Lots of typically bad news with links to Dubya, but I think the summary should just be that Dubya has the anti-Midas touch. Everything Dubya touches automatically turns to sh*t, but now he's touching the entire country, and even the world. The problem is that the Bushies work hard and mostly effectively to disguise the causal links while working to exploit the public damage for their personal political and financial advantage.

On the west end of the country, California is sinking into some sort of bizarre anarchy. Dubya is pretending to be above the fray, though he's already "unofficially" endorsed his good buddy Arnold ("The Terminator") Schwarzenegger for the job. Years of public service as a qualification for public office? Ha. You need to be a movie actor. Name recognition is the only important criteria--but that "electability" guarantees the support of rich and greedy oligarchs who plan to continue raiding the public till. However, I think the causal link to Dubya is more direct. The selection of 2000 in Florida has convinced the Bushies that democracy is dead, and they're just rendering the corpse for soap. Amusingly enough, a lot of the dissatisfaction with Davis that the GOP is exploiting to drive this special election is apparently due to the electricity problems that those great GOP supporters at Enron helped create. You'd think that the voters should get the message and reject the GOP, but now they apparently want the Terminator. What's in a "pretty" name? Everything, apparently.

Meanwhile, on the east end of the country, there were massive power outages. Exact causes are not clear, but already quite obvious that the electric infrastructure is in bad shape. How did that happen? Anyone remember that old deregulation stuff from the '80s? Guess what happens when you adjust the balance away from the public's interests and in favor of increasing profits? Twenty years is just about enough time for the declining infrastructure to start showing--but don't expect the Bushies to make this connection, since their goal is to push for more deregulation. They don't want to get confused with "stupid" and complicated facts. They know where the money is, and the only "fact" they're concerned with is how to get more money. Rich utility companies donate more money to the GOP. That's the only causal relationship they care about.

Good side of not having electric power is that with their computers shut off the east end of the country wasn't as badly afflicted by the latest nasty computer worm that's been going around. Fortunately, the writer of the worm was a lousy programmer, and rather stupid, too, so there were both implementation flaws in the worm and design flaws in the payload, or things would have been much worse.

I don't think it's purely deification to blame Dubya for contributing to that damage, too, though of course it's hard to pin down the real blame without knowing what really motivated the moron who wrote it. The apparent motivation was to express anger at Microsoft, and that anger might well have been aggravated by knowing Dubya will never bother his rich friends. I certainly felt my normal annoyance at Microsoft increased by struggles to download the patch from Microsoft before a friend's computer got attacked. Lost that race, too, but Microsoft is completely free from liability. Gosh, I'd love to bill them for my time wasted because of their incompetence. Not just in creating the original bug. Anyone can make a mistake, even such a huge one. However, having made the mistake, Microsoft's remedial efforts were just SO pitiful. I actually took the patch with me, but I'd taken the wrong language, so it refused to accept it. There is NO good reason for a language dependency in this patch, and every reason to allow a language override. After that, the best option seemed to be to connect to the Web so I could stumble around the Microsoft "security" pages trying to find the patch, but meanwhile the worm struck. If the anger at Microsoft really was the motivation, I'd regard it as a form of insane anarchism--the same sort of thing that began to afflict oligarchic Czarist Russia a few years before the end. On the other hand, that visible motive may well be a disguise for something more sinister, like a North Korean cyberattack.

One peripheral thought on this general topic is another aspect of blame for Microsoft, but again nothing that they'll ever be held liable for. However, it does very accurately reflect the anything-for-money-is-okay motivations of the Bushies. Microsoft's attitude has always been to use the control of the OS as a kind of weapon in their quest for ever larger piles of money, and it's natural to build your weapons as big and powerful as possible. This leads to the cancerous design philosophy of putting more and more functionality into the OS, creating more and more dangerous toys for the virus writers to play with. To be contrasted with the design philosophy of Linux, which is to make a clean and strong and safe skeleton, but one that you can use to build any functionality that you desire. Very unlikely that there'll ever be any similar attacks on Linux no matter how widespread Linux becomes. Too many variations hanging on the skeleton. However, no big money to be made from Linux, so who cares? Certainly not the Bushies.

Lots of typically bad news with links to Dubya, but I think the summary should just be that Dubya has the anti-Midas touch. Everything Dubya touches automatically turns to sh*t, but now he's touching the entire country, and even the world. The problem is that the Bushies work hard and mostly effectively to disguise the causal links while working to exploit the public damage for their personal political and financial advantage.

On the west end of the country, California is sinking into some sort of bizarre anarchy. Dubya is pretending to be above the fray, though he's already "unofficially" endorsed his good buddy Arnold ("The Terminator") Schwarzenegger for the job. Years of public service as a qualification for public office? Ha. You need to be a movie actor. Name recognition is the only important criteria--and the support of rich and greedy oligarchs who plan to continue raiding the public till. However, I think the causal link to Dubya is more direct. The selection of 2000 in Florida has convinced the Bushies that democracy is dead, and they're just rendering the corpse for soap. Amusingly enough, a lot of the dissatisfaction with Davis that the GOP is exploiting to drive this special election is due to the electricity problems that were created by those great GOP supporters at Enron. You'd think that the voters should get the message and reject the GOP, but now they apparently want the Terminator. What's in a name? Everything, apparently.

