You Guys Know About This, Right?

Hope to see you all there.

I was supposed to be in a band, but it didn't come off. Wanted to do a few covers off of Bleach. Thought about calling the band Francis Bean is All Alone, but, again, it didn't come off.

[Update] This looks better on a white background. Click on it.

Closer to Death Everyday

I take it as a sign of my maturity that I can listen to a Boarder discussing John Foster giving a speech about the economy from a working-class perspective with only the merest snort of derision emanating from me.

Fish Pays

Behind the campus sushi joint, there are four parking spaces with parking signs that say "Working Employee Only" which indicates that they have some sort of problem with non-working employees parking there.

Parked in two of those spots are one Mercedes CLS and one Mercedes SLK.

I knew I should have gone into the sushi game.

What Would We Do?

Family Values

There is, apparently, a world where this cartoon not only makes sense, but is some sort of bold statement of conservative values.

For those with no context, at the Miss America pageant, judge Perez Hilton, WHO IS GAY!!!!1!!!!111!!!, asked a Miss California what she thought of gay marriage. Miss California says that she thinks it is great all Americans can choose which marriage they want, but she doesn't believe in gay marriage, but rather supports "opposite marriage." Apparently, Perez gave her a bad score and she finished runner-up. The conservatives have decided that this is some sort of crime against having non-PC beliefs. It is okay to ask about them, apparently, but not okay to judge anyone because of them.

Anyway, there's your context. Now try to figure out what the hell is going on in that cartoon.

The commenters seem to like it and then overwhelming sentiment is that a gay man should not be judging a beauty pageant. There is a certain amount of outrage that this was allowed to happen.

I must say, I am at a loss.

Omnibus

*Now that the Republicans have demonstrated time and again (I am thinking here of the stimulus and EFCA just off the top of my head) that they have no intention whatsoever of cooperating with the Obama administration, can we please dispense with the notion that Obama can't order an investigation of the Bush torture regime because it would harm his chances of getting bipartisan support for his social agenda?

*I don't know if all of you had the pleasure of reading this hilarious piece from Krauthammer, but it gets triple thumbs up from me. For those too busy shaping the future of this crazy world, it goes something like this:

1. Obama has stated that he intends to nationalize health care. [Would that it were true.]
2. The only way to pay for this and other programs is SS and Medicare "reform," but Obama has shown no interest in entitlement reform.
3. Obama has a secret plan to pay for nationalized health care, a plan about which he has provided only one tiny hint, which Krathammer alone was wise enough to pick up on. I quote here, because this level of crazy is unparaphrasable:

When asked in his March 24 news conference about the huge debt he's incurring, Obama spoke vaguely of "additional adjustments" that will be unfolding in future budgets.

Rarely have two more anodyne words carried such import. "Additional adjustments" equals major cuts in Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.

Boom! I know it has been said before, but let's all say it again, thank God for Charles Krauthammer.
4. The only way to save money on Medicare is through rationing. [Note that Krauthammer does not suggest that privatization or reducing waste are options, as Medicare is one of the most efficient health care programs around.]
5. Rationing is bad. You will not be able to get your hip replaced and will probably die of a heart attack.
6. [The part that caused my to spit coffee in bed.]

The more acute thinkers on the left can see rationing coming, provoking Slate blogger Mickey Kaus to warn of the political danger. "Isn't it an epic mistake to try to sell Democratic health care reform on this basis? Possible sales pitch: 'Our plan will deny you unnecessary treatments!' ... Is that really why the middle class will sign on to a revolutionary multitrillion-dollar shift in spending -- so the government can decide their life or health 'is not worth the price'?"

Charles "Mothercanucking" Krauthammer just called Mickey "Donkey Fiend" Kaus one of the more acute thinkers on the left. That is a lot to try to wrap your brain around.

*Asked and answered on the issue of calling torture "harsh interrogation methods" or some other goddamn euphemism, but it's really chapping my hide. I can only imagine that the Bush administration official who first thought that one up is laughing his ass off right now. Getting the right to buy into the frame was one thing, getting the nations entire press corp to do it is stunning.

