perfidy

Robert Novak's written about Generals getting tired of having to tow the Bush line on troop level estimates.

The White House has recently directed its character assassination teams towards Richard Lugar (R) because of his constructive criticisms. Lugar, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (you know, the guys responsible for Congressional oversight of the war in Iraq), has complained publicly that the Administration hasn't shown them a plan for Iraq. I guess it's tough to do your constitutionally-mandated job of oversight if the Executive simply refuses to tell you what's going on, or tell you what they intend to do.

I find Novak's article noteworthy in that he is a pretty heavy-hitting GOP columnist and talk show personality. That this kind of criticism emerges from his pen should put a chill into Bush Loyalists.

The acid test for military involvement in Iraq should be, and should have always been, is this a war worthy of conscription?

There is a large possibility at this point that we're going to replace a very nasty, secular regime with one or two very nasty theocracies.

Let's remember just how accurate Mr. Wolfowitz is: February 2003 DOD Budget Hearings.

Continuous low-level warfare in Iraq has turned a short-term US force into a long-term occupation. From the perspectives of the Iraqis, the US has been there a long time. Prolonging US troop presence in order to bring the population into an uprising, simply by way of elapsed time, has clearly been the strategy of the "Iraq resistance" (a resistance which is likely being guided by Islamic/terrorist elements, at this point).

Makes me wonder something: Who's smarter? The Bush Administration, or the terrorists/Islamics?

They've tried rockets, bombings, assaults, and roadblocks, all chart toppers and def jams to be sure, but now the Iraqi extremists are playing their very first big hit, the 1979 smash titled "Give Us What We Want Or The Hostages Die."

Idiots. The world is a different place than it was in 1979, disco is dead, the Casbah has been Rocked (the jet pilots won), Jimmy Carter is not in the White House, and the USA does not negotiate with terrorists. Not that I know anything about anything, but insiders whisper that a certain somebodies are getting a little desperate!

You'd think that winning a little thing called "The Presidency" would be, I don't know, motivating somehow? Not satisfied with the distinct lack of evidence that he's made any effective decisions since his court-awarded victory, Bush seems to have figured out that he doesn't even have to show up for work, and he'll stillhave defenders who'll be with him no matter what.

This Washington Post story is generally about US casualties, but it notes the following rather astonishing fact:

This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency.

You'd think that with the general public's uncertainty about his capabilities and thought process, he might balance that with a strong work ethic.

Then again, exactly what in his past would lead us to believe that he has a strong work ethic?

It seems that the number one google search result for the word Jew is a real corker about killing them all and such. That will not do. There's an initiative going around the weblog world to pepper posts with links to the Wikipedia page defining Jew, as I have done twice here, in an effort to googlebomb the judenhass back to their dark little Bavaria of the mind.

Thanks to the beautiful and talented Kathy Kinsley for the pointer.

Opinion8, sees violence from both Sunnis and Shiites, and is tempted to think, "A pox on all their houses," and so adapts an old Dennis Miller line:

Twenty-five million bad people just screw it up for the other eleven.

If Howard's going down, he's going to try to take the President with him. Go check out howardstern.com, and see just how angry Stern is at Bush & Co. over his recent trouble with the FCC.

A lot of people listen to Stern and think bits like "Sphincterine" are funny, me included. If the FCC keeps on keepin' on, Stern will just keep turning his show and website into a full-on Bush bash (except without the lesbians). The more stations that drop him, the more people will be looking for someone to blame. That could be very, very bad for W come election day.

A hint of truth to this can be found in the radio-industry mag Friday Morning Quarterback, who report that WBCN in Boston " has interacted with 8,000 listeners via its "Howard Stern 1st Amendment Line." The result: 93 percent say Stern's highly publicized indecency battle will affect the upcoming Presidential election, and 72 percent indicate they will vote differently as a result of the issue."

This piece has a pretty good analysis of the situation, noting that Stern alone has been the target of fully half the fines levied by the FCC since 1990. There's also a rundown of the legislation currently pending to up those fines drastically. Again, I sincerely doubt this will play in Peoria.

Finally, as a show of solidarity with the King of All Media, here's a gratuitous link to Jenna Jameson's website.

A couple weeks ago, Buckethead posted a nice piece on the Earth's latest near-miss encounter with an asteroid big enough to make forever irrelevant all concerns of who's gonna win The Apprentice.

If you're like me, you like staring into the abyss and playing around with what you find in there. So go check out this Earth Impact simulator. Plug in your desired specs (say, witnessing a 5-mile wide hunk of ice hitting the earth at a 35-degree angle at 200Km/s from fifty miles away), and it spits out a detailed analysis of the armageddon you've wrought, from how loud the blast will be at your chosen distance to the size of the fireball and deadly flying chunkage and probable damage to structures.

We're all gonna die! Sweet!

Go read tacitus on the unfolding clusterfuck in Iraq. Excerpt:

There are a few things to keep in mind as you watch the Shi'a uprising, now spiralling into oneness with the Sunni uprising, in Iraq. First and foremost, whatever spin you might hear, remember that this is pretty bad news indeed. Very, very bad news. Consider that if you are American, there is no open road to Baghdad from any of Iraq's neighboring countries. For the moment, CPA resupply is a triumph of airlift. Something to chew on. It's not the result of any one tragically wrong decision or miscalculation; rather, it's the end result of a year of accumulating bad calls and wishful thinking: disbanding the army plus not confronting Sadr plus giving the Shi'a a veto plus the premature policy of withdrawal from urban centers plus the undermanning of the occupation force (and the concurrent kneecapping of Shinseki) plus the setting of a ludicrously early "sovereignty" date plus the early tolerance of lawlessness and looting plus illusory reconstruction accomplishments plus etc., etc., etc. In short, the failure of the occupation to be an occupation in any sense that history and Arab peoples would recognize. Bad calls of such consistency are the product of a fundamentally bad system. More on that later.

