David Stephenson sends me an email:

I feel like an idiot: I know we have 12 allies against Iraq, but I can’t name them all!

I have to admit it: this is a sad commentary on my lack of knowledge of the world. I only count 7. Can you help me with the other 5?

Andorra
Brunei Darussalam
Djibouti
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Monaco
Sao Tome and Principe

No, problem, David. The other five are:

Grumpy
Dopey
Sneezy
Sleepy
Bashful

Doc has a trick knee and Happy is in rehab.

Glad I could be of help.

3 Comments »

“All Things Considered” last night had a report on the Bush administration’s attack on sex education programs that teach kids about contraception rather than only proselytizing for abstinence. The scary part was the degree to which our government is willing to ignore or twist science.

Hey, teaching kids that abstinence is an option is great. Still, if the government really wants to get it to stick, they should couple abstinence education with proselytizing for masturbation. It’s a winning combination!

Slate’s daily news roundup notes that W has nominated Jerry Thacker to his Aids Advisory Panel a former faculty member at Bob Jones University who has called AIDS “the gay plague,” etc. The offending phrases were recently removed from Thacker’s site, but Slate used the Web Archive to rescue the page before it was tucked into the closet, so to speak. It includes the following subheading:

Help for Homosexuals. A message on the nature of homosexuality and how Christ can rescue the homosexual. Includes statistics on homosexual behavior, tips for ministry to those practicing this “deathstyle” and information on the homosexual movement and its political agenda.

5 Comments »

Gary Stock is all over the GOP AstroTurfing brouhaha. His page sends us to DredWerkz were you’ll find a password by which you can roam free at the GOP site.

First go to: http://www.gopteamleader.com/index.asp. Next, log in. Use the username: [email protected] and the password gopgop.

Then Gary recounts how he used the GOP Citizen Spam engine to send a message to the editor of the Kalamazoo Gazette warning him/her to watch out for letters to the editor that are actually spam-for-points sponsored by the Republican party.

Be the first to comment »

The US Patent and Trademark Office’s feel-good newsletter for April 2002 headlines “USPTO Patent Examines Advance Homeland Security.” The story introduces us to the patent examiners and the inventions they’re looking at. It’s not a bad puff piece. But the accompanying graphic is a tad disturbing:

Does the image of Uncle Sam peering through a keyhole at you give you the willies? If not, why not? Discuss amongst yourselves…

[Thanks, Chip, for the link.]

5 Comments »

A report from Stratfor a private intelligence firm (about which I know nothing) says that the US’s real aim is to occupy Iraq because:

1. It takes out of the picture a potential ally for al Qaeda, one with sufficient resources to multiply the militant group’s threat. Whether Iraq has been an ally in the past is immaterial — it is the future that counts. 2. It places U.S. forces in the strategic heart of the Middle East, capable of striking al Qaeda forces whenever U.S. intelligence identifies them. 3. Most important, it allows the United States to bring its strength –conventional forces — to bear on nation-states that are enablers or potential enablers of al Qaeda. This would undermine strategically one of the pillars of al Qaeda’s
capabilities: the willingness of established regimes to ignore al Qaeda operations within their borders.

Most interesting to me is that Stratfor felt the need to come up with a theory to explain the lameness of the Bush administration’s attempts at justifying the war: Bush is left stating ridiculous, unconvincing reasons for going to war with Iraq because no one would support us if W gave the real reasons.

[Thanks to Daniel Berninger for forwarding the email.]

W yesterday, in complaining that the Europeans are too stupid to see what Hussein is up to, said: “This looks like a rerun of a bad movie and I’m not interested in watching it.”

I don’t mean to get all psychological on his ass – well, yes I do – but this is a striking image. W sees a narrative unfolding in which he does not want to participate. It’s a rerun so it’s a memory. What’s the movie he doesn’t want to see? It’s “Poppy the Wuss,” a story in which his dad is publicly humiliated. In getting revenge, W also proves (to himself and to Babs) that he doesn’t suffer from his Dad’s weakness, and that he’s not the second-best son.

Will someone please give Bush a new movie before he gets us all killed?

4 Comments »

It looks like the AstroTurfing by the Bush administration has been nailed down: TheInquirer.net seems to have found the source of the river of near-identical letters to various editors: the GOP Team Leader site.

Of course you don’t need the Web to do this sort of thing. But the Web sure makes it easier to track it down.

[Thanks to Chip for the link. And Gary Stock is amusing on the topic.]

Be the first to comment »

A for-pay article on Salon — jeez, I wish they’d keep in the for-free side of the ledger articles so clearly in the public interest — tells us not to give up the copyright battle yet. Siva Vaidhyanathan writes:

While dismissing the notion that excessive copyright expansion has severe First Amendment implications, she [Ginzburg] invoked two of the classic democratic safeguards of American copyright: the idea/expression dichotomy and fair use. Because of these two concepts, Ginsburg concluded, the court need not take the censorious power of copyright seriously. …

In the wake of this decision, if Congress and later courts are going to take Ginsburg’s words seriously, they must take fair use and the idea/expression dichotomy seriously. They cannot take them for granted, as so many have in recent years.

In dismissing First Amendment concerns, Ginzburg wrote : “… when, as in this case, Congress has not altered the traditional contours of copyright protection, further First Amendment scrutiny is unnecessary.” This, the article says, may give us a hook on which to hang an argument against the DMCA since it ploughs right over those traditional contours.

Further, the article says that this decision moves the issue from the courts back to Congress where the will of the people has a small shot at being heard: when Larry “Bless His Heart” Lessig and Eldred began this case four years ago “they had no army of CD burners and TiVo users behind them.”

(That’s why I’m so happy someone gave Michael Powell a TiVo. Now could someone please give him a DeCSS decrypter, some Cuban cigars, and a baggie of really great grass?)

1 Comment »

I will work for him when he runs for Senate and then I’ll vote for him when he runs for president.

1 Comment »

Thomas Oliphant’s column (here today, gone tomorrow) in the Boston Globe suggests that conservatives ought to be in favor of abolishing capital punishment because it is a clear example of Big Government’s inability to manage a program efficiently.

Good point, although I’m afraid the conclusion conservatives would actually draw is that capital punishment ought to be privatized.

Be the first to comment »

Here’s a devilishly well-edited clip of Bush giving a fiendish State of the Union address. Pick your video format:

QuickTime (mov)
Real
Windows (wmv)

[Referred from a mailing list]

5 Comments »