perfidy

"I take full responsibility."

Donald Rumsfeld said this to Congress last week, during hearings. I never thought the phrase would be so empty of meaning. Can one utter the phrase, then do nothing? What else is being done? I do not necessarily mean that the only acceptable path is that Rumsfeld resign. It is this: When one takes full responsibility, some level of personal sacrifice is required; if none is proffered, then the acceptance is meaningless.

I cheer for small aviation businesses; it's so hard to get into the game, and so many participants do it for love, instead of for rational reasons. One man's aviation business dream just came to an end, when he took full responsibility:

Important Information for Customers

Customer experience has uncovered a type of pump failure never experienced in years of field and laboratory testing of the dual rotor vacuum pump design, including the deliberate destruction of over 300 test pumps. These failures resulted in malfunctioning of both pumping chambers simultaneously. The failures are concentrated on the 300 horsepower Lycoming IO-540 engines. We believe that these engines generate a resonant frequency resulting in breakage of both graphite rotors. Multiple replacement pumps have failed on three different engines. At this point, we can’t be certain about similar failures occurring on other engines. A failure rate of 3%, while seemingly small, is not acceptable for our product. Although the dual rotor pumps are performing well in the other 97% of installations, shipping of dual rotor pumps has been halted. The tens of thousands of dollars of orders on hand will not be filled. Aero Advantage refuses to continue marketing a product that might not perform satisfactorily for all its customers.

Aero Advantage was founded, in good faith, to improve safety of flight and to allow greater peace of mind for its customers by eliminating sudden loss of the vacuum source. While the precise changes that are needed to improve reliability may already be in place, they would likely require between 3 and 9 months to finalize and place into production. The company can not survive the financial burden of having no sales for that length of time and is closing its doors. Closure of the business was an extremely difficult decision for me, the inventor and company founder, since I have invested five years of work and most of my life’s savings in the business.

Several parties have expressed an interest in procuring the current technology and continuing the development of the necessary product improvements.

It is with much regret that I announce the above decision. I believe it is the correct one for all concerned.

Sincerely,

David A. Boldenow

Aero Advantage
My condolences, and respect, to Mr. David Boldenow. I'm sure he'll succeed at whatever he does next, and whoever deals with him will know he is of good character.

Begging to Differ notes a norbizness post that references this Time Magazine article about this email*.

The email was sent to Pentagon staff in the wake of Fox News' posting of the Taguba Report (detailing prisoner abuses at the Abu Gharaib prison by people who really should have known better). It exhorted Pentagon staffers NOT to download the Taguba Report from FOX News, where it was available to read to anyone in the world with access to an internet connection, and in fact was being downloaded by everyone and their dog at at exact moment, because.... wait for it.... the memo is still classified. So if you work for the DoD, just remember, just because a memo has been read by millions of people worldwide doesn't mean it's not still secret!

Snuh?

The email reads, in part,

From: Information Services Customer Liaison, ISD
Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2004 12:45 PM
To: MLA dd - USD(I) - ALL; MLA dd - NII ALL
Subject: URGENT IT BULLETIN: Tugabe Report (FOUO)
Importance: High

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

AUDIENCE
All ISD Customers

SUMMARY
Fox News and other media outlets are distributing the Tugabe report (spelling is approximate for reasons which will become obvious momentarily). Someone has given the news media classified information and they are distributing it. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED. ALL ISD CUSTOMERS SHOULD:

1) NOT GO TO FOX NEWS TO READ OR OBTAIN A COPY
2) NOT comment on this to anyone, friends, family etc.
3) NOT delete the file if you receive it via e-mail, but
4) CALL THE ISD HELPDESK AT 602-2627 IMMEDIATELY

This leakage will be investigated for criminal prosecution. If you don't have the document and have never had legitimate access, please do not complicate the investigative processes by seeking information. Again, THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED; DO NOT GO TO FOX NEWS TO READ OR OBTAIN A COPY.

I especially love the advice on how to cope with dealing with this no longer secret yet still very classified report in four easy steps.

