telescreen.org

Wired: Writers pen (very) short stories.

I am, apparently, a Benevolent Experiencer.

And, while we're talking numbers:

The number of members of the 109th Congress who have been or are under federal investigation:  Eighteen.

Here's an interesting number for you.

The number of Republicans that have called for SecDef Rumsfeld's resignation:  ten.

In the Vidiot-Clears-Out-His-Backlog-Of-Newspaper-Stories-He-Means-To-Blog-About-But-Is-Too-Damn-Busy-To-Do-So-Right-Away Department:

this great WaPo news analysis by Peter Baker:

President Bush and his aides are annoyed that people keep misinterpreting his Iraq policy as "stay the course." A complete distortion, they say. "That is not a stay-the-course policy," White House press secretary Tony Snow declared yesterday.

Where would anyone have gotten that idea? Well, maybe from Bush.

"We will stay the course. We will help this young Iraqi democracy succeed," he said in Salt Lake City in August.

"We will win in Iraq so long as we stay the course," he said in Milwaukee in July.

"I saw people wondering whether the United States would have the nerve to stay the course and help them succeed," he said after returning from Baghdad in June.

But the White House is cutting and running from "stay the course." A phrase meant to connote steely resolve instead has become a symbol for being out of touch and rigid in the face of a war that seems to grow worse by the week, Republican strategists say. Democrats have now turned "stay the course" into an attack line in campaign commercials, and the Bush team is busy explaining that "stay the course" does not actually mean stay the course.

See, all previous statements have been rendered inoperative.  The White House is Zieglering so fast lately that I'm surprised press briefings don't start promptly at eighteen and a half minutes after the hour.  More from Baker:

Political rhetoric, of course, is often in constant motion as well. But with midterm elections two weeks away, the Bush team is searching for a formula to address public opposition to the war, struggling to appear consistent and flexible at the same time. That was underscored by the reaction to a New York Times report that the administration is drafting a timetable for the Iraqi government to disarm militias and assume a larger security role. The White House initially called the story "inaccurate." But then White House counselor Dan Bartlett went on CNN yesterday morning to call it "a little bit overwritten" because in fact it was something the administration had been doing for months.

See, for these folks, language is not a way to describe the world.  It's a mutable tool to control the debate.  Telling the truth is, as it always has been with this crowd, completely optional.

The Avenging Narwhal Play Set is fantastic.

Shouldn't the Times know how to spell "perjury"?

(Thanks to Chico for the catch.)

Lords of the Logistic.

(And Bikes of Burden.)

If you're a crooked politician, and you have 60 investigators working on fraud investigations for your committee, you might feel a bit frightened.

Unless you fire them all, that is.

RNC Chair Ken Mehlman, about Jack Abramoff, in March:

"Abramoff is someone who we don't know a lot about. We know what we read in the paper."

RNC Chair Ken Mehlman, about Jack Abramoff, now:

"I was a gateway," Mehlman said in an interview. "It was my job to talk to political supporters, to hear their requests, and hand them on to policymakers."

Mehlman said he had known Abramoff since the mid-1990s and would listen to his requests along with those of other influential Republicans.

"I know Jack," Mehlman said. "I certainly recall that if he and others wanted to meet I would have met with them, as I would have met with lots of people."

This AP story saddened me:

Former Rep. Gerry Studds, the first openly gay member of Congress, was married to another man in Massachusetts at the time of his death, but the federal government will not pay death benefits to his spouse.

Studds married Dean Hara in 2004 after gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts. But Hara will not be eligible to receive any portion of Studds' estimated $114,337 annual pension because the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act bars the federal government from recognizing Studds' marriage.

And then this graf pissed me off:

Under federal law, pensions can be denied only to lawmakers' same-sex partners and people convicted of espionage or treason, Graves said.

Yup.  Gay people are equivalent to enemies of the state, in some peoples' book.  And in U.S. law.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Sphincter) has some interesting thoughts on the War On Terror:

Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the "Eye of Mordor" has instead been drawn to Iraq.  Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien's 1950s fantasy classic, "Lord of the Rings," to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.

"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.

"It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S.," he continued. "You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."

So...Gollum = Donald Rumsfeld?

Joe Lieberman (D? R? I? -Weasel) can't decide if the party he putatively belongs to should win the House:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a lifelong Democrat and student of politics, blanked when asked if America would be better off with his party regaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives. . .

"Uh, I haven't thought about that enough to give an answer," Lieberman said, as though Democrats' strong prospects for recapturing the House hadn't been the fall's top political story.

He was similarly elusive about the race for governor. Is he voting for John DeStefano Jr., a Democrat and mayor of the city where Lieberman has lived since the 1960s?

"I'm, uh, I'm having," he stammered, then laughed and said his decision would remain private.

Check out the world's most expensive bottle opener.

How's that promised investigation coming along, Mr. Speaker?

