I had been meaning to blog this for a while:
According to the WaPo:
The military already has identified unmet funding needs, including initiatives aimed at providing equipment and weapons for troops in Iraq. The Army has publicly identified nearly $6 billion in funding requests that did not make Bush's $402 billion defense budget for 2005, including $132 million for bolt-on vehicle armor; $879 million for combat helmets, silk-weight underwear, boots and other clothing; $21.5 million for M249 squad automatic weapons; and $27 million for ammunition magazines, night sights and ammo packs. Also unfunded: $956 million for repairing desert-damaged equipment and $102 million to replace equipment lost in combat.The Marine Corps' unfunded budget requests include $40 million for body armor, lightweight helmets and other equipment for "Marines engaged in the global war on terrorism," Marine Corps documents state. The Marines are also seeking 1,800 squad automatic weapons and 5,400 M4 carbine rifles.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, charged that the president is playing political games by postponing further funding requests until after the election, to try to avoid reopening debate on the war's cost and future.
Weldon described the administration's current defense budget request as "outrageous" and "immoral" and said that at least $10 billion is needed for Iraqi operations over the next five months.
"There needs to be a supplemental, whether it's a presidential election year or not," he said. "The support of our troops has to be the number one priority of this country. . . . Somebody's got to get serious about this."
Where should the money come from? Well, according to FoxNews:
"The request for the Missile Defense Agency is $9.14 billion,
according to a copy of the budget President Bush plans to send to
Congress on Monday."
We might not need this much body armor now had we not been penny wise and pound foolish in our planning for the occupation. With the 300,000 troops that Shinseki had originally requested (and gotten canned for), it would have been alot easier to keep a lid on the situation.
Before you watch the Dateline roll call tonight (or not), I urge you to read the story of just one soldier, Lance Corporal Chance Phelps. Read it now.
Continue reading "Just One Name" »
| Iraq |
The article isn't actually interesting -- I just think the headline reads like something out of The Daily Planet.
| Open Source |
I'm generally utterly contemptuous of TV news, especially when it comes to their apparent fear of showing us anything but the most sanitized, Pentagon-approved version of the war, but it seems that ths Friday Ted Koppel will read the names and show pictures of every GI killed since 2003.
Recommended viewing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3666461.stm
Here's that damn liberal media bias again, creeping up like kudzu.
These are the "Related Advertising Links" appended to an article in USAToday about W's testimony to the 9/11 Commission:
Pro-Bush Store
Bush Apparel and Merchandise Show Your Support for George W Bush
store.godubya.com
Re-elect President Bush?
Re-elect Bush? Respond now and you can get a $50 Gift Card (aff).
www.captainbargains.com
Top Political Books
Ranking of top 100 political books from Amazon.com (aff)
books.aroundthecapitol.com
George Bush Playing Cards
52 Reasons to Re-elect G.W. Bush Purchase pro-Bush playing cards
www.newtscards.com
Rice Counters Clarke
Condoleezza Rice testifies. Get expert analysis and opinion.
www.acrosstheaisle.com
| Biased Reporting | Vast Right-wing Conspiracy | Vast Left-wing Conspiracy |
This week we reached our 2,000th post! (Here's the first one, if you want to get all nostalgic and all.) My, how far we've come.... Thanks everyone. It's your posts, clicks, and comments that make Ishbadiddle worth it all.
Punchline: We're most violent when we're 2 years old, but we're not able to inflict much harm. At 3, when we get coordinated, our violence proclivities decrease. So it's not about testosterone, or adolescence, it's about human nature. I disagree with Parker however, on the conclusions he draws. I find his nature/nurture dichotomy simplistic. Violent impulses != violent actions.
| Brain | Toddlers | Terrible Twos | Human Nature | Philosophy | Augustine | Rousseau | Original Sin |
I had been wondering about Kerry's recent low profile. I figured it was deliberate, but building a whole strategy around rope-a-dope? As with Ali, that's either genius or lunacy. Anybody care to speculate on the conditions it would take to make this work, or the conditions under which this would be a disaster? Is this all driven by the fact that internet fund raising may benefit the Dems disproprotionately? Also, do T-shirts count as positive advertising?
| 2004 Election | George W. Bush | Muhammad Ali | Rope-a-Dope |
This seemed potentially noteworthy, what with a T-shirt contest going on and all.