Meanwhile, on the east end of the country, there were massive power outages. Exact causes are not clear, but already quite obvious that the infrastructure is in bad shape. How did that happen? Anyone remember that old deregulation stuff from the '80s? Guess what happens when you adjust the balance away from the public's interests and in favor of increasing profits? Just about enough time for the declining infrastructure to start showing--but don't expect the Bushies to make this connection, since their goal is to push for more deregulation. They don't want to get confused with "stupid" and complicated facts. They know where the money is, and the only "fact" they're concerned with is how to get more of it. Rich utility companies donate more money to the GOP. That's the only causal relationship they care about.

Good side of not having power is that with their computers shut off the east end of the country wasn't as badly afflicted by the latest nasty computer worm that's been going around. Fortunately, the writer of the worm was a lousy programmer, and rather stupid, too, so there were both implementation flaws in the worm and design flaws in the payload, or things would have been much worse.

I don't think it's purely reification to blame Dubya for contributing to the damage, though of course it's hard to pin the real blame without knowing what really motivated the moron who wrote it. The apparent motivation was to express anger at Microsoft, and that anger might well have been aggravated by knowing Dubya will never bother his rich friends. I certainly felt my normal anger increased by struggles to download the patch from Microsoft before a friend's computer got attacked. Lost that race, too, but Microsoft is completely free from liability. Gosh, I'd love to bill them for my time wasted because of their incompetence. Not just in creating the original bug. Anyone can make a mistake, even such a huge one. However, having made the mistake, Microsoft's remedial efforts were just SO pitiful. I actually took the patch with me, but I'd taken the wrong language, so it refused to accept it. There is NO good reason for a language dependency in this patch, and every reason to allow a language override. After that, I had to stumble around the Microsoft "security" pages trying to find the patch, but meanwhile the worm struck. If the anger at Microsoft really was the motivation, I'd regard it as a form of insane anarchism--the same sort of thing that began to afflict oligarchic Czarist Russia from a few years before the end. On the other hand, that may well be a disguise for something more sinister, like a North Korean cyberattack.

One peripheral thought on this general topic is another aspect of blame for Microsoft, but again nothing that they'll ever be held liable for. However, it does very accurately reflect the anything-for-money motivations of the Bushies. Microsoft's attitude has always been to use the control of the OS as a kind of weapon in their quest for every larger piles of money, and it's natural to build your weapons as big and powerful as possible. This leads to the the cancerous design philosophy of putting more and more functionality into the OS, creating more and more dangerous toys for the virus writers. To be contrasted with the design philosophy of Linux, which is to make a clean and strong skeleton, but one that you can use to build any functionality that you desire. Very unlikely that there'll ever be any similar attacks on Linux no matter how widespread Linux becomes. Too many variations hanging on the skeleton. However, no big money to be made from Linux, so who cares?

From Jim Sagle, I found the joke of the day:

Bush's motto: Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Kick him in the teeth, and he'll forget he was ever hungry.

Actually, he published it somewhere on July 17th, and most of his stuff is just borrowed from somewhere else, but he's my source, and I only saw it today...

In today's episode of truth is stranger than fiction, I'll tell you how to make money on terrorism. You go to Poindexter's new Web site, and you place your bets on which terrorist acts will happen when. For example, if you bet that Pakistan's dictator Mubarrak will get assassinated this month, and it happens, then you collect all the money from the people who bet he'd be assassinated at some later date, like next month. And of course, after he's snuffed they'll just start betting on how long until the Muslim terrorists get some of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Great idea, right!

Well, not right. Just about the craziest idea that I've ever heard of, though they had managed to sneak $3 million through the budget process to fund it. Supposed to be self-sustaining after that, with a percentage for the "house". They had actually finished designing the promotional Web site before it got into the open and of course the insane project was immediately canceled, along with various apologies and calls for heads. Maybe Poindexter will have to change his name next time? I've long suspected he'd be more comfortable with the name of Dr. Moriarty.

What will they think of next. I'm becoming afraid to speculate, since they continue to exceed my lowest expectations.

By the way, Dubya admits he was "technically" responsible for claiming that Iraq was buying uranium. But how can anyway expect intelligence when you have such a narrow-minded moron at the top of the entire intelligence apparatus? When has Bush ever allowed himself to be confused by stupid old facts?

