply ran out.

Not to worry. Since we are moving things to the apartment as well as storage – any box at the apartment can be reused.

These boxes already had labels, so these must now be changed:

Kitchen. Pottery & drinking glasses. Fragile. This side up.

Becomes

Kitchen. Pottery & drinking glasses. Fragile. This side up.
Bks

Usually when moving, you miss the odd item or two. When this occurs repeatedly in room after room, it becomes impossible to group and box similar items together:

Computer To Apt Shoe, Garden tools, Blender parts

Shortly after this happens – there is a realization that labeling boxes that are destined for the apartment (which will be emptied and re-used) is less than essential:

Random Crap. Apt.

Then the packing tape runs out. Undoubtedly more is available (we certainly remember buying more) but it cannot be located.

Speed!

There is a brief period of tucking box tabs under each other to "close" boxes – but this only lasts until the looming deadline of date-we-must-be-out crystallizes in our minds.

We shift to plastic tubs.

They'd been used since the beginning – but we'd held onto the illusion that what was put in them would STAY in them much longer than we had with the boxes.

Now, we dump out the tubs and the apartment and lug them back to the house. These tubs have labels on them – carefully written on masking tape:

LittleBean's toys. To Apartment.

Since the tubs are now filled with hangars and unmatched shoes – we peel off the tape.

Despite their size, the tubs are soon overwhelmed by the volume of crap. Their size also makes them quite heavy.

We move to garbage cans.

I've yet to be involved in a move that has not reached the stage when stuff is unceremoniously dumped into garbage cans to "pack" it.

Appliances, more shoes and (put a bullet in my head now)- wire hangars.

As only a few garbage cans in any house have real size, they are filled up almost immediately. One (the recyclable bin in the garage) has been sitting in the 18-degree weather for days and shatters as it is being picked up.

Side note: Only GIANT IDIOTS move in the wintertime.

Addendum: We'll be moving again in February or March.

At this stage we have abandoned boxes, tubs and random plastic containers and have arrived at the crack cocaine of moving containers: the black plastic trash bag.

Now, anyone with a few minutes could reel off a list of reasons to never use trash bags in packing:

• They break open
• Pointy things poke through them
• They do not stack
• People might mistake a full trash back for (duh) trash and act accordingly
• They break open

At this stage, there are no minutes to consider these facts. The thought process resembles this:

Crap. Need thing to carry it. Bag! More crap. Put in bag!

-and so on.

Net result of all of this is an abomination of items stuffed into the back of a mini van to the point that (when you finally open the door) it vomits out onto the pavement like the extra-chunky result of a pub crawl.

Plus some of it was fragile (lucky it was already in a garbage bag, eh?)

This takes care of the stuff you wanted to keep.

Now for the stuff you wish you'd never owned in the first place.

1-800-GOT-JUNK is step one. Point at it and it disappears. Yes, you have to write them a check, but this late in the game- you're practically hugging the guy as he takes away the plastic faux-closet and pressboard desk.

Cha-ching. Vroom. Gone.

What remains are the move's problem children: hangars, old curtain rods, toxic chemicals, paint, a propane tank, and a VAST selection of loose and unidentified objects.

The truly toxic items will get routed for proper disposal; the empty propane tank gets stuffed into a storage container.

And the rest?

Black. Plastic. Bag.

Old glass vases, empty storage jars, a ferocious tangle of hangars are shoved into bags. When those bags split, their ruptured carcasses are themselves stuffed into bags.

Tomorrow is trash day, but the legal trash bin is full to overflowing and the bag count is dangerously close to landfill territory.

Layer the minivan in cardboard – everything goes in the back.

An hour of slinging and flinging and the van is packed solid. There are no sightlines behind the driver seat – but it's all in the van.

It's night. It's butt-cold and I have a van full of garbage and recyclables.

Hit it.

--

I've groused about rentals before, and I'm sure I will again – but there is one thing rental complexes have that makes the current situation bearable:

Unlocked dumpsters.

I am sure no resident would be allowed to unload this much garbage if they asked – so I'm not asking.

Pull into the underground parking, wheel the dumpster over to the van. Fling fling, fling. I'm blocking the entrance, I'm wondering if they have surveillance, I'm trying to think of what I'll say if they watch me throw a 40lb bag of mulch into the dumpster.

