perfidy

I am off to the mountains of Pennsylvania (the western side of the state, not the hoity-toity New-Yorkified eastern half with your liberty bells and your unaccented English) for a week; I trust my cobloggers will carry on in my absence. Carry on like a bunch of howler monkeys, that is! Oh, ho ho ho!

If the world happens to end in that time, well, hey. I'd love to say it's been great knowin' ya.

I watched Bush's big address last night (shame on the major networks for not clearing the time!), and I gotta say... the ending kicked ass. Once the senior speechwriter took over, and you could pinpoint the exact second he or she did, the prose took flight, Bush settled into a comfortable speechifying groove, and for once he sounded like a President rather than a two-bit trust-funder presiding over a Masonic lodge. The speech ended with this call to action and resoundingly clear statement of purpose.

We did not seek this war on terror, but this is the world as we find it. We must keep our focus. We must do our duty. History is moving, and it will tend toward hope, or tend toward tragedy. Our terrorist enemies have a vision that guides and explains all their varied acts of murder. They seek to impose Taliban-like rule, country by country, across the greater Middle East. They seek the total control of every person, and mind, and soul, a harsh society in which women are voiceless and brutalized. They seek bases of operation to train more killers and export more violence. They commit dramatic acts of murder to shock, frighten and demoralize civilized nations, hoping we will retreat from the world and give them free rein. They seek weapons of mass destruction, to impose their will through blackmail and catastrophic attacks. None of this is the expression of a religion. It is a totalitarian political ideology, pursued with consuming zeal, and without conscience.

Our actions, too, are guided by a vision. We believe that freedom can advance and change lives in the greater Middle East, as it has advanced and changed lives in Asia, and Latin America, and Eastern Europe, and Africa. We believe it is a tragedy of history that in the Middle East -- which gave the world great gifts of law and science and faith -- so many have been held back by lawless tyranny and fanaticism. We believe that when all Middle Eastern peoples are finally allowed to live and think and work and worship as free men and women, they will reclaim the greatness of their own heritage. And when that day comes, the bitterness and burning hatreds that feed terrorism will fade and die away. America and all the world will be safer when hope has returned to the Middle East.

These two visions -- one of tyranny and murder, the other of liberty and life -- clashed in Afghanistan. And thanks to brave U.S. and coalition forces and to Afghan patriots, the nightmare of the Taliban is over, and that nation is coming to life again. These two visions have now met in Iraq, and are contending for the future of that country. The failure of freedom would only mark the beginning of peril and violence. But, my fellow Americans, we will not fail. We will persevere, and defeat this enemy, and hold this hard-won ground for the realm of liberty.

That's one for the ages. Great stuff, though chock-full of imperialist/progressive-history assumptions sure to enrage Chomskyites and nonpluss left-leaners (me included, sort of). But what about the other 90% of the speech? Much less good, as if Bush could only let out the President to play for five minutes at a time. The rest of the address was in the usual fumble-prosed and murky style we usually encounter from him. Murdoc says that critics will say "It's the same thing he's been saying all along!" and argues that that's the point. I disagree. A year and a half has gone by, and Bush has quietly changed tack 180 degrees on some crucial issues. Two examples:

At my direction, and with the support of Iraqi authorities, we are accelerating our program to help train Iraqis to defend their country. A new team of senior military officers is now assessing every unit in Iraq's security forces. I've asked this team to oversee the training of a force of 260,000 Iraqi soldiers, police, and other security personnel. Five Iraqi army battalions are in the field now, with another eight battalions to join them by July the 1st. The eventual goal is an Iraqi army of 35,000 soldiers in 27 battalions, fully prepared to defend their country.

So much for de-Ba'athification. A little later, Bush made a comment that elicited howls of derision from the folks I was with, Republican and Democrat alike: "General Abizaid and other commanders in Iraq are constantly assessing the level of troops they need to fulfill the mission. If they need more troops, I will send them." Presented without comment like that, one gets the impression that the invitation's been open all along.

Elsewhere, Bush marred what was in general a strong speech by flatly contradicting himself.

On June 30th, the Coalition Provisional Authority will cease to exist, and will not be replaced. The occupation will end....