From Salon's news feed.
Hand wash, drip dry, insult president
Urban-bag designer Tom Bihn's... sales have doubled since a French-language presidential insult mysteriously made its way onto the bilingual washing instructions for hundreds of his laptop bags and backpacks.
The labels read: "Nous sommes desoles que notre president soit un idiot. Nous n'avons pas vote pour lui."
Translated into English: "We are sorry that our president is an idiot. We didn't vote for him."
Bihn's self-titled company has drawn national media attention and sparked Internet chatter since a Seattle customer spotted the insult and posted a photo of his bag's label on his Web log.
Bihn is careful to note that the tag doesn't specify who "our president" refers to.
"I'm going with the idea that it's a joke about me, the president of the company," Bihn said Thursday, but "clearly when you use the word 'idiot' and 'president' in the same sentence people jump to other conclusions." (more)
Continue reading "What's in a Tag?" » | T-shirts | France |
Via go fish.
| Security | Morrissey |
Recently, Salon magazine ran an article making the following claim:
Bush, in fact, does not read his PDBs, but has them orally summarized
every morning by CIA director George Tenet. President Clinton, by
contrast, read them closely and alone, preventing any aides from
interpreting what he wanted to know firsthand. He extensively marked
up his PDBs, demanding action on this or that, which is almost
certainly the reason the Bush administration withheld his memoranda
from the 9/11 commission.
"I know he doesn't read," one former Bush National Security Council
staffer told me. Several other former NSC staffers corroborated his
habit. It seems highly unlikely that he read the National Intelligence
Estimate on WMD before the Iraq war that consigned contrary evidence
and caveats that undermined the case to footnotes and fine print.
There is no record that he raised any questions about the abuse of
intelligence. Nor is there any evidence that he read the State
Department's 17-volume report "The Future of Iraq," warning of nearly
all the postwar pitfalls, that was shelved by the neocons in the
Pentagon and Vice President Cheney's office. "He probably didn't even
know of 'The Future of Iraq,'" said a former NSC staffer.
Josh Marshall follows this up by claiming that because Bush was on vacation, the famous PDB of August 6 wasn't orally summarized by Tenet, but instead by the number three guy at the NSC, somebody who was only 6 weeks on the job, and who had probably never briefed the President before.
Why is this germane? Well, it brings back up the question, first raised during the campaign, of whether Bush (43) is dyslexic. For the record, Bush denies being dyslexic, but what Presidential candidate in his right mind would admit it?
I find the claim that Bush is dyslexic fairly convincing. Hitchens points out that Bush's peculiar speech gaffes follow a pattern that is hard to explain otherwise. (My favorites: calling tariffs and barriers terriers, and using the word "vile" for "viable". These are clearly gaffes that are visual in origin). We also know that Neil Bush is dyslexic, there are claims that George H.W. Bush (41) was dyslexic, and Barbara Bush has long been involved in dyslexic charities. Since dyslexia is genetic, the family evidence is an interesting circumstantial tidbit.
For those of you who are reading this and who don't know me, I am not arguing that dyslexia should disqualify a candidate from being President of the United States. Certainly, if we look at famous dyslexics, it is clear that dyslexia is no barrier to achievement. If Churchill was indeed dyslexic, then clearly one can be a dyslexic and still a highly accomplished political figure.
At the same time, being dyslexic does not exempt Bush from scrutiny of his intellectual abilities. It is condescending to pretend that dyslexics cannot be either dumb or lazy. The question remains, can Bush, with all of his personal attributes, perform at the level required for the job?
Unfortunately for Bush, his presidency has centered on issues of the economy and foreign policy, the two areas where his prior experience and understanding was the weakest. So he really does have to process alot of new information, and in a fairly short time period. Reading is one way to do this.