*Trivia or hockey tonight? I do like playing trivia, but my difficulty being a team player, instead of a controlling arsehole, has been an issue, and the Ducks-Sharks series has been a cracker. Decisions, decisions.

Really?

Wingnut blogger John H. Hinderaker comes out against the Simpsons appearing on US postage stamps. In doing so, he states that he has never seen an episode of The Simpsons. I'm not sure how this is possible. How out of touch can you be as to have never seen what is arguably the most popular television show in American history?

A Nation of Laws

I don't know about you all, but I am currently enjoying the argument put forward by our friends on the right that prosecuting, or even investigating the Bush lawyers who fundamental misinterpreted the law enough that they authorized torture would be a "political" prosecution because they had their interpretation of the law and you have yours - who's right and who's wrong is a political question. It has been noted elsewhere that these same people are among those that heartily cheered on the Clinton investigations in the 1990s, which, as you know, were not political in any way.

I also love the way that these same people who want to wave the flag and call the brave CIA torturers heroes cannot quite bring themselves to actually use the word torture. Euphemisms fly fast and furious on the right, and I have yet to see any of them come out and say "damn right we tortured the bastard and we should do it again!" Bravery, indeed.

At Least the Dishes Will Get Washed, No?

I got this email from a concerned member of our society, I thought I'd pass it along:

D----- just sent out this list of all of the people we are hiring for the economic stimulus deferred maintenance projects. 62 men and 1 woman. I know there may be a factor that women might just prefer not to go into trades work and probably the vast majority of people who submitted applications were men. I just wonder what kind of effect it will have on society. Most of this economic stimulus money is for construction-related projects and 99% of the people being hired will be men. Are 99% of the people that have been laid off in the last year men? If not, we'll have a much larger percentage of unemployed women than men. Will that have some unintended/unforseen consequences or does it not really matter? Is just reducing unemployment quickly the most important thing? Have people been talking about this in all of the media that I rarely bother paying attention too?

The AP, Now Practically Euphamism Free

Rice OK'd CIA waterboard request as Bush adviser

By PAMELA HESS – 9 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — As national security adviser to former President George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice verbally approved the CIA's request to subject alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding in July 2002, the earliest known decision by a Bush administration official to OK use of the simulated drowning torture technique.

Rice's role was detailed in a narrative released Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It provides the most detailed timeline yet for how the CIA's harsh interrogation torture program was conceived and approved at the highest levels in the Bush White House.

The new timeline shows that Rice played a greater role than she admitted last fall in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The narrative also shows that dissenting legal views about the severe interrogation methods torture were brushed aside repeatedly.

The Intelligence Committee's timeline comes a day after the Senate Armed Services Committee released an exhaustive report detailing direct links between the CIA's harsh interrogation torture program and abuses of prisoners at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in Afghanistan and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Both revelations follow President Barack Obama's release of internal Bush administration legal memos that justified the use of severe methods torture by the CIA, a move that kicked up a firestorm from opposing sides of the ideological spectrum the rest of the world.

According to the new narrative, which compiles legal advice provided by the Bush administration to the CIA, Rice personally conveyed the administration's approval for waterboarding of Zubaydah, a so-called high-value detainee, to then-CIA Director George Tenet in July 2002.

Last fall, Rice acknowledged to the Senate Armed Services Committee only that she had attended meetings where the CIA interrogation torture request was discussed and asked for the attorney general to conduct a legal review. She said she did not recall details. Rice omitted her direct role in approving the torture program in her written statement to the committee.

A spokesman for Rice declined comment when reached Wednesday.

Days after Rice gave Tenet the nod, the Justice Department approved the use of waterboarding in a top secret Aug. 1 memo. Zubaydah underwent waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002.

In the years that followed, according to the narrative issued Wednesday, there were numerous internal legal reviews of the program, suggesting government attorneys raised concerns that the harsh methods torture, particularly waterboarding, might violate federal laws against torture and the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Convention and several other international laws.

But Bush administration lawyers continued to validate the program. The CIA voluntarily dropped the use of waterboarding, which has a long history as a torture tactic, from its arsenal of techniques after 2005.

