The Blog From Another Dimension

Debate Coverage

I plan to watch the U.S. presidential debates tomorrow morning (10:00 am Japan time), and I hope that I will be able to comment--at least briefly--on the ongoing debate in real time. I'll be limited by my ability to listen and type meaningfully at the same time, so the comments may be short--and since my job requires me to scoot just after the debates end, more in-depth commentary may have to wait until late evening Japan time (early morning U.S. time).If you want to drop comments in real time, please feel free--I'd like to hear your thoughts before the spinmeisters get to everyone.

Making the Bigs

Foreign universities based in Japan are soon to be accepted by Monbusho, the Japanese Ministry of Education. This is a big thing, as up until now, foreign university campuses based in Japan--even those with full U.S. accreditation--were not considered real colleges by the Japanese government. Students at these schools were not given privileges enjoyed by most Japanese students, particularly student discounts on train and bus passes and other student prices. Additionally, credit earned by these schools would usually not be transferable to Japanese colleges.

In order to be recognized by Monbusho in the past, one's curriculum had to be at least partly in Japanese, and a good many other labyrinthine requirements had to be met.

With the new rules, foreign colleges in Japan can now have roughly the same privileges while not being bound to strict Japanese-style regulations, so long as the country of origin has their embassy representatives visit the schools and vouch that their curriculum is identical to the home campus'.

Branch campuses of foreign schools in Japan exploded in the late 1980's before the economic bubble had collapsed; about three dozen U.S. colleges and universities had accredited campuses here. That soon changed as the economy went south, Japanese financial backers backed out, and standards plummeted. Schools started shutting down without warning, leaving students stranded in mid-semester. This snowballed into a nationwide distrust of the schools, which led to further recruitment losses and closures, until there were only a handful remaining. With the closure of Minnesota State in Akita last year and the closing of the University of Illinois at Carbondale in Niigata soon, there will be only two accredited American colleges remaining in Japan, both in Tokyo: Temple University, and Lakeland College (Japanese site)--the school where I myself work as an assistant professor.

Our school has been doing very well; our student body tripled in just four years after I started working here (not cause and effect, alas), although some of that gain was lost after 9/11 hit right as our 2002 recruitment drive was starting, and then the very next year, Bush started pushing for war in Iraq. Those incidents made many Japanese students and their parents nervous about safety issues. Since then, however, things have stabilized and numbers are again rising. The new expected Monbusho acceptance should go a very long way to helping us boost those number higher than before.

Additionally, Lakeland College has begun a new Study Abroad Program (Japanese page), in which American students come to live in Japan for four to eight months, while still earning credits from a U.S.-accredited college.

Don Quixote Has Changed

At least the store in Shinjuku on Shokuan Dori , which runs parallel to and north of Yasukuni Dori. They've cleaned up the image somewhat. For those of you unfamiliar with the chain, Don Quixote (Don Kihote in Japanese) is a chain of retail outlets that specializes in having tons of stuff of all kinds for cheap prices. Sort of like Walmart in the U.S., but with narrower aisles and less fascism.

Part of Don Quixote's image is the cramped, closed aisles stuffed with all variety of merchandise, laid out in an almost maze-like fashion so that one never knows what one will run into next, and every shopping experience tends to be different from the last. Imagine a

The new makeover has cleaned up that image while still embracing the fundamental principal. The store is now much cleaner and feels less cluttered, with major aisles now much wider--though the meandering nooks and crannies are still there. Their food section is now much expanded, included a wider variety of foreign imports than before. Still not National Azabu or even Kinokuniya Supermarket, but if you haven't been there for a while, you might want to check--though I don't know if the makeover is limited to that one store...

Kerry "Flip Flops" a Flop

CBS News had no problem outlining ten major flip-flops by Bush (although they didn't have room for a few of the big ones, like wanting bin Laden "dead or alive," and then three months later not caring where he was), but their list of Kerry's "flip-flops" fell drastically short of being true. Look at the "top three" from that list:

Senate's Role In Wars With Iraq

Following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in January 1991, Kerry ... said on the Senate floor, “It is a vote about war because whether or not the president exercises his power, we will have no further say after this vote.” ... In October 2002, he supported the current war in Iraq, despite the fact that Iraq took no aggressive action against its neighbors.

In announcing his candidacy for president, in September 2003, he said his October 2002 vote was simply “to threaten” the use of force, apparently backtracking from his belief in 1991 that such a vote would grant the president an open-ended ticket to wage war.

This analysis disregards the fact that Kerry also stated on the Senate floor in 2002 that he voted to grant powers on the promise Bush made to first send inspectors and then garner a true international coalition, and it was only necessary to grant open-ended powers so that Bush would have the clout to carry out his promise. Bush had been the one to say it would be used "to threaten" Hussein. Kerry did not flip-flop on this one, Bush did.

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If I Knew Then What I Know Now…

“We should not have gone to war knowing the information that we know today," Kerry said Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” "Knowing there was no imminent threat to America, knowing there were no weapons of mass destruction, knowing there was no connection of Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda, I would not have gone to war. That's plain and simple."

But on Aug. 9, 2004, when asked if he would still have gone to war knowing Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, Kerry said: “Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have.” Speaking to reporters at the edge of the Grand Canyon, he added: “[Although] I would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has."

