Locomotive Mule

John Kerry said that dealing with terrorists was “primarily a police action rather than a military operation”. He was quite right you know.

We declared war on the government of Afghanistan, and of course we kicked butt. We’re no longer at war with Afghanistan. We attacked Iraq and toppled the government. If that was ever a “war”, it’s over - we won. We kicked ass.

We’re no longer at war. If we are, with what nation are we at war? The nation of Islam? The nation of a “free and independent Iraq”? binLadinstan? Who?

Mr. Gonzalez today said (I paraphrase here) that because we’re at war, the POTUS has extraordinary powers, that as Command In Chief, he can pretty much do as he damn well pleases, ignoring laws that HE signed. Current and former heads of the NSA are saying that a “whole lotta” lawyers looked at the situation and by-golly-gee, sure ‘nough the prez can do what he wants. Of course all those lawyers are “career” and not “political hacks” so that makes it all right.

The president can have his minions listen in to any conversation they choose (because to do it “legally” would take too long). He can send anyone he chooses to jail for as long as he wants - U.S. citizens included. He can even hold them indefinitely on U.S. soil.

He can torture people - extracting “valuable information” by using “techniques” (such a lovely euphemism) that are not only universally abhorred but banned in nearly all civilized societies - including our own.

How does he do this? The obvious answer is because we let him. And really, that is the short and long of it. 48% of the people in this country tried to throw the bastard out, but through whatever means he chose to use, he’s still there. He’s still lying to us. He’s still trying to turn our country into a oligarchy (not that it isn’t but that’s another tirade).

So, I’ve been asking myself, how does this happen? Why has it happened? Why are the Rethugs so effective at subverting any and all arguments the opposition throws at them? Why? How? What’s their gimmic?

It finally dawned on me. “We’re at war”. The entire basis for everything the Rethugs are using to grab power into the Presidency is based on the concept that “we’re at war”. Smash that concept and every single argument (or ‘excuse’ as you may be thinking) comes crashing down.

What a bunch of pussies we are. Some people die at the hands of some weirdo fanatics and we just freak: “Ohmigod! Save ME! SAVE ME!”. We let these vile and base people lower our standards, our beliefs, our expectations, ourselves, because we believed them. We believed that we needed to be at war - we needed to avenge “those poor people”. The Remorinicans used us. They’re using us still. We’ve bought the lie, hook, sinker, rod and reel. As a nation, we firmly believe that “we’re at war”, even though we don’t really have to do anything but “go shopping”. Jesus what a bunch o’ losers.

These Republicans are not stupid. They’re not floundering and they’re not gonna give up. Global domination is the target and they’re gonna keep after it like a hungry terrier stays on a rat.

No opportunity is lost to them: “We’re at war” - “It’s the war stupid”. “Because we’re at war”. War. WAr. WAR WAR WAR!!!! I half expect GW to collapse into a screaming heap sometimes, “We’re gonna KICK their FUCKING ASSES.. YYEEAAAAAARRRRGGGGGGGG!!!”

There’s no way we can win any argument in the public forum with these mealy mouthed lying mother-thugs until their fundamental premise is attacked and shown to the sham that it is: “We are NOT at war, so how can you justify ‘extraordinary presidential powers’? Hmmmm? How?”

The debates surrounding civil liberties, detention, torture, military “adventures”, budgetary issues - all of them need to be countered with simple, strong and consistent set of questions.

• Who are we at war with?
• And why are we at “war” with them?
• If we’re at war, then why is there no draft? If we’re at war then why aren’t we kicking their asses all the way to the other side of Hell? Hmmm?? I ask you! We’re Americans after all, why aren’t being all John Wayne about this?
• Why are these insane fanatics deserving of being elevated to the status of ‘warriors’?
• When did we declare war on terrorists? Which bill was it? On what date was it signed into law?
• When did revenge become a national pass time?
• Justify this ”war on terrorism” for me in a way that does not include revenge.

The administration’s entire argument is predicated on the simple belief that “we’re at war”. As long as we accept this as the truth, we’ve very little ammunition with which to counter their attacks and (occasionally) their rebuttals. We must begin to attack this belief, to show it as it is - a lie.

It’s a very shaky thing they’ve built - and don’t think for an instant that they don’t know it - all we have to do is grab the base of it and shake the hell out of it. But be careful, shit’s gonna come falling down!

I spent some time reading on the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security site. This for example.

I’ve come to the conclusion that we cannot make ourselves safe from terrorists. Our world is simply too complicated and interconnected - any disruption can halt the flow of products/services. Bombs in 3 or 4 of our major ports or disabling the Panama Canal. A couple Stingers outside of the Memphis airport (FedEx central hub). Any of these things can deliver a staggering blow to us.

As a designer/fixer of software, I learned long ago that there are two ways to attack a problem, 1) apply fixes and patches to change the behavior of the system or 2) determine the underlying problem, grit your teeth, cancel weekend plans and fix it. The second approach is always preferable and always more successful. It may take longer and blow the budget but the first approach will bleed the project over a long period and eventually sink it.