Wow! Long gap there. Not that there's any good news I can think of. Well, I suppose the recent killing of Saddam's sons ought to count as good news of a sort. They definitely contributed to making the world a better place by leaving it. Still, even there, the way the "business" was handled manages to create fresh new evils. High tech heads on pikes--much easier to "share" with the masses, and less smelly, too. Of course I'm referring to their release of the graphic pictures of the mutilated corpses. The shallow pretense of "We have to prove they're really dead" is quite thin. The real point is obviously to show very graphically what happens to Dubya's enemies. If someone else does that sort of thing with American corpses Dubya screams and cries about savage, uncivilized, "criminal" behavior. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

All the big questions are supposed to go begging. Most obvious big question is why we were so determined to snuff them. No question that Dubya had overwhelming force--and (as usual) he used it with great enthusiasm. So why not capture them? What was the big rush to kill them so quickly? (Obvious answer: Precisely to make sure that they didn't talk. Additional strong evidence of a desire to destroy any evidence was the almost immediate bulldozing of the site. Sure the Bushies claimed they searched it first, but anything that the sons seriously wanted to hide has been safely destroyed by now. At least the Bushies must be hoping so.) Actually, even better than a secret siege, why not announce that Saddam's sons are under siege and hope that the alleged "loyalists" will expose themselves in desperate rescue attempts. Hah. If I had to bet on it, I'd actually bet that the supposed loyalists are really new Al Qaeda recruits proving their loyalty by killing Americans. Pretty hard for a mole to get into the club if he has to start out by committing a murder. Quite a loyalty test, and in terms of lifelong loyalty, there's no statute of limitations on murder. Anyway, the main point here is that the Americans were calling the shots, but the only shots we were apparently interested in calling were a few quick head shots.

Even the "proof" pretense begs the obvious question of why Dubya's boys have to prove anything, except for the ugly little fact that they've established such tarnished reputations as deliberate twisters of the truth. Actually, the truth twisting to support the "war" (pronounced "slaughter") in Iraq has become something of an issue recently, extending all the way to England with the ruckus over the recent "suicide" of an arms inspection expert who was talking too much about the pressures to slant the reports.

Anyway, who cares? The voters will forget all about it by 2004. And even if the voters remember, or if they're perhaps angry about something else (like the economy), what difference will it make? Didn't even need to count the votes in 2000, but in 2004 vote-rigging voting machines will make the process much smoother. Can't even pretend to check the ballots when the machines never even bother to print them! That's the way to end the long tradition of election fraud! Eliminate the evidence before it ever exists. Voila! No one will be able to prove anything, so no more election fraud, no matter how fraudulent the election!

One more somewhat lesser topic today is about Dubya-related books available in Japan. Recently I've been visiting some bookstores to see what they're stocking, and the results struck me as interesting. For example, in the English section of a large bookstore, they had a surprisingly large assortment of imported works on America and Dubya, etc. These must mostly be targeted at English speakers like me, and the lack of focus suggests we are quite curious and perhaps even confused. I'd say the ratio was about two anti-neocon books for each pro-neocon book, but the prices were reversed, so (assuming equal markups) the profits (= the motivation for the bookstore to import the books) appear to be about equal on each side. I didn't recognize any fence-sitting books. My largest surprise was actually the large number of books about President Carter.

In various (mostly smaller) Japanese bookstores (with very limited English sections), they also have many relevant titles. Mostly these were books translated into Japanese, though some were originals by Japanese authors. I only noticed one pro-Dubya book, a translation of Bush at War. Actually, I'm not even sure if that counts as pro-Dubya. Lots of leeway in the difficult art of translating, and I am sure that the literal back-translation of the Japanese title would be Bush's War. I can think of several possible ways to translate the phrase "Bush at War" while trying to maintain the more neutral flavor of the original "at". That title certainly seems slanted to the Dubya-as-warmonger side, and it makes me wonder if the entire translation might be slanted. Was the title just a marketing trick? Or is it a case of tit for tat, considering the earlier heads-on-pikes topic? Anyway, if the marketing reflects their attitudes, the locals appear quite skeptical. Michael Moore seems especially popular, whatever that means. I myself regard him as amusingly ineffectual.

Big surprise of the day was hearing that the Japanese government decided to send some SDF troops to help "keep the peace" in Iraq. I really can't even imagine the rationale behind this one, even allowing for the all-night debate and final vote at 4 in the morning. Maybe they were hoping the Japanese people wouldn't find out about it if they did it while they were asleep? Actually, I'm sure this one has to be based on some kind of secret deal or maybe even a secret threat delivered by Blair when he visited Japan a few days ago.

I have to call this one "How to rob a bank without even crying" and dedicate it to Dubya's little brother who helped out with the same kind of scam in Colorado. Still, I sort of like the innovative way it was reported in the local newspaper, in per capita terms. It worked out at 16,000 yen/head. Or was it 18,000? Anyway, over a $100, but it's part of the way the scam works, since the victims don't really feel it directly. The precise form? Yet another bank bailout, but still following the basic pattern of the Reagan years. However, you can't even give Reagan credit for the innovation. He was (as usual) asleep at the wheel, and variations of these scams have been going on for many years.

Just to clarify, a lot of people deposited various amounts of money in this bank. Me, too, though a very minor account, and way back when it was called Daiwa. The bankers lost it. The money is gone, the bank is kaput, and the bankers then begged the government to bail them out. The government moaned and cried a bit, then said they had to protect "public confidence" in the financial institutions, and they forked over the money. Our tax money, of course. In a sense, I actually come out ahead in this deal, since it's all of the other taxpayers who are making sure I can get my original money back, and I'm sure most of them use other banks.

A couple of high honchos at the bank resigned to take responsibility. Whoopee. No one has to go to jail or anything awkward or embarrassing like that. Just unlucky business decisions and a lot of "non-performing" loans. Sounds so much better than saying the bankers gambled the money away. All wonderfully legal, and the taxpayers will now foot the bill.

