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June 2005

 

June 30, 2005

Life - as craptacular as it looks.

Posted at 12:53 AM

 

June 29, 2005

I thought that this column was interesting, particularly considering I've been saying the same thing for months.

The New McCarthyism
By E. J. Dionne Jr.

In the 1950s the right wing attacked liberals as being communists. In 2005 Karl Rove has attacked liberals as being therapists. Thus is born a kinder and gentler form of McCarthyism.

Named after the late Sen. Joe McCarthy, who never let the facts get in the way of his lust to charge liberals with sedition, McCarthyism has come to mean "guilt by association." What gave McCarthyism its power was the fact that the senator from Wisconsin did not invent the danger posed to the United States by Soviet communism. The Soviet Union was a real threat, and there were real communist spies working in America.

What made McCarthy and his allies so insidious was their eagerness to level the "soft on communism" charge against even staunchly anticommunist liberals. One of them was Secretary of State Dean Acheson, an architect of Harry Truman's tough policy of containing Soviet power. In the 1952 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon pounded Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson for earning a "PhD from Dean Acheson's College of Cowardly Communist Containment."

The McCarthyites' real enemies were not communists but the New Deal liberals who had dominated U.S. politics for 20 years. The McCarthy crowd was willing to divide the nation at a time of grave international peril if that's what it took to beat the liberals.

Rove's instantly famous speech last week to the New York State Conservative Party should be read in light of this history and not be written off as a cheap, one-time partisan attack. On the contrary, the address by Rove, President Bush's most important adviser, provides the outlines of a sophisticated strategy aimed at making liberals and Democrats all look soft on terrorism.

Here are the key passages: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the United States military against the Taliban; in the wake of 9/11, liberals believed it was time to submit a petition. . . . Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said: 'We will defeat our enemies.' Liberals saw what happened to us and said: 'We must understand our enemies.' "

Liberals and Democrats were enraged by Rove because virtually every officeholding liberal and Democrat closed ranks behind President Bush on Sept. 11. They endorsed the use of force against the terrorists and, when the time came, strongly backed the war in Afghanistan.

But Rove knows how to play this game. The only evidence he adduces for his therapy charge is a petition in which the current executive director of MoveOn.org called for "moderation and restraint" in the wake of Sept. 11. Rove then slides smoothly from the attack on MoveOn to attacks on Michael Moore and Howard Dean. Finally, Rove tosses in an assault on Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) for his statement that an FBI report on the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, might remind Americans of the practices of Nazi and communist dictatorships.

In the ensuing controversy, Rove's defenders cleverly sought to pretend that there was nothing partisan about Rove's speech. "Karl didn't say 'the Democratic Party,' " insisted Ken Mehlman, the Republican national chairman. "He said 'liberals.' " It must have been purely accidental that one of the "liberals" mentioned was the Democratic national chairman and another was the Senate Democratic whip. It must also have been accidental that both of them, like most other liberals, supported the war in Afghanistan, not therapy. At the time, Durbin called the war "essential."

On Friday White House spokesman Scott McClellan narrowed the Rove attack even more. McClellan found it "puzzling" that Democrats were "coming to the defense of liberal organizations like MoveOn.org and people like Michael Moore," when in fact Democrats were coming to their own defense. McClellan also ignored what Mehlman had conceded the day before -- and what the text of Rove's remarks plainly shows: that Rove was attacking liberals generally, not just these two targets.

That's how guilt by association works. Make a charge and then -- once your attack is out there -- pretend that your words have been misinterpreted. Split your opponents. Put them on the defensive. Force them to say things like: "No, we're not soft on terrorism," or, "I'm not that kind of liberal." Once this happens, the attacker has already won.

Respectable opinion treats Rove's speech as just another partisan flap. It's much more. It's the reincarnation of a style of politics that turns political opponents into traitors or dupes who are soft on the nation's enemies. Welcome back to the '50s.

Posted at 2:07 AM

 

June 28, 2005

Am I missing something? Is there some reason that I have to keep existing here in misery? Why can't I just die now?

Posted at 2:01 AM

 

June 27, 2005

How is it that with over fifty years of recorded television programming and almost 100 years of recorded film that every time I turn on the television I have to struggle to watch not only an episode or movie that I've never seen before but I actually have to struggle not to watch the same things that I watched even just a day or a week earlier? How many fucking times can some things be repeated, and why with so much that exists in the old vaults are we stuck watching the same small selection of things?

Maybe my depression is making this seem worse than it is, but I honestly didn't ever feel like TV was this lim ited when I was a kid, and there were only about half a dozen channels to choose from back then. Sheesh.

Posted at 1:24 AM

 

June 26, 2005

The sadness, lethargy, pointlessness, and emptiness are all there, along with the persistent tiredness and slight headache. Ain't depression grand.

Posted Written at 1:17 AM

 

June 25, 2005

Crud.

The Wicked Witch had it right in the end - "What a world; what a world; what a world." It's the same any way you look at it.

Crud.

Posted at 10:45 PM

 

June 24, 2005

Depression sucks just about most of all when you can't even escape it by going to sleep. I hate these times when my depression combines with insomnia. It's obviously a preview of hell.

Posted at 6:02 AM

 

June 23, 2005

This is sick and just plain wrong, but I just can't help find it wonderfully amusing. ROFLMAO.

Posted Written at 12:03 AM

 

June 22, 2005

Sperm: It's not just for breakfast anymore.

Posted at 12:34 AM

 

June 21, 2005

Tonight's gaming session was great, just about winding up our exploration and combat in the old tower of the Black Wizard, now in the possession of a powerful Ogre Mage. The Ogre Mage could have kicked our asses if we'd have tried to kill him and his Ogre minions, but we were able to defeat a guardian of the tower for him, something he had been unable to do (as had many others whom he had sent before us with the same task), and because of our success we got the Ogre Mage to set down to negotiations with us, allowing us to barter for future trade and to also get valuable information from him. Key among such information was learning that a tribe of Goblins we're pursuing is much, much more organize and numerous than we'd expected - much more numerous and organized. So now we realize that we, as a group of five adventurers, can't handle a tribe of 700+ Goblins on our own, even as much as Mark's dwarf desperately is spoiling for a fight. We've gained a whole lot of information that answers a bunch of questions we've had, but it makes the threats to our small town even more desperate and difficult than we had ever imagined. Now we're left with figuring out how best to face the threat from the Goblins along with the threat we know also exists from the Orc clan that is even closer to our town than these Goblins. Steve has certainly created a world full of turmoil for us to deal with.