And whatever you do, for God's sake, do NOT visit FOX NEWS DOT COM. (EVER.)

* ain't the internet grand?!?

[wik] Commenters below have now broken the LAW a combined... lessee... 11 times. And counting. Oops-- thirteen.

Traitorous eggheads at the New York university have succeeded in creating tiny robots made of DNA, and only 10 nanometers long. (10 nanometers is, in human terms, really, really goddamn small.) These robots are so small, we probably couldn't even kill them. And to me, that is a major defect in their design. At least we'd have a chance against the giant fighting robots...

Go here to make your own Mr. Picassohead!
 

Haw!

A cheap-ass pun merely to inform you that Major League Baseball has decided, after fan outcry, that Spider-Man bases are a no-go. The rest of the promotion will go off as planned but the bases, the perfect white diamonds that in their perfection are perfect miniatures of the perfect greater diamond they define, and whose perfect presence is the reason for the (perfect) game in the first place in all its hallowed glory and perfection yea forever and e'er amen, will not be touched.

Damn straight.

KOS puts the cost of the war in perspective.

Key figures: Cost of War in Iraq (so far): $149 Billion. Cost of all law enforcement in the United States, including police, prisons and courts, is $167 Billion.

So when it comes to making Americans safer, where should we be spending our money?

If I know Bush (and I don't), then I know what's coming -- a tax cut!!!. What better time could there possibly be for a heavy tax cut for the wealthy, again? No time like now! Stupid socialists! Don't you know that if we give the wealthiest people in this country yet another tax cut, it will...well...turn out...better....for them? And maybe their heirs...but...you could marry into one of their rich families and then you'd be better off...and then everyone can do that! Yay!

Bush likes having his cake and his turkey, and he wants to eat them both.

This Presidency is turning out to be the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the American people.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Bush was reportedly upset that he learned of the extent of the prisoner abuses and saw the incriminating photographs by watching "60 Minutes II" last week, with no advance warning. He is also reported to be upset with Rumsfeld that the Pentagon had not acted on recommendations that Iraqi prison conditions be improved. All eyes will be on Rumsfeld Saturday when he testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

That is an absolutely astonishing quote. What it means that Bush's team keeps key decision-making information from the President. They're either doing it because they have bad judgement, they're incompetent, or they're doing it deliberately. Take your pick.

Which makes me wonder: Exactly what else has Bush not been told? If we take a "delegating", CEO-style President who relies on and trusts the opinions of his inner circle and then combine that with an inner circle that is less than candid with their President, it starts to explain a hell of a lot about the continuing policy screwups of this administration.

My gut feel is that his inner circle people are not "bad people". My gut feel is that his inner circle people are gamblers. They don't know what's going to happen as a result of their policies, and they're willing to take the risk. They present to the President scenarios and characterize them as fact, when they are in fact supposition. I suspect that this behavior is not limited to the inner circle; it likely pervades the political structure in this White House.

Can anyone else apply Occam's Razor and find a simpler answer?

Yesterday I went to one of those office farewell parties where everyone stands around gabbing and snacking and some nebbish has to go without cake. The snacks were the usual fare, nachos and a taco dip, desserts and drinks, except for the pork rinds. Pork rinds! For the life of me I couldn't imagine what pork rinds had to do with the apparently faux-Southwestern culinary theme the rest of the eats had going on, nor could I see a connection between pork rinds and a degree in Poetry, which is what my departing cow-orker is leaving to pursue.

So I asked. "Why the heck are these nummy pork rinds here?" The answer I got: "No carbs. Atkins friendly."

Take a minute to let that sink in. No carbs. Atkins friendly.

I look upon the Atkins craze with grave suspicion and faint disdain, and view the new food-industry embrace of it as sheer lunacy. Low carb beer! Low carb bread. Low carb effing cheese! Moreover, many people seem to take Atkins' dietary rules as license to eat as much steak with a side of cheese as they can get, to the exclusion of such delicious low-carb alternatives as green vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. The entire Atkins industry is more than a little ludicrous.