House Majority Leader Boehner:  It's all Democrats' fault...for not reporting Republican page sexual-predator scandal sooner.

Really, how do they say this shit with a straight face?

Thoughts on the Cory Lidle crash and the reaction thereto:

As is sadly the case with most high-profile plane crashes or other aircraft accidents, it seems that the non-aviation press wastes no time in sensationalizing, exaggerating, and generally trying to scare the shit out of the public.  (Memo to most TV journalists:  If you don't know anything about a given topic, you might want to keep that in mind while speculating about it.)

Senator Schumer, a usually-smart guy who really should know better, jumped on the bandwagon as well with some more fearmongering:

"A smart terrorist could load up a small, little plane with biological, chemical or even nuclear material and fly up the Hudson or East rivers, no questions asked," said Schumer, D-New York. "I hope this will be a wake-up call to the FAA to re-examine flight patterns, which, amazingly enough, they haven't done since 9/11."

First of all, thinking about the way you do things and analyzing if it's the best way is always a good idea.  But I kinda doubt that ATC cleared Flights 11 and 175 into the World Trade Center.  This seems to have been a case of too much airplane in too little space, with an inexperienced pilot in suboptimal weather.  (More on this below.)

And, a Cirrus is about the size of a Honda Civic.  Yes, a terrorist could load up a light aircraft with dangerous stuff and fly around Manhattan with it.  But, I'd think a smarter terrorist would load up a truck with dangerous stuff -- but a lot more of it -- and drive it into Times Square.  (They inspect some trucks going into Manhattan, but by no means all of them.  Or, if you want to go completely undetected, get a couple Crown Vics, paint 'em taxicab yellow, load 'em up with the nasty stuff, and drive those into town.)  Just because something's in the air above our heads doesn't make it appreciably more deadly than the dangers on the ground.  And one can come up with an infinite number of scary scenarios that don't involve airplanes, so singling out the general aviation community doesn't especially make sense.

However, in the midst of all the hoopla, some informed commentary from people who, well, actually know what they're talking about is most welcome.  James Fallows, a very good writer for the Atlantic (and a pilot who owns a Cirrus SR20, the same model that Cory Lidle was flying) drops some science on some of the factors involved.  He points out that Lidle was relatively inexperienced (but flying with a certified flight instructor), that the weather was decidedly less than ideal, and that the airspace over the East River is difficult, narrow, and crowded.

Philip Greenspun, a CFI himself, expands on this last point, looking at the sheer complexity of the airspace involved:

My preliminary best guess (and at this point it can only be a guess) is that the two pilots on board the accident SR20 were cruising slowly up the East River.  At some point, they decided that they’d reached the end of the little cut-out tongue of uncontrolled airspace over the East River.  They attempted a 180-degree turn in an attempt to get southbound down the river toward uncontrolled airspace.  An airplane in a sharp turn stalls at a much higher airspeed than when straight and level.  Merely by putting the airplane into a steep bank and trying to hold altitude, they could have gone from flying to an aerodynamic stall (wings at too high an angle to the relative wind or, in simpler terms, air not moving fast enough over the wings) in a matter of seconds.  At this point, the airplane is not easily controlled and a lot of bad things can happen.  Low-speed low-level maneuvering, which typically happens when aircraft are trying to land, is the leading cause of plane crashes.

He adds, in a comment:

One ironic fact that will probably be overlooked is that if they had been in a 30-year-old $18,000 deathtrap of a Cessna 152 instead of their modern super-safe parachute-equipped $200,000 Cirrus, they would be relaxing over a beer right now. The 152 flies a lot slower, so it would naturally turn tighter without a steep bank. The 152 would give more warning in the controls before a stall. The CFI would probably have had a lot more experience with the 152.

Yes, the SR20s are equipped with a parachute system which can lower the entire aircraft gently to the ground in the event of an engine failure.  Pretty nifty, no?  Many of the press reports I've seen over the past couple days make much of the fact that the parachute didn't deploy.  For one thing, the system doesn't engage automatically -- a pilot has to activate it.  For another, a parachute isn't much help when you fly into a building.  Your aircraft is going to make a sudden stop, and what's left of it is going to plummet straight down.  If the engine failed, it'd be a good idea to pop the 'chute, but I'm not sure it would have been of any help at all in this situation.

Also, Patrick Smith addresses some of the hysteria in his always-excellent Salon column "Ask the Pilot":

There's a tendency to equate commercial flying with recreational flying in more ways than are warranted. Seven years ago, when John F. Kennedy Jr. lost control of his Piper Saratoga and crashed into the ocean near Martha's Vineyard, much was made of a dastardly phenomenon called "spatial disorientation." Good god, people wanted to know, what if an airline captain were similarly to lose his bearings? Such thinking neglected to consider that airliners are flown by vastly more experienced crews with vastly more sophisticated equipment.

Interesting NYT article from last week about hidden rooms.  WANT.