We also realized tonight that our group of players has shrunk and isn't likely to see certain people coming back to join us. Steve of course runs the game as the Dungeon Master, describing the setting and laying out the storyline and role-playing the monsters and people we encounter, and he is quite reliable and sure to be there every week (which is good, because without him we can't game at all). Mark has been around for just about every session in both the old game (when we started this in 1997) and in the new game (that's been playing for a couple of months). He's sure to be around regularly as well. Kristie, however has been a no-show since I've come back into the group, and her appearances were spotty before that. Furthermore she basically will only meet on Mondays or Wednesdays, and our current Tuesday night sessions don't work for her. I, of course, am enjoying myself immensely and will be a constant player, even though I missed the first few weeks when Steve started things again recently. Steffen, who joined in only when Steve restarted things recently, has been very reliable, and a great player, and I feel we can depend upon him to be a regular player as well. O.J., however, who also joined in at the restart of the campaign, has not showed up for weeks, and since he works weekday evenings, it seems completely unlikely that he will ever rejoin the group at all (I've been using O.J.'s character in the group until such time as Steve can reincorporate my own character back into the group logically (which may happen fairly soon since they're heading back to town, and that opens many possibilities). Lastly, Robbie was showing up semi-regularly, even if he was late all of the time, but he hasn't shown up either of the past two weeks since we've met at Mark's house, even though Mark and Steffen have talked to him and he has assured them that he will be there - we don't believe it at this point and we have little doubt that Robbie won't be showing up any more. We aren't upset about that, honestly; he can join us or not as he pleases, and that's fine, but we're just not expecting him to be there any more. So that really just leaves three of us as players with Steve as the DM. That makes for a small group, to some extent, but at least we know we'll all be there every time, each week.

So now we're a core group, and while I'm having great fun and enjoying this for myself, I also feel like I'm making a positive impact on the group not just with my good role-playing skills but merely with the fact that I'm committed to showing up and playing. I'm fully planning on staying involved as long as every body else can be kept playing. As long as this core group of us still holds together then we might just avoid the conflicting schedules and spotty attendance of the various players that led to this campaign group disintegrating in 1998. We can only hope.

Posted Written at 3:58 AM

 

June 20, 2005

Not long after I first moved here to take care of my grandmother we were shopping at Meijer and I pulled her into an aisle to suggest that we could buy a nice address book to pull together all of her loose addresses and phone numbers. I had noticed her "collection" - or more specifically I'd been forced to sort through her scraps and stacks in their various hiding places - to try to find phone numbers for calling to make appointments for my grandma. Her filing system, if I can even euphemistically use that term, was an assortment of numbers scribbled in the fronts and backs of the half dozen phone books she had from various years along with little scarps of paper with scribbled addresses stuffed in here and there and the torn corners of envelopes where she'd saved the return address. This was her main stash, but there were other hideaways in various places in her desk, her dresser, her closet, her purse, and other places. On top of this randomness she had a variety of phone numbers and a variety of addresses for any given person, even on the same page of paper, and it was almost impossible to know what was recent and useable. I talked her into buying an address book at Meijer that day, although it was a long and difficult argument to get her to agree. In the end, even though I tried desperately to get her to only agree if she was interested in trying for her own benefit, I'm sure that she actually only agreed to buy it to satisfy me.

When my grandma went away for a visit to my sister in Maryland a couple of months later I took the address book, which she hadn't touched, and sorted all of the addresses I could find, determining what was accurate and tossing the rest, and putting everything into the new address book neatly, and then trashing all of the confusing mass of scraps and scribbles. I even got rid of all of the old phone books. When my grandma got back she was initially freaked out, sure that she wouldn't be able to get by without all of her cluttered menagerie. It didn't take long for her to come to love that new little address book, though.

The new address book was easy for her to find, all of the addresses were accurate, and everything was alphabetized and written neatly (which is a big thing since my grandma quite often finds herself completely unable to read her own handwriting). She started singing the praises of the address book to everyone, and she never gave a further thought to her old collections of stuff.

At least not until I worked with her to go through her desk and sort through things. The desk could barely be opened without an explosion of papers erupting, and as I should have known, a lot of the mess was addresses on scraps and slips of papers, hole envelopes saved for an address, old address books, and more. I set all of those aside into one collected bag, waiting for a day when I had time to sort through those with my grandma and put more addresses into the new address book.

That was last summer. During the winter my grandma took it upon herself to pull out that bag of addresses and take various scraps and stuff them into the new address book. It took a while before I noticed this, and then I asked why she was making this barely usable mess (you could barely open the address book without little slips of paper falling all over the place). She told me that she didn't want to spoil the address book with all of my neat writing. I guess you can't really teach an old dog new tricks.

Anyhow, I've wanted to clean up the growing mess (which my grandma has continued to add to), but school work and other projects have always come first. Today I jumped headfirst into the ugliness and tackled first the scrap-stuffed address book and then the remainder of the huge bag-o-stuff and the variety of addresses, phone numbers, and names (married names, maiden names, children's names, dead husbands' names, etc.). Figuring out what names and addresses were accurate was a challenge, figuring out who was dead from the names (which was a lot) was a greater challenge, but keeping calm when I'd find the same address for the same person saved on one and a half dozen scraps of paper, many times collected in the new address book where that name and address had been written for the last year - that just about freaked me out.

But it's done, and that's one project that I'm glad is over. Granted, I won't be able to stop my grandma from continuing to scribble names and addresses on top scraps of paper and keep stuffing them into the address book, but now I can check the address book every week or two and keep on top of any address collecting before it gets to be a project that would take a whole day to complete.

If only this sort of situation weren't true for all of my grandma's files. No such luck. There's still a long way to go to make any sense of the bags, boxes, and stacks of papers that are collected in closets, drawers, and shelves throughout her house. I'm making progress - big progress actually, and progress that my grandma loves (and so does my mom, who realizes that I'm saving her the trouble of sorting through all of it one day) - but there's still so, so much to be done.

Posted at 10:31 PM

 

June 19, 2005

When the U.S. was fighting the Vietnam War, our government made regular claims that: we were liberating the Vietnamese people and keeping them safe from the communists who wanted to kill or enslave them; that we were working to make Vietnam a stable democratic nation; that we would stay until the South Vietnamese could stand on their own and defend themselves; and that the opposition (in the form of the Viet Cong insurgents and the North Vietnamese communists) were viscous and evil, willing to kill civilians, men, women, children, and even themselves - anything to achieve their goals of communist domination of all of Asia. None of that was true, of course, as we now clearly know.

The Vietnamese people were fighting for their independence after millennia of having been dominated by one colonial power or another, and the independence movement ended up being based upon communism (partly because communism was seen throughout the world at the time as intellectually interesting and full of potential, but also, and more importantly, because the U.S. had rejected independence leader Ho Chi Minh on both of the occasions when he had asked for support for creating a democratic independence movement). The communists had no intention of killing their countrymen, but they were willing to die if that was what it would take to gain independence for their people and their descendants. Furthermore, the South Vietnamese government was weak and corrupt, completely dependent upon U.S. economic and military support for its very survival, and hardly democratic in that it was nothing more than a series of totalitarian regimes that crumbled one after the other with the only continuity being the general control of all military operations by the U.S. The U.S. did such a great job of propping up South Vietnam and making it strong that it collapsed and was conquered by North Vietnam in less than a year after U.S. troops pulled out. The North Vietnamese made it clear from the start that all they wanted was an independent united Vietnam, free of any control from western powers. They weren't evil or crazy or hateful, they just wanted their independence. You'd think the U.S. would have respected that. You'd think the U.S. would have figured this out just by looking at the history of Vietnam and it's 1400 years of constant insurrection against occupying powers. But the U.S. is dumb that way.