No offense to those hardy souls who have enthinned themselves at Atkins' knee, but if you need more proof that the Atkins diet in the popular interpretation is the fad-diet peer of alchemy, orgones, EST, the jackalope, and the extended warranty, consider this: Pork rinds are now a health food.

I guess I should expect that Orgasmatron any day now.

A woman I work with, her husband, and I were thinking about cool names for punk bands the other day. Here's what we came up with; feel free to add your own or modify, fold, spindle or mutilate those listed. Favorites among those who have seen the list are "Changing Table" and "Practice Head" (from a King of the Hill episode)

The list:
1. Helper Monkey
2. Killing Timmy
3. Bronx Science
4. Practice Head
5. Mister Furley
6. Regime Change
7. Chandra Levy
8. Neutral Drop
9. Attention Shoppers
10. Changing Station
11. Fen-Phen
12. Monkey's Double
13. Buhrka Assasins
14. Full Release
15. Chechen Rebels
16. Jonestown Mazzacerz
17. Dangling Babies
18. Stem Sleeper Cell
19. DC SniperZ
20. Boxcutter
21. Guarini Gorilla
22. Nylo Bone
23. Aunt Nancy
24. Peacewrecker
25. Pray for Mojo
26. Cracker Factory
27. Musing Meme (for your cerebral punks)
28. Sickle Cell
29. Fisted Nurse
30. Pony Rode Hard
31. Every Swingin' Richard

And for some local flavor:
1. Tom Bevacqua's Hairpiece
2. Turnpike-Fuckpipe

LOOSE wire quotes Microsoft's and Yahoo's answer to questions about their use of email content to deliver "targetted" advertising. My thought of the day is this: google is big. Microsoft is big. The various content-oriented ad companies seem to be pretty capable.

Why doesn't google allow me to set ad preferences? I am fifty times more likely to click an ad for, say, a computer component, than I am for Sean Hannity's latest campfire-starter. Why doesn't the google toolbar, in particular, do this? (By the way, if you use IE, you need the google toolbar; perfect popup blocking).

I have no problems with ads being on the sites I visit. The reason their click through rates are so low is that they keep showing me stupid ads for crap I am not interested in . Sometime in the year 2029 this is going to sink in for these idiots.

So how do we fix this? Simple. Every PC in the universe, practically, has Flash on it. So let's start there, as a tech base. "Generic" advertisers (those who are paid by others to show ads on their site, who do not direct content), simply insert a link to a little Flash code, wherever they want an ad. That Flash code can connect to a server and pull in generic ads, or do content-driven advertising. So far so good. The bottom of that little Flash ad can contain "Interested" and "Not Interested" buttons, which can be used to influence further ad delivery. It can also link to a more complex UI (possibly manifested right inline), that allows more precise selection of general topic areas.

None of this particularly requires Flash, of course, but it can be made very unobtrusive by using it (as in, no web page alterations). None of this is particularly original, either. I am just completely mystified as to why a user's basic interests are not taken into account, and the only conclusion I can come up with is that it's been poor usability and functionality that has prevented it from really taking off.

Imagine how much more effective advertising would be if it operated the same way that Amazon's ratings do. You can click on "I already own it", or "not interested", and have a much higher chance of seeing something that you ARE interested in...

You know George Will, serious conservative political commentator. His latest in the Post, Time for Bush to See The Realities of Iraq, demonstrates the uncertainty yet another serious conservative has about this administration. The current leadership's hard line has real costs associated with it. Their no-fault, no-error, no-problem monoposition causes real damage, and has real consequences.

Will:

This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts. Thinking is not the reiteration of bromides about how "all people yearn to live in freedom" (McClellan). And about how it is "cultural condescension" to doubt that some cultures have the requisite aptitudes for democracy (Bush). And about how it is a "myth" that "our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture" because "ours are not Western values; they are the universal values of the human spirit" (Tony Blair).

"Thinking is not the reiteration of bromides" is definitely my quote of the day. George Bush's bizarre, bumper-sticker solutions to complex, real-world problems have damaged this country for a generation or more, economically and culturally.