No one shows. I push the bin back to its original position and leave no trace I was ever there (well, except for the 40 bags of garbage).

My back feels like it's been beaten with a pipe – but the house is all but empty.

Cue the Mission Impossible theme – I was never here.

I'm sure this will all work out in the end

About the time that we are all but moved into our new place and all but out of our old place - the offer on the Tatanka house was accepted.

This will mean that we have between two and three months of purgatory before we can resume our roles as debt-ridden homeowners.

Which is not to say that the rental is a waste - it was absolutely going to happen with or without the offer going through - now we know that it will be over sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, we're re-learning the joys of rental property:

• Second-guessing decisions about putting nails into the walls.
• The inability to fix/replace minor items that annoy the crap out of you (like ruined door-stoppers).
• Mapping which plugs be relied on and which plugs are controlled by a wall switches.
• Lugging the trash down to a communal dumpster that is forty yards from my door and behind a locked door. (Always fun in 18 degree weather)
• A drive-up mailbox (with a key) that is sixty yards from my front door (also fun in 18-degree weather)
• Heat that (while free) purges the house of all moisture and makes you start every morning on the verge of a hangover.
• Giving my new address to the same pizza company we've been writing checks to for years and being told that "we don't take checks."
• A washer and dryer whose capacities are barely adequate for a pygmy living alone at a nudist camp.

The endgame puts us in a big house for the right price (barring horrific defects like last time), so I suppose I should suck it up - but I'd forgotten what I'd hated so much about renting.

Bring on March.

Yet another meme for your overstuffed brain

Via lifehacker:

How to fold a T-shirt in two seconds:




Fold A Shirt In 2 Seconds - video powered by Metacafe

Okay, that's totally slick.

What got me onto this was the discussion of How to fold a fitted sheet - a technique that was demonstrated to me by some random woman I met in a laundromat.

She was positively evangelical about it - but it was so cool, that E and I found ourselves demonstrating the same technique to her amused relatives less than a week later.

Kinda gives credence to that whole 'ideas are viral' theory.

109 bucks, 42 minutes on the phone, and 78 hours

This is what it costs to transfer internet and phone service from one address to another.

Thanks so much AT&T.

You're all we've come to expect from Telcos.

Purgatory

End of an era and I just can't muster the energy to care.

Six and a half years in this house and we move tomorrow.

The mad scramble of packing will give way to the mad scramble to keep ahead of the movers. I need to take down the computer and disassemble the desk so they can haul it away. Don't know if the drill's charged, still have crap in the desk.

It's a mess.

I've taken three van-loads of crap over to our temporary housing - an apartment whose only quality was availability. Price maybe, but since we're renting furniture, the end result is that we are equaling our mortgage payment between structure and amenities.

Baby E gets her own room though, so I suppose that's more bang for the buck.

Zero neighborhood, though. A collection of things I'd forgotten since I'd last rented. Scrambling for parking - neighbors who are self-absorbed twenty nothings.

Shitty electric ranges - washer and dryer that scream "cheap" - lovely view of a nearby highway.

There's a pool. I'm sure we'll be using that in the next few months.

The offer on the house bounced back as a counter. This house (I'll call it Tatanka) makes the Big House look like an outhouse. Freakin' huge - dated decor. Not the home run house for either of us, but it would be a major step up in quality of life in pretty much every category.

Plus, it'd be near where we are now. We wouldn't need to abandon what we love about this neighborhood.

The seller of Tatanka has thrown in some odd conditions: they want us to plunk down more in earnest money, they want to cap how much we'd be paying per month to finance the house (weird) and they have a few items we'll need an interpreter for.

We'll see. Once we've truly jumped into this lovely apartment - it's not like we'll need to move until June. No hurry.

Oh, cell reception is actually WORSE at the apartment than it is in my current house (which is saying something - our house is like a Faraday cage).

Neighborhood walks will be a thing of the past and E will become a commuter. The kids and I get to be closer to our daily destinations, but I'm not looking forward to being out in boon-effing-nowhere.