That's funny, I don't feel more confidence. I feel like I've been conned.

Isn't it a wonderful con game? If you try to rob a bank with a gun you'll get slam dunked big time, but if you "misplace" all of the bank's money (Well, about 98% in this case), then you have to retire early, and the public pays it back. (Actually simplifying the fancy numbers a bit. The actual state of insolvency involves reserve margins, but like Dubya says, it's just a bunch of complicated accounting stuff. Of course, he was alleged to be company president at that time...)

Ah, it must be so nice to be a rich banker like so many of Dubya's buddies. The rest of Dubya's buddies are the rich banker's customers--like the Enron boys who were so good at making the banks' money disappear. Of course that must be legal, too. None of them have gone to jail, either. Just like Neil Bush danced away.

Rats leaving the sinking ship? Ari, the Minister of Lies... Er, I mean the White House press secretary resigned this week. No overwhelming reason given, but his credibility had been getting weak anyway--too many reports of reporters breaking into laughter when he wasn't even pretending to be telling a joke. Also, Whitman, secretary of dismantling the environment decided to leave, again without any particular reason given. One or two other fairly major figures. Whitman was supposed to be one of the least objectionable Bushies. Must be getting lonely for semi-token Powell, the secretary of dismantling international diplomacy.

Several candidates for the fatal torpedoes, actually. Two economic disasters in progress. One is the dollar, which seems to be losing out badly against the Euro. Perhaps the insiders know it's really on the verge of collapse? The other is the tax cuts for the rich they just rammed through Congress. Still, that one should be a rather slow torpedo, even though the economy is still reeling from the earlier tax cuts. However, I think the big torpedo may be political corruption. Don't forget that's what finally nailed Nixon's coffin. Turns out that they ordered the Texas DPS to erase all records related to the chase after the Texas Democrats last week, and it's already stinking to high heaven. It would be funny if Dubya got dragged down in such a piddling little whirlpool.

Hmm... That's not good, but worth noting. The times on the blog entries can't actually be relied on. Not a substantive change, but I realized that I missed bolding one of the references to the movie in the previous entry, but making that change didn't change the date of the entry.

Not really much news to report or comment on just now. More terrorist attacks. More SARS worries, this time in Japan. I'm increasingly worried about a terrorist attack using SARS, and I'm not the only one. Iraq continues to fester. The first round of commanders/rulers/whatever of the Iraq occupation have already been replaced, and in yesterday's paper there was a bit about the difficult decisions facing our new ruler of Iraq. He has to decide how much democracy to permit. I suppose that should be classified as an amazing black joke. As if the Bushies have any conception of what democracy actually is.

Actually, that reminds me of the funniest recent story, where a bunch of Texas Democrats lammed out of the state to block some partisan Republican gerrymandering. Without a quorum, the Texas legislature was effectively shut down. Dubya's legacy and orchestrated by his staunch supporters. So much for the Bushies' claims of bipartisan leadership. (Yet again.) However, even this joke turns ugly. Turns out they used the Homeland Security Agency to help track down the missing legislators. They didn't actually have the power to arrest them outside of Texas--yet--but the "promise" was that the HSA was not going to be used for domestic political purposes. Yo-ho-ho. Power corrupts. No joke.

First we have a minor joke. As usual these days, not very funny. Not even newsworthy, since continuous hypocrisy is the new standard state of the Union. One of the leading conservative "political philosophers" is a fellow named William Bennett. His big best seller was called The Book of Virtues, though he's written others, such as The Children's Book of Virtues. Recently outed as a big-time gambler to the tune of $8 million in losses. Needless to say, gambling didn't make the list of virtues. So how many people would have bought that book if they had actually known they were just funding his gambling addiction? Now for the punchline. He was Secretary of Education under Reagan, personally responsible for creating a whole new generation of conservative voters. Makes it rather hard to have much hope for America's future.

Now for the big one, possibly to be filed under "be careful what you wish for" or "remember Ed Wood". Dubya recently launched his reelection campaign as the hero of the Iraqi liberation/occupation/whatever. This was done with a staged photo-op and speech aboard the aircraft carrier Lincoln. It's sort of okay, since they were way out there somewhere, much too far away to worry about hearing ol' Abe spinning in his grave. However, it mostly reminds me of ol' Ed Wood and Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Required background is to know that Plan 9 from Outer Space is regarded by many people as the worst movie ever made. A cult classic--but it wasn't intended that way. Ed Wood was the director back in 1959, and he was just as serious about it as any of his other movies. He actually made many movies, and all of them were regarded as bad, but this one was the worst. One of his most famous quotes was made at the premiere of Plan 9 from Outer Space: "This is it! THIS is the one I'll be remembered for!" He was right, you know. But not the way he meant it. Ed Wood is more famous now than he ever was when he was alive, but it's sort of a good thing he died rather than finding out why.

From all reports, Ed Wood really and sincerely believed he was creating great works of art. Most reports say Dubya thinks he's doing okay as resident of the White House in spite of leading America to economic disaster and new depths of perpetual fear. (And let's not forget the international isolation and even hostility.) However, this new militaristic image is a new thing, and should backfire disastrously for two reasons: 1) America is not a military dictatorship, and 2) Dubya is personally a military embarrassment.