Which brings me to this point: One of the most important reasons to vote for John Kerry this fall is an unfortunate, indirect one. The election of Kerry represents a real opportunity for America to reset itself in global culture. A voter rejection of Bush's policies will be seen by the rest of the world as demonstrative of the true nature of the citizenry; quarter will be given, and success is dramatically more likely.

Can this country really afford to bury itself under four more years of faith-based government?

During Spider-Man(R) 2 Weekend, which has been scheduled during a segment of the 2004 Major League Baseball Interleague Play schedule, ballparks will feature in-park and on-field Spider-Man(R) signage and each Club will feature special Spider-Man(R) promotional events, including giveaways with the
world-renowned web crawler. In addition, highlights from Spider-Man(R) 2 will run on stadium video boards to promote the motion picture's June 30 release. Major League Baseball Properties and the 15 participating Clubs will promote Spider-Man(R) 2 Weekend locally in each market and nationally.

Muckracker Matt Drudge translates.

In a move that has purists howling, Major League Baseball has agreed to decorate its bases -- and pitching-mound rubbers and on-deck circles -- with a spider-web pattern as part of a promotion for the release of Sony Corp.'s "Spider-Man 2" next month.

The superhero sequel is set to open in theaters June 30. "`Spider-Man 2' Weekend" will start Friday, June 11, and all 15 MLB teams playing at home have agreed to participate for one or more games, the WALL STREET HOURNAL reported on Wednesday.

The deal is baseball's latest attempt to develop a splashier national marketing image. "In an ultracompetitive sports-entertainment environment, you have to take risks," says Tim Brosnan, MLB's executive vice president for business.

Count me among the howlers. Tacky, tacky, tacky.

Now the robots will control our music!

Two readers have now emailed me this article, about the impending launch of an all-digital electric guitar by the venerable Gibson company, father of the electric guitar (thanks, mapgirl and NDR!).

As Gibson Guitar Corp. launches a new digital model, company CEO Henry Juszkiewicz can close his eyes and almost hear the music.

"The defining moment will be when a certain lick in a popular song is out there, and it can't be done with anything else but a digital guitar," Juszkiewicz says. "It only takes one example to really inspire people."

That, Juszkiewicz hopes, will usher in the age of the digital guitar -- much the same way as the Beatles and Rolling Stones inspired a generation of young people to pick up a standard electric guitar in the 1960s.

"It opens a whole new palette of possibilities," Juszkiewicz says. "It's a little bit like hearing stereo as opposed to mono."

....

The advantages of the digital guitar come down to sound and control. For 70 years, the electric guitar pickup has translated string vibrations into an electrical signal fed to an amplifier. The player can control the tone and volume, but output is limited to a mono or stereo signal. The signal itself is noisy by today's standards, and stray frequencies often cause an annoying hum.

"Some of the guitar pickups popular today go back to the 1920s," Juszkiewicz said. "We have not changed a lot in terms of the instrument."

NDR argues that now is "time for revolt" before the electronic guitar does for the bell-bottom-flapping-stack-of-Marshall-tens power chord what the CD did for high fidelity. I'm kinda with him on that, but I find to my surprise that I can't get too worked up.

Here's why. As with compact discs versus vinyl, there is an ineffable warmth to the sound of analog that digital simply cannot match. Listening to Neil Young's "Rust Never Sleeps" on LP is a fundamentally different experience from listening to it on CD, and don't even get me started about the gritty trebles and woolly bass tones of some early jazz CD transfers. The same debate has already played out among the musicians of the world as the flatter-sounding yet more durable transistor amplifiers have become more common than the rich and gorgeous yet tempermental vacuum-tube varieties. And yet tube amps retain a dedicated (even fanatical) following, and most guitarists play one of a few models, most of which are decades old.

Myself, I don't care. There's a sound for all seasons, and digital guitar will merely open new frontiers. Much of what Gibson's CEO touts as shocking new innovation already exists in the from of guitar synthesizers, which have become increasingly refined and useful over the last decade or so. Moreover, the guitar synth has already found its niche without taking the place of the proverbial Sound Of Les Paul into Marshall Head. Vernon Reid, Elliott Sharp, and a fleet of others have made whole careers out of wrangling their guitars like plectrum-struck keyboards.