As an example, Microsoft has a fundamental security problem in their OS. They have yet to address the underlying problems - they just continue to patch/modify the overlying behavior trying vainly to keep up with their antagonists. We all know how well they’re doing.

If the desired result is to ’secure’ our economy, people and life style, then we have to attack the problem. Band aids and quick fixes (airport security, tanks on Wall Street, orange alerts) are not going to even come close to solving the problem. Hell they don’t even address the problem, they just try to prevent some behavior that we think might happen. We need to 1) determine what the root problem is and 2) develop a truly international solution to the problem.

Walling ourselves off from our enemies will not prevent them from attacking. Eyeing our own people with suspicion will not solve the problem, nor will it prevent even one attack - all we’ve done so far is to close the proverbial barn door. (I may be wrong here but our government is so tight with information that we have no way of knowing.)

Bush’s doctrine is wrong. It’s illogical at best. Immoral at its worst. Kerry needs to hammer on this theme, determine the root of the problem and fix it in the most expedient fashion. We’re not alone in this problem, every secular or non-Islamic nation on the planet is in this with us. We need to put aside nationalism, throw off the dogmatic knee-jerk reactions and get down to fixing the problem.

Americans need to be pulling together on this one, not dividing, not hiding and most of all, not falling victim to those that say “trust me”.

I’m fond of telling my kids that “you know that, you learned that in kindergarten”. Well for most of life’s problems that’s very true - the solutions are simple and we know exactly what the problem is and its solution (whether we act on that knowledge is something else again). But this is a very adult problem - it may be insoluble.

Insoluble or not, we need to be very adult, very pragmatic in our approach to this problem and so far very few of those that can actually affect changes are acting either adult or pragmatic.

I don’t think things are going well in Iraq. Although from from watching our own media you’d never know it.

This morning, I saw a story on Google News that Kerry recieved no ‘convention boost’, the numbers stayed essentially the same. This afternoon I see this:
Kerry Leads Bush in Post-Convention Poll. What’s the real story?

Barack Obama gave a tremendous speech the other night - almost had me going - but I just couldn’t ignore the discrepencies. A couple blocks away from where he made his speech was a ‘protest zone’ that was (presumably) full of anti-Kerry protesters. John Kerry also raised the issue of civil rights and their loss. Again no mention of the quarantined Americans just trying to make their opionions known.

Are they being hypocritical? I believe so. It’s not like they don’t know it’s going on, it’s more like they condone it by their silence. Shouldn’t they be screaming from the roof tops that Americans are being deprived of their most fundamental rights by the administration? It seems to me that a few good points could be made at the paranoia and arrogance of both the president and vice-president. But for some reason, silence on these issues rules the day.

I am not impressed with Kerry or Edwards. It’s not just the ‘protest zones’ thing. I see no real information, no meat, just platitudes and generalities that noone will be able to hold ‘em to later on. I see no real distinction between the R’s and the D’s other than the tone of their messages. The R’s are a downer and the D’s are trying to be upbeat. That’s not much of a difference on which to elect a President.

Noone seems to be telling the truth anymore (well, except maybe Helen Thomas - you go Helen!). The mass media sure aren’t - they show themselves to be lying mo^%$#^%kers every day - either boldly lying because they know noone will call them on it (and what could they do anyway?) or through gross omissions. The omission thing seems to be the more prevelant form of ‘news lie’. Take for instance this little tidbit: Iraqi Civilian Death Toll More Than 37,000. Why is it that this is not on the evening news, or the Sunday morning talkfests? Sure the numbers could be wrong (and more than likely are inflated) but even reducing it by 50% leaves a rather newsworthy item.

The right accuses the mass media of being ‘liberal’ and ‘biased’. If you happened to catch FOX news the morning after Kerry’s acceptance speech, you’d have seen the media’s true colors. Biased? Duh. Liberal? I’m thinking not. What really frightens me is that there’s a concerted effort to label the media as ‘left’ so they can get away with being ‘way right’ - and then justify it by pointing to the right and say “but they accuse us of…..”. It’s kinda sad really.

I read stuff like this: Can’t Bush and Blair See Iraq Is About to Explode? and it just doesn’t square with what my own government and media are saying. There’s no hint in the major press that Iraq is falling apart - now I’m not stupid and I can see that it is imploding simply by the dearth of information in the main stream press (if it was going well they’d be making a lot of noise about it - silence in this case is really not good). But the main reason I tend to believe this article is the simple fact that I do not believe the official news sources nor my own government. It’s terribly wrong and depressing to realize that no matter what is said, you can’t beleive it - in fact you immediately suspect the opposite.

I’m starting to understand how people can become frothing radicals.

It is depressing.