And of course using U.S. and dumb in the same sentence now-a-days immediately conjures the image of George W. Bush, and why not? The comparison to U.S. stupidity in conducting war in a foreign country and completely misrepresenting all of reality with propaganda is so much of a parallel to what was done in Vietnam that it's unbelievable. I'm talking about Iraq, of course, and of Fuehrer Bush is doing his utmost to live up to the stupidity and the lies that made the Vietnam War the utter failure that it was from the first day it was begun.

Bush has once again claimed that we are in Iraq as a response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a lie that has never held true (but heck, those WMDs never showed up and more Iraqis have died during this occupation than under Saddam, so the first two reasons for going can't be used any more). He has claimed that the insurgents (whom he calls "terrorists" because that has the negative connotation he wants) - he claims that they want to kill everyone, that they enjoy killing men, women, and children and even themselves. He has claimed that by fighting these people in Iraq we're keeping them from attacking here in the U.S. And he has claimed that U.S. troops will leave when the Iraqis can stand on their own against the opposition, and they will be a wonderfully democratic nation just like America. Isn't that swell?

Well if propaganda is swell, then sure. Really, however, the truth is that the insurgents (call them "terrorists if you must") have made clear that they want the U.S. and other western powers out of the Middle East and minding their own business. They don't want our culture trying to overwhelm their culture and they don't want our strongarm tactics of pressuring them to do what we tell them. They want the western powers out of Iraq, out of Lebanon, out of Israel, and out of every other place in the Middle East. They basically want their lands to be free to have their own culture without occupying forces from western powers and without cultural dominance by western cultural norms. Honestly, they have pretty fair demands in that sense, because really we have no right to be there treating them as if we're the only people who know how to live (and you either live our way or die).

The comparisons to Vietnam are too clear. We are basically threatening the independence and freedom of culture of Middle Eastern nations and they want us out. They want us out so bad that they'll fight with their every last dying breath to get it. Considering the American patriots did the same thing against the British, you'd think the U.S. would get this. But most people don't get it. And while the insurgents are fighting a deadly war, they are fighting for their own lands, and they are fighting the U.S. as a foreign occupying force. Simple enough. Also like in Vietnam, the assumption that the Iraqi government will magically be a democracy just like in the U.S. is a farce, a lie. The Iraqi government faces severe problems in a power struggle between various religious factions. Even once they get past that (if they can) they will have to gain control of all of the areas controlled by various warlords and insurgent groups - a task that even the full strength of the U.S. military hasn't been able to accomplish, let alone the paltry Iraqi army. Let's face it - Fuehrer Bush is lying his ass off, trying to make the U.S. war against Iraq seem like some great humanitarian effort that we're doing out of the generosity of our hearts. Face up to the bullshit, though, and see that Bush is just trying to make everything seem perfect and easily won. Even his fellow Republican John McCain has made clear that that's just stupid and unrealistic. Bush needs to be impeached for how he's lied to Congress and the American people, and we need to get the hell out of Iraq.

It took the U.S. years to figure out that they were fighting a losing war in every aspect in Vietnam, and they left without having accomplished anything. Iraq is shaping up to be pretty much the same, and I don't see any possible way to achieve any of the things that Bush says we will do in Iraq (not soon and not ever).

"Those who fail to recognize the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it." No truer words have ever been spoken.

(Here are the articles cited above):

Bush Says US is in Iraq Because of 9/11 Attacks on US

President George W. Bush defended the war in Iraq, telling Americans the United States was forced into war because of the September 11 terror strikes.

Bush also resisted calls for him to set a timetable for the return of thousands of US troops deployed in Iraq, saying Iraqis must be able to defend their own country before US soldiers can be pulled out.

"We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address.

US President George W. Bush defended the war in Iraq, telling Americans the United States was forced into war because of the September 11 terror strikes. (AFP/File/Tim Sloan)
Bush began a public relations offensive to defend the war as his approval rating has dropped well below 50 percent with Americans expressing skepticism about the invasion.

The centerpiece of the campaign will be a speech on June 28, exactly one year after the US-led coalition officially handed over sovereignty to a hand-picked Iraqi provisional government.

"Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world's terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror," said the president.

"These foreign terrorists violently oppose the rise of a free and democratic Iraq, because they know that when we replace despair and hatred with liberty and hope, they lose their recruiting grounds for terror," he argued.

"Our troops are fighting these terrorists in Iraq so you will not have to face them here at home."

Bush, who was to welcome Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari for his first visit to the White House on Friday, ruled out any hard and fast timetable for withdrawing the 130,000 US soldiers currently deployed in Iraq and made it clear that it will not be anytime soon.

Terrorists "know there is no room for them in a free and democratic Middle East, so the terrorists and insurgents are trying to get us to retreat," he said.

"Their goal is to get us to leave before Iraqis have had a chance to show the region what a government that is elected and truly accountable to its citizens can do for its people."

A June 13 USA Today poll showed that almost six of 10 Americans, 59 percent, want a full or partial pullout of US troops from Iraq.

In a New York Times/CBS News poll among 1,111 adults, Bush's approval rating dropped to 42 percent while 59 percent disapproved of his handling of Iraq.

Lawmakers from both parties, opposition Democrats and Bush's own Republicans, have called for a time frame for withdrawing from Iraq. More than 1,700 US soldiers have been killed there since US and British troops invaded in March 2003.

But the Bush administration has insisted that Iraqi troops must be ready to defend their own country before US troops can return to the United States.

"I am confident that Iraqis will continue to defy the skeptics as they build a new Iraq that represents the diversity of their nation and assumes greater responsibility for their own security," Bush said. "And when they do, our troops can come home with the honor they have earned."

"This mission isn't easy, and it will not be accomplished overnight. We're fighting a ruthless enemy that relishes the killing of innocent men, women, and children," he said.

"By making their stand in Iraq, the terrorists have made Iraq a vital test for the future security of our country and the free world. We will settle for nothing less than victory."

(and this one):

McCain disputes Cheney on Iraq
Senator calls on White House to stop predicting successes

Sen. John McCain disagreed Sunday with Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that the insurgency in Iraq is in its "last throes," and called on the Bush administration to stop telling Americans victory is around the corner.

"What I think we should do," McCain told NBC's "Meet the Press," "is wait until we achieve the successes, then celebrate them, rather than predict them. Because too often that prediction is not proven to be true."

In an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live" that aired last week, Cheney said he expected the war would end during Bush's second term, which ends in 2009.

"The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline," Cheney said. "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." (Full story)

Asked Sunday whether he agreed with the comment, McCain replied, "No, but I do believe that there are some signs which can be viewed as hopeful."

He said the U.S.-led program to train and equip the Iraqi military has improved and that more attacks seem to be coming from foreigners.

He accused Syria of failing to prevent insurgents from crossing its border into Iraq -- an accusation the Damascus government has denied.

McCain, a member of the Armed Services Committee, was asked if that could mean military action against Syria.

"I don't think military action, but I think there are a variety of ways to put pressure on Syria," he said.

"First of all, I'd go to the international organizations and try to get some kind of sanctions and condemnation of it," McCain said.

"Second of all, I think that we should let the Syrians know that if there is continued passage of people, we may have to do what's necessary in order to prevent that." He did not elaborate.