However, we don't know how well the President can read. There is a wide range of dyslexia. I had a friend who was the valedictorian at one of America's top hgh schools, and who kept up with the 600+ pages per week of classic texts required by Directed Studies. On the other hand, there are hollywood stars who can neither read their scripts nor their contracts. Bush seems to be able to read a teleprompter, I imagine he should be able to read the 13 or so pages in the PDB that day.
| George W. Bush |
1. I don't like TV. I don't enjoy most of the shows that are on, but if I have a TV, especially with cable, I will watch way more than I plan to, and feel drained at the end.
2. I use netflix as a form of cable TV. I get films and watch them in snippets whenever convenient.
3. DVDs have subtitles. This is very convenient when dialogue is important but inaudible.
4. You can view the subtitles in many different languages. Some movies don't even have english subtitles.
5. I've taken to watching blaxploitation films with the French subtitles on. It was almost by accident - Coffy didn't have english subtitles, and I couldn't hear a critical bit of dialogue right that the end of the movie. I've also seen pieces of Cradle 2 the Grave this way. In that case, I was bored with the movie, but not bored enough to turn it off. Seeing the dialogue in French made the whole thing a bit more fun.
Fact is, the dialogue and plot in these movies is really basic. That makes the subtitles accessible, but still interesting. Why not just watch French movies? I actually was better at oral french than written (and probably still am), but even at my greatest proficiency, I had a hard time parsing movie dialogue. Blaxploitation French is alot easier, more fun, and well ... I pick up some useful vocabulary. Unfortunately, I didn't take any notes, but next time I'll try to jot down a few snippets.
| Blaxploitation | Pam Grier | Jet Li | DMX | French |
These files contain a list of over 75 occurrences of the words "they"/"their"/"them"/"themselves" referring to a singular antecedent with indefinite or generic meaning in Jane Austen's writings (mainly in her six novels), as well as further examples of singular "their" etc. from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and elsewhere. While your high-school English teacher may have told you not to use this construction, it actually dates back to at least the 14th century, and was used by the following authors (among others) in addition to Jane Austen: Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, the King James Bible, The Spectator, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Frances Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Fielding, Maria Edgeworth, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, William Makepeace Thackeray, Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot [Mary Anne Evans], Charles Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, John Ruskin, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walt Whitman, George Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, W. H. Auden, Lord Dunsany, George Orwell, and C. S. Lewis.
Singular "their" etc., was an accepted part of the English language before the 18th-century grammarians started making arbitrary judgements as to what is "good English" and "bad English", based on a kind of pseudo-"logic" deduced from the Latin language, that has nothing whatever to do with English. (See the 1975 journal article by Anne Bodine in the bibliography.) And even after the old-line grammarians put it under their ban, this anathematized singular "their" construction never stopped being used by English-speakers, both orally and by serious literary writers. So it's time for anyone who still thinks that singular "their" is so-called "bad grammar" to get rid of their prejudices and pedantry!
| English | Grammar |
Could it be? Finally? Hellboy success leads to greenlight for Watchmen movie?
Please let it not suck.
| Alan Moore |
Reading "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" out loud for the nth time last night, I wondered about a question that had been bothering me for some time: why are the bowls of porridge different tempratures? You'll recall that the three bowls are too hot, prompting to the bears to leave the house temporarily. Yet when Goldilocks tries the three bowls, Papa Bear's is too hot, Mama's is too cold, and Baby Bear's is just right.
So here's the question: if the porridge all starts out the same, then why do they end up different?
A quick Google search on goldilocks differential cooling rates turns up this discussion on the Porridge Problem, which I now excerpt in the name of science:
Continue reading "The Science of Fairy Tales" » | Fairy Tales | Food |
Sorry blogging's been light as of late; we've been busy getting Designs On The White House launched.
|
Over on Beezlebot.
| New York City |
From Really not worth archiving:
"I Thought It Was."I thought it was important
For the United Nations Security Council
That when it says something,
It means something
For the sake of security in the world.See, the war on terror
Had changed the calculations.
We needed to work with people.
People needed to come together
To work.And therefore,
Empty words would embolden the actions
Of those who are willing to kill indiscriminately.The United Nations passed
A Security Council resolution
Unanimously that said,
Disarm or face serious consequences.And he refused to disarm.