When they wrote the Constitution they wanted to make it very clear that the American military serves the civilian government and NOT vice versa. They very deliberately and quite explicitly made a civilian "commander in chief" of the armed services. Yes, most presidents have served in the military, and many of them were even high ranking officers, but no real president has ever gotten confused about who's in charge, and to the best of my knowledge, no real president has ever appeared in a military uniform the way Dubya was prancing around in his military flight suit. This is the sort of propagandistic imagery you expect from an impoverished banana republic after the latest coup.

As for Dubya's OWN military service, that's NOT something they want the voters to think too much about, though this escapade is quite likely to bring it to the voters' attention. The very best angle is to say Dubya chose to avoid any risk of service in Vietnam, even though he supported that war, and Dubya's military record is all downhill from there. There were LONG waiting lists for national guard service, but Dubya instantly bypassed them. Everyone knows he evaded the draft using his father's influence. Anyone who ever hoped to be a military pilot (even including me) has to be rather offended that Dubya also got that posh billet, in spite of having the lowest possible qualifications. Then it gets into the messy stuff and the reasons why Dubya's personal military records remain sealed, even though all other public figures release their military service records as a matter of course. Most of the available evidence suggests that after receiving all that expensive flight training at public expense, Dubya just blew off the last part of his military commitment. Rather than make a politically awkward issue of his dereliction of duty, they simply swept it all under the rug, and pretended he was penalized by having his service extended a few months--as a name listed in a paper reserve unit in Colorado. There are still lots of questions that could be answered if his records were made public, but that seems very unlikely. Me, I'd like to know whether he was removed from flight status for incompetence as a pilot, fear of drug testing during his "young and irresponsible" days, or for other reasons.

So Dubya's handlers want this to be the image he's remembered for? Well, let's not forget Ed Wood's hope of being remembered for Plan 9 from Outer Space. Just didn't turn out the way he wanted it to. Ed Wood didn't intend to be remembered as the worst movie director of all time. Dubya's track record of worsts is already rather impressive.

Back in the logical paradox arena, this one is so bad we practically have to pray Dubya was lying. The one that's been getting coverage so far is the paradox of claiming we have solid proof of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, but it wasn't solid enough so we could actually find anything. At least in that case, we already know the Bushies were lying, and each day that goes by just makes it more likely that any evidence which does appear was faked--and there have already been too many attempts to use fake evidence for the Bushies to have any credibility to spare.

However, the new news is probably worse. Turns out that some of the leftover nuclear sites in Iraq have been looted and some of the nuclear material may have been taken. Some of this goes back to the days when Saddam was our friend and we were helping him "modernize" his country with American nuclear technology. The Israelis nipped most of that in the bud with their little bombing raid. However, if Dubya was actually telling the truth about Al Qaeda having organized connections with and operations in Iraq, then we know who has it now and what they're going to do with it. Unfortunately, there is no solid evidence here. The negative evidence is that Dubya didn't bother to give any detectable priority to securing these well-known and very dangerous sites, but what does that mean? Dubya knew that the Al Qaeda thing was a bogeyman? In that case he was just lying about a danger that didn't exist. Or maybe he actually hopes that Al Qaeda gets some of this stuff so he can justify more "defensive" power for himself? Lordy, who's minding the store?!

Lots of news items worthy of note, but mostly continuing to suffer from information malnutrition. Need a catchier description of that national malady. Mostly the news is tripe, but sometimes there are important hints revealed, sometimes just by the form of the misdirection.

The latest case in point is the political game playing with "homeland" security, which is supposed to be something we're all in favor of. The story was played for maximum headline coverage about how they were going to cut the number of airline security people. That's just another indirect subsidy where all of the taxpayers provide crucial security services for the airlines, with the primary beneficiaries being the same rich folks who do most of the flying. Can you imagine where ticket prices would be if the airlines actually had to absorb all of those costs, too?

This latest beauty was orchestrated by Dubya's appointee who heads the appropriate agency. The apparent point was to blame Congress for not coming up with more money. Even though the GOP has ostensible control of both houses of Congress, there's still a tiny risk of a couple of GOP defectors, so sometimes they have to compromise a tiny bit, and that's just unacceptable. After all, the airlines donated lots of money to Dubya and deserve to get "fair value" in return. Among the MANY other factors that weren't mentioned in considering the overall financial woes of the airline industry were declining tourism due to worries about SARS and massive federal deficits that are making it harder and harder to come up with money for anything, even though Dubya continues to press for more tax cuts for the wealthy (to make things worse for the rest of us serfs). The entire presentation was so twisted that I was amazed they could print it without putting all of it in italics. And of course they'll revive the story in a major way just as soon as there's another successful terrorist attack.

Gosh, just can't get away from the jokes in these busy days. Too bad they aren't trying to be funny. Just read that the US is effectively pulling out of Saudi Arabia, except for some instructors. That's the main thing Bin Ladin wanted. Remember him? The guy who actually supported the 9/11 massacre? Kind of fell out of the news, but now we're apparently doing all the things he wanted. Disposed of Saddam, and getting out of Saudi Arabia. What more could he ask for? Trying to figure out some way to interpret that as an American victory, especially when you add in all the billions of dollars spent and more thousands of innocent people killed. Sorry, but it just doesn't seem to add up. Blaming Saddam for 9/11 has to be another part of the joke, but it still ain't funny. More like insane.