Tomorrow, the movers will show up with containers. It's like PODs, only with moving help. It's a new wrinkle for me, but if it works, this may actually be cheaper than regular movers and fit our needs better.

I just hope we can avoid having trash bags of stuff being flung into containers at the last minute. The classic "observe our shit not being together" moment. We're both so shredded, I can hardly imagine tomorrow being worse.

But of course it will be. The snow will make moving things more difficult. The guy we hired to clear our snow did our driveway with a bobcat - and our walk with a garden spade.

Assuming people survive the walk to the driveway, they should be fine.

And it will snow tomorrow - so that should be nice.

The kids will be shuttled off to their cousin's house. My brother in law is driving down to pick them up (only family would do that - they've been such a help, I'm totally embarrassed. We've never been in much of a position to help them. Jen and her husband always seem to have their act together.)

The Boy does NOT want to go to his cousins - but every time we pick him up, he's having a total blast - so I'm sure this is just his age coming out. Baby E couldn't care one way or the other - not after the first fifteen minutes or so.

I just think The Boy is a little overwhelmed by all of this. He gets so little say in so many of his daily activities - I'm sure he's frustrated. The next few days he's going to have even less input. "Go to your cousins, we'll meet you later. Don't touch that. You can't have that, it's going to storage."

I just don't know - he's going to go to a different place with a different room, with a subset of his stuff. He won't be able to play outside (the neighborhood bites) and anyway it's cold as F---. Mom and dad are freaking out most times, and are happy to park him in front of the TV.

We need a house, we need more space, we need a neighborhood.

Mostly - we just need a break.

WaPo, WaPo, how far hast thou fallen?

Okay, there's all sorts of criticism out there for the Perry Bacon's WaPo hatchet job on Obama - but CJR's Paul McLeary has the best rejoinder yet:

---

I’m just going to let [Washington Post's Assistant Managing Editor, Bill] Hamilton hang himself here [with his defense of the story]:

The paper’s intention, Hamilton said, was “to write a story about the kind of rumors that are out there,” and added that “saying something is a rumor is not saying it’s true.”

“We didn’t say it was a false rumor,” Hamilton added. “To me, a rumor is not true.”

With reasoning like that at the top of the editorial food chain, it looks like our job is going to be done for us this campaign season.

---

Mr. Hamilton? You need to stop talking to the press. Better still, you need to stop working for the press.

Son, can I speak to your parents?

Easily the most disturbing photograph I've seen today...

NIE

Yes, I know about the NIE.
No, I won't be posting about it, because every time I think about how we've been assured that Iran is going to nuke us 'til we glow - I begin smashing things.

Here's a picture of a bunny with a pancake on its head:

Wisdom of old age

This is over a year old, but Guy Kawasaki posted something that makes a hell of a lot of sense.

Along the lines of the "Wear Sunscreen" speech, it's a top ten list of ways to live well:

Hindsights

Speaking to you today marks a milestone in my life. I am fifty years old. Thirty-two or years ago, when I was in your seat, I never, ever thought I would be fifty years old.

The implications of being your speaker frightens me. For one thing, when a fifty year old geezer spoke at my baccalaureate ceremony, he was about the last person I'd believe. I have no intention of giving you the boring speech that you are dreading. This speech will be short, sweet, and not boring.

I am going to talk about hindsights today. Hindsights that I've accumulated in the thirty-two years from where you are to where I am. Don't blindly believe me. Don't take what I say as “truth.” Just listen. Perhaps my experience can help you out a tiny bit.

I will present them ala David Letterman. Yes, fifty year old people can still stay up past 11:00 pm.

#10: Live off your parents as long as possible.

I was a diligent Oriental in high school and college. I took college-level classes and earned college-level credits. I rushed through college in 3 1/2 years. I never traveled or took time off because I thought it wouldn't prepare me for work and it would delay my graduation.

Frankly, I blew it.

You are going to work the rest of your lives, so don't be in a rush to start. Stretch out your college education. Now is the time to suck life into your lungs-before you have a mortgage, kids, and car payments.

Take whole semesters off to travel overseas. Take jobs and internships that pay less money or no money. Investigate your passions on your parent's nickel. Or dime. Or quarter. Or dollar. Your goal should be to extend college to at least six years.