I thought it was very interesting
That Charlie Duelfer, who just came back,
He's the head of the Iraqi Survey Group
Reported some interesting findings from his recent tour there.
And one of the things was,
He was amazed at how deceptive the Iraqis had been toward unmovic and unscom,
Deceptive in hiding things.We knew they were hiding things.
A country that hides something is
A country that is afraid of getting caught,
And that was part of our calculation.
Charlie confirmed that.
| George W. Bush |
US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush
They may be the ones facing danger on the battlefield, but US soldiers in Iraq are being asked to pray for President George W Bush.
Thousands of marines have been given a pamphlet called "A Christian's Duty," a mini prayer book which includes a tear-out section to be mailed to the White House pledging the soldier who sends it in has been praying for Bush.
"I have committed to pray for you, your family, your staff and our troops during this time of uncertainty and tumult. May God's peace be your guide," says the pledge, according to a journalist embedded with coalition forces.
The pamphlet, produced by a group called In Touch Ministries, offers a daily prayer to be made for the US president, a born-again Christian who likes to invoke his God in speeches.
Sunday's is "Pray that the President and his advisers will seek God and his wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding".
Monday's reads "Pray that the President and his advisers will be strong and courageous to do what is right regardless of critics".
---------------
Would it be unseemly to point out that W may already be "not relying on his own understanding"?
As my friend Ben says, "If I'm going to live in the Vatican, I want to wear some kind of pointy hat."
| George W. Bush | Prayer | Iraq | Religion |
With LiveJournal Images, you can see the most recent images posted to blogs on LiveJournal. [Warning: May not be safe for work!] Particularly interesting are the accidental juxtapositions, like this one:
| Web Tools |
I can't get image upload to work (perhaps b/c I can't resize the image properly). Here is a version of the PDB with the key words circled and linked. While hindsight may be 20-20 (something I have a draft post about), there was a fair amount of prescient information in this document alone.
| 9/11 | PDB | PBJ | LBJ | Wadministration |
Or not so recently clicked since it was down when I tried it. via Brad DeLong:
LittleGreenFootballs or Late German Fascists? (the LGF quiz): Care to test your knowledge of history and ear for dialogue? Each of the following 14 quotes represents either: a) a poster from Littlegreenfootballs.com dehumanizing Palestinians, arabs or Iraqis. - OR - b) Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler or some other "late German fascist" dehumanizing Jews. See if you can tell which is which! There is no time limit, so please choose carefully.
[NOTE: this means I'm posting before actually having seen this. I just like the idea, although I have no idea about the execution]
| Nazis | Quiz |
"Christ died for your sins" right? He didn't rise for your sins, did he?
The iconic image of Christianity is Christ on the cross, it's a cross that's on the walls of every church in America, not an empty cave, or a Christ ascendant.
So if the moment of crucifixion is the key defining moment for a Christian, then why is Good Friday is an afterthought to Easter? Even for the Catholics, it's Easter that's the key holiday, that's the big Mass, not Good Friday.
I also don't get why, if salvation is a joyful concept, Good Friday is not a joyful day. That's easy, say you -- the crucifixion was a gruesome event. How can you be happy at the brutal death of the messiah? Well, say I, this is the long foretold sacrifice of the lamb, right? This is the moment of redemption. If Christianity is a religion that says that you shouldn't be afraid of death, then why can't you be happy on Good Friday? After all, this is the big G-D we're talking about here ... omnipotent being and all, right?
But then, I don't get it. And I apologize, in advance, if I offend. Lastly, should you leave comments, please use my handle. I would hate to have my semi-public reflections come back to haunt me, out of context, at an inopportune time.
| Jesus Christ | Holidays | Easter | Good Friday |
ashidome: http://www.subservientchicken.com/
ishbadiddle: i saw
ishbadiddle: i made him strut and lie down
ashidome: creepy
ishbadiddle: then i im'd him "i'm sorry to humiliate you"
ishbadiddle: "how much are they paying you?"
ishbadiddle: no reaction
ishbadiddle: what did you have him do?
ashidome: dance
ishbadiddle: dance, chicken, dance!
ishbadiddle: did he do the chicken dance?
ashidome: i dunno
ashidome: it was slow so i closed my window
ashidome: he moved around a bid
ashidome: t
ishbadiddle: slow dancing chicken, how romantic
ashidome: funny
ishbadiddle: ok, time to blog this IM
ashidome: laughs
| Memes | Fast Food | Birds | Chickens | Advertising | Food |
| John Ashcroft | Pornography | Civil Liberties |
Now that the vampire bat problem is kicking in, can we please admit that deforestation is maybe a problem?