Whoops, forgot the important issue of the day: SARS. That's the one we're not supposed to think about yet. Not sure why they're downplaying it so much, since it has the potential to become pandemic and in that case would do much more damage than the infamous Spanish Flu after WW I. More deaths than the war itself. In most ways this is much worse, but modern medicine is much better and no one knows what will happen. So far the Chinese are still trying to keep it under control, though they seem to be losing, and it's also in Canada, too. Not supposed to be any risk of spread from Canada, but it's very likely to escape from China at some point, and then things will probably become really bad--unless the rumors about it being an American bio-weapon test turn out to be true. In that case, as soon as it seems to be going pandemic, there will suddenly be a "miracle breakthrough" and a vaccine will suddenly be given to all the fine Americans and Brits--where "fine" probably means "loyal supporters of King George". However, for now I still think it's just a natural disaster, and hopefully real science will conquer it. Sure hope they don't need any of the copious resources under Dubya's control. He doesn't even believe in evolution, so why would he buy into their scientific explanations that the disease is evolving in a dangerous way? "It must be God's righteous wrath smiting those Chinese heathens!!"

Well, in retrospect it's hard to call it much of a war. How about "Slaughterhouse Iraq"? America officially spent $75 billion for the month, give or take a few billion. What's a few billion dollars among Dubya's friends? Iraq's related expenses were estimated around $1.5 billion equivalent. Not quite a cakewalk, but close enough. I think the biggest joke was American complaints about an "asymmetrical war", when virtually every aspect of the asymmetry was in our favor. Not yet clear if they actually killed Saddam or if he took a powder after an assassination attempt of opportunity, but if the whole point was to kill him, $75 billion certainly seems ridiculous. The Russian mafia could have handled the job for a few million. I'm sure they've hired some old KGB boys for just that sort of thing. Ongoing costs are unknown, but we should be delighted that Iraq is now able to follow our wonderful principles--at least the 2nd Amendment principles. Apparently an extremely large number of fully automatic weapons up and disappeared in the chaos, and it's quite safe to say that most of them will never be traced. Oh well. Everyone already knew it was a tough neighborhood.

WMD? You remember WMD, don't you? The reason we did all this, right? Well, turns out we still can't find anything, so the latest claims are that our wonderful intelligence just didn't discover that they'd all been destroyed or sent somewhere else before the "war" even started. Kind of outrageous propaganda insofar as we insisted we had solid proof and that was our rationale for killing all those Iraqis. They're still counting, but around 2,000 civilians certified dead so far. But who cares about such trivia as Iraq rapidly slides into various forms of anarchy? So far the only evidence of unification is that all the strong factions want the Americans to get out of their country.

Lots of details of various sorts in the news, but hard to keep track of all of it. Actually, I've realized the bigger picture is not just information overload, but outright "information malnutrition". The mass media is fully controlled by right-wing fanatics, and they eagerly provide a stream of information pabulum, mostly focusing on blood and gore that support the desired environment of fear, with an occasional juicy gossip story. A much broader spectrum of information on the Web, but who can find it? Especially significant that Google appears to be increasingly exercising their censorship powers, which is almost as good as deleting a Web server altogether. It's not that there is an absence of important information that should be reaching the voters, but that tiny trickle that would be vital for the nourishment of real democracy is being blocked up as effectively as possible. The most glaring example remains Cheney's national energy policy as forged by Enron and friends. That certainly should have been vigorously pursued and exposed by Congress, but instead those worthless Congressmen just sat back and let the GAO struggle futilely for a while, and now it's apparently a dead "non-issue" as to how Cheney and friends are robbing the nation.

Of course the media is full of more news of Czarist America's war on Iraq. I guess the only important detail is how many innocent people have died. I'd say that we've now passed Al Qaeda in that category. Very conservative estimates say we've already killed more than 300 Iraqi civilians. These estimates are conservative in the sense that they are carefully confirmed reports of cases where American weapons actually did the deed. More realistically, the numbers must be much higher, even vastly larger if we consider the long-term effects of the sanctions. However, Iraq is much smaller than America, less than 1/10 the population, so on a per capita basis, those 300 deaths are proportionately larger than the 3,000 deaths America suffered on 9/11.

Apparently the war is not the cakewalk that Dubya and Rumsfeld had been selling. We're sending another 100,000 emergency reinforcements, and sandstorms and Iraqi resistance fighters and guerrilla tactics are all making things very awkward. Turns out the Iraqis don't love us after all. Even the many of the Iraqis that dislike Saddam apparently dislike the US even more. Cost estimates continue to skyrocket, but that's probably just making the secret bad news public. Bottom line is that there's absolutely no way for Dubya to get out of the mess now. Of course, from HIS special perspective, this is no mess at all. Though overall the war is a disaster, including a financial disaster, some people do manage to make large profits, and those people happen to be his special friends, and they'll gladly provide the money he needs to stay in power. Actually should be a bargain next time, since he's going to be the perpetual war president and the elections will be fully rigged.