According to the two Senate reports, CIA lawyers first presented the plan to waterboard Zubaydah to White House lawyers in April 2002, a few weeks after his capture in Pakistan. Tenet wrote in his memoir that CIA officers themselves originated the idea.

In May 2002, Rice, along with then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales met at the White House with the CIA to discuss the use of waterboarding.

The Armed Services Committee report says that six months earlier, in December 2001, the Pentagon's legal office already had made inquiries about the use of mock interrogation and detention tactics to a U.S. military training unit that schools armed forces personnel in how to endure harsh treatment torture. A former intelligence official said Wednesday the CIA officers also based their proposed harsh interrogations torture on the mock interrogation methods used by the unit. He declined to be identified because the CIA had not authorized the disclosure of the information.

In July 2002, responding to a follow-up from the Pentagon general counsel's office, officials at the training unit, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, detailed their methods for the Pentagon. The list included waterboarding.

But the training unit warned that harsh physical techniques torture could backfire by making prisoners more resistant. They also cautioned about the reliability of information gleaned from the severe methods torture and warned that the public and political backlash could be "intolerable."

"A subject in extreme pain may provide an answer, any answer or many answers in order to get the pain to stop," the training officials said in their memo.

Less than a week later, the Justice Department issued two legal opinions that sanctioned the CIA's harsh interrogation torture program. The memos appeared to draw deeply on the survival school data provided to the Pentagon to show that the CIA's methods would not cross the line into torture.

The opinion concluded that the harsh interrogation torture methods would be acceptable for use on terror detainees because the same techniques did not cause severe physical or mental pain to U.S. military students who were tested in the government's carefully controlled training program.

Several people from the survival program objected to the use of their mock interrogations in battlefield settings. In an October 2002 e-mail, a senior Army psychologist told personnel at Guantanamo Bay that the methods were inherently dangerous and students were sometimes injured, even in a controlled setting.

"The risk with real detainees is increased exponentially," he said.

Nevertheless, for the next two years, the CIA and military officials received interrogation torture training and direct interrogation torture support from JPRA trainers.

Last week, the Obama administration's top intelligence official, Dennis Blair, privately told intelligence employees that "high value information" was obtained through the harsh interrogation torture techniques. However, on Tuesday, in a written statement, Blair said, "The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means."

Der

Headline in Emerald today:
SPORTS FANS LINKED TO SEXISM

AFT-Oregon Per Capita Taxes

That's Glenn's America

How is it that I didn't know Glenn Beck was having a tea party at the Alamo yesterday? Apparently, he thought it the most appropriate place int he world. I agree, what place could be more appropriate than a landmark commemorating the brave struggle of the independent Texas Republic to succeed from Mexico in order to maintain slavery? And lose?

What the heck could be more American than that?

Red Guard, Indeed

I'm pretty sure than no anti-war protest since 1991 drew front page coverage in the Register Guard. I remember attending a large rally (my only one because I hate hippies and the hippies run the rallies in Eugene) that drew what I considered 1000 people or so to the Courthouse. The mayor spoke, DeFazio spoke, we were forced to sing "Give Peace a Chance" and were treated to 5+ minutes of a drum circle (I don't know how long it went, five minutes is all I can give a drum circle). I believe this drew City/Region coverage and I was pissed the crowd was estimated at 500.

Yesterday's tea parties were treated to front page coverage, extending to the inside, and a separate article on the inside about the national tea parties. From reading the R-G, I might be lead to believe that the average fine citizen of Springfield just happened to wake up that morning and - gosh darn it - express some frustration about what Obama is doing to this country.

Now, because we are pinko, leftist, commie-types, we'll remember that at least once 1 million people demonstrated in NYC against the war. I believe this rally got a mention in the "Across the Nation" blurb section of the R-G. Apparently Fox News' weeks-long campaign to get people out, resulting in tens of thousands across the nations, is worthy of an good-size story.

/standard rant about the so-called liberal media

He's Right, You Know

I thought this was all kinds of awesome. I love anyone who can't refer to St. Reagan without the ", the greatest president who ever lived," subclause. Once you get that, you know you're in for a ride.