Delay, as long as possible, the inevitable entry into the workplace and a lifetime of servitude to bozos who know less than you do, but who make more money. Your parents and grand parents worked very hard to get you and your family to this point. Do not deprive them of the pleasure of supporting you.

#9 Pursue joy, not happiness.

This is probably the hardest lesson of all to learn. It probably seems to you that the goal in life is to be “happy.” Oh, you maybe have to sacrifice and study and work hard, but, by and large, happiness should be predictable.

Nice house. Nice car. Nice material things.

Take my word for it, happiness is temporary and fleeting. Joy, by contrast, is unpredictable. It comes from pursuing interests and passions that do not obviously result in happiness.

Pursuing joy, not happiness will translate into one thing over the next few years for you: Study what you love. This may also not be popular with parents. When I went to college, I was “marketing driven.” It's also an Oriental thing.

I looked at what fields had the greatest job opportunities and prepared myself for them. This was stupid. There are so many ways to make a living in the world, it doesn't matter that you've taken all the “right” courses. I don't think one person on the original Macintosh team had a classic “computer science” degree.

You parents have a responsibility in this area. Don't force your kids to follow in your footsteps or to live your dreams. My father was a senator in Hawaii. His dream was to be a lawyer, but he only had a high school education. He wanted me to be a lawyer.

For him, I went to law school. For me, I quit after two weeks. I view this a terrific validation of my inherent intelligence. And when I quit, neither of my parents were angry. They loved me all just the same.

#8: Challenge the known and embrace the unknown.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in life is to accept the known and resist the unknown. You should, in fact, do exactly the opposite: challenge the known and embrace the unknown.

Let me tell you a short story about ice. In the late 1800s there was a thriving ice industry in the Northeast. Companies would cut blocks of ice from frozen lakes and ponds and sell them around the world. The largest single shipment was 200 tons that was shipped to India. 100 tons got there unmelted, but this was enough to make a profit.

These ice harvesters, however, were put out of business by companies that invented mechanical ice makers. It was no longer necessary to cut and ship ice because companies could make it in any city during any season.

These ice makers, however, were put out of business by refrigerator companies. If it was convenient to make ice at a manufacturing plant, imagine how much better it was to make ice and create cold storage in everyone's home.

You would think that the ice harvesters would see the advantages of ice making and adopt this technology. However, all they could think about was the known: better saws, better storage, better transportation.

Then you would think that the ice makers would see the advantages of refrigerators and adopt this technology. The truth is that the ice harvesters couldn't embrace the unknown and jump their curve to the next curve.

Challenge the known and embrace the unknown, or you'll be like the ice harvester and ice makers.

#7: Learn to speak a foreign language, play a musical instrument, and play non-contact sports.

Learn a foreign language. I studied Latin in high school because I thought it would help me increase my vocabulary. It did, but trust me when I tell you it's very difficult to have a conversation in Latin today other than at the Vatican. And despite all my efforts, the Pope has yet to call for my advice. Latin has proven to be very valuable, but a “live” language would be nice too.

Learn to play a musical instrument. My only connection to music today is that I was named after Guy Lombardo. Trust me: it's better than being named after Guy's brother, Carmen. Playing a musical instrument could be with me now and stay with me forever. Instead, I have to buy CDs at Tower.

I played football. I loved football. Football is macho. I was a middle linebacker--arguably, one of the most macho position in a macho game. But you should also learn to play a sport like hockey, basketball, or tennis. That is, a sport you can play when you're over the hill.

It will be as difficult when you're 50 to get twenty-two guys together in a stadium to play football as it is to have a conversation in Latin, but all the people who wore cute, white tennis outfits can still play tennis. And all the macho football players are sitting around watching television and drinking beer.

#6: Continue to learn.

Learning is a process not an event. I thought learning would be over when I got my degree. It's not true. You should never stop learning. Indeed, it gets easier to learn once you're out of school because it's easier to see the relevance of why you need to learn.

You're learning in a structured, dedicated environment right now. On your parents' nickel. But don't confuse school and learning. You can go to school and not learn a thing. You can also learn a tremendous amount without school.

#5: Learn to like yourself or change yourself until you can like yourself.

