Tannishblog

In Hungary, protesters rioted when they learned that their Prime Minister lied to them about the economy:

We lied throughout the past one and a half or two years," Ferenc Gyurcsany said. "We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening and also at night."

I don’t condone violence as a means toward political reform, I nonetheless find it refreshing that a people can expect their elected officials to adhere to democratic principles and to behave ethically. Imagine that!

What would it take for the people of this country to force Washington to a code of behavior in accordance with our moral values? What would Hungarians think or our administration’s five years of lies, political hack-jobs, and bankrupting our nation to further an un-win-able war? Likely they wouldn’t stop at trashing just a TV station.

I missed another Friday Night Zen post. While you may be ambivalent, these are important to me because it is one thing about this blog that may be unique. At least, I haven’t yet found anyone else doing such. Too, it is a great exercise for me to re-affirm my convictions ant to learn how to communicate such slippery concepts. It’s sort of like the Jehovah Witness’ practice of going door to door to proselytize, but less annoying.

To the (imagined) few who like reading my Friday posts, I apologize. You are out there, aren’t you? The other week, and again last night, I became involved in a project that, while overtly consumer focused, has a Zen-like calming affect in me: Disassembling and reassembling computers.

After three long years of squirreling away spare Hamiltons, I bought an impressive pile of computer guts and am trying to recreate Frankenstein. (Its’ much easier extracting electronic intestines that it is to insert them.) I’ll spare you the boring specs. Once that is done, I’ll try to use the older, still useful parts to upgrade other machines in the family, rebuild my Linux box, and generally delay paternal responsibility as much as I can.

The tired, old adage is true: "You can separate the men from the boys by the price of their toys…" I’m okay with that.

Hooray! The Republicans are finally thinking again. I always knew they could. After five years the proverbial 9/11 ether has worn off and they awaken from the Presidential Line-dancing festival with a splitting election-cycle headache. Many, no doubt, are trying hard to remember how they got home from the party.

Only now are they willing to question the judgment of our "leaders;" only now are they able to do their jobs. Five years of goose-stepping will be hard to erase from an angry public’s consciousness. Five years of "Yes, sir. Please pass the Kool-aid…" will stick to them like tar and feathers. The job of congress is to debate policy, to dissect it and decide whether a current proposal is in the best interests of both the nation as an entity and the people that entity represents. Finally, slowly and painfully, that function is being reinstated. 

To finally act to reign in our inhuman (lack of) detention policy, is a great step forward. We’ve taken, however, too many steps backward for this one issue to regain our global integrity. This needs doing, as does our investigation of intelligence-gathering techniques. Many other closet decisions of our administration need the light of day. Mayhap many of them will stand. But the process of balance, so painstakingly set out in our nation’s initial documents, must be followed. Now that the fog has lifted from the collective minds of our Republican congress, the realization is apparent.

Too bad for them its too late.

As a Liberal, I’m supposed to toe the line and get upset over the NSA’s domestic eavesdropping program. I just can’t. I have nothing to hide. Let them listen.

One of the hard lessons I’ve learned in my nearly half century is to "Pick your fights." One simply cannot go about angry and shrill over every little infraction real or imagined. Believe me; I’ve tried. The end result is that no one will listen at all so, when a really important issue comes along, you’re tuned out before you even begin.

Another lesson learned is, as my inner geek would say, it so "Improve your signal-to-noise ratio." This would involve thinking before speaking, remaining calm and rational, and actually having something of value to offer.

So because of these lessons and because the program just might save lives, I cannot get too excited about the whole thing. Besides, it is humanly impossible, and technologically infeasible to mine every word and inflection in the vast landscape of voice transmissions. What the NSA can find is patterns over time. So if your patterns show that you have a regular connection to your cocaine trafficker in Kenya, or some such, then you might want to be concerned. Whether that particular information was or was not gathered legally might be irrelevant in such an instance.