What matters now is crushing the uprising, and figuring out what it portends.

The whole thing is clear, intelligent, and uncompromising. Astute reader will remember that I opposed the libervasion of Iraq mainly because I was not at all reassured by the lack of aprés-tango planning. We are now seeing the sad results of those piecemeal plans and subsequent second-guesses. I'm not saying this to jeer or mock the people in charge. I'm not saying it to score easy points off people more sanguine than I about the immediate prospects for peace in Iraq. I'm just saying it because the whole deal is turning ugly, and I'm very disappointed to see that I was right about the mid-term situation.

Well, whatever the next few days and weeks hold, and whatever the cost, Iraq is our problem now and if we cut and run it'll be much worse for us in the long run than staying could ever be.

[wik] One of Tacitus' commenters asks, "have the American people been properly informed--ever--by this administration of the risks, duration, and gravity of their plans for Iraq?" I don't think we have. I know that in the past, Bush has said things about our long-term commitment in Iraq, but he's said a lot of stuff nobody hears. What we need now is for the President to tell us in specific terms what the hell is going on and what he's having done about it. We need him to SAY it, in BIG words. Classic words, like "Blood, toil, tears and sweat." "Our long national nightmare is over." "Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came."

So far, W. has just dropped mentions of Iraq's cost and duration into policy speeches as if to defend himself down the road from accusations that he never told the American people what the deal is. Last night I saw dude on the TV smirking about that Sadr dude's uprising. Smirking! He's the president and he's fucking smirking about the war! "Seems to me it's just one guy and his followers," he says, smirking on camera.

Not good enough. We need a serious appraisal, one that underscores for the American people what the importance of Iraq is and why prevailing over the uprising and restoring order to the country needs to be our sober national duty right now. And cut out the goddamned smirking. It gives the impression that he finds his war funny.

That's how Bush keeps this PR moment from becoming his Tet, and could make it his Gettysburg instead.

Murdoc has a good roundup of blog posts on the fighting in Iraq, and some good thoughts of his own here.

Seeing as Perfidy is letting its inner (or not so inner) geek hang out, lets just wallow in it, shall we?

No one, to my knowledge, has come up with a really good role-playing game system. The problem seems to center on the difficulty of modeling skills and the learning process. Other problems (such as combat, physics, various magical or super-technological systems) have been solved with varying degrees of success, usually with an attempt to balance ease of use with verisimilitude. The fact that these systems are used constantly in the game system puts a premium on the ease of use side of the equation, as overly complex games have a limited market, even among nerds and geeks.

However, the problem of character development remains. The game might have a slick way of resolving how successfully you apply your skill at safecracking, orcslaying, or starship piloting. But how does your character gain and improve that skill? The results have always been unsatisfying.

Existing game systems can be plotted on a spectrum ranging from D&D on one end, and original rules Traveler on the other.
D&D had by far the most simplistic advancement scheme. Characters had a class, which gave them a package of skills or attributes. (Well, really it mostly gave them a different table for resolving combat.) As the campaign progressed, gold expropriated from dragons, orcs and Enron translated directly into experience points. At certain thresholds, you would move up a level and all of your skills would simultaneously increase. This is not in any way realistic, though certainly satisfying to the thirteen year old who loves to say he has a 25th level Assassin.* The focus is almost completely on advancement in the game.

On the other end of the scale was the Traveler system. Characters were created using a system that closely resembles what actually happens in real life. You start out at 18, with nothing more than remedial skills. Then, depending on the career track you select, you enlist in the navy, army, marines, interstellar scouts, or go to college. Your pre-game life is divided into four year terms, during which you have an opportunity to gain skills related to your profession. You can keep this up as long as you want balancing your greed for more skills with the realization that you don't want to be having an adventure with a 90-year old alter ego. Once this process ends, you begin the game. Once the game has started, it is exceedingly difficult to gain new skills or even improve old ones. You are stuck with what you have. Again, this is much like real life. The focus here is almost completely on character creation. (GURPS used a different approach, but was similar in that the focus is on character creation.)

Most games fall somewhere in between these two extremes. How do you create a game that allows your character to start with some skills, yet allows skills to be developed in game? How do you create a system that allows character creation in some detail, without predetermining the character’s future existence? How do you design a reward system that isn't based on the easily quantified cash, but isn't based solely on the subjective judgment of the DM? Moreover, how do you find a system that simultaneously isn't completely subjective and doesn't require hours of anal-retentive bookkeeping?

The last campaign I ran before I gave up on gaming completely eliminated most of the game system. The only concession I made to traditional role-playing was to keep a combat system, which I appropriated from White Wolf's Vampire games. And I only did that because the players insisted. Most of the time they were rolling dice just to amuse themselves, though I allowed them to think that the results affected the game.

I dodged the whole question of character development by having the players play themselves in the campaign. If they could do it, their character could do it. This was satisfactory in most respects, but sadly puts a great deal of limitations on the types of game you can play. (Worked great for a present day Cthulhu game, though.) Rewards were largely moot, since the campaign lasted only a few weeks in game time.

I've tried to see through to a way to combine the pristine simplicity of that last game with the requirements of other types of campaigns, but so far without success. The thing is, if you have a group of decent players, the game system is just a framework. The campaign is more important. The problem with adopting the no-system system is that it becomes hard to balance character creation with the needs of the campaign. You can't have the characters that are too powerful. Further, in a long campaign, you have to have some mechanism for rewarding players with improvements to their characters. Gold and wisdom is not enough. This, really, is the only thing that needs to be systematized. Everything else can be done on the fly, given enough background information and some quick thinking. But I haven’t figured it out yet.