Politics

Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.

Safer nuclear missiles

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Thank god for small favors — at least when Bush finally flips his lid and the nukes start flying, we won’t be damaging our atmosphere…

In order to comply with EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulations, and at a cost of about \$5.2 million per ICBM, the rocket motors on 500 Minuteman III missiles will be replaced with new ones. These rockets will emit less toxic chemicals when used. But the new, environmentally correct rockets will be heavier than the old ones, and will thus  have a shorter range than the original motors. The actual range of the  Minuteman III  has been classified, but is thought to be nearly 10,000 kilometers, based on where the missiles are stationed and where the original Russian targets were.  Thus, if the Minuteman III ICBMs have to be used in some future nuclear war, their rocket motors will not pollute the atmosphere. EPA regulations do not apply in foreign countries, so no changes are being made to reduce the harmful environmental effects of the nuclear warheads.

(via Boing Boing)

iTunes: “Killin’ Time (Hot Tracks)” by Cousins, Tina from the album Roadkill! 2.18 (1999, 6:29).

Speak English, George!

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I’m so glad I didn’t bother trying to watch Bush’s national address the other night on television. I would have been so busy cringing at his first sentence — “This has been tough weeks in that country.” — to even pay attention to the amazing hypnotic tie.

(via MeFi)

iTunes: “Annihilate” by Major North from the album Junior Vasquez, Vol. 2 (1997, 5:20).

National ID not a good idea

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One of the many ideas being bandied about in the post-9/11 era has been that of a single national ID card, to replace the various forms of ID we carry around now (state IDs or driver’s licenses, military IDs, company ID badges, etc.). Bruce Schneier points out that this might not be a good idea…

…my primary objection isn’t the totalitarian potential of national IDs, nor the likelihood that they’ll create a whole immense new class of social and economic dislocations. Nor is it the opportunities they will create for colossal boondoggles by government contractors. My objection to the national ID card, at least for the purposes of this essay, is much simpler:

It won’t work. It won’t make us more secure.

In fact, everything I’ve learned about security over the last 20 years tells me that once it is put in place, a national ID card program will actually make us less secure.

Definitely worth reading, especially if the national ID program was sounding like a good idea.

(via Boing Boing)

iTunes: “District Sleeps Alone Tonight, The” by Postal Service, The from the album Give Up (2002, 4:44).

Bush: ‘…the PDB was no indication of a terrorist threat.’

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What?

I challenge anyone to explain to me how this isn’t just flat-out idiotic. From a press conference with President Bush yesterday:

Q Mr. President, could you tell us, did you see the presidential — the President’s Daily Brief from August of ’01 as a warning —

THE PRESIDENT: Did I see it? Of course I saw it; I asked for it.

Q No, no, I’m sorry — did you see it as a warning of hijackers? And how did you respond to that?

THE PRESIDENT: My response was exactly like then as it is today, that I asked for the Central Intelligence Agency to give me an update on any terrorist threats. And the PDB was no indication of a terrorist threat. There was not a time and place of an attack. It said Osama bin Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that. What I wanted to know was, is there anything specifically going to take place in America that we needed to react to?

As you might recall, there was some specific threats for overseas that we reacted to. And as the President, I wanted to know whether there was anything, any actionable intelligence. And I looked at the August 6th briefing, I was satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into. But that PDB said nothing about an attack on America. It talked about intentions, about somebody who hated America — well, we knew that.

This would be the PDB entitled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US“, by the way.

You’ll have to excuse me for a moment, but…could we please get this fucking imbecile out of the Oval Office?

I cannot believe the hubris, the monomaniacal egotism of Bush and his cronies. Because there wasn’t a time and dated marked on a calendar and circled in bright red ink, they think they’re absolved of any responsibility in preventing the attack.

This makes me sick.

David Sirota is fact-checking Bush also:

Not only is Bush lying, but he’s making a ridiculous argument: he’s essentially saying that because he did not know terrorists would attack at a specific time, place he is absolved from his gross negligence in failing to ratchet up homeland security and counterterrorism before 9/11. It is like saying that while you know a car accident can kill you and your family, it is OK to not strap yourself and your kids in because you don’t know exactly when and where you might get into an accident.