Do note the use of the word "occupation," the first time I can remember that Bush has called a plow a plow since the libervasion began. Kudos there. But the larger point is that the occupation is slated to end on June 30. Yet, a little later the President says, "given the recent increase in violence, we'll maintain our troop level at the current 138,000 as long as necessary." To me, that seems a bit contradictory. Either the occupation will end on June 30, or US troops will stay in Iraq at full strength. That dissonance is only magified by statements like this one: "After June 30th, American and other forces will still have important duties. American military forces in Iraq will operate under American command as a part of a multinational force authorized by the United Nations." Aside from the faintly ridiculous presumption that the UN's endorsement of whatever plan the US brings to it is a fait accompli, one is left to wonder which of the three plans is the real one, or in what measure each is true.

Furthermore, even though Bush came thisclose to admitting mistakes have been made, ("We've learned from these failures, and we've taken steps to correct them"), it turns out the failures in question are Iraqi:

Iraq's military, police, and border forces have begun to take on broader responsibilities. Eventually, they must be the primary defenders of Iraqi security, as American and coalition forces are withdrawn. And we're helping them to prepare for this role. In some cases, the early performance of Iraqi forces fell short. Some refused orders to engage the enemy.

Beyond being fatuous and cack-handed, yet again the President resists the urge to admit fallibility.

But, after a point I am nitpicking. Last night Bush did something he should have done long ago: reached out to the American people with a progress report and a plan for the future. Despite what I regard as grave missteps as cataloged above, and a cringe-inducing moment when he squinted at the TelePromTer as he stumbled over the pronunciation of "Abu Ghraib" (giving the unfortunate impression he'd never heard the words before), Bush sounded more Presidental, and more like a leader, than he has since September 2001.

It's not enough to make me vote for him, but at least it seems that after three years in office, he's learning a thing or two. Go read it yourself and see what you think.

Now they're trying to ban flavored cigarettes. Specifically, douchebag Ohioan Mike Dewine (R-Monkeybutt Junction) is introducing the "Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act" into Congress in an effort to crack down on fruit- and candy-flavored cigarettes that trick millions of kids into smoking them. Or some bullplop to that effect.

I don't know about you, but I was at college in the early 1990s when grunge, the "Singles" soundtrack, and flannel ruled the day. There is no smell in the world more sure to bring those heady days flooding back in all their hazy pretentious glory than the smell of a clove cigarette. Ahhh, cloves.

Now, I know that clove cigarettes are supposed to be bad for you and stuff, but please. One of the many pleasures of young adulthood is experimenting with funny-tasting smokables like those weird Egyptian cigarilloes flavored with cherry and that American Spirit "peace pipe blend" that kind of tastes like a hippie's wool socks. Beyond my own selfish desires to see successive generations enjoy the same odiferious pursuits I once did (and with no lasting brain damage-- honest!!?>()#QWERTYU$$$), I have to ask: is this law really, really necessary?

Or is this just another way for parents to let the government raise good compliant kids for them so they don't have to take the time?

NDR blogs on a curious European phenomenon: Gasoline tourism. The small Luxembourg town of Wasserbillig (Germanish for "cheap as water") is a popular destination for German drivers because tax differences between the two countries make for cheap Luxembourganian gas.

These gas stations have created a "gas tank tourism" for Luxembourg. A number of gift shops have appeared around these gas stations, selling jam, cheeses, cigarettes, sparkling wines--all of which are cheaper than in Germany. These trips to Luxembourg become gluttonous affairs of bulk purchases for Germans, who return home with full tanks and full trunks.

Below the fold is a pic of Wasserbillig's main strasse.

Does this remind anyone else of Breezewood, PA?

So it looks like blame in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse thingy might lay partially upon Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who may have known about it before the date he claims to have found out (ooh! Definitive!). This AM on the news I saw three stars on that guy's lapel. Three stars!

As Blackfive notes in the link above, nothing is certain. I don't know what the facts is. But I fervently hope that further investigation shows that orders and blame originate much farther down the chain of command than Lt. Gen.

I had the singular pleasure, last Friday, of being invited to drive two hours through DC traffic to my company's headquarters in lovely Herndon, hard by the Dulles International Airport, to be informed that I was laid off. There were no positions in the company matching my skill set, and sadly, I must be let go. But hey, we loved working with you! And you're high on our recall list! Stay tuned!

