Archive - Jul 2008

Quoted in the Star Tribune, massively popular online news source Ars Technica, and Third Pipe. Interviewed recently on a MN foundation blog and on Mark Heaney's show on Air America [mp3 file].

Also had an op-ed published this week.

What a couple of days. Yesterday, I took the day off to visit my parents and help with some yard work. It was hot and humid. Especially when the trusty ole Probe stalled on blacktop on my way down there in the morning. Waited for the tow truck for 45 minutes when it magically started again. So I finished the drive.

Decided to drive it back home despite its unreliability because the auto shop I go to is closer to me than them. It stalled. On 35E. After 45 minutes, while again waiting for a tow truck, it started. Poof. So I started moving again, hoping it would keep working, as in the morning.

But it didn't. And traffic was backed up due to construction (on 35E, at 9:30 at night). So when it died this time, I was not moving and could not get on the shoulder. Fortunately, the construction had just changed the traffic pattern and instead of using only the lane I was in, they changed it to using only the other two lanes. Phew.

Unfortunately, it was dark, and some idiot nearly nailed me anyway. So instead of waiting more than an hour for the tow truck AAA was arranging for me, I called 911 and patched me through to the State Police. They sent a cruiser to push me off the road for safety and called a different tow truck that would get there faster. The officer was quite friendly and waited there until the wrecker arrived to offer more protection against drunks or other idiots who might hit me.

Got towed to the auto shop, where Michelle came out at 11:00 to pick me up and transfer my stuff to her car. This morning, I woke up after barely sleeping and developing a huge headache. Drove up to the shop to drop off the keys to the car and explain that if it was going to be a spendy repair, we'll opt not to do it and get rid of the car.

Driving back in Michelle's car, I was sitting at a traffic light when I was confused to see quarters from the center console hit the dashboard. I think my brain heard it, then saw it, and puzzled over it until I realized I had just been rear-ended. Again. Happened 14 months ago to me in the Probe. This is now my 6th auto accident (I was responsible for only 1 but was driving for 3 of them).

The woman who hit me (she was probably mid twenties) looked fairly scared. I was shaky, having started with a headache and now having too much adrenaline in my body. We pulled off, called the police, and exchanged info. Had to wait awhile, so we talked. She was friendly, apologized, and actually thanked me at one point for not yelling at her. At that point, I was closer to just crying because everything auto-related seems to be falling apart in my life.

The St. Paul police officer arrived, was incredibly friendly and gave us a case number. So I called into work, came home, and laid on the couch with Harley for the day. Took pain killers, buried my head under the pillow and listened to the Director's commentary on Transformers. Feeling better now. Not great, but better.

It helps to have Michelle be incredibly supportive over the last 2 days and my family being there whenever I need them. So thanks. I'll try not mess up any (more) of your vehicles...

After yet another conversation about whether the world is going to hell in a handbasket - the predominate opinion of most people, throughout time, seems to be yes and faster than ever before. For more than a year now, I have been fighting some of these sentiments by suggesting that things are actually looking up.

For instance, pollution has decreased dramatically (exempting greenhouse gases, which is hugely worrisome) even under the Bush Administration, which I believe has slowed the rate of improvement rather than actually move us backward.

So I finally looked up some data to see if my hunches were correct. Let's start nationally, the EPA has some data (but they have about a million miles to go before being as helpful as the Energy Information Administration). But it is fairly clear that we have made progress on reducing pollution targeted by the Clean Air Act.

So we are seeing some dramatic national improvements and I feel vindicated for claiming that the air is much cleaner now than at any other point in my life.

You can play around with local monitoring stations that report to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to check out pollution levels throughout Minnesota.

I found a monitoring station near my apartment and found that carbon monoxide levels have dramatically decreased over the years.

So if you are convinced that everything is messed up and getting worse, you may have to look to other areas than air pollution.

Spent last weekend at Michelle's parents and had another great time. Almost won at Hearts, but Jim had rough 1/5 the points I had. So I didn't win. But I did beat Michelle. So that's something.

I've been reading a lot lately while not feeling the blog vibe. Just read Janet Evanovich's latest Steph Plum novel - Fearless Fourteen. A fun summer read but I wouldn't pay money for it. Other than that, I've been catching up on my magazines. And playing with a new camera.

HELL YEAH - a NEW camera! Wooohooooo!

Nikon's D700 has found its way to my possession. I'm impressed with it thus far - especially Nikon's commitment to reusing batteries. Extra batteries from previous cameras work in the new one! This is exciting cuz I got some extra batteries.

Local folks may want to tune into AM 950 on Wed evening at 6:30pm to hear me talk about a local network and a lawsuit I have been following closely.

You should be able to listen online here.

After spending most of my recent reading time learning and reading magazines, I finally jumped back into fiction while on vacation. The book Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter inspired the movie Shooter with Mark Wahlberg. I loved both. Good, smart action.

The adaption was true to the book - and it was modernized quite well given it was written before 9/11, when everything supposedly changed. This was my first Stephen Hunter book but I think I'll be reading more. In particular, my friend Neil had recommended one with the provocative title Dirty White Boys.

Akhtiar was among the more than 770 terrorism suspects imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They are the men the Bush administration described as "the worst of the worst."

But Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo's Camp Four who hissed "infidel" and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn't: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.

"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.

...

While he was held at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base, Akhtiar said, "When I had a dispute with the interrogator, when I asked, 'What is my crime?' the soldiers who took me back to my cell would throw me down the stairs."

He is hardly an isolated instance. Looks like we will only be attempting to prosecute less than 10% of those we held at Guantanamo. Not because we have too many liberals whining about how we treated them, but because we sent a bunch of farmers and goat herders to be tortured while the Bush Administration claimed they were the worst of the worst.

As for the torture policies - who came up with that? Was it anyone who had any experience in gaining intelligence? No. From what is emerging, it sounds like the green light for torture came from a bunch of idiot lawyers led by idiot-extraordinaire Gonzalez who have never been on a battlefield, much less dealt with interrogations. But they may have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express once or twice and they have seen 24, so they were pretty sure it was the smart thing to do. Those who led the interrogations of the Iraqis following the Gulf War were horrified but mostly have had to protest from outside the Administration cuz no one likes a party pooper in Washington - some details here.

I know, I know. You are tired of reading about the Bush Administration and what our government is doing. You are just waiting until he gets out of office. And probably, if you run into someone who thinks the Bush Admin is doing a good job mostly, you just ignore them rather than challenging them too much.

Well fuck that. I'm sick and tired of hearing how soldiers protect our freedoms. They have. But mostly it has been citizens and groups like the ACLU and even NRA, no matter how much you hate either one. And citizens who are too busy to know what their government is up to should move to China where you do not have the burden of living in a free society.

McClatchy newspapers have done an incredible story on Guantanamo Bay and what really happened there. That is what the above quote comes from. Diane Rehm recently did two incredible shows on Gitmo - one on Prosecuting detainees and one on detaining terrorism suspects.

Finally, the March/April issue of Mother Jones has a great series of articles on how the U.S. came to be a country that officially embraced torture (while actually torturing the definition of torture).

What a sad day for America. And it has not come because our troops failed. We have failed. The citizens of the United States have refused to improve upon the country we inherited. How have we progressed in the last 20 years?

For the last hundred years, the U.S. has made impressive gains. Women's suffrage, civil rights, social freedoms, and a modest improvement toward achieving equal status for gays. We have a long way to go on all of those issues, and our foreign policy over the entire history of this country has never been as enlightened as we pretend.

Nonetheless, I cannot think of a worse Presidential Administration, where the country gave up so much and lost so much. We have not gained riches while allowing the government to do what it pleases without oversight. In fact, our economy is falling apart.

True, we have had no terrorist attacks in the past 5 years. But Bush's policies have bankrupted the country financially and morally. Killing more troops in a bullshit war than died in 9/11. And maiming enough others to account for 100 9/11s. We have no moral high ground as Bush brags about being the world's top polluter (which isn't even true for fuck's sake). What a day for America.

I'm sure some would respond to this by saying we have to do everything we can because this terrorist threat is the worst threat we have ever faced. Even if you accept this judgment (which is utter bullshit and demonstrates the wretched knowledge of history most Americans exhibit), consider what Bush has done. From the McClatchy investigation:

A McClatchy investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam — thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them — and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists.

The radicals were quick to exploit the flaws in the U.S. detention system.

Soldiers, guards or interrogators at the U.S. bases at Bagram or Kandahar in Afghanistan had abused many of the detainees, and they arrived at Guantanamo enraged at America.

The Taliban and al Qaida leaders in the cells around them were ready to preach their firebrand interpretation of Islam and the need to wage jihad, Islamic holy war, against the West. Guantanamo became a school for jihad, complete with a council of elders who issued fatwas, binding religious instructions, to the other detainees.

In a funny movie called Canadian Bacon, Michael Moore is in a bar when they hear on the news that Canada has taken some Americans hostage. He says: "Gentlemen, there is time to think, and there is a time to act. And this, is no time to think." Nailed it.

Photo of Miss Kimmi biking with TnT and a few other folks training for their triathlons. The whole gallery is available here.

I loved the Firefly series and was dismayed to see it end. But kimmi shot me a link this morning that filled in my void a bit. Joss Whedon has a new project and it features NPH!!!

After reading the article, you can watch the first episode (15 minutes) of Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Hulu. FYI - Hulu is really lame. I was totally disappointed - there is no progressive download, it is just streaming. This means it frequently hiccups and easily gets out of sync for a few seconds.

But the lameness of Hulu in no way reduces my enjoyment of the clip. These people are frigging hilarious.

Seriously?

People are upset at a satirical cover on the New Yorker magazine. This seems like much more of a 24-hour media phenomenon than anything. Talking heads need something to gush about and apparently it is hot enough in all the TV studios for them to have lost all sense of humor.

I liked the damn cover. I thought it was well done and satirical. But for those who did not like it, I think Jon Stewart offered the absolute best answer to the cover the Obama campaign could have given.

Obama's campaign seems to have morphed into a rather average Democratic Party affair. He has jettisoned the idea of doing things differently (mostly - he has still refused to take money from lobbyists). But I remain convinced he is the best hope for our sad government.