born live love die

How do I spin thee?

Let me count the ways…

The Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Secretary of State Rice had some contested words and I don’t have a problem with that.  At least it shows they are alive.  A microphone was left on and the conversation was recorded.  It is informative.  But I love the way it ended:

The Lavrov-Rice sparring continued at a subsequent news conference over issues such as Russia’s growing control of natural gas supplies in Europe and threats to democratic institutions in Russia.Reporters traveling with Rice transcribed the tape of the private luncheon but did not tell Rice aides about it until after a senior State Department official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity as usual, assured them that “there was absolutely no friction whatsoever” between the two senior diplomats.

Once the flabbergasted official learned of the tape, he continued the briefing. He paused repeatedly, asking before describing a discussion whether reporters had heard it.

I think I get it.

Official: Did you hear about this?

Reporters: No.

Official: (how do I spin this?)

Cheney’s minions have been practicing an intellectual Ponzi scheme, where after an initial assertion of executive power, every action is cross leveraged off each other in multiple ways. Here is an example of a claim of executive power:

The administration’s allies, however, were disturbed that Bush’s hands now may be tied by the ruling, written by Justice John Paul Stevens. “Stevens’s opinion was quite shocking in its lack of discussion of the president’s independent authority,” said Andrew McBride, a former Justice Department official who wrote a brief supporting the administration on behalf of former attorneys general and military lawyers.

What independent authority would that be? The right to declare war? That is in the Constitution. Levy taxes? It’s in the Constitution. Adjudicate laws? In there. McBride should read it sometime.

This is the end of a well written piece in the New York Times.

“I don’t know if this war is worth the life of Terry Lisk, or 10 soldiers, or 2,500 soldiers like him,” Colonel MacFarland told his forces. “What I do know is that he did not die alone. He was surrounded by friends.”A Greek philosopher said that only the dead have seen the end of war,” the colonel said. “Only Terry Lisk has seen the end of this war.”

The soldiers turned and walked back to their barracks in the darkness. No one said a word.

Read the whole thing.

For those who don’t know, ’419′ is the term used to describe the phony email games run by Nigerians to con people out of money.  A guy in England, reverses the scam with hilarious results.  Check them out:

419 Eater

Before creating the television show, The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin wrote the movie, The American President.  It is one of my favorite movies.  The penultimate scene is at the end of the movie were President Shepherd faces down his critics.  From link:

INT. THE PRESS BRIEFING ROOM - EARLY MORNING

ROBIN is on her last drops of energy and patience.

REPORTER #4
Robin, will the President ever
respond to Senator Rumson's
question about being a member of
the American Civil Liberties Union?

But instead of hands going up, the PRESS CORPS suddenly
stands. ROBIN turns to see SHEPHERD stride in and step up to
the podium.

SHEPHERD
Yes, he will. 'Morning.

ROBIN
Good morning, Mr. President.

SHEPHERD takes the podium. There's a palpable BUZZ in the
room as video operators adjust their equipment, etc. People
starts to stand.

SHEPHERD
That's all right, you can keep your
seats. For the last couple of
months, Senator Rumson has suggested
that being president of this country
was, to a certain extent, about
character...

ANGLE - ROBIN

who's picked up the receiver from a wall phone and punches in
four numbers.

She turns in to the wall to shield her conversation from the
rest of the room.

ROBIN
(into phone)
Lewis...call A.J. and come on down
here...I don't know, but
something's happening.

SHEPHERD
...and although I have not been
willing to engage in his attacks on
me, I've been here three years and
three days, and I can tell you
without hesitation: Being President
of this country is entirely about
character.

LEWIS enters with A.J. and KODAK.

SHEPHERD
(continuing)
For the record: Yes, I am a card-
carrying member of the A.C.L.U. But
the more important question is why
aren't you, Bob? This is an
organization whose sole purpose is to
defend the Bill of Rights, so it
naturally begs the questions.

SHEPHERD
(continuing)
Why would a senator, his party's most
powerful spokesman and a candidate
for president, choose to reject
upholding the Constitution? If you
can answer that question, then,
folks, you're smarter than I am,
because I didn't understand it until
a couple of minutes ago. Everybody
knows American isn't easy. America is
advanced citizenship.