Well, Dubya is finally getting his war on, but first, a forgotten word on the old topic of Al Qaeda. Yeah, remember them? The guys who actually attacked us? Wanted to add a few words of confusion about that recent arrest of the high Al Qaeda honcho. Still not even sure if he is actually alive, and pretty sure they haven't started any fancy show trials yet. No sign of the body, but he never qualified for habeus corpus, anyway. However, there was an official US Government announcement explaining the kinds of torture we were "allowed" to use. In quotes, because no one else gets to tell us Amerikans anything about what we are and are not allowed to do. Officially, the torture would be limited to "relatively minor" stuff like sleep and light and food deprivation, though they admitted they would exploit torture targets of opportunity. In that context, they mentioned another Al Qaeda leader who was shot a few times during his capture, and they thought it fitting and appropriate to deny him any pain relieving medications during his interrogations. With regards to the high Al Qaeda honcho who might or might not be alive and under torture somewhere, they definitely admitted to capturing his young children, and explained that they would be interrogated very humanely, using child psychologists and all that stuff. Nevertheless, remember that this is just the stuff they are officially admitting to, and it's pretty obvious that they are vigorously slanting things their way. Just look at some of the lies about Iraq. Pure and utter balderdash. On the torture topic, they didn't mention anything about adding drugs to the food, but that's because they're sure they can eliminate that evidence, and even the torturee can't prove anything about the drugs. Also nothing about the transfers of prisoners to less squeamish governments that are willing to take care of the "proper" tortures at arms length from the "good and moral" Amerikans.

Meanwhile, back to Dubya's war. Actually seems to be starting off relatively slowly, and apparently even with extreme concern about minimizing civilian casualties. Two most likely explanations are that Dubya has realized he is committing war crimes and wants to minimize the number of counts against him, or that he's hoping (and no doubt praying) to get lucky and drop one on Saddam's noodle. Assassination is such an ugly word! Let's just call it an act of god. (Yeah, I think it MUST be a little "g" god in Dubya's case. No way a just God could be involved in any of this.) The Bushies are calling it a decapitation strategy, but not much chance it's going to work. Quite obvious that Saddam's counterintelligence boys are going to flood the channels, and that's one of the places where the defense has a fundamental advantage.

I feel like adding some comments about the anti-war protests, but that's got nothing to do with Dubya: See no peace, hear no peace, speak no peace. Act war. However, seems more useful to comment on yet another Bushish moral inversion: Lawyers as better politicians? Yeah, you read it correctly. In general lawyers are the scum of the earth, greedy game players who exploit the rules and other people's problems, and I generally regard it as a big problem that almost all politicians come from that bad crowd. However, when push comes to shove, at least the lawyers have SOME respect for the rule of law. Dubya started his national career by riding roughshod over the election laws of Florida (and double roughshod over the will of the voters), and now he's doing the same to international law, only more so.

It's not that I think the UN is perfect or anything, but when you look at the bottom line, they did manage to avoid any really major wars for more than 50 years, which is probably the all-time record. I'm making allowances for technology there. Yes, far fewer people died in earlier wars, but those still were the most major wars they could manage in those times, given the available killing technologies. These days we can take out an entire city with one bomb. And the way Dubya is going, that's what's going to happen--but Dubya is sure that he'll be safe enough in his bunker, and in political terms, that will really consolidate his grip on power.

So what are the Bushies going to do with the power? Still not clear. They could still go down the Nazi road, but let's hope not. Certainly they can't be thinking of a Napoleonic empire. Try to compare Dubya with Napoleon without falling off of your chair. Actually, I think the model they are most likely following is Czarist Russia, with the extreme gap between the serfs and the ruling class.

Lots of things continue to happen, and STILL can't figure out what to say about them. I feel like digressing to a piece on the marks of a real journalist... As an outline:

1. Recognizing the important facts
2. Recognizing the lies
3. Spotting the missing information (Especially hard to see what isn't there, and the Bushies are trying REALLY hard to make sure most of the truth is NOT out in public.)
4. Knowing where to focus when writing about things

A number of items floating around in my head, and still don't know what to make of them. One is actually about Rove, Dubya, and the crazy nickname thing. I knew about Dubya's "Boy Genius" nickname for Rove, but I didn't realize that Rove becomes "Turd Blossom" when things aren't going Dubya's way. Doesn't sound like a very friendly joke. Perhaps a love-hate relationship? Or maybe just more evidence of Dubya's mental imbalance and confusion.

Not sure whether or not to classify it as more evidence, but a few days ago Dubya got the networks to give him air time for a major speech. Apparently he was expected to announce the start of the war against Iraq, but instead he just mumbled about Israel and the Palestinians. Calling wolf big time? Perhaps trying to keep Saddam off balance? Actually, my guess is that something caused him to lose his nerve at the last second, but it's hard to imagine what. He very clearly has no choice but to punt the UN, so what else is he waiting for? Or maybe there was a terrorist plot they don't want to tell us about? I didn't hear anything about another increase of the alert level, though there have been lots of jokes about the perpetual alerts, duct tape, and the Great Ductator. About the only thing I'm pretty sure of is that these must be "Turd Blossom" days.