Arm U.S. vessels against piracy

I thank God and the U.S. Navy that Richard Phillips, the captain of the Maersk Alabama, was rescued. The United States should have armed mercenaries on board any U.S. vessel designated as potential targets for pirates and arm them with weapons necessary to repel pirates before they can do any harm to our vessels.

But there will be sob-sisters like the ACLU who will be defending the rights of the pirates and stating we were using undue force to repel the pirates.

Also, there is Sen. John Kerry (who served in Vietnam, you know) who wants to hold Senate hearings on the pirate mess. What does he want to do, negotiate with the pirates? The worst thing we could do in this situation is to have the know-nothing Congress involved.

As Ronald Reagan, the greatest president in modern times, stated in part, “We will never negotiate with terrorists.” “But,” cry the whiners, “What if one of our own is killed?” Well, that may happen; it just may be the price we pay to put an end to all this piracy.

If other countries are unable to protect their own vessels, the United States must cease assuming the responsibility of policing the nations of the world.

If we must resort to predator drones bombing the sites harboring pirates when we are actively involved, so be it, and hang what the ACLU nations of the world say about us; they don’t respect us anyway, so why should we be concerned?

Dale R. Dickson

Eugene

Good News in the News

I don't really, really care, but it looks like the right-wing candidate for president of the ASUO has been kicked off the ballot. Student government is mostly a meh around here, but even meh has two sides and the Oregon Action Team was definitely on the crap side of meh. This being ASUO, though, I am sure that they will be re-instated and taken off the ballot at least three more times before voting ends on Friday. A very small win for the good guys.

(More) Proof That God Hates Me

Yesterday, my beloved Liverpool Reds (see previous two posts) took on the hated Chelsea Blues in a second-leg match in the Champion's League. Due to a scoring system that seems overly-difficult to explain to the uninitiated, but is really quite simple, Liverpool had to win by three goals to advance in the playoffs, or by two goals if they scored three or more. See, simple.

Anyway, I have been swamped at work (thus the light posting), so there was no way I was going to be able to take a couple hours off to watch the match. Plus, Liverpool has little chance of success, so why bother, right? So I am working way and it gets to be a about 12:15, so the match was half-hour in, so I thought I'd check it on the interwebs. I dial up the soccernet and low-and-behold, the Reds had put two in and were one goal away from doing the next-to. Still, work to be done and all that (Law-Boy has been fudging his job up and creating work for me and everyone else), so I decide that I can squeeze in the second half while I eat.

While I was at Taylors waiting for my chicken Autzen sandwich with a salad-blue-cheese, Chelsea scores. No big deal, if the 'pool scores once more to make it 3-1, then we have extra time. While eating my sandwich, Chelsea scores again. Liverpool is basically dead here. They would need to score twice more and they have not looked like scoring in the second half. So I missed Liverpool scoring twice to keep the dream alive, but I got to see Chelsea score twice to kil the dream back off.

Meanwhile a gentleman of the alcoholic persuasion has entered the bar and taken a seat next to me. He smells. And not good. Fine. He slurs his way through asking the bartender for a cab, which the bartender starts to call for, until he becomes pissy that the bartender is rushing it, as he would like to have a beer first. And maybe a glass of Tanquery. And another beer. I'm still sitting there out of the petty hope that if Liverpool can score, at least the Chelsea fans in the bar will have to sweat out the last ten minutes of the match.

Chelsea scores.

With the score 2-3 with 15 minutes left, I suddenly realize that I should be at work. Liverpool would need to score three times to advance. So, I missed Liverpool's goals, but got to listen to the Chelsea fans (who really are garbage) go on three times. Joy.

Back a my desk, I am working away until about 10 minutes later when I get a twit from Wobs saying "See you in the semis" (he roots for Barca, they advanced easily) and I am wonder why he would see me in the semis. My interest in the semis would be greatly lessened by Liverpool's non-participation. On a lark, I check the score. Liverpool has managed to score twice in the ten minutes I was not watching and have taken a 4-3 lead, needing one goal to advance with about 5 minutes to play.

