test from bilbo blogger
This is a test.
Bush “legacy”? Nobody with functioning synapses gives a rat’s ass…
White House interns forced to fill seats at final Bush press conference | Crooks and Liars
With seven days left until he surrenders power, Bush will have to do a heck of a sales job to convince the nation of this. Further complicating his last-minute legacy rehabilitation: Nobody seems to be paying attention. The White House had high expectations for yesterday’s final, historic news conference. “ONE CORRESPONDENT PER ORGANIZATION,” proclaimed the bulletin sent to reporters. “STANDING ROOM ONLY FOR NON-SEAT HOLDERS.” But when the appointed hour of 9:15 a.m. arrived, the last two rows in the seven-row briefing room were empty, and a press aide told White House interns to fill those seats.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, asswipe. As has been crystal clear since before the 2000 stolen election: what a loser.
xephem and missing Print.h
When compiling xephem under Fedora 9 and 10, I got an error complaining of a missing X11/extensions/Print.h. Turns out two development libraries are missing: libXp-devel and libXmu-devel. After installing these from the Fedora repository, xephem compiled successfully.
Spaceship on the Mountain
A lenticular cloud over the San Francisco Peaks on 24 December. We were on our way back to Flagstaff after visiting the Grand Canyon.
Results of Plutocracy
America the Horrendous?
Mostly not, perhaps. But there’s no ignoring certain blatant facts that are all too clear—certainly to the rest of the world if not the ignorant, unthinking, in-denial masses blithering away their lives in America. Spiegel Online has a (typically) well-written, if depressing, article:
America, Land of Extremes: An Enigmatic Country Elects a New President
America? A horrendous country that betrays its own values every few years, thus forfeiting its moral right to lead the Western world. It elects presidents who know nothing about the world, and have no interest in learning more, which explains why they readily succumb to errors and illusions, only to reveal their utter amazement when they finally—and usually too late—admit their mistakes. Since 1945, America has been fighting wars in countries that it knows very little about, and under premises that have almost nothing to do with reality.
America is a superpower around the globe, but a Third World country at home, with an infrastructure that defies description. There are collapsing bridges, power failures along the entire East Coast, and homes in places like Florida, North Carolina and Texas are regularly destroyed every year by hurricanes that flatten houses as if they were beach bungalows in Haiti.
There is also the obscene contrast between rich and poor, which has hardy interested or shocked any administration since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. What is even more obscene is the ignorance of a government that allows millions of people, in the richest country in the world, to live without health insurance. This is a government that stands by idly as the (primarily black) city of New Orleans disappears under floodwaters. Yes, the most obscene aspect of all remains the unacknowledged racism in this country of pragmatic enlightenment—the ongoing prejudices of whites against blacks.
America is an extreme country, and no one feels indifferent about it.
David Sedaris on Presidential Elections
David Sedaris offers this analogy to help us understand undecided voters:
I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?” To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
You Should be Scared
H. Bruce Franklin writes in truthout:
Some people are making fun of how Sarah Palin pronounces “nuclear.” That’s a mistake. Instead they should listen to how she used the word - because that displayed a truly terrifying ignorance.
“Now, a leader like Ahmadinejad,” she said, “is not one whom we can allow to acquire nuclear energy, nuclear weapons.” Her mindless merging of nuclear energy with nuclear weapons threatens the entire structure of the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the only legal obstacle to a planet where dozens of nations confront each other with nuclear bombs and missiles. The NPT is also the only legal obstacle to a nuclear-armed Iran.
The NPT depends on its assurance that all non-nuclear armed states have an “inalienable right” to develop “nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.” The treaty even obligates nuclear-armed states to assist this development. To insure that this nuclear energy is being developed for peaceful purposes, the NPT provides for international inspection. That is the legal basis for the inspection being conducted in Iran. Denying Iran’s right to nuclear energy would push it into withdrawing from the NPT, thus ending all inspection and actually legitimizing a nuclear-armed Iran.
So was this just a slip by Palin? Or was it just her own ignorance? I’m afraid the answer is much scarier. Palin was attempting (in her garbled way) to express the long-held position of John McCain, which was also the policy that George W. Bush actually implemented, the policy that led to North Korea testing a nuclear bomb in 2006 and moving toward a nuclear arsenal.