For the last couple weeks, I had been uneasy about my situation. The project that I was working on had run into difficulties, as a result of the client's unwillingness or inability to realize that you can't provide a complete picture of a software system until after it is built. The purpose of a design document is to show the path forward, giving a general idea of how problems will be solved, and what methods will be used to instantiate business rules and processes in code. Naturally, many details will not be known until the code is actually written.

So, two weeks ago, after the system design document was rejected for the fourth time, higher powers within my company sacked the PM in order to save the contract. I was concerned at the time because the problem centered on documentation, and I am a technical writer. But when I wasn't fired immediately, I began to feel somewhat safer. That was mistaken, and it does seem that I had been blackened with the same brush that painted the PM out of the picture. Needless to say, I think this is a bit off base, as the government didn't have issues with the grammar, style or format of the document - all of which were within my purvue - but rather with the content and direction of the design.

After a long drive home, half a pack of cigarettes, and some well chosen words, I was home. And I found that I was not really as upset as I might have been. My son was in the backyard slowly learning how to move rapidly over uneven terrain. My wife had a beer for me. Life ain't bad. Over the weekend, I have already developed several leads on jobs. But if any of our gentle readers is aware of any job openings in the field of technical writing or editing in the DC metro area, I would be pleased and grateful to hear of them.

Instapundit has the terrible, awful, shameful story.

On the day after September 11, Micki Weinberg walked to the UC Berkeley campus still in shock. At the entrance to campus, facing Telegraph Avenue, huge sheets of blank paper were spread out as an impromptu memorial on which students, faculty, and other passersby were invited to write comments. Glad to have found such a forum, Weinberg scanned the inscriptions. Then he saw one, large and clear, that stopped him dead in his tracks:
"It's the Jews, stupid."

The slender Weinberg, a year younger than most freshmen, had only just arrived at Cal from Beverly Hills, where he had been president of his high school's Shalom Club. As a young teenager, he had savored heady stories of how Mario Savio and his comrades in the Free Speech Movement danced the hora and sang "Hava Nagila" at sit-ins and peace rallies forty years ago. The son of left-wing, Jewish intellectuals, Weinberg viewed himself as one too, having spent the summer before his senior year of high school in Myanmar, cataloguing the archives of Rangoon's disintegrating and depopulated Jewish synagogue. "That's why I came to Berkeley -- because of its strong romantic aura of the Free Speech Movement and Mario Savio," he recalls. "Then I got here and discovered that that light seems to have been extinguished. You have this vitriol. You feel it everywhere. Berkeley is now the epicenter of real hatred."

Almost three years later, Weinberg graduates this month as a student whose days at Cal were marked by what he calls "pinnacles of horror," in the pinched tone of a man betrayed. He remembers pro-Palestinian protesters insisting that Israeli border crossings are as bad as Nazi death camps. He remembers the glass front door of Berkeley's Hillel building -- where he attends Friday night services -- shattered by a cinderblock, with the message FUCK JEWS scrawled nearby. He remembers the spray-painted swastikas discovered one Monday morning last September on the walls of four lecture rooms in LeConte Hall accompanied by the chilling bilingual message, "Die, Juden. "

Just when you think things can't get worse, they do. What the hell has happened to the radical left? And when will they figure out that they're cutting a hideous figure?

As with so many things I care to write about, the staff of The Simpsons have thoughtfully provided me with a parable by which to judge the present. I suppose that means I treat The Simpsons as a reservior of moral and ethical teachings much like fairy tales, the Bible, Greek myth, or Buddhist sutra, though the part of me that fancies itself a serious scholar recoils from what that implies. (The Simpsonian heresy? To the auto-da-fe with him! And while my flesh melts in the flames and vultures perch on the stake I'm tied to all I can think of is Ralph Wiggum crying out,"My mouth tastes like burning!".... I should probably accept that my intellectual growth has been irrevocably stunted.) But I digress.

Last night I had occasion to attend a John Kerry fundraising houseparty put on by a friend of mine. As far as I can tell, there were hundreds of similar parties going on across the country at the same time. Why, you might well ask, would I go to a John Kerry houseparty when I'm on record as "having my hate on" for him?
Well, there's a few reasons, but mainly I just felt like it would be fun to get together with some people for a night to talk politics, like a twenty-first century junto or salon. I'm not very much of a Democrat at heart, and I was hoping that my handful of Boston Republican friends would be there so that the night would not just be a self-affirming leftward circle-jerk. In truth, there wasn't much risk of that, because the party organizer's original email read in part, "Now, do I think Kerry is the best person the Dems have? No. BUT, I do think that he is a much better alternative for this country compared to Bush."