I call Wobs -- holy F.

While I am watching the ESPN gamecast, which consists of a text scroll of some commentator and little dots flashing on the screen when a shot is taken, it seems Liverpool is pouring it on. I am telling Wobs the same story I am telling you now and

Lampard scores for Chelsea in the 89th. 4-4. It is over.

So, I missed all four Liverpool goals, but caught all four Chelsea goals.

At this point, I feel I should apologize to all Liverpool fans around the world. If we have a chance of overtaking United for the Prem title, I promise not to watch.

Hillsborough

On April 15, 1989, ninety-six people lost their lives watching a football match at the Hillsborough football ground in Sheffield, England. All killed were fans of Liverpool and they were crushed to death by fencing, their fellow fans, bureaucratic indifference, and stupidity.

A very good article on soccernet tells the story of that day better than I can.

Come On, You Reds!

Greenberg's Theorem

I don't know how many of you are lucky enough to have your local paper carry conservative columnist Paul Greenberg, but the R-G has done us the favor of bringing him back for another round. Last we saw Paul around these parts was the late '90s. He's the editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and a huge Clinton-hater, so he enjoyed a good eight year run there reminding us all that the Clintons were the most corrupt people on Earth. My impression at the time was he was trying to be a "moderate" voice fighting against the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy the Clintons wanted to impose on this great nation. I guess now that he is on Townhall, he has abandoned that pretext. Anyway, now that there is another Marxist-Leninist (or is that Leninist-Marxist?) in office, the R-G has brought Paul back to scare us with his "the world is going to hell because it no longer looks like Little Rock circa 1955 anymore" stories.

I bring all this up because his column published today hits close to home.

Every teaching assistant at a large state university has had the experience. At least I did as a TA in the University of Missouri's history department. Sometime during the semester you'd get a call from a junior assistant coach -- as new to the academic life as you were -- who just wanted to drop by and have a Coke.

My first thought, of course, was "No, not every TA experiences that," but I got the gist and played along, besides we all have to generalize from the particular every now and again. My second thought was that Paul must have been a TA in nineteen-dickity-two, and that is one hell of a generalization from the particular, given that we have invented cars, electricity, and thinking since Paul was a TA.

Of course the young [buzz-cutted, one imagines] coach goes on to encourage him not to flunk some football player. Paul slyly lets it be known that he played ball, so to speak.

The young coach had carried out his assignment, I'd done my duty, no hard feelings. That's the way it worked. Every system has its little accepted corruptions that accumulate like sludge on the gears.

The next sentence is the one I loved most in the article:

I don't know if that kind of visit still happens. It shouldn't.

See, you know that times have changed since Paul was a Tiger, because we have invented thesis statements since then. You know, opening sentences that let the reader know what the rest of the article will be about. Paul's was about the universality of an experience. Four paragraphs in, he has acknowledged that he has no idea if his initial argument is actually true. This is not going well.

From these petty corruptions that make society work, Paul moves on to the real horror taking place on our college campuses today.

There's been one big change since my days behind the lectern. It's no longer the coaches who appeal, wheedle, growl, grovel, or whatever it takes to raise a student's letter grade. It's the students themselves.

The horror![?] Actually, as we've discussed, there have been a lot of changes at Mizzou since Paul was behind the lectern. I can think of one giant change to college life at a Southern university since Paul taught there. Can you?

What could be worse than having actual students beg their TA for a higher grade? Academics studying such a thing.

Naturally enough, a team of academics has written a paper about this sad trend. ("Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting and Motivational Factors"). The syndrome now has a name (Academic Entitlement) and an abbreviation (AE) -- just like Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Doubtless there will soon be federal grants and endowed chairs to study AE and a drug to treat it. And sure enough, it'll turn out to be more widespread than anyone ever suspected.

The four scholars who did this Pioneering Study trace the origins of AE to parental pressure, material rewards for good grades, competitiveness, and "achievement anxiety and extrinsic motivation." They conclude that AE is "most strongly related to exploitive attitudes towards others and moderately related to an overall sense of entitlement and to narcissism."

