I refer, of course, to this.
Today, March 29, 2004, a group of protestors was bussed to the home of Karl Rove, the President’s chief political advisor. They surrounded his house, shouted slogans, waved signs, and pounded on his windows. I will credit the man with showing marvelous restraint, as nobody was hurt as a result of this unprecedented assault on a citizen.
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It really drives me nuts when people mangle our language. Ok, let’s forget for a moment that the specific incident that spawned this rant involves mangling not one, but two languages, but we can go from there.
Why do people insist on adding modifiers to BOOLEAN ADJECTIVES?!
Al Dente – Italian for “to the tooth”. Subjective? Yes. But boolean. Something either is, or is not, al dente. Yet I heard a woman state quite happily “These beans are very al dente”. That’s like being very perfect, or very on. AAAAIGH!
And my mother wonders why I drink…
Spring Fever bit me right on the ass today. It hit 70 degrees here in sunny Connecticut. I took the opportunity to get the car washed and then drive around really fast with all my windows open. It’s about time.
Of course, this being New England and all, Twain’s rule applies.
No nefarious political posturing here, folks. This is a simple “separation of powers” thing. You’ve no doubt heard the term “chilling effect” before. That’s what separation of powers is about.
It’s the reason federal judges are appointed for life. It’s the reason we have three separate branches of government, with limited ability to interfere in each other’s affairs.
Put simply – could a president make difficult decisions if every thought was counterbalanced by the fear of being hauled before a congressional investigation?
Could the Supreme Court do their job if they felt that any controversial decision they made could result in their removal from the court?
The only way the President (or his advisors) should be compelled to testify under oath before congress is if there are indictments presented alleging specific criminal behavior. Absent that, the congress will have to make due.
There’s something about this guy that bothers me. It’s obvious that he lied about what he did, or what someone else did, but I can’t tell when or where. And this troubles me greatly.
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When the truth cannot be objectively known. Such is the case with the invasion of Iraq. I am tired of people telling me that “George Bush lied about WMD so he could go get Saddam” for whatever reason. To say that he lied, you must believe that he intentionally said things that he knew to be false. There is no evidence to suggest that. I would suggest that anyone who feels misled by the Bush administration was instead misled by their own beliefs and biases.
In order to say you were misled, and it isn’t your fault, you need to accept that someone deliberately fabricated information and presented it as truth. There is no evidence to suggest that information was fabricated, enhanced, “sexed-up” or otherwise presented falsely. Therefore, the misleading that has happened, has happened in your head.
The case was made that intelligence indicated that there were weapons there. The behavior of Hussein supported that assertion. That the State department had doubts about the veracity of the intelligence does not make statements and decisions derived from that intelligense a lie.
You were not misled. You simply don’t like the fact that the intelligence was wrong. There’s a big difference there.
Our intelligence on the German atomic bomb project was wrong too. Did FDR lie to the American people so they’d support the Manhattan Project?
Just in case you were wondering where I come down on the Microsoft issue.
As much as I think the EU are a bunch of sniveling snipes, Microsoft should expect that if they want to do business in Europe, they have to play by Eurpoe’s rules. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
I don’t think that software bundling in and of itself is harmful to competition, but exclusive contracts with hardware vendors, the repeated IP thefts, the proprietary non-standard implementations of standards – those ARE harmful.
The only explanation for why the US government went after MS for Internet Explorer, and not for the hundreds of technologies they “stole” (actually, they would get their engineers to look at stuff that other people developed, and either steal it outright, or clone it and give it away, sucking the value out of the original inventor’s hands) is that the government wanted a case where they could show that they were “doing something, damnit!”, but in actuality all they were doing was getting Microsoft to pay protection money to both political parties.
Now that it looks like MS is buying politicians like everyone else, people are surprised?
Senatrix Patty Murray (D-WA) may well be one of the dumbest women in American Politics, possibly in the whole of America. You may recall that this woman heaped praise upon Osama bin Laden. Now, after doing that, and excoriating President Bush for the rebuilding of Iraq, she wants President Bush to “engage” the EU on Microsoft’s behalf.
Talk about your big brass ones. This is one very dumb woman. At the very least, she hasn’t got much going for her in the common sense department. Or maybe she does, given that her colleague Jim McDermott went to Iraq and basically called the President a liar and said we should trust Saddam Hussein. Is the entire state of Washington that far to the left? And I’m not talking geography here.
Welcome to the first post from the road for Applied Indifference! Coming to you (sort-of) live from the (now closed) convention floor of the PhillyClassic5 Classic Video Game event. It’s nice to see young people come to these things and enjoy the games I grew up with as much as I enjoyed them. Highlights:
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This is outrageous. I thought it was a little overboard to sue a state or what-have-you for millions of dollars for wrongful imprisonment. Certainly someone is entitled to compensation for the time spent in prison, plus something for the damaging of their good name.
But CHARGING someone for room and board, after releasing them from prison when they were wrongly convicted in the first place?
That’s just mad.