At this point I should offer some full disclosure. While on the bass guitar front I am a dedicated purist for four strings (5- and 6- stringers sound thin and grindy), for twelve years I have been the proud owner of a Fender Ultimate Stratocaster featuring new-generation Fender Lace pickups that are as unlike the traditional wire-wound magnet versions as a Mac running OSX is from a Dell running Win98. They sound awesome, bringing that classic bell-clear Strat sound but more so, and with greater sustain since the magnets are much weaker than normal and create less drag on a vibrating string. I'm a dedicated user of effects (mostly cheap) and signal transformers, but only when they are called for. If I had money to burn, I'd buy myself a nice big tube-driven Mesa/Boogie amp with a Line6 Pod preamp and a whole flotilla of rack effects. I would rip out the rhythm part to "Janie's Cryin'" and people five hundred miles away would cower at the sheer sonic power of my awesome riffage.

But if I had money to burn, I'd also buy one of the new Gibsons in a heartbeat. Back when I played every day, I got pretty good at playing two parts at once, palm-muting the lower strings to alter the tone in the lower register at the same time. The new Gibson digital allows you to customize the tone of each string independently, which would let me take that technique to the next level. Freaking sweet!

Think of it this way. The Hammond-B3, the Fender Rhodes, and countless generations of increasingly sophisticated synthesizers have failed to put Steinway and Bosendorfer out of business. To the contrary, Yamaha now offers some models of piano that integrate a digital preamp, processor, and hard drive with the finest in traditional piano construction and tonal shaping. The very best of these are magnificent. Yet most people when buying Yamaha still go for the baby grand, spinet, or upright devoid of the bells and whistles. I think the same will go for guitars. As long as Mexico keeps turning out the pinewood Fender Stratocasters for $300 a pop, and as long as tube amps can be gotten used for $150, Gibson hasn't immanentized the eschaton for heroic rockin' guitars. They've merely ushered in a new era.

Let me be the first to welcome our new six-stringed overlords.

[wik] A side note to NDR: just imagine a world where Joy Division had to record "Love Will Tear Us Apart" or "She's Lost Control" without the benefit of synths. I think in twenty or so years we'll be saying the same thing about the Gibson digital guitar.

As the May 17th deadline approaches after which gay couples will be able to wed in my fair Commonwealth, Governer Mitt Romney has pulled what could charitably be seen as a bozo move.

Romney, who has done everything in his power to stop the marriages from going forward (which is of course his right), has invoked a 1913 state law that bars out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts. That seems like a reasonable stopgap, an attempt to mitigate the effects of couples from other states marrying here and going back home, forcing a painful and rancorous re-examination of the Defense of Marriage Act and the Full Faith and Credit clause of the US Constitution. Unfortunately for Mitt, his problem is with gay marriage itself rather than its political consequences, and the law in question was originally passed to ban miscegenation by barring interracial couples from out of state from marrying.

Furthermore, straight couples from out of state are not barred-- and the Governer has not instructed that they be barred-- from getting married in Massachusetts, though the law is still on the books. It's just the gays, like the blacks used to be. To my mind, it's more than a little hypocritical to revive an antiquated law whose intent everyone today would agree is fundamentally immoral in defense of an ostensibly moral crusade.

With this in mind, I challenge all comers to tell me with a straight face that gay marriage, complicated as the question is, is not a civil rights issue with strong ties to the past.

Hat tip to brdgt.