Combine this with recent logging deregulation* and I think we're getting into some interesting territory. I envision a sort of "Dawn of the Dead Spotted Owl" thing. Note I've generously linked to the Freepers' take on this issue, to be fair and balanced. (*Side thought: If the Wadministration thinks this is such a great idea, why did they announce it during Christmas week, when no one would notice? Well, surely W mentioned it in his State of the Union. No? Must have been an oversight, along with the Mars thing.)
Oh! And speaking of enviro-calamity, are we all waiting in line in front of our local movie-houses for The Day After Tomorrow? Unlike other disaster pictures, it has the creepy undertones of an actual "secret" Pentagon report to give it that extra edge. Now THAT is some badass guerilla marketing. (Director Roland Emmerich swears he didn't plant the story.)
Phew! It's enough to make an eco-terrorist want to take a break and hit Starbucks.
Um, how're those T-shirt designs coming?
| Vampire Bats | End Of The World |
* Saddam did have WMD plans says inspector
* Bush and Blair made secret pact for Iraq war nine days after 9/11
* US soldiers in Iraq poisoned by radioactive weapons -- ours
| War | WMD | George W. Bush | Tony Blair |
Gates rumored to launch Microsoft-enabled Particleboard next quarter; Wintel computers will no longer work when sitting on Ikea furniture.
| Ikea |
|
OK, so it's no Spirited Away -- but still a cut above. One of the great things about it is that not much happens. Kiki is a witch in training, but it's less about magic, and more about a girl growing up.
| Animation |
You are a GRAMMAR GOD!
If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!
How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
| Quiz |
With apologies:
Mr. McGuire: I just wanna say one word to you. Just one word.Ben Braddock: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben Braddock: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: "Chametz".
It seems that you can now sell/lease your chametz on-line, which brings me back to the heady early days of the dotcom boom, where people thought that they could eliminate the middleman on all transactions, and we would live a more perfect, neo-liberal economics-y, life.
Unfortunately, all they have on the website is a form for selling your chametz, and nothing about buying it. I had this image in my head of the "chametz market", where you could have chametz futures, etc. [The best part of the website is the "Click to navigate with Mr. Matzah"]
Mr. Braddock: Don't you think that idea is a little half-baked?Benjamin Braddock: Oh no, Dad, it's completely baked.
------
Update: It turns out that Viagra is chametz! This makes the presence of a chometz market even more interesting.
| Chametz | Pesach | Economics | Religion |
Found on The Department of Homeboy Security.
| Web Tools | Reference |
Just so we're not in an all politics, all the time mode -- some reviews of movies we've recently seen:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind . Debbie and I both really enjoyed this. What the hell is it like inside Charlie Kaufman's head, that's what I want to know. And hey, Jim Carrey wasn't actively annoying! (Black Table called it a remake of “Annie Hall” for the iPod set, which may be true, but does that make it less good, Max?)
After seeing ESOTSM, we really wanted to visit the Lacuna clinic to have our memory of Duplex removed. Warning: if you hear that a movie is really really bad, but want to watch it because it was filmed in your neighborhood, and you figure if you put up with all those film trucks for months and months, the least you can get out it is seeing your nabe on film in a bunch of establish shots -- don't bother. The movie will be really really bad, and they won't bother to throw in pictures of your favorite neighborhood bookstore or anything to save the movie. Nothing could save this movie, possibly one of the worst I've ever seen. Zero stars.
We also recently rented The Professional. Jean Reno can help any movie he's in -- for instance, he was the only good thing in Godzilla -- and the relationship between him (hit man) and