The Kerry campaign says voting to authorize the war in Iraq is different from deciding diplomacy has failed and waging war. But Kerry’s nuanced position has contradicted itself on whether it was right or wrong to wage the war.

This is a bizarre analysis--it only seems contradictory if you try hard to misinterpret, or only pay attention to the first few words of sentences. Kerry's stand was consistent: he would have voted to give the authority to the president as a way to force inspections, and believes now just as he did then that it was right to do that. He has also remained consistent in saying that going to war without letting diplomacy do its work is the wrong thing. Where's the contradiction? There's just no flip-flop here, just an apparent flip-flop generated by spin, not reality.

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The $87 Billion Vote

In September 2003, Kerry implied that voting against wartime funding bills was equivalent to abandoning the troops. ... Then, in October 2003, a year after voting to support the use of force in Iraq, Kerry voted against an $87 billion supplemental funding bill for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He did support an alternative bill that funded the $87 billion by cutting some of President Bush’s tax cuts.

But when it was apparent the alternative bill would not pass, he decided to go on record as not supporting the legislation to fund soldiers.

That's a flip-flop? By not switching sides when the vote count looks bad? CBS is claiming that Kerry flip-flopped here ... because he didn't flip-flop! On this one, Kerry stood by his convictions; that his favored bill didn't pass did not mean that he voted against funding. By the words of the CBS analysis, Kerry knew that the soldiers would receive funding anyway--so how was he abandoning the troops? Incredible.

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Really, the list reflects more the spin put out by the Bush administration than the actual truth of the matter. I can only surmise that the writer, finding no significant flip-flops from Kerry, had no choice but to use the GOP spin in lieu of actual flip-flops in order to seem balanced, producing top-ten lists for both candidates.

Typhoon

Once again, I'm staying up way beyond the time I should. But I looked out the window and saw the typhoon moving away. It swept over us this evening, dropping heavy sheets of rainfall for hours, sometime even splashing against my dining room windows so i couldn't see outside. (And took out satellite TV reception several times....)

And now we have post-typhoon clarity outside, starry skies and a receding swarm of clouds lit by the occasional flash of lightning within.

Should be good weather tomorrow.

The Case Against Bush

What is needed at this time is a portable yet comprehensive list detailing why Bush should not be re-elected. Here's my shot at it:

Taxes: Gave trillion-dollar tax cut to the wealthy while giving token sum to middle class; in so doing, shifted the tax burden from wealthier Americans onto the middle class. What little the middle class got out of it was quickly nullified by higher oil prices, slashed public services, and a greater burden put on states, leading to higher property and other state & local taxes.

Jobs: Presided over the greatest loss of jobs since Herbert Hoover. What few jobs have been gained pay far less than before, with a hemorrhage of manufacturing jobs going overseas with Bush trying to give them tax breaks for doing so. The Bush administration's solution to the loss of valuable jobs: try to get burger flippers reclassified as manufacturers.

Deficit and Debt: Inherited a historic, rare budget surplus. Immediately handed a gigantic tax cut to wealthy people as the economy was floundering, and allowed a Republican-controlled Congress to massively overspend on pork, while spending hundreds of billions on a war in Iraq that did not need to be fought. The result: massive, record-breaking deficits. The damage: the interest on the national debt alone is now costing us $375 billion per year, and more than $4 trillion over the next ten years. A Democrat would have stayed Clinton's course and would have been paying down the debt right now instead of massively adding to it. Bush's budgets have grown twice as fast as Bill Clinton's.

Medicare: Lied to Congress about how much his Medicare plan would cost. Locked seniors into plans that healthcare providers could change at any time. Forbade the government from negotiating for lower prices from pharmaceutical corporations, and blocked state plans to import drugs from other countries like Canada. Illegally used government funds to create fake news reports which were little more than Bush campaign commercials.

Social Security: after doing little to nothing on the issue, Bush still wants to privatize social security, which could have catastrophic effects on seniors while handing a trillion-dollar windfall to financial service industries. It would also strand millions of seniors whenever the economy goes south just as they retire, and we will be forced to pay benefits to them anyway or let them starve.

Education: Failed miserably in reforming Texas educational system, instead corrupting the system and encouraging fraud and the abandonment of lower-performing students. Backs standardized testing which leads to a disastrous test-centered educational system. Massively underfunded education, most of all the "No Child Left Behind" system. Wants vouchers for private schools which cannot possibly work at the large scale; instead it will only limit quality education for wealthier families who already access private schools, while huge numbers of poorer children will see their own educational system crumble.

Foreign Policy: Alienated most of the world, after almost all countries felt an incredible level of sympathy for us. Abrogated several treaties, ridiculed and condescended to some of our strongest allies. Lied to the international community about Iraq intelligence, and met unheard-of opposition from other countries in his single-minded drive into Iraq. Has made the United States an international pariah.