The powerful Arizona Republican, who lost the Republican presidential nomination to George W. Bush in 2000, is widely seen as a potential candidate in 2008.

The lawmaker did not say he had any definite plans to seek the Republican nomination -- saying he wanted "to work hard and be a good senator" -- but he did convey an interest in the position.

"The question is not whether you would like to be president or not. The question is: Do you think you can win and do you want to run? And none of those are clear to me," McCain said.

"I'm going to wait two years before making that decision," he added.

'Draft didn't work'

McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war after being shot down during the Vietnam War, said the United States is "in trouble" if its military continues to fall far short of recruitment goals. (Full story)

But he predicted that despite recruitment troubles the country would not reinstitute mandatory military service.

"The draft didn't work in the previous form," said the Naval Academy graduate and former Navy carrier pilot.

Instead, he said the United States must work to make service attractive. And he said it missed an opportunity after the 2001 terrorist attacks but that it was not too late to change.

"The biggest mistake I think we made after September 11 was not calling on Americans to serve. We shouldn't have just told them to go shopping or take a trip," he said.

"We should have said, 'OK, we're setting up all the organizations. We're expanding existing organizations. And we're going to give you all a chance to fight as foot soldiers in the war on terror.' I think we can still do that."

Though he supported President Bush's re-election bid, McCain has openly disagreed with the administration on many issues, including Iraq.

"Too often we've been told, and the American people have been told, that we're at a turning point, whether it be the capture of [former Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein or [his sons] Uday and Qusay or the elections," said McCain.

"What the American people should have been told and should be told ... [is] it's long; it's hard; it's tough. It's very tough."

Durbin apology sought

The former POW said he is concerned that U.S. treatment of detainees at the prison camp in the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- including reports of controversial measures and allegations of abuse -- could endanger future American prisoners of war (Full story)

If the United States is acting improperly, he said, "We will not have as high a moral ground the next time we are in a conflict and Americans become ... prisoners of war."

But McCain said Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, should apologize for comparing the actions of American interrogators at Guantanamo to Nazis, Soviet gulags and Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.

"I don't know if censure would be in order, but an apology, because it does a great disservice to the men and women who suffered in the gulags and in Pol Pot's killing fields," McCain said.

Durbin did issue a statement Friday saying, "I sincerely regret if what I said caused anyone to misunderstand my true feelings. Our soldiers around the world and their families at home deserve our respect, admiration and total support."

Posted at 12:47 AM

 

June 18, 2005

Ahhh, those wacky Republicans. Why don't they just hold a constitutional convention and cut to the chase, rewriting the American government to be the fascist elitist police state that they want. Then they could just have all of the Democrats killed for expedience. That's obviously what they're working toward.

Congress Assaults the Courts, Again

The House of Representatives took a little- noticed but dangerous swipe at the power of the courts this week. It passed an amendment to a budget bill that would bar money from being spent to enforce a federal court ruling regarding the Ten Commandments. The vote threatens the judiciary's long-acknowledged position as the final arbiter of the Constitution. It is important that this amendment be removed before the bill becomes law.

During consideration of an appropriations bill for the Departments of State, Justice and Commerce, Representative John Hostettler, Republican of Indiana, introduced an amendment to prohibit any funds from being used to enforce Russelburg v. Gibson County. In that case, a federal court ruled that a courthouse Ten Commandments display violated the First Amendment and had to be removed. Mr. Hostettler declared that the ruling was unconstitutional, and inconsistent with "the Christian heritage of the United States."

Since the Supreme Court decided Marbury v. Madison in 1803, it has been clearly established that the courts have the ultimate power to interpret the Constitution. But right-wing ideologues, unhappy with some of the courts' rulings, have begun to question this principle as part of a broader war on the federal judiciary. The amendment that passed this week reflected an effort to use Congress's power to stop the courts from standing up for the First Amendment and other constitutional principles.

The budget amendment was truly radical. The genius of the American system is that the founders carefully balanced power among three coequal branches. Mr. Hostettler's amendment would throw out this brilliant structure, and 200 years of constitutional history, and make Congress the final interpreter of the Constitution. If the amendment succeeded, Congress would no doubt begin designating other cases and constitutional doctrines the courts would be barred from enforcing.

There is little doubt that if the amendment became law it would itself be held unconstitutional, but it should not reach that point. The Senate should show the responsibility, and respect for the founders' vision, that the House did not and excise this offensive provision.

Posted at 10:31 PM

 

June 17, 2005

I always enjoy Paul Krugman's columns in the New York Times, but the title of this one alone makes it worth reprinting. It's a bizarre, interesting story in itself that he is writing about, a scandal called Coingate that is both stupid and devious at the same time, just what we have come to expect from Republicans. I swear, if I didn't have to be here to take care of my grandma I would have gotten myself as far away from this fucked up state as possible a long time ago.

What's the Matter With Ohio?

The Toledo Blade's reports on Coingate - the unfolding tale of how Ohio's Bureau of Workers' Compensation misused funds - deserve much more national attention than they have received so far. For one thing, it's an entertaining story that seems to get weirder by the week. More important, it's an object lesson in what happens when you have one-party rule untrammeled by any quaint notions of independent oversight.

At first, state officials angrily insisted that this unusual use of state funds was a good investment that had nothing to do with Mr. Noe's political connections. An accounting investigation revealed, however, that Mr. Noe's claims to be running a profitable business were fictitious: he had lost millions, and 121 valuable coins were missing.

On June 3, police raided the Colorado home of Michael Storeim, Mr. Noe's business associate, and seized hundreds of rare coins. After changing the locks, they left 3,500 bottles of wine, valued at several hundred thousand dollars, in the home's basement.

On Monday, Mr. Storeim told police that someone had broken into his house over the weekend and stolen much of the wine, along with artwork, guns, jewelry and cars. As I said, this story keeps getting weirder.

Meanwhile, The Blade uncovered an even bigger story: the Bureau of Workers' Compensation invested $225 million in a hedge fund managed by MDL Capital, whose chairman had strong political connections. When this investment started to go sour, the bureau's chief financial officer told another top agency official that he had been told to "give MDL a break."

By October 2004, state officials knew that MDL had lost almost the entire investment, but they kept the loss hidden until this month.

How could such things happen? The answer, it has become clear, lies in a web of financial connections between state officials and the businessmen who got to play with state funds.

We're not just talking about campaign contributions, although Mr. Noe's contributions ranged so widely that five of the state's seven Supreme Court justices had to recuse themselves from cases associated with the scandal. (He's also under suspicion of using intermediaries to contribute large sums, illegally, to the Bush campaign.) We're talking about personal payoffs: bargain vacations for the governor's chief of staff at Mr. Noe's Florida home, the fact that MDL Capital employs the daughter of one of the members of the workers' compensation oversight board, and more.

Now, politicians and businessmen are always in a position to do each other lucrative favors. Government is relatively clean when politicians are sufficiently afraid of scandal to resist temptation. But when a political machine controls all branches of government, and those officials charged with oversight are also reliably partisan, politicians feel safe from investigation. Their inhibitions dissolve, and they take full advantage of their position, until the scandals become too big to hide.