Perhaps worth noting that Dubya recently gave his first press conference in over a year. Apparently came off quite badly, looking very staged and bogus, and Dubya acted like he was drugged to the gills. Around the same time he cancelled a planned speech to our "allies" when they were unable to guarantee a friendly reception. The report there was that he wanted to be assured of receiving a standing ovation and that there would be no heckling or protests. That one is a sign of thinking he's some sort of king. Doesn't exactly surprise me--I've long regarded him as King George II. However, a number of people have commented on how Dubya seems to be losing his already weak grip on reality. Heaven help us all when he snaps completely.

Back on the joke topic, I actually managed to make one in Japanese, though it doesn't translate very well. �uƒCƒ‰ƒN‚É“ü‚炸‚ñ‚Î�A�Ζû‚𓾂¸�B�v The Japanese all recognize it immediately as based on a Japanese folk saying about the tiger's lair, and they even laugh at it. The original says that you have to go into the tiger's den if you want to get a tiger cub, though the modified version would translate as "If you don't go into Iraq, you can't take the oil." Unfortunately, the translation is very flat and doesn't capture the funniness of the original.

Lots happening, but not much to say about it I guess. Even what news there is seems confusing and misleading. For example, recently they reported that the number two leader of Al Qaeda had been captured, but he apparently turned out to be dead. Still not clear if he was killed in the raid, or after the raid, or maybe before the raid, or what. Enough rumors flying around for him to turn up alive, actually. I hope not, but who knows? Anyway, it's unlikely they could have gotten anything out of him. At least not if they wanted enough pieces left for a show trial.

Yesterday there was a big anti-war demonstration in Hibya Park, and I went for a while. I didn't stay for the march to Ginza, but I sat in the theater for a while. One report said there were 40,000 participants, though with my own eyes I never saw more than about 15,000. However, I went to the library before the march actually began. I was wearing a "Dubya's political weather forecast: Moral inversion with a 100% chance of WAR" sign. Truly absurd situation that leaving Saddam alone appears to be the lesser evil now, but Dubya has specialized in messing things all of his life. Just bigger messes these days.

Two more thoughts about that Holocaust movie. First, while it is true that most of the German people in the 1930s would have been horrified by and strongly opposed to the crimes that their nation would ultimately commit, it is also true that many of them voted for the Nazis, for whatever reason. The elections that brought Hitler to power were basically fair and honest, and the government of Germany at the time was the most democratic and "safe" design that the allies could come up with. That was supposed to have been a lesson of what we now not amusingly call WW I. At that the time it was regarded as the ultimate war to end all wars.

Second, it is also true that there were many prominent Nazis who were extreme racists and who truly and passionately hated the Jews. There were people who regarded the Jews as subhuman monsters and who wanted to kill all of them. Many of them rose to prominent positions of power under the Nazis, even though most Germans would have dismissed them as a lunatic fringe. This very much reminds me of many of the current GOP supporters, even including some of Dubya's judicial nominees. Rush Limbaugh seems to attract many of the worst of them. Heck, he panders to them. I recently came across what was supposed to be one of their writings that explained why Amerika should attack and destroy the rest of the world. The vivid description was of their miserable and impoverished descendants peering fearfully out of their caves, in terror of the return of the 'Mercans. It would be nicer to believe it was written as some kind of reverse propaganda, but I just don't think so. I think that the author was quite sincere and the author is just a wannabe war criminal. However, the sad thing about war criminals is that the "best case" is that they are punished for their deeds, but in EVERY such case many innocent people have already suffered horribly from the war crimes.

Dubya's utter lack of moral clarity has so mucked up the situation that it now appears the least evil course of action is to leave Saddam alone. If that isn't a screw up, I can't imagine what would qualify. The Great Ductator, my eye.

So much for comedy... A friend wanted to see the movie "The Pianist" yesterday. Not funny at all, but many aspects reminded me of things which are happening in America right now. Or should that be Amerika? Yes, there are lots of differences, too, but history never repeats itself exactly. I'm quite certain that if you asked the German people of the '30s, at the time period that seems to correspond to where America is today, they certainly wouldn't have foreseen that they were headed to the outcome the movie shows... Even the Nazis themselves couldn't have seen where it was all heading.

This morning I came across a rather good explanation of how computerized voting can be used for fraud and to violate the electoral process. Most of the evidence was rather circumstantial, unfortunately, but the fundamental problem is that the power exists, and any power that exists tends to be used--and abused. There is NO good reason not to create a paper trail of the election process. There is NO good reason to eliminate independent information about how the voters actually voted. But there is a very clear and very BAD reason to do so, if the goal is to control the elections and ignore the voters' will.

Still in the humor column. Now it's the Great Ductator. I think that would be a really fitting nickname for Dubya as a capsule description of his reign of error. Dubya's homeland security boys told people to get some duct tape and plastic and tape up a room so it will be sealed against a terrorist attack. If it wasn't so utterly stupid it would be really laughable. However, considering the way Dubya is running the country into the ground, I just hope someone will be around to laugh at it.