I know a forty year old woman who was a drug addict. She is a mother of three. She traced the start of her drug addiction to smoking dope in high school.

I'm not going to lecture you about not taking drugs. Hey, I smoked dope in high school. Unlike Bill Clinton, I inhaled. Also unlike Bill Clinton, I exhaled.

This woman told me that she started taking drugs because she hated herself when she was sober. She did not like drugs so much as much as she hated herself. Drugs were not the cause though she thought they were the solution.

She turned her life around only after she realized that she was in a downward spiral. Fix your problem. Fix your life. Then you won't need to take drugs. Drugs are neither the solution nor the problem.

Frankly, smoking, drugs, alcohol--and using an IBM PC--are signs of stupidity. End of discussion.

#4: Don't get married too soon.

I got married when I was thirty two. That's about the right age. Until you're about that age, you may not know who you are. You also may not know who you're marrying.

I don't know one person who got married too late. I know many people who got married too young. If you do decide to get married, just keep in mind that you need to accept the person for what he or she is right now.

#3: Play to win and win to play.

Playing to win is one of the finest things you can do. It enables you to fulfill your potential. It enables you to improve the world and, conveniently, develop high expectations for everyone else too.

And what if you lose? Just make sure you lose while trying something grand. Avinash Dixit, an economics professor at Princeton, and Barry Nalebuff, an economics and management professor at the Yale School of Organization and Management, say it this way:

“If you are going to fail, you might as well fail at a difficult task. Failure causes others to downgrade their expectations of you in the future. The seriousness of this problem depends on what you attempt.”

In its purest form, winning becomes a means, not an end, to improve yourself and your competition.

Winning is also a means to play again. The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the unlived life is not worth examining. The rewards of winning--money, power, satisfaction, and self-confidence--should not be squandered.

Thus, in addition to playing to win, you have a second, more important obligation: To compete again to the depth and breadth and height that your soul can reach. Ultimately, your greatest competition is yourself.

#2: Obey the absolutes.

Playing to win, however, does not mean playing dirty. As you grow older and older, you will find that things change from absolute to relative. When you were very young, it was absolutely wrong to lie, cheat, or steal. As you get older, and particularly when you enter the workforce, you will be tempted by the “system” to think in relative terms. “I made more money.” “I have a nicer car.” “I went on a better vacation.”

Worse, “I didn't cheat as much on my taxes as my partner.” “I just have a few drinks. I don't take cocaine.” “I don't pad my expense reports as much as others.”

This is completely wrong. Preserve and obey the absolutes as much as you can. If you never lie, cheat, or steal, you will never have to remember who you lied to, how you cheated, and what you stole.

There absolutely are absolute rights and wrongs.

#1: Enjoy your family and friends before they are gone.

This is the most important hindsight. It doesn't need much explanation. I'll just repeat it: Enjoy your family and friends before they are gone. Nothing-not money, power, or fame-can replace your family and friends or bring them back once they are gone. Our greatest joy has been our baby, and I predict that children will bring you the greatest joy in your lives--especially if they graduate from college in four years.

And now, I'm going to give you one extra hindsight because I've probably cost your parents thousands of dollars today. It's something that I hate to admit too.

By and large, the older you get, the more you're going to realize that your parents were right. More and more-until finally, you become your parents. I know you're all saying, “Yeah, right.” Mark my words.

Remember these ten things: if just one of them helps you helps just one of you, this speech will have been a success

And… the hits just keep on comin'

From CJR, commentary on the scandals over at The New Republic and National Review Online:

NRO Joins TNR in Walk of Shame
Another day, another reporter making stuff up
By Paul McLeary

It looks like war-time fabrication isn’t just the domain of The New Republic anymore. The National Review’s W. Thomas Smith, a regular contributor and author of the magazine’s milblog The Tank, has been caught reporting fabrications fed to him by sources during a trip to Lebanon this fall. According to several critics—and Smith and the NRO themselves—Smith fell for the falsehoods his sources fed him completely, without ever bothering to try to corroborate or confirm them independently, while making it sound like he had witnessed more than he really had.

So, let's reflect a bit. You have Time magazine allowing Joe Klein to assert as fact items that are demonstrably false. When this is demonstrated, the Klein responds with "I have neither the time nor the inclination to determine who is right."

