Whatever I Want

“What do you call it when a hellhole meets a cataclysm? Oh yeah; a catastrof**k”

The Seattle Times has an opinion/editorial piece that talks about a little known part of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act pushed and signed into law by President Bush. Not only does the NCLB push educational standards and accountability (which I believe are hurting our children) but it also enables “the most aggressive military recruitment tool enacted since the draft ended in 1973.” The law now requires high schools to turn over to the military for recruitment purposes the personal records of students who don’t sign an opt-out form. This gives recruiters plenty of time and the necessary personal information to target recruiting, and, the article claims, sexual advances, to the individual kids who are most vulnerable.

I know that the military needs to recruit to do their job of protecting our country but with this ill-conceived war in Iraq trudging on day-after-day it looks like the Bush administration has once again been shown to sink to new lows with regard to personal privacy to further their personal ambitions.

The article also listed a website Leave My Child Alone that provides the opt-out forms for students not wishing to have their records turned over the the U.S. Military for recruiting purposes.

I came across this Index to the Signing Statements for George W. Bush. Wikipedia states that before Ronald Reagan only 75 signing statements had been issued. Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Clinton issued 247 between them. George H. W. Bush has issued 134 on his own, which challenge 810 federal laws. The most disturbing aspect of this is that there is “the apparent attempt to nullify legal restrictions on his actions through claims made in the statements.”

These signing statements are in heavy-duty legal jargon so they tend to be pretty tough going if you want to read and understand them but I thought it was a good resource and worth mentioning.

Wired News is reporting that a company, Aqua Sciences, has created a machine that can extract water from air with as little as 14% humidity. The U.S. Military is interested in using the technology to provide water to troops in Iraq. “The 20-foot machine can churn out 600 gallons of water a day without using or producing toxic materials and byproducts.” Currently, it costs about $30/gallon to get water fro the troops. With this method, machine included, it will cost about 30 cents/gallon.

Just an informal poll here and, since my readership is somewhere around zero, it’s definitely not a representative sampling.

Just want to get a feel for how people plan to vote this November compared with the last Congressional election. If you’re undecided you can leave a comment.

No personal data is used or retained.

Remember to come back on November 1st to re-take this poll. We’ll see if anything’s changed in the coming month or so.

Sometimes private dick, sometimes public dick, Matt Drudge has dug up some dirt to muddy the waters and help his buddies in the Republican party. Since one of the pages in the Foley scandal was outed yesterday by the Daily Oklahoman, Drudge has reported that two anonymous (are there any other kind with this guy??) sources have reported that the page “goaded Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos” and that “the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives favorable to Democrats.” These statements directly contradict comments by ABC News that they didn’t receive the IM’s from a Democrat.

All of this, of course, works with the current Republican strategy of blaming everyone but the Republican leadership for the current problem. The right-wing pundits are doing their best to throw as much information, and disinformation, as possible so that the essence of this issue becomes so convoluted that it’s almost impossible to know the truth from the lies.

Update: The attorney for the above mentioned page has issued a statement saying that Drudge’s “prank report” was “a piece of fiction”.

More at TPMmuckraker.

Think Progress is reporting that a newly translated letter by Al Qaeda leadership is saying that a prolonged conflict in Iraq will be good for them.

I’m sure that the Bush administration will say that this is ‘reverse psychology’ on Al Qaeda’s part and this letter shows that we have them on the run. The administration is always to be happy to interpret these messages in a politically expedient way. Previous messages were taken as gospel – remember the “quiet” release by the military of a captured al Zarqawi letter saying, “mujahidin, are still weak” just a week ago. That was during the NIE brouhaha.

I’ll be interested to see how the administration chooses to spin this one, if they even do. The Foley/House Republican Leadership Scandal is taking a lot of focus off of the White House right now for better or worse.

Wow… 2 non-political posts in a row.

I had heard about this back in August when they were taking submissions and was intrigued but it dropped off my radar. This is a contest to create the next killer app for the Macintosh. They took submissions from people with ideas for what they thought would be a great Mac app. From those submission they are narrowing it down to the top 3 innovative (developmentally feasible) killer apps. They will then pick a winner. They’re allowing the public to vote and getting feedback from some big names in the industry like Kevin Rose (Digg), Guy Kawasaki (original Mac evangalist) and Steve Wozniak (Apple co-founder).

I’ll tell you, they’re down to 12 and they’ve got some pretty great ideas. It’s worth checking out.

Perian calls itself the “swiss-army knife for Quicktime” and it’s hard to disagree. Install it and you can use Quicktime to play the following media:

• Divx, XviD, FLV, AVI
• MS-MPEG4 v1, MS-MPEG4 v2, MS-MPEG4 v3, DivX 3.11 alpha, 3ivX, Sorenson H.263, Flash Screen Video, Truemotion VP6
• These formats when they are inside an AVI:
  h.264, mpeg4, AAC, AC3 Audio, and VBR MP3.

I can get behind anything that extends the capabilities of Quicktime on the Mac. You can get it free here.

I love FactCheck.org. They are a truly nonpartisan group (rare today) that tries to cut through the spin and B.S. to simply give you the facts. They did a breakdown on the President Clinton, Chris Wallace exchange including the Condoleezza Rice statement and whether Wallace had been as tough on members of the Bush administration as he was on Clinton (they even take on “the smirk”). Here’s the score:

• President Clinton’s Statements
• True/Mostly True/Essentially True: 8
• Disputed or Debatable: 3
• False: 1
• Exaggerations: 2

• Condoleezza Rice’s Statement
• True: 0
• False: 1

You can see the full report here.