Back in 1994, President Bill Clinton halted North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons (which had begun during President George H. W. Bush’s administration) by negotiating what is known as the “Agreed Framework.” Under the Agreed Framework, North Korea’s secretly produced plutonium was locked up and placed under strict international supervision, with teams of international inspectors sent to live in North Korea, where they maintained continual surveillance of any possible nuclear activities. In return, the United States agreed to help North Korea meet its energy needs by providing an ample supply of fuel oil and two light-water nuclear reactors, just as envisioned in the NPT.
Washington, however, did not abide by several parts of its side of the agreement, including its promise to help build the light-water reactors. Nevertheless, on and off negotiations continued, and for the next eight years North Korea engaged in no significant development of nuclear weapons.
But then in December 2002, after denouncing Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the “axis of evil” and while deploying forces to invade Iraq under the spurious argument that Iraq possessed an arsenal of “weapons of mass destruction,” President Bush announced that the United States was unilaterally withdrawing from the Agreed Framework. When the United States actually invaded the only one of these three nations that did not have any active nuclear program, North Korea predictably decided to go hell-bent for a nuclear deterrent. So in 2003, North Korea withdrew from the NPT. Thus, the international inspectors no longer had any right to be there and Pyongyang was free to rush into the nuclear arms race. On October 8, 2006, North Korea conducted its first test of a nuclear bomb.
Three days later, Sen. John McCain went on NBC’s “Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” to blame North Korea’s bomb on President Clinton and the Agreed Framework. To advance his position, McCain blatantly rewrote history, ignoring the basic fact that the Agreed Framework had stopped North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons for eight years. Later that week, a number of analysts called this the beginning of a campaign by McCain to win the White House in 2008.
McCain’s position on nuclear proliferation two years ago is still his position today. Forget meaningful negotiations, ignore the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and rely on threats and force to keep nations such as Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. So it’s not hard to understand how Sarah Palin, after her pre-debate crash course in talking points, could end up saying that Iran should not be allowed to have nuclear energy.
That’s scary. What’s even scarier is that so few Americans know enough to be scared by the words coming out of the mouth of someone who could easily become president of the United States sometime in the next four years.
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A former navigator and intelligence officer in the Strategic Air Command, H. Bruce Franklin is the author of 19 books, including “War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination.” He is currently the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark.
Candidates’ Issues Pages
Thanks to Mahablog:
If you want details, don’t wait for details to be spoon fed to you through mass media. The candidates’ websites have the details. All you have to do is click and read.
[W]hen you get beneath the interface, some of McCain’s content is a bit dated. His “Relief for American Families” section still promotes a summer gas tax holiday, for example. And much of the content is vague. You read that John McCain is going to act decisively to achieve this or that goal, but often the “how” is missing.
On Obama’s site you get how up the wazoo.
- He has bulleted lists.
- He has lots of bulleted lists.
- His bulleted lists have bulleted lists.
Dear Wall St., do us all a huge favor: Jump!
Yeah, this seems about right:
Interrupting the negotiations to save his campaign
Origins of the Financial Crisis Explained
The best explanation I’ve seen:
Joe goes to the track and bets $2 on a horse.
Two guys standing nearby get into a discussion and Fred says to Sam, “I’ll bet you $5 that Joe wins his bet.”
Next to them are Bill and Bob. Bill says: “I’ll bet you $10 that Fred welshes on his bet if he loses.”
Next to them is Sally. Sally says: “For $3 I’ll guarantee to Bill that if Bob fails to pay off, I’ll make good on the bet.”
Sally then goes to Mary and borrows the $7 needed in case she has to ever pay off and promises to pay back $8. She doesn’t expect to every have to pay since she believes Bob will always make good. So she expects to net $2 no matter what happens to Joe.
A quick calculation indicates that there is now 2+5+10+3+7 = $27 riding on the outcome of the horse race.
Question how much has been “invested” in the horse race?
Wait for it:
Answer:
$50,000 by the owner of the horse who is expecting to recoup his investment from the winnings of the horse and other future deals. Everyone else is gambling, not investing