See if you can spot what's wrong in this short piece from the New York Times:

SUDAN REGAINS HUMAN RIGHTS SEAT: Sudan was elected to another three-year term on the United Nations' Commission on Human Rights, but the United States delegation, citing allegations of ethnic cleansing in Sudan's western Darfur region, walked out of the meeting before the vote. The deputy representative of Sudan, Omar Bashir Manis, accused the United States of "shedding crocodile tears," and said American forces had committed atrocities against prisoners and civilians in Iraq. Sudan ran uncontested, as one of four nations chosen by the African Regional Group to fill four allotted vacancies on the commission. Daniel B. Schneider (NYT)

Now that's rich. Not only is the Sudan home to a continuing human-slavery industry, and not only has the Sudan been the site of various atrocities, imbroligos, attempted genocides, and general antihumanitarian mayhem for the past fifty years, but they are also a member of the UN's Human Rights council and have the temerity to claim that the actions of some US soldiers and civilians are worthy of scorn in comparison. The difference between us and them: we're punishing soldiers for humiliating and torturing POWs; they're harboring slave traders. Good for our delegates for walking out of that vote.

Not that all this is surprising or anything; it just gets my goat. When the Sudan can score hits off your human rights record, you know it's been a bad week.

What did Michael Jackson say to Woody Allen?

Can I give you two fives for a ten?

GeekLethal put me on the trail of a Yahoo(!) news piece on a new fad: fantasy record labels. Universal's distribution arm, UMVD, has launched the program among retailers whom they deal with with the aim of raising awareness of new Universal product. Sure it's a cynical ploy to earn retail footprint, but what a concept!

Here's the deal. Much like with fantasy sports, you do research into bands, tour schedules, bios, etc., pick a roster, and compete against your peers for fabulous prizes. The team who charts the highest and sells the most units at the end of the 36-week season wins. But unlike my fantasy baseball league, in which I stand to win a few bucks if I win the season, winners in UMVD's SMASH (Scoring Music and Selecting Hits) program get consumer electronics.

This sounds like an idea that has found its time. A friend of mine had this idea a few years back but, lacking programming acumen and overweening ambition, we never got it off the ground. I suck mightily at A&R, but I always thought it would be fun to see if I could pick the winners out of a crop of upcoming releases.

The most interesting stuff will happen when UMVD takes this to the public. I'm willing to bet that SMASH will become something like an Iowa Electronic Market for music, except with less war and more exposed thongs. I can't wait to sign up.

As if our usual stuff weren't moronic enough, please take a moment out of your day to pay homage to pure trash genius: The Exorcist as re-enacted by bunnies. Go see! The power of Christ compels you!

Thanks to GeekLethal for the notion.

The main Ministry computer is off taking care of its own private matters today (note to self: buy helmet and JDAM), so I have been deputized to take care of some Ministry business in its stead.

So... ladies and gentlemen, if you will direct your attention to the left-hand side of your screen, you will see that the Ministry welcomes two new weblogs to the blogroll, Patton's Opinion8, and Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution. The latter, being an econoblog, is a sop to Minister Ross' penchant for numbers and the games they play.

One further note.... "Calpundit" is now "Political Animal." Same Kevin Drum, slick new high-end digs.

You may notice that, on the whole, the blogroll skews decidedly rightward. Part of that stems from Founding Minister Buckethead's conservative predelictions, and my own less fervently held centrism (which Buckethead describes as 'drifting in the great Brownian sea of the American center'), but the rest of the story is that many lefty bloggers just ain't that great, and if they're sometimes great, they ain't funny (notable exceptions include Norbizness and certain members of Crooked Timber and Begging to Differ). Can anybody recommend some great and funny leftward bloggers?

This concludes Ministry business for today. Your compliance is appreciated. Indeed, it is expected.

Beginning with one of the best ledes I've seen in a long time,

Christian teens are stealing Jesus music

this Seattle Times article tells the sordid tale of Christians pirating inspirational music.

The findings were a jolt to many in the evangelical music industry, who expected churchgoing teens to be mindful of the commandment that states, "Thou shalt not steal."

"I'm surprised and disappointed that the behavior isn't that ardently different between Christians and non-Christians," said John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association, the leading trade group for evangelical music.

While downloading a Metallica song and putting a metaphorical finger in the eye of Lars Ulrich might give one a certain frisson of excitement; stealing the Word of the Lord should provoke a slightly bigger "hey, wait a damn minute" from the conscience. Or at least make you reassess your commitment to the moral system that motivated the musicians whose music you're stealing.