SHEPHERD
(continuing)
You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's
gonna put up a fight. It's gonna
say, "You want free speech? Let's
see you acknowledge a man whose words
make your blood boil, who's standing
center stage and advocating, at the
top of his lungs, that which you
would spend a lifetime opposing at the
top of yours. You want to claim
this land as the land of the free,
then the symbol of your country can't
just be a flag; the symbol also has
to be one of its citizens exercising
his right to burn that flag in
protest." Show me that, defend that,
celebrate that in your classrooms.
Then you can stand up and sing about
the land of the free. I've known Bob
Rumson for years. I've been operating
under the assumption that the reason
Bob devotes so much time and energy to
shouting at the rain was that he simply
didn't get it. Well, I was wrong.

SHEPHERD
(continuing)
Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't
get it. Bob's problem is that he
can't sell it. Nobody has ever won
an election by talking about what I
was just talking about.

SHEPHERD
(continuing)
This is a country made up of people
with hard jobs that they're terrified
of losing. The roots of freedom are
of little or no interest to them at
the moment. We are a nation afraid
to go out at night. We're a society
that has assigned low priority to
education and has looked the other
way while our public schools have
been decimated. We have serious
problems to solve, and we need
serious men to solve them. And
whatever your particular problem is,
friend, I promise you, Bob Rumson is
not the least bit interested in
solving it. He is interested in two
things and two things only: Making
you afraid of it and telling you
who's to blame for it. That, ladies
and gentlemen, is how you win
elections. You gather a group of
middle-aged, middle-class, middle-
income voters who remember with
longing an easier time, and you talk
to them about family and American
values and personal character. Then
you have an old photo of the
President's girlfriend. You scream
about patriotism and you tell them
she's to blame for their lot in life,
you go on television and you call her
a whore. Sydney Ellen Wade has done
nothing to you, Bob. She has done
nothing but put herself through law
school, prosecute criminals for five
years, represent the interests of
public school teachers for two years,
and lobby for the safety of our
natural resources.

SHEPHERD
(continuing)
You want a character debate? Fine,
but you better stick with me, 'cause
Sydney Ellen Wade is way out of your
league. I've loved two women in my
life. I lost one to cancer, and I
lost the other 'cause I was so busy
keeping my job I forgot to do my job.
Well that ends right now.

SHEPHERD
(continuing)
Tomorrow morning the White House is
sending a bill to Congress for its
consideration. It's White House
Resolution 455, an energy bill
requiring a 20 percent reduction of the
emission of fossil fuels over the
next ten years. It is by far the
most aggressive stride ever taken in
the fight to reverse the effects of
global warming. The other piece of
legislation is the crime bill. As of
today it no longer exists. I'm
throwing it out. I'm throwing it out
and writing a law that makes sense.
You cannot address crime prevention
without getting rid of assault
weapons and handguns.
I consider them a threat to national
security, and I will go door to door
if I have to, but I'm gonna convince
Americans that I'm right, and I'm
gonna get the guns. We've got
serous problems, and we need serious
men, and if you want to talk about
character, Bob, you'd better come at
me with more than a burning flag and
a membership card. If you want to
talk about character and American
values, fine. Just tell me where and
when, and I'll show up. This is a
time for serious men, Bob, and your
fifteen minutes are up. My name's
Andrew Shepherd, and I am the
President.

SHEPHERD exits the press room, leaving a stunned room in his
wake.

I always loved that scene.

Howard Kurtz, writing in the Washington Post, comments on the concerted effort by members of the Bush Administration in his Media Notes Extra column.

President Bush calls the conduct of the New York Times “disgraceful.” Vice President Cheney objects to the paper having won a Pulitzer Prize. A Republican congressman wants the Times prosecuted. National Review says its press credentials should be yanked. Radio commentator Tammy Bruce likens the paper to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Even by modern standards of media-bashing, the volume of vitriol being heaped upon the editors on Manhattan’s West 43rd Street is remarkable — especially considering that the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal also published accounts Friday of a secret administration program to monitor the financial transactions of terror suspects. So, in its later editions, did The Washington Post.

The Bush Administration wants to beat the New York Times like a pinata, but Greg Sargent has the best question at The American Prospect:

I just got off the phone with a spokesperson for the Treasury Department, and she’s refusing to explain why Treasury officials didn’t demand that the Wall Street Journal hold off on publishing the story about the U.S.’s secret financial surveillance program, the way they demanded it of the New York Times and the L.A. Times.

I belong to a Yahoo group for soldiers who were once tower rats, guarding the Pershing missile sites in Germany. It is a echo chamber for trashing the media and any one who doesn’t follow Bush. The meme that the media lost Iraq is already building.

If the shorter version of Sen. Specter is, “Oh, yeah?” to the Bush Administration, let’s see how loudly he says it.