National Security: Underfunded border and import control, local police, fire and emergency services. The invasion of Iraq has stretched our military forces to the breaking point, rendering us unnecessarily unable to fight any war that may need to be fought. Bungled the intelligence before 9/11, ignoring intelligence that pointed to the attack because it would have been inconvenient to focus on terrorism while pushing for a missile defense system. Admits that al Qaeda operates within the United States while having no clue as to who or where they are or what they may be doing. Abandoned any serious hunt for bin Laden or al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Military: Cut pay and benefits for soldiers, slashed veterans' benefits, and chintzed on supplies for soldiers while handing billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to big firms, most of all Vice President Cheney's firm, Halliburton. Created havoc in the military with the invasion of Iraq, a quagmire that is sapping our military strength. Is lengthening soldiers' (including guardsmen and reservists) tours ridiculously long while draining forces from military bases around the world, discouraging re-enlistment and recruitment. America is now unable to take on any additional military tasks, and can barely handle what Bush is pushing on it.

Environment: Cut clean-air and -water regulations, cut funding for environmental protection, pushed for oil drilling in wildlife sanctuaries, allowed corporations to avoid clean-up costs, opened up public lands to logging, among countless other environmental failings. Subverted and distorted science to fit his policies, appointed pro-business and anti-environmental officials to key posts. Opposes the Kyoto treaty.

Energy: Among the main points of the very long list of malfeasance: allowed big oil, coal and nuclear industries to secretly write the nation's energy policy, and refuses to this day to let you know the details. Mouths support for clean energy but does not fund them anywhere close to the point where they could actually produce anything. Oil prices under Bush have shot up to record levels, making Americans even more dependent on foreign oil, not less.

A Divider, Not a Uniter: Has polarized the American public to an unheard-of degree. Has played extreme partisan politics since day one.

Character: The only president in history with a criminal record. Arrested for drunk driving. Well-known for belittling people, putting them down. Once cruelly mocked a woman on death row who had become a born-again Christian and was doing good works. There is so much more... see here, here and here for a fuller accounting of the depth of this man's petty character.

Lies: Lied about his criminal record. Lied about his relationship to Ken Lay. Lied about his intentions upon becoming president. Lied about the state of Iraq's weapons programs, and our reasons for going into Iraq. Lied about who kept inspectors from doing their job in Iraq. Lied about the state of affairs in Iraq. Lied about wanting to find out about intelligence failures that led to 9/11, opposed the 9/11 commission. Lied about his tax cuts. Lied about the size and permanence of budget deficit. Lied about his Medicare program. Lied about countless other issues, large and small.

Corruption and Lawbreaking: As governor of Texas, lied under oath in a criminal case. Had Ken Lay as his biggest contributor, then denied knowing him. Had long-term relations with Saudis and other oil interests in the Middle East, then covered for them by censoring a report that identified them as supporting terrorists. Allowed energy corporations to write national energy policy. Subverted antiterrorism policy in favor of pushing pet policies like missile defense, leading to the open door the terrorists walked through on 9/11 and before. Fought tooth and nail to prevent the 9/11 commission from being formed, fought against it when it needed time and resources, and has failed to implement its recommendations. Lied to Congress about his Medicare plan costs, then illegally used public funds to make fake news reports which were thinly veiled campaign commercials. People in his administration committed a felony when they revealed the identity of a CIA operative as payback for her husband's exposing Bush's lie on Iraq's nuclear program. Republican operatives for Bush purged mostly-Democratic and legally eligible voters from voter rolls in Florida (in 2000 and 2004), and then in 2000 led a massive campaign of fraud in Florida to stop recounts, aided by election fraud consisting of tampering with absentee ballots in two counties and suppressing the minority vote; without even one of these illegal actions, Bush would not have won. And the list goes on and on, from the man who claimed to bring "honor and dignity back to the White House. More here, here, and here (just recent stuff), and here and here and on countless other sites on the net, just do a Google and see the huge numbers pop up.

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And remember: all of the above is the short list.

The U.S. and the Third-World Election

The GOP is gradually turning us into a country with third-world elections. We have to have international inspectors now, and despite that, it is almost a dead certainty that election fraud will still be rampant. And isn't it interesting that it always just happens to favor the GOP, performed by them or on their behalf?

The Florida situation is an excellent example of this. In 2000, just one of the many GOP frauds committed there was the issuance of a "felons" list that illegally disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters, most of them Democrats. That in and of itself should have been punished with a jail sentence for the partisan administrator who ordered it--but instead, then-Florida state attorney general Katherine Harris, who swore an oath to protect the law she violated, was awarded with a safely Republican congressional district, like a loyal vassal receiving a fief for services rendered.

Still, even with the crime exposed, if not punished, one would think that (a) no one would dare try to do it again, and (b) if they did, the repercussions would be severe. And yet (a) they did it again, and (b) again nothing is being done. Jeb Bush and his people put together another "felons" list--and tried to keep it secret, too. It took a court order to have it made public, and when that happened, again it was found to have illegally disenfranchised thousands of voters and additionally omitted a strongly Republican demographic.

The brazen fashion which Jeb Bush is acting is simply one of the more blatant examples of voter fraud being committed nationwide, as we speak. The Guardian provides this article detailing many of the problems in Florida. But then there is also the active suppression of minority voters by Republicans, as that group usually votes strongly Democratic. This was widespread in Florida in 2000, but not by any means limited to there. A Michigan state senator, Republican John Pappageorge even said publicly, “If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we’re going to have a tough time in this election.” More than 80% of Detroit residents are African-American. Other violations and cases of voter fraud have occurred across the country.