In other words, Ohio's state government today is a lot like Boss Tweed's New York. Unfortunately, a lot of other state governments look similar - and so does Washington.

Since their 1994 takeover of Congress, and even more so since the 2000 election, Republican leaders have sought to make their political dominance permanent. They redistricted Texas to lock in their control of the House. Through the "K Street Project" they have put lobbying firms under partisan control, starving the Democrats of campaign funds. And they are, of course, trying to pack the courts with partisan loyalists.

In effect, they're trying to turn America into a giant version of the elder Richard Daley's Chicago.

These efforts have already created an environment in which politicians from the right party and businessmen with the right connections believe, with good reason, that they have immunity.

And politicians who feel that they can exploit their position tend to do just that. It's a likely bet that the scandals we already know about, from Coingate to Tom DeLay's dealings with the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, are just the tip of the iceberg.

The message from Ohio is that long-term dominance by a political machine leads to corruption, regardless of the policies that machine follows or the ideology it claims to represent.

Posted at 3:17 AM

 

June 16, 2005

Ooof!

Watch where you're going.

Posted at 1:02 AM

 

June 15, 2005

Having only gotten to sleep some time after 4 AM, I was happily sleeping in a bit today. My grandma was going out with friends to a luncheon (a birthday celebration for one of her friends), and that meant that she was being taken by those friends and I wouldn't need to be up and about to drive her around. I didn't even have to drive her to the YMCA since she was skipping her exercise to go to this affair.

So I had no plans to wake up and get moving until I woke up naturally, fully rested. But the best laid plans invariably fail to follow through, and my grandma buzzed my intercom shortly after 10:30 and asked me to come downstairs to help her find her glasses. This has happened before, but rarely. My grandma needs to wear her glasses constantly to see, and she's very good (or at least habitual) about either wearing her glasses or putting them down by the sink in her bathroom. She is better about this than almost anything, and even with her forgetfulness, her inability to concentrate, and her general tendencies to disorganization, she very rarely sets her glasses in an unusual place.

Of course the glasses are only a small part of the problem. The bigger part of the problem is that my grandmother gets herself very worked up by things like this. She gets flustered, frustrated, and she mentally beats herself up about it, and this sort of thing is very difficult for me to stop. Worse still, this sort of anxiety wears her out very fast, and she ends up exhausted and often still frustrated with herself, even after the situation has been resolved. So I knew that the best thing would be to downplay losing her glasses, find them quickly, and get her mind onto other things.

Unfortunately I was still tired, bleary-eyed, and not at my best. On top of that, one of her friends (who lives in the neighborhood) had shown up 45 minutes early, further upsetting my grandma because she wasn't nearly ready and because she was even more upset about her glasses being missing. I wasn't too thrilled about her showing up so early either considering I had no idea she was there until I got downstairs with my eyes half shut, my hair tousled in a dozen directions, and my loose bed shorts and loose t-shirt not being particularly presentable attire. Still, the task at hand was to find my grandma's glasses, and I focused upon that.

Unfortunately 45 minutes of searching all over the house multiple times over revealed nothing. I was to the point of looking in drawers and under furniture and in cupboards, and I was honestly at a loss. Eventually my grandma's other friend, her ride, had arrived, and they had to go. She went off frustrated but carefully led by her friends, and I went back to my futile search. Only a couple minutes after she had left she came back inside and went straight to her room, saying she thought she might know where she'd put her glasses. She was right, too, and she found them in her robe pocket. So off she went, much happier (although still frustrated with herself for not finding them earlier), and I breathed my own collective sigh of relief and frustration.

I was far too wide awake by this point to have any pretence of going back to sleep, so I made my way back upstairs and got myself going for the day.

Later in the day, in the late afternoon, after my grandma had been back for some time, she misplaced the newspaper that had come a few hours earlier. I searched the house for that as well, failing to find any trace of it, and I have no clue where she could have (or would have) put the newspaper that I couldn't find it. She's misplaced the newspaper before, about a month or so ago, and I eventually found it about nine days later, but only after having endured nine days of lamentation about how my grandma couldn't believe how she could misplace the newspaper and how stupid she was as a result of that, all of which I would dismiss and downplay in an effort to get her mind off of such things. For a woman who can forget the most obvious and important things she is unbelievably focused upon anything she has done that she sees as wrong.

Taking care of my grandma can certainly be a handful. She's incredibly self-sufficient for her age, but it's days like today that keep me phenomenally busy trying to take care of her.

Posted Written at 12:34 AM

 

June 14, 2005

We met at Mark's house in Toledo tonight for the gaming session. Steve and I actually met up at Panda Chinese as we were grabbing dinner on our way, and by the time we got to Mark's, Steffen was there (and of course Mark was already there). Robbie never showed up, which may be a sign that he won't come to the games unless we play at the SAGES, like we have the previous few weeks. But with poor air conditioning and uncomfortable chairs, the SAGES offices were far less comfortable than Mark's basement.

Things at Mark's weren't perfect. His kids (ages about 8 months, 2 years, 3 years, 12 years, and 16 years old) were an occasional distraction as were his dogs (three young Boxers) and even his wife, but still the more comfortable, relaxed atmosphere was a good change from the distractions posed at the SAGES. We spent nearly the whole first hour just eating, chatting, and figuring out how we wanted to settle in, but once we got going we made some good progress.

Steve and I discussed the progress of the characters in the game at great length after the game, after Steffen had left and Mark had gone to work (he has a third shift patrol as a Toledo Police officer). Steve feels that the pace is perfect while I argue that things could certainly be going a little more rapidly. Some of the fault for the slower pace, in my mind, is due to the way Steve runs the game and tries to make everything very detailed and deliberate, but the rest of us are to blame, too, because I think a lot of the time we're much too overly-cautious.

It's common for people playing Dungeons and Dragons to be overprotective of the characters , particularly when playing low-level characters who don't have a lot of powerful armor or weapons. One attack from even just a black bear or a human soldier can kill you instantly because your character can't withstand the damage, and bigger, uglier opponents like a Minotaur or an Ogre are even more dangerous. So it makes sense to be cautious, really, but still I think we take it to an extreme a lot of times. After all, it's just a game and we can make new characters if these die. That would be sort of a pain in the ass, but really, if these are supposed to be heroic adventurers, it seems uncharacteristically un-heroic to cautiously creep up to every door, listen for sounds of trouble, check carefully for traps, check if the door is locked, check this, check that, and after ten or fifteen minutes of observation finally open the door. And then do the same thing again with the very next door. It's just a bit too much.

But I'm having fun. In spite of the way I make it sound, we are making progress and doing things - killing monsters, finding treasure, trying to figure out the mysteries of the wizard's tower we're currently inside and trying to figure out the bigger mysteries and intrigues in which we're embroiled in the world. It is fun, and I'm getting a lot out of it.

It's been a long night, though, and I'm tired. Sleep sounds good, really, and I have no intention of waiting for it any longer.