(via Atrios)

President’s Daily Briefing, August 6 2001

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The Memo has been released.

Here it is (216k PDF file).

Declassified and Approved for Release, 10 April 2004

Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a [CENSORED] service.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [CENSORED] service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Laden’s first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Zubaydah was planning his own US attack.

Ressam says Bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation.

Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepared operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Ladin associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.

Al-Qa’ida members — including some who are US citizens — have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qa’ida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [CENSORED] service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Shaykh” ‘Umar’ Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patters of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.

For the President Only
6 August 2001
Declassified and Approved for Release, 10 April 2004

(via Daily Kos)

Congratulations Dan Savage and Amy Jenniges!

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About a month ago, Dan Savage wrote a column for The Stranger explaining just how he, a gay man, was able to get a legal marriage license in the city of Seattle. It was pretty simple, actually.

He applied for, and was granted, a license to marry his lesbian friend.

The clerk called over her manager, a nice older white man, who explained that Amy and Sonia couldn’t have a marriage license. So I asked if Amy and I could have one–even though I’m gay and live with my boyfriend, and Amy’s a lesbian and lives with her girlfriend. We emphasized to the clerk and her manager that Amy and I don’t live together, we don’t love each other, we don’t plan to have kids together, and we’re going to go on living and sleeping with our same-sex partners after we get married. So could we still get a marriage license?

“Sure,” the license-department manager said, “If you’ve got \$54, you can have a marriage license.”

…Amy can’t marry Sonia, I can’t marry Terry–why? Because the sanctity of marriage must be protected from the queers! But Amy and I can get a marriage license–and into a sham marriage, if we care to, a joke marriage, one that I promise you won’t produce children. And we can do this with the state’s blessing–why? Because one of us is a man and one of us is a woman. Who cares that one of us is a gay man and one of us is a lesbian? So marriage is to be protected from the homos–unless the homos marry each other.

Is it putting too fine a point on it to say that this is a pretty fucked-up situation?

Dan and Amy got their license, and last week, they got married.

Savage and Jennigs got a marriage license, got married by a minister of the Universal Life Church and plan to file their license with King County, making the marriage legal.

Afterwards the [couple] plan an immediate divorce.

“We are going to try and stay married for about 55 hours and 10 minutes. We are going to just best Britney Spears,” he laughed.

So, congratulations Dan and Amy!

The situation provoked a very interesting discussion on Metafilter which I’ve just spent much of the evening reading through. Lots of well-reasoned, well thought out, intelligent, and passionate arguments in favor of allowing anyone to marry the people they love regardless of which way their genitalia point, and only a couple of people trying to make reasonable arguments against gay marriage (and not doing a very good job, in my opinion). I believe this was one of my favorite posts:

There’s a large set of psychological reactions we have to an associate’s mate. Take the earlier example of a male corporate executive’s partner of twenty five years dying, and the guy having to suffer in silence. It’s not about the time off. It really is about condolences, the understanding, the empathy. You can’t use semantics to erase this; this is a fight for empathy. Gay people are insisting that other humans respect their capacity for deep, abiding love — and those other humans are protesting, because “they’d never marry such a person”.

We cannot have an honest debate without admitting openly that it’s not just about legal rights and that it’s not merely about what a church feels. You can’t legislate condolences — but you can remove the legal rubric that says it’s OK to ignore the love of another.

[…]

If you really want to talk religion, The Creator of the Universe saw fit to breathe the binding fire of love into all mankind — He did not restrict it as a special gift to straights, any more than he did for whites (which would make whites more special) or English speakers (which would make English speakers more special) or the rich. You are familiar with the phrase that God is Love. You need to take a good long hard look at the fact that every time you reject gay marriage, you are denying a love so powerful it is willing to be martyred. That’s far more God-rejecting than anything two people in Love could ever do.