But that doesn't stop the right-wing rags from claiming that Democrats are planning "massive vote fraud." Their evidence? Democrats in Iowa are registering and requesting absentee ballots in record numbers. Those bastards! How villainous! They aren't supposed to do that!

Sorry. It would be more funny if it weren't so damned despicable. This is what they're turning our country into. Well, I say prosecute the hell out of the bastards. With extreme prejudice. If the laws don't exist, then make 'em. After all, if we don't have a fair vote, then our very own "democracy" is nothing but a very sad, pathetic joke. Don't let them do this to us. Let the election results wait too long so that the fraud can be investigated and force a constitutional crisis, if absolutely necessary, but don't let them get away with it like they did in 2000.

It Works!

I can't believe it, I got a one-shot solution to blog comment spam. At least for now...

I followed instructions laid out on other web sites to write an .htaccess file in the root directory--just a simple 4-line script in a text file uploaded to the main folder on my site, designed to block access to the Movable Type comment script file. And where I had been getting as many as a hundred spams per day, in the last four days I have gotten a grand total of two, both blocked by MT-Blacklist. Let's hope it holds!

The script is available on the net, but if you'd like to know what it is (I'd rather not post it here) to use on your site, just comment (using any URL to block the email address from being visible) and I'll email it to you.

Now to see if I can't get rid of that blasted referrer spam...

Half Right

From the Washington Post:

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that the insurgency in Iraq is getting worse and that the U.S. occupation there has increased anti-American sentiment in Muslim countries, but he said successful elections in Afghanistan and Iraq would turn the situation around.

Usually the Bush administration officials just deny the obvious problems and claim that things are peachy. I guess Powell is at least reasonable enough to admit things are bad when they're bad. But not reasonable enough to let go of the "they're going to love us" pipe dream. Powell thinks that just because flimsy elections where only US-approved candidates are on the ballot will make insurgents close down shop and everything will be okay? This ranks right up there with Cheney's "we'll be greeted as liberators" flower-throwing-on-the-soldiers fantasy.

Just having elections won't solve things there. Even the best effort with far more done (see Kerry's plans) will be a doubtful thing. But just have an election or two, in the current state, where huge chunks of the countries will not even be able to vote because the insurgencies are so strong?

As one example of how disjointed from reality Powell is, he also said, "Just as we would have difficulty with partial elections here in the United States . . . I think it has to be throughout the country."

What? "Just as we would have difficulty with partial elections here in the United States"? If we had "partial elections" here in the United States, it would be a disaster. Look what happened when we had just a few percent of the vote nullified in one state out of fifty--but to have 20 to 25% of the country not allowed to vote? We would no longer be a Democracy. Which, of course, is exactly where Iraq is now and will be for some time: the elections are a U.S.-sponsored sham.

When you hear the administration handing out yet more of this "just around the corner" baloney, that things will get better right after November, take it for what it is: fiction.

Oh, Well, Naturally

Four years. For four long years I've been getting this hick-town-quality cable service. For four years I've paid them for really bad cable. Very few channels. Almost none of the good channels. For four years I've filled out and sent in those questionnaires about which channels they should get, and for four years they've consistently gotten nothing but the bottom of the barrel. Before I went to all the trouble of switching to satellite, I even asked them, point blank, when is there any chance of even one or a few stations getting changed. Nowhere in the foreseeable future, they told me. Not going to happen, they told me.

So I went out and paid about $300 to get the satellite installed. Just today I gave them back the cable tuner, closing my account (it had been prepaid until this date). And just today I open the new cable TV guide in the mail that arrived yesterday--they sent it to me for next month despite my cancelation. And now guess what?

That's right. From November 1st, just a month away, they're going digital (with an analog converter supplied), and they're adding every single channel I wanted. Seventeen new channels, in fact. And they're reducing their rates on top of that.

Do I have the worst timing you've ever heard of, or what?

Well, it's not a complete loss. The Toshiba DVR/DVD recorder I got wouldn't have worked with their service--probably--and the fact that it auto-records everything is something I have really started to appreciate.

But still, this couldn't have happened one month earlier, or six months later? No one could've mentioned to me when I asked directly about this huge change which obviously they have been planning for a long time? I mean, for crying out loud.

Air America Breaking Out

After a beginning that has often been called "rocky," with both good and bad news, Air America Radio is settling in for the long run and beginning a slow but steady pace upward. The maverick network is bringing in more and more stations, including the usually conservative Phoenix AR, Albuquerque NM, Boston MA, and next week (finally!) San Francisco CA (in addition to being added to the cable Sundance Channel). Rochester NY, Denver CO, Atlanta GA and San Diego CA were recent big additions, and Washington DC is coming soon.

One of the reasons for the addition of new stations is the influence of its ratings: the Albuquerque station manager said he's picking it up because "It's shown legs in other markets, with the ability to garner ratings and revenues," and the Phoenix reporter notes that "[i]n Portland, Ore., radio station KPOJ jumped from No. 22 to No. 3 in the spring Arbitron ratings among listeners ages 25-54."