A bill becomes the rule of the land when Congress passes it and the president signs it into law, right?

Not necessarily, according to the White House. A law is not binding when a president issues a separate statement saying he reserves the right to revise, interpret or disregard it on national security and constitutional grounds.

That’s the argument a Bush administration official is expected to make Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who has demanded a hearing on a practice he considers an example of the administration’s abuse of power.

“It’s a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution,” Specter said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m interested to hear from the administration just what research they’ve done to lead them to the conclusion that they can cherry-pick.”

Cherry pick, indeed.  If that is what you call cutting the trees down to get to the cherries.

“It means that the administration does not feel bound to enforce many new laws which Congress has passed,” said David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues. “This raises profound rule of law concerns. Do we have a functioning code of federal laws?”

This is a “good to be da king” moment on the part of Bush, et. al.  Let’s see if the good senator has his “A” game today.

Michelle Cottle writing in The New Republic, tells the story about a new set of books for children.

Some days, modern parenthood feels like an ever-expanding spiral of anxiety. Is your child watching too much “Wiggles”? Will she be seduced by an Internet predator? Will video games inspire him to shoot up his preschool? As if this situation weren’t stressful enough, Eric Jackson, chairman and co-founder of World Ahead Publishing, wants conservative parents to contemplate one more nightmarish scenario: What if, God forbid, your indescribably precious offspring grows up to become … a liberal?With an eye to forestalling such heartbreak, last September, the Torrance, California-based press, which touts itself as “the West Coast’s leading conservative publisher,” launched its own children’s division, Kids Ahead. While the adult imprint focuses on titles addressing “serious and weighty matters” like Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine, Kids Ahead aims to bring the conservative message to the playdate set. The mission, explains Jackson, “is providing books for families who have traditional values, if you will, and who want to have books to use as a tool to pass on those values to their children.”

Thus far, the new imprint has only one writer in its stable: Katharine DeBrecht, the pen name of a mother of three whose authorial debut, Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!, generated major buzz–and sold some 30,000 copies–after receiving an on-air plug from Rush Limbaugh. In the wake of DeBrecht’s success, Kids Ahead is moving forward with an entire Help! Mom! series. Help! Mom! Hollywood’s in My Hamper! hit stores in March, Help! Mom! The Ninth Circuit Nabbed the Nativity! will be out in time for Christmas, with Help! Mom! There Are Lawyers in My Lunchbox! to follow. Jackson, meanwhile, is wading through a flood of manuscripts from other would-be authors. “Over the past six to twelve months, the number of submissions to us has just soared,” he marvels.

I’ll bet they soared. After all, it is an easy market to make. The parents who buy these books are already hooked on the hate they spread, and the kids who listen to them don’t have a voice in the purchasing decision.

Here is the book on Amazon.

I find solace in the knowledge that kids are like watermelon seeds. Hit them too hard on the head and they take off for parts unfound. When parents try to force kids to accept stuff like this, it backfires.

Science Blog is a daily read for me.  This story about a possible placental link to autism is a good example of the things they catch.

In previous work, Kliman had observed an unusual pathologic finding in the placentas from children with Asperger Syndrome, an ASD condition which, like autism, impairs the ability to relate to others.

“By serendipity, at a dinner party I happened to sit next to George M. Anderson, a research scientist in the Yale Child Study Center who had access to many cases of children with ASD,” said Kliman. “We realized that by working together we might be able to determine if this placental abnormality could be a useful clinical marker.”

With the help of Andrea Jacobs-Stannard, a student in Kliman’s laboratory, and Katarzyna Chawarska and Fred R. Volkmar of the Yale Child Study Center, the group designed a study to see if the placental abnormality, specifically the presence of trophoblast inclusions, was a marker for ASD. The multidisciplinary team of Yale researchers compared placentas from 13 children with ASD to those from 61 unaffected children for the presence of trophoblast inclusions.

They found that the placentas from ASD children were three times more likely to have the inclusions. Kliman and the team identified trophoblast inclusions by performing microscopic examinations of placental tissues.

Dr. Dan says to bookmark, and read twice daily.

Regrets?  I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention…

So the song goes, but now comes evidence that people regret not having more fun.  From Science Blog

The older we get, the more we regret not having more fun, says new study in the September issue of the Journal of Consumer Research. Researchers from Columbia University show that choosing work over play leads to regrets about having missed out on the pleasures of life. Over time, these regrets intensify, while guilt about indulging tends to fade.

I need to indulge more if I’m not going to regret it after tomorrow.