But I don’t really want to talk religion here. Look. I know my viewpoint doesn’t fall into the nice, neat categories of “keep your religion out of my life” vs. “that’s unholy”. But we really need to be honest here — this is a fight for the tiny respects, not just the grandiose ones. It’s a fight for humanization, and it’s one that naturally fought by every single second class citizen throughout history.

iTunes: “Hello I Am Your Heart” by Hickman, Sara from the album Rubáiyát: Elektra’s 40th Anniversary (1990, 2:44).

Racism and broadband…what?

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So Phil was bouncing around the ‘net, trying to find Sonnet Technology’s website (which is right here, by the way). On one attempt, he made the guess of www.sonnet.com. Turns out that that’s actually the home of Sonnet Networking — “Your neighbors on the ‘net.”

Well, as long as you aren’t Mexican, at least.

Mexico invading United States

Quite frankly, I was more than a little taken aback by this. There’s a certain almost surreal incongruency in the combination of banner ads promoting wireless networking and DSL-based broadband and the blatant racism plastered across the top of the page. New AztlanThere’s even a handy “Invasion Map” showing how much of the southwest has become overrun by Mexicans (this map appears to have been taken from La Voz de Aztlan, an independent Mexican-American news and opinion site based out of Los Angeles, which in turn seems to lean fairly anti-semetic…).

In the left-hand sidebar of the page, underneath links to Disney and Google is a link simply titled “Defending Citizenship” that goes into more detail about this “invasion”.

In the schools of Mexico, students are taught that the southwestern USA belongs to Mexico, an area called Aztlan, and that one day Mexico will reconquer it. For political reasons, the Mexican government encourages Mexicans to invade our country, relieving Mexico of its poor, and generating a stream of \$14.5 billion into Mexico every year. This is money that should be spent in local businesses, but instead becomes Mexico’s second largest source of foreign income. And so the invasion continues, and their vision of reconquista becomes real.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census Bureau, 96.8 percent of the population in East Los Angeles, Calif., was Hispanic/Mexican. Stockton, Calif. was recently featured in a Wall Street Journal story about the exploding Mexican illegal alien problem. A dead crack-mama Mexican with 9 children on welfare and father on workers comp disability was on the front page of the Modesto Bee just before Christmas. This problem is on our doorstep today.

It’s hard for me to come up with any other description for this than “disgusting.” Bad enough that there are people who feel this way, but to make such hateful views a large part of a corporate website?

Is this even legal? Wouldn’t anti-discrimination laws prohibit things like this? If nothing else, I’d think that the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Laws would make this display illegal…at least, if I were of Hispanic descent, I know that I would think twice about applying for a job with a company promoting such beliefs on their public website. What do you really think the chances are of anyone from Mexico, Spain, Peru, Portugal, or any similar heritage getting hired by this company? How about their customers — do service requests called in by someone with a Spanish accent get resolved with the same politeness, speed, and efficiency as requests called in by someone without an accent?

Admittedly, it’s something of a Catch-22, but I’ve often found that the one thing I’m steadfastly intolerant of is intolerance. There is no justifiable excuse for any company to be so blatantly racist.

Should you be so moved, here’s the contact page for Sonnet Networking. I’ve rapidly reached the point where I’m out of anything more to say while remaining coherent.

Condi under oath

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So National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice appeared under oath before the 9-11 commission this morning. While I haven’t had the opportunity to go through the transcript, the Center for American Progress issued a statement regarding the contents of her deposition, and posted a page fact-checking some of Condi’s claims against prior news reports, government documents, and even some of Condi’s own statements:

CLAIM: There was “nothing about the threat of attack in the U.S.” in the Presidential Daily Briefing the President received on August 6th. [responding to Ben Veniste]

FACT: Rice herself confirmed that “the title [of the PDB] was, ‘Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'” [Source: Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04]

(via Atrios)

Presidential compassion

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Y’know, if I were part of one of the hundreds of families who have lost a member to the war in Iraq, I wouldn’t be very amused at all about Bush turning it into a joke…

Bush put on a slide show, calling it the “White House Election-Year Album” at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association 60th annual dinner, showing himself and his staff in some decidedly unflattering poses.

There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere,” he said.

In fact, I’d be pretty damn pissed about it. Actually, I don’t even have had to have lost a loved one to be pissed.

Shmuck.

(via Daily Kos, via Kirsten)