---

At this point I have two reasons to vote for Kerry 1) He does not seem to exhibit the personal hubris which I find so appalling in Bush&Co. and 2) he’s not the incumbant. That the only thing I can get excited about (at least in politics) is that I get an opportunity to ‘vote the bastards out’ is telling I think. I’ve really tried to get interested and excited about this race - reading up on the issues and trying to stay abreast of what’s going on but all that does is feeds my cynicism (which can’t be entirely healthy).

Bush makes 30th Pennsylvania trip

WASHINGTON (AP) – Playing to his strength, President Bush is campaigning in the small-town Republican heart of Pennsylvania, trying to win a state that Democratic presidential candidates have captured in each of the last three elections.

Bush is taking a bus tour in a battleground state that has drawn more personal attention from the president than any other. He has averaged a trip a month to Pennsylvania this year and Friday’s visit was to be the 30th of his presidency to the state.

Isn’t this guy s’posed to be fighting a war? Isn’t he a “war time president?” Oh, silly me - Cheney’s still in D.C. no doubt.

When asked about his copious vacation time in Texas, Bush responded that phones and faxes worked “really well for keeping in touch” , so no doubt he can use that excuse while he’s on the campaign trail. But his performance on 9/11/01 belies his ability to do so - while safely ensconced in one of the most sophisticated communications platforms in the world (Air Force 1), Bush let Cheney run the show presumably because he was “there”.

Report: CIA Gave False Info on Iraq

WASHINGTON (AP) - The key U.S. assertions leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq - that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was working to make nuclear weapons - were wrong and based on false or overstated CIA analyses, a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report asserted Friday.

Intelligence analysts fell victim to “group think” assumptions that Iraq had weapons that it did not, the bipartisan report concluded. Many factors contributing to those failures are ongoing problems within the U.S. intelligence community - which cannot be fixed with more money alone, it said.

Call me paranoid but I just can’t believe these guys anymore. Both the House and the Senate have some serious ass covering to do in this matter, Bush may have been the front man in the mass deception but Congress is just as culpable as they ‘approved’ the whole deal.

Nope, I just can’t buy this one. The CIA is just too easy a target in this case - Tenet was just ousted (I know, “retiired") in disgrace leaving no real target - no person or small group at which to heap the blame. Better an amorphous cloud is to blame than (god forbid!) someone that actually has to explain themselve to their constituents. Is the sworn testimony of Richard Clarke so quickly forgotten? This doesn’t exactly mesh with what he and O’Neill had to say.

The worst part of this is that both Congress and the Administration are trying to justify this stupid and immoral war by shifting blame to a disembodied organization (which is impenetrable for ‘national security’ reasons). Instead of discussing what fuck ups lead us down this road, they’re once again saving their own asses.

Who’re they gonna blame in a couple years when we’ve totally failed to “bring democracy” to Iraq? Will they blame the Iraqis? Or maybe the Iranians? OH! OH! I know! Let’s blame the Syrians and Jordanians thereby giving us a reason to “bring the seeds of democracy” to those states too.

Traveling home from Montreal the other day, I was (un)fortunate enough to be on a brand spankin’ new 777 (complete with new plane smell) from Chicago to Denver.

Well, predictably, we sat at the gate for 1 1/2 hours past departure time (another connection already missed) while the techs scampered on and off the plane conferring with the pilots. Lights, air and other stuff going on and off, engines starting and stopping and all manner of mildly disconcerting things happening.

Finally the pilot gets on the PA and announces that ”…we have to reboot the airplane to see if that clears the spurious indicators”.

That sounded an awful lot like what I tell people to do when they can’t get Windows to work: just reboot it and try again.

I looked around to see if anyone else was visibly unconfortable with this announcement. The pilot up one row was still reading his book - either unconcerned or terrified and being professional. The attendants were still chatty and smiling - more pros - they’re no help. I saw no one else even paying attention. I thought, “Ok, they’re happy with the announcement and blissfully unconcerned that the flight crew and mechanics have no fucking idea what’s wrong with the plane.”

It’s been a mild irritant the last 10-12 years that Microsoft has lulled the lay public into believing/accepting sub-standard software that needs to be rebooted occasionally to keep it working. It now terrifies me that apparently the public in general is okay with the same concept in their airplanes.

I realize that this is really not a big deal (with the plane that is) and the only real issue is that the pilot decided to phrase his
announcement in what to him was the most innocuous way he could. But the fact that it’s become acceptable that complicated
things ‘need to be rebooted’ should be bothersome to all.

As a software developer for over 20 years, I’ve seen a decline in customer’s expectations - they used to demand that everything work like magic right outta the box. And they’d demand that things work forever. Now it seems that recommending a reboot once a week ‘just to make things run better’ has become acceptable, even expected.

I s’pose I should be grateful because this actually makes my job a little easier: near perfection is good enough. But it still indicates something’s terribly wrong in the high tech world - either we’re too lazy to make things right or there’s not enough tiime.

In my experience it’s always time: never enough to finish the job, never enough to do a proper design. Unfortunately there’s always enough time to reboot the plane.

I just hope there’s always enough altitude.