Posted Written at 4:01 AM

 

June 13, 2005

I started the day out alright, but I've gotten quite depressed very quickly. It's sucked for most of the day (since maybe about 10 AM), and I've cut out one thing after another that I had planned to do today. I did get a few small things accomplished early on, but I ended up giving over the day to playing Rise of Nations to try to relax (and distract) my mind. It's worked to some degree since I'm not quite as depressed as I was before, but I'm still down, and that's still sucking. At least it's not as bad as it was.

Posted at 1:42 AM

 

June 12, 2005

Yes, Virginia, there is a Sanity Clause.

Posted at 10:50 PM

 

June 11, 2005

The right-wing religious zealots who think they can "cure" people from being gay make me sick. They are evil, sadistic bastards that should be imprisoned in complete isolation where their hatred and insanity can poison only themselves until they die.

This article/interview (which I've included below) reveals exactly the sort of inhumanity I'm talking about. It's this sort of sick human beings who are torturing not only adults but kids - mostly kids, in fact. And the fear and suffering if those kids is abominable, as can be glimpsed in the blog entries of this poor, sweet boy from Tennessee. It just breaks my heart.

Love In Action: The Final Indoctrination
Interview With Tom Ottosen, Former
Love In Action Ex-Gay

CULT: quasi-religious group, often living in a colony, with a charismatic leader who indoctrinates members with unorthodox or extremist views, practices or beliefs. --Webster's New World Dictionary.

"I would rather you commit suicide than have you leave Love In Action wanting to return to the gay lifestyle. In a physical death you could still have a spiritual resurrection; whereas, returning to homosexuality you are yielding yourself to a spiritual death from which there is no recovery." --The Final Indoctrination from John Smid, Director, Love In Action (LIA), San Rafael's "ex-gay" clan.

"That's exactly how he put it," states Tom Ottosen, 24, an expressive, articulate two year ex-LIA group member.

Ottosen says he clearly recalls that experience. He says it occurred in October of last year during his last one-on-one conference with John Smid, LIA's Executive Director, who claims to be able to change gay men into straight men through a live-in rigidly controlled indoctrination program Smid calls "reparative therapy."

Ottosen says Smid clearly and emphatically warned him, "It would be better if I were to commit suicide than go back into the world and become a homosexual again. He felt that a physical death--with my soul intact--was much preferable to a spiritual death, which would happen if I were to leave the group and go back to being gay." claims Ottosen.

Ottosen further states that Smid said this at a time when Smid clearly was aware he had strong suicidal feelings and was going through periods of extreme depression, guilt and loneliness.

Ottosen recalls his depression had been building for several months during his second year at LIA, primarily because of a warm and emotional relationship he was experiencing with another group member. "It wasn't sexual at all, but it was strictly forbidden and I was kept from even talking to him for several months."

Also, earlier in July, "Another house member, who was in his fourth year with the group and in a position of authority, became depressed and attempted suicide" and was sent away for observation. "He was taken from his position of leadership and then he just kind of disappeared." Ottosen admits that he too, within a few months was at point where he had never been before. "I couldn't work. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't do anything."

He says he was so depressed and stressed that he knew he had to do something different if he was going to survive. "When I found myself calling the suicide hot line, I knew it was time to get out." If it weren't for Lea Brown, a staff member from Spectrum, Marin County's pro-gay and lesbian counseling and information center, Ottosen says he doubts he would have survived.

Smid responds that Ottosen's specific reference that he recommended suicide is "totally untrue," however Smid does not deny that a private meeting took place between he and Ottosen in October and confirms other details of Ottosen's account.

It has been reported that former cult members who have been under the intense intimidation of guilt-centered religious indoctrination, such as those who escaped the mass-suicide poisoning at Jim Jones "Jonestown" and the firestorm of self-destruction at the Waco Branch Davidian compound, often spend years in intensive therapy trying to overcome the psychological damage which a cult's rigid and uncompromising brainwashing can cause.

The same kind of psychological damage can happen in the case of sexual orientation indoctrination, agrees Brown, Spectrum's programs manager. "In this case, the heavy doses of deception and dishonesty which are necessary to try to purge strong feelings of love and compassion from a person's natural affection needs can cause serious problems. What groups like LIA try to do is force people to choose between serving God and living their lives. That's not a choice that anyone should have to make."

On the other hand, Psychotherapist Robert Norton, also Sonoma County's Project 10 co-director who provides professional counseling to clients such as Tom Ottosen, strongly condemns Smid's tactics. Norton says he was "shocked and horrified" when he learned of this charge. One wonders "how many other clients [Smid] has told to commit suicide?" Norton sternly blasts these "cult-like organizations," and reminds them that telling a client to commit suicide is clearly "a breach of ethical law."

Easing off slightly, Norton says, "The religious right wants people to believe that homosexuality is only a behavior and therefore can be changed. However, it is not just a behavior, it is also a psychosexual and emotional development which is at the core of an individual's self; and just like heterosexual development it can not be altered or changed."

Ottosen now understands this, and recalls during his last year at LIA at least 75 percent of the original participants had either left the program because it wasn't working for them or reported many "sexual falls" (homosexual experiences including fantasies and masturbation). Many were "forced from the group" when they began having serious doubts about the program's effectiveness in their life. "They tell them they must leave because the doubters become a threat to the other members. But then on the outside, most ostracized members still feel intense loyalty to LIA, and feel like they are betraying the group if they say anything to anyone about their experience." Ottosen says he was lucky because when he was told to leave, he immediately started seeing a licensed counselor on a regular basis, "...but most are having a very difficult time on their own."

Ottosen reveals that like most cults, the indoctrination program at LIA is very effective at fostering feelings of intense loyalty because all group members are isolated within the group homes and all contacts outside the group are extremely limited. "Due the fact that members are not allowed to question anything the hierarchy says, most members who were forced out or who have left on their own end up extremely guilt-ridden, very confused, dogged by the religious dogma given them by the groups, and most end up worse than ever before," Ottosen said.

And consider this excerpt from the most recent blog entry of a 16-year old boy suffering in one of these programs.

I haven't been on a computer, phone, nor have I seen any friends in a week almost-- Soon. Soon, this will be all over. My mother has said the worst things to me for three days straight... three days. I went numb. That's the only way I can get through this. I agree, if you're thinking that these posts might be dramatized.. but the proof of the program's ideas are sitting in the rules. I pray this blows over. I can't take this... noone can... not really, this kind of thing tears you apart emotionally. To introduce THIS subject... I'm not a suicidal person... really I'm not.. I think it's stupid - really. But.. I can't help it, no im not going to commit suicide, all I can think about is killing my mother and myself. It's so horrible. This is what it's doing to me... I have this horrible feeling all of the time... I wish this on no person...

Posted at 11:38 PM

 

June 10, 2005

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman consistently impresses me with his simple straightforwardness and thoughtful observations. Today's look at the losses experienced by the middle class is yet another column that displays his keen insight.

Losing Our Country

Baby boomers like me grew up in a relatively equal society. In the 1960's America was a place in which very few people were extremely wealthy, many blue-collar workers earned wages that placed them comfortably in the middle class, and working families could expect steadily rising living standards and a reasonable degree of economic security.

But as The Times's series on class in America reminds us, that was another country. The middle-class society I grew up in no longer exists.