What might concern me - and the fight I would chose - is if the NSA or anyone else crashed my door down without a warrant in the dark of night. Regardless of how our government gets its data, it is more important how it reacts to the knowledge gained. Spy, if you must. As I said; I have nothing to hide. But when the time comes to act upon that information, do so legally.

Crossposted at Democrats.org :

Happy Halloween! "What?" you say, "It's only September."

For the next few weeks, it might as well be Halloween or maybe a marathon Fright-Film fest. As Rep. Jim McDermott notes at Huffington Post, Expect to be frightened.

The Congress of the United States has reconvened in Washington, D.C., but don't expect Congress to legislate on behalf of the American people.

The Republican Party will spend the next 30 days trying to make you afraid. It is the Republican midterm election strategy.

For the rest of September, until the moment Republican leaders gavel the Congress into adjournment, Republican speakers will rise and implore the American people to be afraid.

He says 30 days. I say the fearmongering will continue until the photo finish in November and, if the Repugs have their way, well beyond. It's already begun.

President Bush mixed solemn remembrance of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks yesterday with a renewed call to complete the mission in Iraq, paying tribute to the fallen even while warning Americans that failure in the Middle East would leave the United States more vulnerable than ever to Islamic extremists.

"Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq," Bush said last night in a prime-time address from the Oval Office, "the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone. They will not leave us alone. They will follow us. The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad."

"I am often asked why we are in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks," Bush said.

"The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat," the president said, tapping his desk for emphasis. "The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power."

Politicizing 9/11. Shameless. Especially when one notes how G. Warmonger Bush has missed the last few 9/11 anniversaries. Why attend this one? It's an election year, dummy!

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon:

Cheney told the crowd, which included families who lost loved ones during the attack on the Pentagon, that America has learned difficult lessons since that fateful day.

"We have learned that oceans do not protect us, and threats that gather thousands of miles away can now find us here at home," he said. "We have learned that there is a certain kind of enemy, whose ambitions have no limits and whose cruelty is only fed by the grief of others. In these years, we also found our mission, to defend America against a present danger, and to offer democracy and hope as the alternative to extremism and terror."

The vice president said America has a history of fighting tyranny and will never give in to terrorism.

"This nation has defeated tyrants and liberated death camps, raised the lamp of liberty to every captive land," he said. "We have no intention of ignoring or appeasing history's latest gang of fanatics trying to murder their way to power."

I especially love the way they try to cast themselves into the WWII imagery, as if they are the Saviors of the World Incarnate. Bullshit! Not a single one can match people like Montgomery, Eisenhower or Patton. To paraphrase Sen. Lloyd Bentsen: "You're no Winston Churchill, George." It seems the rest of America is noting this also: Who Left This Hole in the Ground, Mr. President?

So, prepared to be scared. Or to be disgusted some more. The Halloween season is upon us. While Education slips behind world standards, Health care impoverished us, while the wealthy reap benefits of vast tax cuts sent to off-shore shelters, while our vice President continues to work for the oil industry, while billions of dollars have been lost through graft and corruption, we on the ground floor get to watch the circus our Republican congressmen are planning to maintain their empire.

BOO!

Okay. I know I’m pointing out other’s words today instead of creating my own. Some days the muses sleep in, and here in Chicago, the rain makes it a great day to sleep in. Too bad I went to work.

Anywho, Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch and author Ira Chernus has an interesting take on all the 9/11 hyperbole floating about. (Gotta clean up the place after this.) It seems, per Tom , that the Day The World Changed came earlier than we’re led to believe.Very insightful.

This is the vicious circle from Hell. The Bush administration’s aggressive policies weaken U.S. power. Then its officials try to frighten the public into supporting the very same aggressive policies. We were stuck in a similar cycle, only half-recognized, throughout the Cold War years, and there’s no end in sight. So far, it looks like not much has changed at all since 9/11.

A nice tidbit from the CIA’s World Factbook which ranks nations based upon their bank accounts (literally.) Guess who’s in last place.