[hat tip: Sophont.]

I'm having a hard time reconciling battlefield success in the War on Terror with the loss of the cultural or social contest.

Recently, BBC reported that Santiago Cathedral in Spain will remove a statue depicting St. James, aka "Moorslayer", to avoid upsetting non-Catholics: "Among the reasons for the move is to avoid upsetting the 'sensitivities of other ethnic groups' ". Similarly, a hospital in Norway removed a mural of Winnie the Pooh characters, which included Piglet, from its children's wing for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities. Meanwhile, a town in Michigan caved instantly to local Muslims' demands for amplified calls to prayer across the city in what Muslim leaders there called "a pioneer city for the whole United States".

In other recent news, rampaging Muslims destroyed and defiled 29 Orthodox churches and monasteries along with 800 homes in Kosovo. Don't hold your breath waiting for arrests. And just two years ago, terrorists of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade shot their way into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and used it as a fortress for weeks before ultimately surrendering to the IDF. They were exiled.

So.

Wherever or whenever Muslims care to defile, destroy, or disrupt non-Islamic religious structures is fine. Whether it's armed bandits, marauding mobs, or craven domestic "leaders", the result is the same. There is little coverage, little concern, and zero outrage from international or domestic organizations. Apparently, Muslims can dictate not only the terms of public expression, but affect what goes on in within religious structures outside of Islam, as this statue business illustrates.

As a thought experiment, consider what would happen if Catholic militants stormed one of the 150,000 holiest sites of Islam and used it as a strongpoint for a month- under arms, sleeping, eating, defecating, urinating within it; or the local Protestant sect in Riyadh demanded that church bells ring to summon worshippers; or for that matter, lodge a complaint with the government of Turkey and explain that those huge minarets at the Hagia Sofia "upset your sensibilities".

Terrorists and jihadis are wasting a whole lot of human capital, effort, and material in fighting the US military. Instead of training, fighting, and dying, all they had to do was move here and demand everyone else accomodate them. No muss, no fuss, and guaranteed effective.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pops the Bush "tax cut" hot air balloon. I don't know who these guys are, but at first blush, their numbers look a lot like my own do. They've got somewhat different inflation-adjusted income figures over time, but their time scale is different from mine.

Bottom line is this: The Bush tax cuts are doing exactly what they were designed to do: Benefit the political donor class (to borrow a descriptive phrase from David Cay Johnson). Nobody seriously believed that tax cuts for the wealthy would create jobs; twenty years of recent history means we know that's just bullshit.

This whole tax policy debate bears astonishing similarity to arguments about smoking and health. Sure, we know now that it's bad, and you were a dope to ever think that it was good for you. But in the seventies and eighties the jury was out as far as health effects went...the tobacco profiteers maintained their public ignorance about the health effects and went to extremes to ensure that the debate stayed confusing.

Today's "conservative" is reduced, in his pro-tax cut rhetoric, to vague protestations of "it's just wrong to tax", or "the rich people will leave, and we'll all be in trouble".

One of the ideas behind democracy is that if we all vote in our self-interest, what comes out of the sum of that is policy that benefits to most people. What is utterly mysterious to me is how many otherwise decent and smart people vote for a party whose fiscal policies amount to stabbing that voter in the back.

Our cultural clash with Radical Islam has taught us a great deal about a spectrum with politics on one end and religion on the other. If we presume that facts were ever available to support a position, knocking away those facts one by one results in a shift to the religious end of that spectrum, if one continues to support those positions with the same level of fervor...

I'm waiting for the first conservative idiot commentator to characterize criticism of this sick turn of events as "aid and comfort to the enemy".

CBS News: Abuse of Iraqi POWs

What, are we finished talking about this already?

Does anyone seriously believe that this is the only occurrence? The army itself has indicated it knows of other incidents; they're just not public yet.

Exactly how well is the battle for "hearts and minds" going, at this point?

We have well-defined success criteria in Iraq: Some form of democracy, a "westernization", the restoration of human rights. What are our criteria for failure? At what point, exactly, do we decide that the pooch is screwed, and it's time to go? In business you don't throw good money after bad.