Additionally, the station has three million monthly listeners on its streaming Internet radio feed (Real Player required), not counting those who listen to the archived shows at Air America Place.

The network, despite the new expansions, is still in its infancy and will likely take a few years to grow into a name brand on the radio dial. But despite constant put-downs and predictions of demise from the right wing (I'm a Mac user, and am used to hearing people predict the death of Apple time and time again), the network is steady, successful, and growing.

Another Bullet List: What We Must Do

In his most recent speech at Temple University in Philadelphia, Kerry outlined specifics in how Bush badly mismanaged the fight against al Qaeda:

• Instead of using U.S. forces to capture Osama bin Laden, Bush outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, who let bin Laden slip away.
• Instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan, Bush rushed to a new war in Iraq.
• Instead of listening to the military, State Department, leaders in Congress, and outside experts about how to win the peace in Iraq,Bush listened only to nearsighted ideologues who pitched a pipe dream about being welcomed.
• Instead of responding to the greatest intelligence failure in our history, Bush dragged his feet and actually resisted reform. After opposing the 9/11 Commission, after trying to block its extension, and after finally agreeing to testify, Bush still refuses to fully implement the Commission’s recommendations.
• Instead of proposing a Department of Homeland Security, Bush actually opposed it – and then exploited it for political purposes.
• Instead of expanding programs to keep weapons of mass destruction in Russia out of terrorist hands, Bush first tried to cut the programs.
• Instead of facing the urgent nuclear dangers in North Korea and Iran, Bush allowed these dangers to mount.
• Instead of speaking forcefully to the Saudis and others about terrorist financing, Bush has said little and done less.
• Instead of providing our police and firefighters with vital equipment, instead of protecting ports, trains, subway lines and highways, instead of defending nuclear plants and chemical factories, Bush has under-funded homeland security.
• Instead of bringing the world together against the terrorists, Bush alienated the countries whose help we need to defeat them.

And Bush says he wants to "stay the course." Spiffy. Kerry, in contrast, outlined his own ideas about how we should do things differently:

Kerry will build military and intelligence capability:

• implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations
• increase the number of troops by 40,000
• increase special forces
• develop new technologies for collecting intelligence on terrorists
• strengthen the intel community
• make Afghanistan a priority again
• get NATO to provide more troops to Afghanistan

Kerry will move to deny the terrorists weapons:

• secure all nuclear weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union within four years (as opposed to Bush’s 13 years)
• seek a verifiable global ban on the production of materials for nuclear weapons (Bush abrogated nuclear treaties)
• lead an international effort to impose tough sanctions on North Korea if they do not stop developing nuclear weapons (Bush has virtually ignored Korea, which has shared weapons with terrorists where Hussein did not)
• work with U.S. allies to get the six party talks with North Korea back on track

Kerry will wage a war on terrorist finances:

• trace terrorist funds to their sources and freeze the assets of anyone financing terrorism
• hold the Saudis accountable
• shut down the financial pipeline that keeps terrorism alive
• make the U.S. energy-independent of Mid East oil

Kerry will make homeland security a true priority, backing it with actual resources:

• prevent terrorists from entering our country (Bush has underfunded border patrol and cargo inspections)
• give border inspectors access to the terrorist watch lists
• seaports must be protected (Bush spends more in Iraq in 4 days than in the U.S. in 3 years)
• improve the way the terror aviation list is structured to keep terrorists from entering the country
• screen air cargo just like baggage is screened
• make sure our police, firefighters, and ambulance drivers have the latest equipment and emergency operation centers they need to respond effectively in a crisis
• cancel the $100 billion missile defense system which won't work anyway, technically or strategically
• protect chemical plants and other high-priority terrorist targets (which Bush has neglected)
• reinstate the program to put 100,000 new police officers on the street (which Bush has scrapped)
• invest more than $2 billion to safeguard railroads and subways

Kerry will focus on the long-term anti-terror goals, denying them recruits and safe havens:

• show that America uses its economic power for the common good
• assist the world’s poorest countries
• lead the international community to cancel the debt of the most vulnerable nations
• enable children in poor countries to get a quality basic education
• work to pre-empt the radical schools teaching hatred of America throughout the Middle East

Kerry says that he will promote the development of free and democratic societies throughout the Arab and Muslim world:

• make clear to repressive governments in the region that we expect to see them change
• improve our outreach to the Muslim world
• train a new generation of American scholars, diplomats, and military officers who understand the region
• convene a summit with our European partners and leaders from the Muslim world

And finally, Kerry made absolutely clear that we will be stronger if we work with our allies.

That is a very strong case, and would be difficult to argue against--I invite conservative guests here to try, so long as you provide evidence to back it up and show how, in equal detail to the above, how Bush has done better than this. I don't think there will be any takers, though, and certainly none who can prove such a point. In all areas Bush has been lacking. He has sapped the strength of the military to the point where we can no longer fight a new war without dropping all other balls, and he has had more than enough time with full control of Congress to get exactly that done--no more excuses about how it was the last guy's fault.