The centerpiece of the night was a conference call from the Man Himself. I was kind of hoping that it would be a live event, with an opportunity for a Q&A session at the end, but sadly that was not to be. At 6 PM we gathered around the conference pod and waited for the call to begin. We were notified that we would be listening to a pre-recorded address, and then John Kerry started to speak. It was a masterpiece of political rhetoric, with laugh points, applause points, and sweeping policy statements that clarified for all present exactly what John Kerry, President, would do for our country.

No, no no. I'm just fucking with you. In reality, the first laugh point of the evening was inadvertant, and came when Kerry called upon "each and every one of you across the country tonight to reach out to fifty people you know" to get them involved. We all knew that a call to action would be coming, and we all were nodding in agreement, "sure, sure, I can find a couple people to get on board with this thing" until Kerry dropped that number. Fifty. Do I even know fifty people? We all just looked at each other in disbelief and broke out in laughter-- "who the hell does he think we are? And does he really think we care?" We laughed through the next bit; no big deal.

Here's the short version of the John Kerry House Party speech: "I'm not Bush. Bush is bad for the country and I'm not like him. Fifty people! I'm not like Bush. International community. Manufacturing jobs. I'm not like Bush. Create jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs, environment, jobs. Not like Bush! International community, Bush bad! Health care, too expensive! Bush Bad! Eat your peas, Bush bad! Jobs! College, jobs, Bush, college, international community, bad Bush jobs!" All of which was punctuated by fake-folksy interjections, asides, and implied grins. As an example of public speaking it was ugly, and as a specimen of political image-making it was embarassing.

I'm not sure why I expected more from the junior Senator from Massachusetts, but I did. It's June, the campaign is in full swing, and all I know about John Kerry, candidate, is that he isn't like George Bush. Well, fine. Chlorine isn't much like lead either. How, exactly, does John Kerry plan to bring manufacturing jobs back to the country, and what does he think that will accomplish? And exactly how many subsidies will that require? And how will those subsidies be financed, and will the products of those subsidized industries be cheaper for it, or more expensive? And, if that's the plan, exactly how does this "plan" differ from a very expensive and roundabout form of sub-New Deal make-work welfare at $25 an hour? It's time to talk turkey, and all we the supposed True Believers got last night was pap.

But back to the Simpsons. John Kerry reminds me of nobody more than Armand Tanzarian, the imposter known to Springfield as Principal Skinner. The town knows he's a fraud and imposter, and that he's not much of a principal, but they accept him anyway. He's an awkward figure, a bit of a cold fish, spineless and vaguely incompetent to boot That's great for a cartoon figure, but are those really ideal, or even marginally acceptable, qualities in a presidential candidate? I was in a room full of left-leaning young voters last night, and not one of them were the least bit enthusiastic about a Kerry presidency. Not one. I realize that Kerry isn't even bothering to campaign in Massachusetts because he can't lose here no matter what happens, but last night John Kerry was speaking to a national audience and came across as a joke.

So I am left to wonder. When faced with a choice between a president who is taking the country in directions I deeply disagree with, and a contender who is little more than a cipher, what do I do?

Well, well, well. Former Neocon man of the hour (now revealed as merely a con man) Ahmad Chalabi was spying for Iran. Or not, details are sketchy. Either way, he's on the outs and in big, big trouble.

The million-dollar question for me is, why did it take this long for Bush's people to drop this smarmy dickhead like a hot potato? He's known to be untrustworthy, widely disliked by Iraqis, incapable of leadership, and ethically suspect. In short, he's the last person to put in charge of a delicate and Herculean task like managing the rebuilding of Iraq.

(Cheap shot coming...) Hm. I guess they just had a hard time getting rid of someone so much like themselves.

Haw!

The question, asked over at MSNBC, is, "Can ‘Star Wars: Episode III’ be saved?"

Read the piece, and I'll think you'll find that hope is fading. Not that we had a lot of hope going into it. The first two movies as well could have been done by chimps.