Working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973. But it rose only 22 percent from 1973 to 2003, and much of that gain was the result of wives' entering the paid labor force or working longer hours, not rising wages.

Meanwhile, economic security is a thing of the past: year-to-year fluctuations in the incomes of working families are far larger than they were a generation ago. All it takes is a bit of bad luck in employment or health to plunge a family that seems solidly middle-class into poverty.

But the wealthy have done very well indeed. Since 1973 the average income of the top 1 percent of Americans has doubled, and the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled.

Why is this happening? I'll have more to say on that another day, but for now let me just point out that middle-class America didn't emerge by accident. It was created by what has been called the Great Compression of incomes that took place during World War II, and sustained for a generation by social norms that favored equality, strong labor unions and progressive taxation. Since the 1970's, all of those sustaining forces have lost their power.

Since 1980 in particular, U.S. government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families - and under the current administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless. From tax cuts that favor the rich to bankruptcy "reform" that punishes the unlucky, almost every domestic policy seems intended to accelerate our march back to the robber baron era.

It's not a pretty picture - which is why right-wing partisans try so hard to discredit anyone who tries to explain to the public what's going on.

These partisans rely in part on obfuscation: shaping, slicing and selectively presenting data in an attempt to mislead. For example, it's a plain fact that the Bush tax cuts heavily favor the rich, especially those who derive most of their income from inherited wealth. Yet this year's Economic Report of the President, in a bravura demonstration of how to lie with statistics, claimed that the cuts "increased the overall progressivity of the federal tax system."

The partisans also rely in part on scare tactics, insisting that any attempt to limit inequality would undermine economic incentives and reduce all of us to shared misery. That claim ignores the fact of U.S. economic success after World War II. It also ignores the lesson we should have learned from recent corporate scandals: sometimes the prospect of great wealth for those who succeed provides an incentive not for high performance, but for fraud.

Above all, the partisans engage in name-calling. To suggest that sustaining programs like Social Security, which protects working Americans from economic risk, should have priority over tax cuts for the rich is to practice "class warfare." To show concern over the growing inequality is to engage in the "politics of envy."

But the real reasons to worry about the explosion of inequality since the 1970's have nothing to do with envy. The fact is that working families aren't sharing in the economy's growth, and face growing economic insecurity. And there's good reason to believe that a society in which most people can reasonably be considered middle class is a better society - and more likely to be a functioning democracy - than one in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty.

Reversing the rise in inequality and economic insecurity won't be easy: the middle-class society we have lost emerged only after the country was shaken by depression and war. But we can make a start by calling attention to the politicians who systematically make things worse in catering to their contributors. Never mind that straw man, the politics of envy. Let's try to do something about the politics of greed.

Posted at 3:28 AM

 

June 9, 2005

Ooohh! Look! Shiny stuff!

Posted at 11:04 PM

 

June 8, 2005

If you need empty boxes - for anything - come to me. My grandma has enough of them in the basement to supply everyone who roams the internet.

Posted at 2:28 AM

 

June 7, 2005

I went back to Toledo tonight to once again be part of Steve's Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I've been exc itred about this all week, and although I've been otherwise busy with the garage sale, I've been looking forward to this a lot. In fact a good part of yesterday as well as the earlier part of today were spent changing my game character from the old system to the new system (when we last had played this fantasy role-playing campaign in 1998, Steve was using a gaming system he had made himself called GarQuest. With the game now being run in Dungeons & Dragons version 3, a lot of changes/transitions are required in how the characters are constructed).

Tomorrow is Steve's birthday, so I bought him a small cake, and I bought some fudge brownies for the rest of the guys, and we joked around and gamed for a good five hours. We even killed "the Guardian", the nasty high-level minotaur-like monster that was our current opponent to find and defeat. It was all a great time and very much the sort of fun interaction I've always loved about role-play gaming.

Unfortunately the SAGES offices were hotter than hell, having been left closed up with no A/C before we got there, and even by the time we left the old, weak A/C they had was of little effect. It looks like we'll be gaming at Mark's house next week instead, solving that issue. It'll also be more comfortable all around, and we won't have to worry about getting in (none of the SAGES were initially there to let us into the building today, so Steve and I ended up standing around on the sidewalk until Mark and Stephen showed up, and then they stood around with us for a while, too. Obviously we got in, but that shit's frustrating).

Anyhow, I have some more work to do to have my character completely set up neatly on the character sheets the way I'd like, but I'll have that stuff ready well before we meet again next Tuesday. I can hardly wait, honestly, and this sort of excitement is something I haven't felt in a very long time.

Posted Written at 2:56 AM

 

June 6, 2005

Say it isn't so, Steve.

Apple today announced that they will switch to Intel processors in all of their computers starting next year and they will have all machines on Intel chips by 2007. They'll be having all software (in-house and third party) recompiled to work on Intel, and that means that eventually (maybe three to five years from now) the non-recompiled programs almost certainly won't run any on the newer Intel-based machines any more.

I have mixed feelings about Apple bedding down with Intel, but I'm really burned by the fact that if my last laptop hadn't unexpected died on me, I had been planning to get a new Powerbook in 2007. At that point my Powerbook would have been about six years old, and I had figured that it would be outmoded to some degree by then. I was right because Apple's change to Intel chips will cause big changes in a short time. Instead of getting a new laptop then, however, I have a new laptop now, and in less than two years it will already be in some ways obsolete. That sucks.

I love this new Powerbook, and it has been very wonderful for its new features and faster processor, but it hasn't given me enough difference from the performance of the old Powerbook that I see a huge benefit from having had to switch when I did. Now I feel even more like I've been screwed royally once again by fate. It never fails.

Here's the details as posted by Apple:

Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006

At its Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple® announced plans to deliver models of its Macintosh® computers using Intel® microprocessors by this time next year, and to transition all of its Macs to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007. Apple previewed a version of its critically acclaimed operating system, Mac OS® X Tiger, running on an Intel-based Mac® to the over 3,800 developers attending CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote address. Apple also announced the availability of a Developer Transition Kit, consisting of an Intel-based Mac development system along with preview versions of Apple’s software, which will allow developers to prepare versions of their applications which will run on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs.

“Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor roadmap by far,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “It’s been ten years since our transition to the PowerPC, and we think Intel’s technology will help us create the best personal computers for the next ten years.”

“We are thrilled to have the world’s most innovative personal computer company as a customer,” said Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel. “Apple helped found the PC industry and throughout the years has been known for fresh ideas and new approaches. We look forward to providing advanced chip technologies, and to collaborating on new initiatives, to help Apple continue to deliver innovative products for years to come.”

“We plan to create future versions of Microsoft Office for the Mac that support both PowerPC and Intel processors,” said Roz Ho, general manager of Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit. “We have a strong relationship with Apple and will work closely with them to continue our long tradition of making great applications for a great platform.”

“We think this is a really smart move on Apple’s part and plan to create future versions of our Creative Suite for Macintosh that support both PowerPC and Intel processors,” said Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe.

The Developer Transition Kit is available starting today for $999 to all Apple Developer Connection Select and Premier members. Further information for Apple Developer Connection members is available at developer.apple.com. Intel plans to provide industry leading development tools support for Apple later this year, including the Intel C/C++ Compiler for Apple, Intel Fortran Compiler for Apple, Intel Math Kernel Libraries for Apple and Intel Integrated Performance Primitives for Apple.