Bush has done nothing to deny terrorists weapons: Iraq had none, and countries where such weapons are coming from are untouched and even more out of control than before. On finances, I would like to hear exactly what Bush has done--I certainly know of no achievements in that area. As for homeland security, it is a joke--used more often to infringe on non-terrorist Americans' rights, and sometimes even as a political weapon (both in terms of publicity and as a physical resource). But the borders are porous, law enforcement underfunded and under-equipped, and our infrastructure, power plants, factories and transportation open to attack. But at least we've got John Ashcroft telling us what color we should be afraid of, right?

And if one thing is certain, it is that Bush has done an abysmal job of winning the hearts and minds of the people of the Arab world.

There are no easy answers, no snap solutions. After four years of Bush, Kerry will have his hands full just with damage control over the havoc Bush has wrought. But Kerry has better ideas and better plans, and we simply cannot afford four more years of Bush. This is not just mere partisanship; the way so many people who see what Bush is doing, and I myself, genuinely fear what might happen under Bush. It's not just distaste for the man, it is a palpable fear and trepidation of what he will do over that much time.

We do not just need a change. Change is overwhelmingly essential to the well-being of our country and to the world, and to lose that opportunity to a well-oiled PR and dirty-trick campaign would be a disaster. And yes, I know how over-the-top that sounds. But I would be less than honest if I said that it was anything less than what I firmly believe.

An Important Message to Hear (Kerry's NYU Speech, Part II)

To continue on John Kerry's speech at NYU earlier this week:

The centerpiece of the speech was Iraq, with Kerry pointing out, in detail, exactly how Bush had gone wrong before and after the invasion. One aspect of that is the fact the Bush diverted resources away from Afghanistan--where the real fight against al Qaeda was centered--and instead focused them on Iraq, where there was no terrorist threat. As a result, Bush alienated our allies and sowed discord in the Middle East, while sabotaging the real war against terrorists. As Kerry himself summarized:

The President’s policy in Iraq has not strengthened our national security. It has weakened it.

And it is here where Kerry further clarifies his stand on the vote to authorize the president with war powers: that it was to give Bush the ability to play a strong hand so he could accomplish the desired goal of getting arms inspectors in. Instead, Bush abused the authority and rushed to war, flushing out the inspectors who Bush later outrageously claimed were thrown out by Hussein. Kerry pointed out how Bush violated his promises:

Bush promised to let inspectors do their work--instead, he drove them out of Iraq even though progress was being made;

Bush promised he would take "every precaution" and would "plan carefully"--he did neither;

And Bush promised he would only go to war with an international coalition, "allies at our side"--when in fact he went in with Great Britain only, all other members of the "coalition" playing only token roles.

Many people criticize Kerry for not providing a "magic bullet" for solving the Iraq problem, that his proposals are only marginally better than Bush's--but the criticism is weak. There is no magic solution to the Iraq problem, and that's the point: Bush got us into a mess that is now impossible to get out of cleanly, and as more time passes, the prognosis becomes worse and worse, so that even Republicans in an election year are criticizing Bush. It is less about the inevitable painful endgame in Iraq, and more about judgment: do we want to give Bush another four years so he can make many more fatal errors? Kerry has it right when he says what he would have done:

I would have concentrated our power and resources on defeating global terrorism and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden. I would have tightened the noose and continued to pressure and isolate Saddam Hussein – who was weak and getting weaker -- so that he would pose no threat to the region or America.

And in Iraq, Kerry's ideas are better than Bush's.

First, an expanded international role could bring the benefits of true legitimacy to the forces working there--people would know it would less about the oil, the business, and the bases for America, and more about putting Iraq on its feet. Bush could never rally that support having alienated the world, but Kerry could achieve it. There is no denying Kerry's advantage there.

Second, a large contingent of Iraqi soldiers must be fully trained, not the pathetic handful Bush achieved, and then later lied about their numbers.

Third, the reconstruction plan must be aimed at helping the people of Iraq; Bush has failed to spend what he was authorized to accomplish this goal, and has left the vastly unemployed Iraqi labor force out of it (so that Halliburton can overcharge us to obscene extremes). Push through "high-visibility, quick-impact projects" to encourage the people.

And fourth, bring about real elections as soon as possible, not the sham without even giving people in huge swaths of the country the chance to vote.

I will be the first to agree that these goals don't stand a great chance of succeeding to the point where we can painlessly withdraw, but I cannot imagine a better plan considering what damage Bush has done--and Kerry would certainly be more able and credible in the effort than Bush could ever hope to be. Half a chance is better than none.

Kerry pointed out what anyone with an objective, informed view already knows: Bush misled us, committed gross errors in judgment, failed to plan properly, and bungled the post-invasion occupation. As a result, our people are being cut down with no hope in sight. I know people personally who have family members in the military who are scared to death at what they believe to be their loved ones' inevitable assignment to Iraq. The soldiers are game, they want to perform their duty. But we owe it to them not to subject them to this.

Bush's strategies in Iraq have failed miserably. A change is essential. Bush's credibility is nil. Only Kerry can bring the right credentials to the table. Bush has done little more than fail and than lie about it. Kerry could not help but do far, far better.

Kerry ended on this important note:

I believe the invasion of Iraq has made us less secure and weaker in the war against terrorism. I have a plan to fight a smarter, more effective war on terror – and make us safer.