The President's answer to this is never. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we have continuous stories of prisoner abuse, every two weeks, for the next year. Can we succeed in Iraq if something like that happens? The answer is NO. The chance of success is ZERO. So that's one situation under which we'd "cut and run", which is a shitty way of putting it. When a business shuts down a money-losing line of business, we don't call it "cut and run", we call it sensible management.

Likewise, the phrase "cut and run" is being used to characterize a political decision that could potentially be very damaging to the people in power. Both sides of the debate have fallen into the language trap.

I'm not saying it's time to leave Iraq; what I'm saying is that in the light of failures of intelligence, failures of planning, and failure to win hearts and minds (with worsening chances for ever achieving it), exactly why are we still there? Are those goals achievable?

Enumerating possibilities and framing responses to them is called planning. This seat-of-the-pants administration reaps now from the sown seeds of its simplistic, ass-kick, deceptive, and lowest common denominator approach to foreign policy.

Welcome back.

I'm sure by now all of you have had a chance to see (and recoil from) the shameful conduct of some of our soldiers in Iraq.

Rather than be redundant, I'm going to turn this screed over to Sgt. Stryker.

Every single angle of this story is disgusting and infuriating, but let me start with Staff Sergeant Chip Frederick. He's charged with "maltreatment for allegedly participating in and setting up a photo, and for posing in a photograph by sitting on top of a detainee. He is charged with an indecent act for observing one scene. He is also charged with assault for allegedly striking detainees – and ordering detainees to strike each other."

What's his defense for failing not only as an NCO, but as a human being? "'We had no support, no training whatsoever. And I kept asking my chain of command for certain things...like rules and regulations, says Frederick. 'And it just wasn't happening.'"

The first rule of a coward, when caught, is to play stupid. The second is to blame someone else. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure I don't need a superior to tell me that attaching wires to someone's genitals or beating the living shit out of them is unacceptable. What are you, a fucking idiot?

. . . .

[D]id anyone ever tell you that maintaining discipline and standards of conduct is your main charge as an NCO? Did this piece of training slip through the cracks as well? You know, I wear the same uniform. I'm an NCO as well. Not only have you disgraced yourself, your unit, your country and humanity, your actions have disgraced me and everyone else who wears that uniform. Your stupidity, ignorance, and cruelty have stained all of us, because of that uniform we all wear. It's the binding tie that connects not only all of us serving today, but everyone who has ever served and those who will serve in the future. That uniform is stained with the noble blood of those who've fallen in battle for their country, but you have smeared that uniform -my uniform!- with the excrement of malevolent barbarism.

You have failed in every possible way a soldier can fail. You failed, as an NCO, to maintain basic standards of military order and discipline. You failed, as a soldier, to maintain the highest standards of conduct required of you by the United States Government. You failed, as a human being, to afford even the slightest bit of dignity and respect to those placed under your care. And what do you have to say in your defense? You only offer excuses that blame everyone else but yourself. You, and those who shared in your depravity, are a disgrace and a shame. May the military justice system have more mercy on you than you could muster for your own prisoners.

As with everything in life, there is a Simpsons quote that applies to the situation: "Videotaping this crime spree is the best idea we ever had!" (Jimbo Jones, episode 5F13). The difference is, of course, that Jimbo Jones is a cartoon figure who stole a Parking Enforcement buggy, and the accused soldiers are disgraceful fuckwit douchebags masquerading as worthy human beings who have given our enemies the perfect propaganda, and have signed the death warrants of many soldiers and citizens of free nations around the world. Nice work, guys. Al Jazeera wasn't quite getting the message across on their own.

GeekLethal found a wonderful toy, with which you can create wonders such as this: 

A list of classic books is working its way 'round the blogging classes. I picked it up from the Oldsmoblogger who picked it up from others. And now I bring it to the Ministry, because Lord knows we need another reason to think we're so-damned-smart.

Books actually read are bold; portions only or Cliff's Notes don't count.

Forthwith, the list:
Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel GarcÃ-a - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son