Then you have The National Review and The New Republic unquestioningly gobbling up Thomas Smith's every pronouncement when even rudimentary fact-checking would have shown his stories to be exaggerations or outright fabrications.

Al Franken was half right – The bias in media isn't just liberal/conservative – it's a lazy bias – but the lazy is applied to the ideas they are sure of. The ones they doubt, they will do their homework so you can crucify the opposition.

Lt. Col. Bob Bateman has it exactly right:

…what seems to have happened at the core of this issue was an editor’s willing suspension of disbelief because fact-checking was either “too hard” or because the storyline fit within their own vision of reality.

Or both.

B students of the world, unite!

On Moneymaking's Jon Morrow, via brazencareerist:

Twentysomething: Why I regret getting straight A’s in college

By Jon Morrow - I nearly killed myself in college to get straight A’s. Well, almost straight A’s. I graduated with 37 A’s and 3 B’s for a GPA of 3.921. At the time, I thought I was hot stuff. Now I wonder if it wasn’t a waste of time. Let me explain...

Yeah. What he said.

Take that, overachievers!

Murphy's Law as applied to the cellular age

Just a quick observation:

It used to be, that if you had to reach a person by phone – Murphy's Law would merely arrange that the person is unavailable at whatever moment you chose to call. It was the one and only rule of important phone calls – they end with a machine telling you "Blah, blah blah, I'll call you back." (Shorthanded below as BBBICYB).

With the advent of cellular phones, the playful paw of fortune has many new ways to screw with you.

As luck would have it, I have explored most of them over the past few days. We're trying to find a place to live between the time when we have to leave the house we just sold and when we move into whatever house we eventually find.

If we find a place.

Here's just a sampling - I call and leave a message, and the person calls me back when:

• I am in a cellular dead spot.
  
  
  • "Mr… uds…bordup…rental…avail… [dial tone]"
  • *Return call*
  • BBBICYB
• I am in a business meeting.
  
  
  • [Ring]
  • *hit 'forward to VM' *
  • *Get voicemail*
  • *Return call*
  • BBBICYB
  
  
• I have my cell in a pants pocket while driving:
  
  • [Ring]
  • *contort*
  • *swerve*
  • [Ring]
  • *pull over*
  • *contort*
  • *hit 'forward to VM' by accident*
  • *Get voicemail*
  • *Return call*
  • BBBICYB
  
  
• I am parked on the side of a busy road, with my infant daughter in one arm
  
  • "Hello?"
  • "Hi this is-"
  • [Deafening roar of passing truck]
  • "-today?"
  • "I'm sorry, could you repea-"
  • [Screaming baby]
  • "-time hearing-"
  • [Passing car without muffler]
  • *Nearly drop baby*
  • "Damnit!"
  • [Upside-down screaming baby]
  • "Did I get you at a bad-"
  • *Drop phone*
  • *Put baby in car seat*
  • *Look for phone under car*
  • *Pick up phone.*
  • "-so I'll call you back."
  • "Okay"
  • [Dial tone]
  • *Resume life, restore order*
  • *Return call*
  • BBBICYB

Twice now, I've experienced Murphy's best attempt at irony:

I’m at work and make the initial call and "blah, blah blah, I'll call you back." I wait, at my comfortable desk, with perfect cell reception during a day when I have no meeting scheduled.

Later in the day I experience - let's just call it "severe gastro-intestinal distress" – and end up camped out in a bathroom stall. Murphy is a true bastard because the extended duration of my stay gives me time to contemplate how each passing moment would be a really bad time for -

[Ring]

Now – Murphy's got his rule and I've got mine when it comes to calls in the bathroom: I don't care if it's God Almighty on the line, he's gettin' voicemail.

You wanna reach me in the bathroom-you'd better send a pillar of fire.

At this point, I would hope Murphy has played out his fiendish energies – but with three more callbacks pending, I'm not optimistic.

Late edit:

Just added a call-waiting scenario:

On the phone with my adorable son and [Boop, Boop] call waiting kicks in. Must get son off the phone in mid babble, so I can pick up.

Can't make it. Miss call. Ugh.