C’mon, guess.

What mystery? How about the one where a broadcast network, after decades of building credibility and fomenting trust with the American people, would throw it all away for an obvious political hack job.

Oh, yeah… that mystery.

Well, Lambert at Correntwire follows the money. What is it about the state of Florida that can twist the integrity of our great nation so shamelessly? (ignore that: rhetorical question.)

As I troll the web looking for inspiration on Patriot Day, the fifth anniversary of the demolition of the World Trade Towers. While reading all the pablum and politics the papers are spewing, one thing occurs to me:

Al Qaida succeeded in its mission to disrupt America.

And we’ve helped them do it. From conspiracy theorists to antiwar activists, from spying governments to circuit judge rulings, our nation has fractured. The debate whether ABC is libeling Democrats or just exercising author’s licence in its portrayal of event leading up to the tragedy, its political fallout for both parties, is just the latest example of how the attacks at the pentagon and in New York were victorious.

Notwithstanding anyone’s feelings about our incumbents, the Grand Canyon of our political discontent has never been as wide or as deep as it has grown since that fateful day five years ago. And it’s still growing. I’m sure our discomfort is a pleasure to watch for those who dreamed up the attacks: their understanding of American cultural psychology must be keen. And our understanding of ourselves must be non-existent.

Well done, Osama: good job.

I just may become a turncoat. For the past seven days, I've been wrestling with a mysterious Windows XP slowdown. I've read about it, but never paid much attention. My latent teenager is in play whenever I get near technology, and when reading the horror stories, the teenager said, "That won't happen to me."

It did. And a gamut of diagnostics ensued:

1. Update virus definitions and run Symantec: nothing.
2. Update and run Spy-bot Search and Destroy: nothing.
3. Research the problem online and discover a free malware utility (a-Squared) download, install and run: nothing.
4. Defrag hard drive, even though windows said I didn't need to: no improvement.
5. Update drivers for mother board, video card: no effect.
6. Research some more and discover a PC fixing utility, Error Doctor, download the free scanning utility and run (incredibly slow, points our a couple hundred errors, then does nothing about them - until you pay for the fixing part of the program for $30.) Too gimmicky, but it did clue me in on the possibility that DirectX was at fault.
7. Opened IE (which I hate), ran Windows Update which located a need for .NET framework update, clicked proceed, then went to the local CompUSA seeking inspiration, got my haricut, came back and the screen hadn't changed one iota. Frozen PC-cicle. (You know there's a problem with the software when even the new machines still have a reset button front-and-center.)
8. While at computer store, I take a chance on a PC repair utility suite, System Tech XP ( not too expensive) and, after rebooting the frozen machine, installed it and ran the registry clean-up tool. CRASH! half way through the registry scan, I'm greeted with the MS friendly crash-report message (as if that ever does anything constructive) offering to sent Microsoft information on the crashing of a third party program. (I imagine is goes into a vast electronic round-file or inter-dimensional vortex of some kind - same thing.)
9. during the hassle of registering new, worthless software with vendor to facilitate a fix or an RMA, I remember the DirectX clue. So, I again visit Microsoft Update, and reinstall the latest version. The machine seems fine, now.

Can computers laugh? If only it knows how far I've come in saving for new components. Sure; play your games now, buddy. Your days are numbered. As soon as Vista comes out I'm gutting you, ripping out your innards, and upgrading like mad, you…you Frankenstein!

Wait a minute! Do I really want to waste more money on the Microsoft Hegemony? My older, mellower machine runs Ubuntu like silk. And Most geeks know - even if they're in denial - that Apple makes a better Operating System. The upcoming Windows Vista is only playing catch-up with OSX, anyway. From all I've read, it will be just a cosmetic upgrade. Nothing new to prevent crashes, spyware, virii, trojans, worms - all the nastiness of a Windows machine will still prevail Should I even bother?

Damn, it sounds like I'm contemplating treason!.