I used to have a fairly good opinion of Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) -- he seemed principled and thoughtful.  But check out his response to the Foley scandal and the following coverup:

"I know the speaker didn't go over a bridge and leave a young person in the water, and then have a press conference the next day," the embattled Connecticut congressman told The Hartford Courant in remarks published Wednesday.

"Dennis Hastert didn't kill anybody," he added.

So....does that mean that enabling a sexual predator and covering up his crimes, all for political gain, is okay with Shays?  I assume that it is.

UPDATE:  Shays continues his sliminess, referring to the systematic beatings, torture, and deaths at Abu Ghraib as a "sex ring."  It's not torture...it's a sex ring!

CNN:  Women join military, risk lives to get thinner  (video link)

Because you can't spell "diet" without "IED!"

I see that John McCain has crawled out from under his rock and said that North Korea's nuke test was Bill Clinton's fault.

(P.S.:  It wasn't.  (See also))

How does he look at himself in the mirror?  Does he bemoan his lost integrity, or does he not even care anymore?

From TPMMuckraker, a revised timeline of l'affaire Foley.

One that clearly shows just how Speaker Hastert and his staff are lying through their teeth.  Hastert should resign.

How George W. Bush let North Korea get nukes, from the May 2004 Washington Monthly.

Chickens coming home to roost...

Still more bombshells in the Foley affair.  And still the leadership did nothing but cover it up, lie furiously, try to blame it on the Democrats, and look the other way.

Don't miss Evan Thomas's excellent takeout from Newsweek.  To whet your appetite:

On one night in 2002 or 2003, an allegedly inebriated Foley showed up at the pages' dorm after a 10 p.m. curfew and tried to gain entry, according to an account provided by two congressional sources, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. Foley was turned away by a guard. It is not known if the pages were ever aware that Foley lurked outside their door, but word of the incident reached the House Clerk, who notified Foley's chief of staff, Kirk Fordham.

This was not the first time that Fordham had learned of his boss's behaving, in that modern all-purpose euphemism, "inappropriately." Fordham decided that it was time to go to a higher authority, so he went to see Scott Palmer, chief of staff to the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. That, at least, is what Fordham is prepared to tell investigators, according to a knowledgeable source who requested anonymity in discussing the probe. Palmer has already accused Fordham of dissembling, and Washington is settling in for one of its periodic melodramas of moralizing and prurience.

And Hastert chief of staff Scott Palmer may be in trouble, as is his boss:

On one occasion, sometime in 2002 or 2003, [then-House Clerk] Trandahl told Fordham about Foley's nocturnal adventure to the pages' dorm. Trandahl told Fordham that Foley "appeared intoxicated," according to the source who provided Fordham's account to NEWSWEEK.

This incident prompted Fordham to go to Scott Palmer, Hastert's chief of staff, and tell him about Foley's behavior. Fordham called Palmer and told him that he wanted to speak with him privately, the source says. The two men met in a small office on Capitol Hill. (Palmer says the meeting never took place.) . . .

Palmer assured Fordham that he would talk to Foley. A day or two later, Fordham called Palmer to ask what happened. Palmer told him that he "dealt with it" by talking to Foley and that he "informed the Speaker," according to the source familiar with Fordham's account. Months later Fordham had an awkward conversation with Foley in which his boss indicated that he had spoken to Palmer. . .

Last week, as House GOP leaders felt the waves of scandal breaking over their heads, a spokesman for Hastert insisted that Fordham had never warned the Speaker or his top aide, Palmer. "What Fordham said did not happen," said Palmer in a written statement. Trandhahl, who resigned for unknown reasons as Clerk of the House in November 2005, was not returning phone calls. Trandahl, who like Fordham is openly gay, could be an important witness as the House ethics committee begins an inquiry.

Oh, and by the way, something tells me I know what the Ethics Committee's gonna say...

So it looks like the North Koreans have tested a nuclear device.  This is a spectacular failure of foreign policy from China, from South Korea, and most importantly the United States.  This is but the latest and most pressing example of the Bush Administration's foreign policy (or lack thereof, other than "hold on till 1/20/09") actually making Americans less safe.  (I wonder if they're happy that it's driving Foley out of the headlines for a little while.)

Josh Marshall brings some good analysis:

President Clinton eventually concluded a complicated and multipart agreement in which the North Koreans would suspend their production of plutonium in exchange for fuel oil, help building light water nuclear reactors (the kind that don't help making bombs) and a vague promise of diplomatic normalization.

President Bush came to office believing that Clinton's policy amounted to appeasement. Force and strength were the way to deal with North Korea, not a mix of force, diplomacy and aide. And with that premise, President Bush went about scuttling the 1994 agreement, using evidence that the North Koreans were pursuing uranium enrichment (another path to the bomb) as the final straw.

Remember the guiding policy of the early Bush years: Clinton did it=Bad, Bush=Not whatever Clinton did.