Today, because of George Bush’s policy in Iraq, the world is a more dangerous place for America and Americans.

If you share my conviction that we can not go on as we are …that we can make America stronger and safer than it is… then November 2 is your chance to speak... and to be heard. It is not a question of staying the course, but of changing the course.

I’m convinced that with the right leadership, we can create a fresh start and move more effectively to accomplish our goals. Our troops have served with extraordinary courage and commitment. For their sake, and America’s sake, we must get this right. We must do everything in our power to complete the mission and make America stronger at home and respected again in the world.

Fighting Spam

So I've been trying a few new spam-fighting wrinkles before taking the plunge and going to MT 3.0. First of all, I started using a .htaccess file in the root directory with instructions to deny access to anyone trying to directly access the "mt-comments.cgi" script. We'll see if that works.

I tried to include a few strings in the htaccess file with instructions to deny access to anyone with a referral from a domain with certain spam-worthy keywords, but for some reason it shut me out of the site (giving a "500 Internal Server Error"--anyone know why?), so until I get that worked out, it'll have to wait. Very disappointing, I really wanted that to work. It was supposed to block referral spam; "IP Deny" in my site's cpanel doesn't seem to be working at all.

But I've also noticed a new wrinkle in referral spam: since August, the referral area on my stats page has been overloaded with referrals from ordinary blogs that appear not to have any links to me. All of these referral links end in "...mt-comments.cgi" or "...archives" after the blog domain. Before August, I used to get links like that (most noticeably from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog site), but they never hit me hard--I never got more than six or seven sites with referrals like that in any given month. Then in August, I got 38 with the mt-comments.cgi (92 with the "archives" one), and now, just three weeks into September, 142 with mt-comments.cgi (28 with "archives").

After a search on Google, I found several other blogs which are experiencing the same thing--but nobody seems to be offering any explanation as to why.

The only thing I can figure is that maybe this is a quirk in a recent release of Movable Type version 3.x. But it doesn't seem to be typical referral spam--only bloggers' domains are affected.

Weird.

Kerry's New York Speech

John Kerry is back on track. He's often been known as a strong finisher, and it seems like that's what we're beginning to see here. His speech at NYU is now considered a turning point, seen as strong, decisive, and capable of steering the issues in this campaign.

He started with a compelling vow on fighting terrorism, noting that he now has the official endorsement of the "Jersey Girls," the widows of 9/11 victims now famous for dragging Bush, kicking and screaming, into allowing the 9/11 Commission to be formed. Kerry is backing its recommendations (which Bush has been dragging his feet on as well).

In the speech, Kerry focused on his strengths: the potential to form international alliances (in contrast with Bush's ability to alienate the world against us), necessary if we want to fight effectively. In the wake of 9/11, there is no doubt that Kerry would have cultivated the sympathy and support of the world and used it soundly to implement a profoundly better offensive against al Qaeda, instead of pissing it away and insulting the world while letting a personal war sap our ability to focus on the real and dangerous enemy. Kerry has made it clear (to those who read or hear his entire quotes) that he would not have invaded Iraq. He would only have done so if inspections had shown that Hussein was a threat, and they wouldn't have. But I digress--back to the speech.

Kerry outlined his ideas for fighting terrorism: strong alliances (vital!), a powerful military (not one sapped by a needless quagmire which has made America unable to fight another war elsewhere), diplomacy, and a true application of American values in the Islamic world (not the abortive attempts by the Bush administration to make a few lame videos and then give up). Bush has failed in all four of these areas, but it is clear that they are invaluable to our security. Kerry can make them happen.

But the cornerstone of Kerry's speech, and to a great degree what made it so notable--in the media, finally--was his focus on Iraq. Kerry points out what should be obvious, but needs to be pointed out:

• Iraq was not related to terrorism, and diverted our focus away from al Qaeda;
• the Iraq war threatens to be a war with no end in sight;
• we have sacrificed the lives of too many good American soldiers;
• Bush failed to create anything close to a true coalition;
• Iraq is not headed towards freedom or democracy, it is deteriorating into chaos;
• American dead and wounded are rising to record numbers as violent attacks by insurgents soar;
• Bush has ceded large areas to the insurgents, "no go zones";
• conditions for Iraqis grow worse and worse, with fewer jobs and a destroyed infrastructure;
• Iraqis are not coming to our side, they resent us.

Furthermore, Bush has made "a series of catastrophic decisions" in Iraq:

• Bush lied about why we went to war (he gave 23 different rationales);
• his main rationales (WMD & al Qaeda ties) have been proven false;
• he lied about what it would cost us;
• he lied about what kind of commitment was involved (taking years, hundreds of billions of dollars);
• he lied about forming a true coalition;
• he lied about our chances of success.

Kerry pointed out Bush's devastating mismanagement of our image in the world, and our current lack of credibility; how our allies used to trust us implicitly (an excellent example in de Gaulle's trust in Kennedy's word), and how few would trust Bush today.