At the risk of putting all that in plain English, these kids are spoiled brats with character problems.

Ha, ha, ha! Academics. Have they nothing better to do than study a phenomenon that affects tens of thousands of people? I mean, Paul was unaware that it was an issue until he read about their study in the New York Times, but come on, isn't this just a giant waste of our time that also just happens to alert us to one of the greatest threats to civilization itself? Ha, ha, ha. Academics.

Paul goes on in the "kids today" vein for a bit until he gets to his point, which is toward the end of the column, rather than, well you know where the point of an article belongs because you were educated after people stopped wearing onions on their belts.

Consider this newly named syndrome another argument for universal military service. Call it Greenberg's Theorem: There's nothing wrong with these kids that six weeks of basic training at an Army base in some barren clime wouldn't cure -- if they didn't manage to have mama or papa get them out of it.

It's true you know, six weeks of basic would settle their hash. Plus, then we'd have lots and lots of kids to fight in the twin threats to civilizations itself, Iran and North Korea, those haters of freedom, what with their forced military service and all. Oh, if only we didn't have that so-called "natural-born citizen" Obama in charge, then we could get something done in this country, I tell you what.

Let me leave you with the words of one of Paul's more insightful readers, Patrick from the great state of Texas:

LIBERALS LOVES TEST

LIBERALS USE TEST AS A WAY TO SHOW NEED FOR THEIR GREED. NOT I.Q. TEST, NOT DNA TEST, NOR ANY TEST THAT CAN PROVE ANYTHING, THEY USE TEST TO CLAIM PREJUDICE. TEST SHOULD BE USED TO SEPARATE THE STUDENT FROM THE ENTRY LEVEL CAREER PERSON AND THEN ENHANCE THE SKILLS TO ENABLE BETTER PEOPLE.

Paul couldn't have said it better himself.

By 'Yes,' We Mean 'No'

I'm pretty sure this is how I got into grad school.

NEW YORK - New York University officials weren't laughing when hundreds of people mistakenly received word that they'd been accepted to grad school on April Fools' Day.

NYU says it sent out acceptance e-mails April 1 to 489 applicants to the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Those applicants should have received rejection letters instead.

The school sent out a second e-mail about an hour later to the applicants, saying they hadn't been accepted after all.
NYU spokesman Robert Polner blamed the mixup on a clerical error. He says the school apologizes for the mistaken e-mails and is looking into it to prevent it from happening again.

17

Last night marked the seventeenth anniversary of the day I kissed Ginger for the first time. We were sitting on the steps outside her dorm at the U of O and I said "I'm going to kiss you now" and I did.

As anniversaries are wont to do, it got me thinking about where my life would be today if not for Ginger. I offer up that I couldn't begin to imagine. How the hell can I actually put my self back in the shoes of my younger self and trace out some sort of plausible trajectory? I can't. But I also can't imagine that my life would be any better than it is today. As I was walking and thinking of any way that life could be better, several notions occurred to me - I could have won the lottery for instance - but each notion was rejected as insufficient to improve on having Ginger's love. I wouldn't trade it for money, the idea seems bizarre to me. There could be no other woman. Not one that so fucking accepts the mess I can be. Hell, most of you have trouble taking me in two hour doses, can you freakin' imagine putting up with me for seventeen years? And I am nothing. This is old hat for you all, because you have heard me tell the tale so many times, but, as you know, the most amazing thing in the world to me is that when my mom was dying and Amber needed a home, this woman, this amazing twenty-three-year-old woman who was having so much trouble trying to put up with me, working a crappy job in a city she hated, automatically reached out and said yes to a lifetime of raising my half-sister. And then set about dedicating her life to making sure that that girl knew every single moment of her life that her new mom loved her dearly and always would.

Seventeen years and I have not done anything to deserve a day of it. How could I possibly contemplate my life any other way? Ginger is so much of who I am, me without her is impossible. To contemplate, to exist. Not what, but how? How could I be without her in my life?

So, not that you didn't all know this already, I thought I'd let everyone know that I am the luckiest guy on the planet and I love Ginger H. I hope that she will always do me the honor of loving as well.