Intel (www.intel.com), the world’s largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning desktop and notebook computers, OS X operating system, and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital music revolution with its iPod portable music players and iTunes online music store.

Posted at 1:42 AM

 

June 5, 2005

Garage Sale: Day 3

At least it's finally over ... for now. Having talked to some of the neighbors who also had sales this weekend, I think I'll do one more sale the first week of August (and they'll hold garage sales as well). After today I wonder if it's worth it, particularly the whole Sunday sale day deal.

I was up at 5 AM again and setting stuff up at 7 AM again, yet by 10:30 I'd had only one customer, and he didn't show up until after 9, the official start time. The number of people to stop by didn't get better, really. I had maybe two dozen people stop all day, and only a few of them bought a single day. If it hadn't been for these two cute kids (maybe about eight years old each) that drove up on their bikes, the day would have been a bust. Their fathers had given them $15 each and told them to go out and spend it. They found me and my neighbor and bought all sorts of stuff, nothing I would have expected them to want (small rugs, a suitcase, a blanket, tackle boxes (that made some sense), some large sheets of spongy foam, some water bottles ... lots of stuff), and they had a huge pile of stuff. They grabbed what they could and drove their bikes back home and then came back for the rest of the pile, then they shopped some more, collecting a few more items, and then one of the boys left with a handful of stuff. He came back after a bit of a delay and his father was following behind soon after in his car so that the boys could load up their booty. The father didn't smile at me but he didn't scowl either, so I have no take on what he thought of all of this. All I do know is that those two little boys made my day. They were so energetic and so excited about each thing they bought that it was fun to watch. They managed to take a lot of stuff, too, at least in terms of bulk, and even though they got a lot of items I'd marked down to move quickly, they still spent most of their money and between the two of them spent more that everyone else who'd bought stuff from me during the whole rest of the day.

In the final assessment, I made $73.85 today, a pretty piss poor amount compared to all of the other sale days. But I can't complain. I got rid of a whole lot of stuff this weekend and made just shy of $600 for the weekend. Added to the total from the last sale that puts me at $935 for both sale after expenses. And there is, of course, still one more sale to go at the end of the summer. Plus I'll be selling some stuff on eBay once I have the time to focus on that. So I've made a good start.

I'm tired, but I'm content. Tomorrow I'll be taking a bunch of stuff to the recycling center, donating the clothes that were left over from the sale, and running a bunch of errands for my grandmother and myself. I'll be pretty rushed and busy, but it looks to be far less hectic than the last four days. And heck, I won't have to get up at 5 AM ... or ever 7 or 8 AM. Hee hee - a full night of sleep. How cool is that? Very.

Posted at 11:19 PM

 

June 4, 2005

Garage Sale #2: Day 2

Strange Days - or at least strange day. Today was odd. I was up at the crack of dawn, cleaned up, and then moving sale items into place at 7 AM. I had everything in place by 9 AM, the official start time, which was odd since I've never had everything out on time before, but also strange because the early-comers, who swarmed me yesterday and also two weeks ago at the beginning of the last garage sale, weren't there. Well, yes, I had two people show up before 9 AM, but only within the last half-hour before that. Anyhow, it was an odd beginning, and the oddities continued.

As the day progressed I kept wondering what was going on. We'd been swarmed with people yesterday, and we had a lot of people at the last garage sale, which was on a Saturday, but today (a Saturday) there was barely a trickle of people at any point. I sold all sorts of stuff, and I made almost exactly what I made yesterday (which was good for a garage sale on any day, but less than I had been expecting/hoping to draw in), so it was a successful day for the most part. In the big picture, I'm seriously whittling down the pile of stuff to sell, and that's one of the main goals of slaving away at this (that and making lots of money to pay down my credit card debt, of course, but that's almost a given, really).

Anyhow, tomorrow is the last day for this sale. I've talked with the various neighbors who participated again today, and I think at least two or three of them will join me in one more sale at the beginning of August when we can catch the 'back-to-school' crowd. Hopefully I'll sell all sorts of stuff tomorrow, but barring some shockingly unexpected series of events that leads to someone buying out everything I have to sell, I'm sure I'll still have plenty of stuff left to sell. And with two more months to poke around the house, I will surely find more to add to the sale items in an effort to minim ize the clutter and pay down my debts. Here's to hoping for good things.

Posted at 9:01 PM

 

June 3, 2005

Garage Sale #2: Day 1

Today's sale started at Noon ... or at least it was scheduled to start at Noon, but people obviously can't read, so I was facing all sorts of early-comers in amazing numbers before I could even get out a portion of my stuff to be sold. It was frustrating, and the early birds slowed down my ability to set things up. It was not only frustrating but hot. The Noonday sun burnt me up and gave me a dose of mild sunburn, so that added to the fun. However, putting all problems aside, the day went well. It didn't rain, which was possible (and it certainly looked like it would indeed rain most of the early hours of the sale), and a lot of people came to shop. In the mere five hours of the sale (plus an hour or so from the early-comers) I made $268 and sold a whole bunch of stuff. Mind you, there's still all sorts of stuff left, but I've still got tomorrow and Sunday to find new owners for those things. Hopefully I'll find a lot of new owners. We can only hope.

Posted at 10:11 PM

 

June 2, 2005

I repeat, Ugh!

I've been working all day at gathering stuff from all over the house that can (and should) go into the garage sale (which starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday). I've had to poke around all over the place, find out what my grandma wants to keep or not (or what I want to keep or not), clean the things up (since most things are invariably covered with the dust layers of ages of disuse), and then figure out what the hell to charge for the things and put price stickers on them. And I got to do it all day long (except when I was trimming and mowing the lawn and supervising the guy that was fixing the gutter he had previously installed wrong).

Do I know how to have a fun day or what? Yes, the correct answer is 'What.' I wonder if the next three days of garage saling will be as much fun as this. Ugh. I don't know if I could take that.

Posted at 10:46 PM

 

June 1, 2005

Ugh! I've been tired all day. Yesterday was great (or at least it ended great), and it helped to lift my spirits a good bit, but getting to bed after 3 AM and being awoken by the phone at 7:30 AM (by one of the people I've contracted to work on the house) didn't give me much sleep time. I tried to get back to sleep after the phone call, but that didn't work very well, and shortly after 9 AM I just gave up and got myself together to drive my grandma to the YMCA for her aquarobics class. I did some small things during the day, hoping to have more energy at some point as the day progressed, but the energy never materialized. Hopefully with a full night's sleep tonight I'll be more energetic tomorrow because I have a lot of stuff to get ready to add to the garage sale (the second one of the summer that I'll be holding this Friday through Sunday). Tomorrow's the last day I have left to get things together, and I have a lot that I hope to pull out, clean up, price, and have ready to move out. It should make for a busy day (particularly since I want to trim and mow the lawn tomorrow as well). Fortunately I think a full night's sleep will come easily tonight.

Posted at 11:58 PM

 


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Journal, by Paul Cales, © June 2005