Kerry pointed out that seeing the errors Bush made in Iraq is not hindsight, but that all were seen in advance of the war. That's where he used the now-famous phrase, "colossal failures of judgment." Among them:

• We'd be greeted as liberators;
• looting would not be a problem;
• Iraq's infrastructure would not be a problem;
• we had enough troops to handle the aftermath of the invasion;
• we could rely on people like Chalabi;
• the Iraqi police, army, and civil service would be able to take over security functions and run the country.

Kerry goes on to describe how things have deteriorated under Bush:

"Nuclear dangers have mounted across the globe. The international terrorist club has expanded. Radicalism in the Middle East is on the rise. We have divided our friends and united our enemies. And our standing in the world is at an all time low."

North Korea is building nukes, as is Iran; Russian WMD are not secure; Afghanistan is destabilizing. Osama bin Laden is more popular in most places in the Middle East than America is.

And while Osama got away, Bush diverted resources away from fighting al Qaeda so we could invade a country which had not attacked us and posed no real threat.

That's just the beginning of the speech. I'm not finished here, I'll be back tomorrow. But I would urge you to read the speech in its entirety--you'll see why some called it a campaign masterpiece, and you'll see why the media had little choice but to pick this one up and run with it. It's got the Kerry campaign energized.

Kerry's "Top 10 Bush Tax Proposals"

Read by Kerry on "Late Night with David Letterman."

10. No estate tax for families with at least two U.S. presidents.

9. W-2 Form is now Dubya-2 Form.

8. Under the simplified tax code, your refund check goes directly to Halliburton.

7. The reduced earned income tax credit is so unfair, it just makes me want to tear out my lustrous, finely groomed hair.

6. Attorney General (John) Ashcroft gets to write off the entire U.S. Constitution.

5. Texas Rangers can take a business loss for trading Sammy Sosa.

4. Eliminate all income taxes; just ask Teresa (Heinz Kerry) to cover the whole damn thing.

3. Cheney can claim Bush as a dependent.

2. Hundred-dollar penalty if you pronounce it "nuclear" instead of "nucular."

1. George W. Bush gets a deduction for mortgaging our entire future.

Follow-up

All the major news organizations are now featuring the CBS story about the Bush documents as their top story.

Pop quiz: can you name any other time when a story that broke big, was found to be in error, and the story of it not being accurate got pushed to the top of the headlines? Zzzzt. Time's up. Neither can I. News orgs always push these stories down--the story breaks big, the news that it was all wrong gets buried. Except for Bush.

Damned that liberal media, at it yet again.

The impression that Bush & Co. are rejoicing at now is that Bush's Guard scandal is as false as the CBS docs, which of course is a completely false impression in itself. The CBS docs would have simply been more nails in the coffin, and did not represent the coffin itself. The evidence that Bush (a) used family influence to get into the Guard and get special treatment there, (b) went because he wanted to weasel out of the war which he approved of and told others they should go fight, and (c) went AWOL and never completed his tour of duty--these facts are well-evidenced completely independent of the Killian memos. The forged Killian docs simply would have been further confirmation, and drew attention simply because they would be new.

And one should not forget: Col. Hodges, who worked with Killian, and Killian's secretary, both stated that (a) they didn't think the memos were authentic, BUT also that (b) they reflected real memos from that time, and they reflected what Killian spoke about during that time.

Not that many people will get this. Most people will hear, "the claims about Bush during Vietnam are fake," and will go on believing that Bush's character is not in question. Which is the grand disservice that Rather and CBS did, not to mention this Burkett fellow.

Bush Reluctantly Agrees to Three Debates, Maybe

The news came in earlier today, the Bush team has caved. They wanted to skip one of the debates, the one to be held in town-hall style. The stated reason: they did not want Bush to be exposed to a question-and-answer session with undecided voters over concerns that members of the audience could be partisan (read: someone who might ask Bush a critical question). This is, of course, completely in line with recent Bush strategy, where "town hall" appearances are actually limited to strong Bush supporters, who either throw softballs or simply get up to thank and/or praise the president. Doonesbury has been doing a series of strips on the issue (see previous post). That debate is still being negotiated; even though the Bush side has pretty much agreed to all three, they obviously still want to get rid of the possibility that Bush may be directly challenged in public.

Nevertheless, we must be very cautious not to make the same mistake we made four years ago: underestimating Bush. When not prepped or scripted, he can be bumbling and inarticulate--but when he is prepared, he can be quite effective. Bush himself said it fairly well: "They misunderestimated me." This was encouraged by his own people, knowing that painting Bush as the underdog could only help him in the end. It came to the point where everyone assumed that Bush would make such a fool of himself that simply getting through the debates without peeing himself would be considered a victory. We can't let that happen again. Bush proved himself more than effective enough the first time around; if someone tries to say that Kerry will probably do better, remind them of Bush's debates with Gore. Kerry has the disadvantage of appearing stiff and more than too articulate to the point of being boring; Bush has the "down-home" patter down, and if sufficiently prepped, could in theory do the same job on Kerry that he did with Gore.

And Kerry must be careful not to pull a Gore, that is, to appear awkward and manipulative in the debates. Remember Gore's audible sighs? Remember that weird step forward he took while Bush was speaking. It's little stuff like that which can throw your campaign down the toilet. Kerry has to be sure to do more than just be concise, he has to make sure he is natural up there, and not sound canned, not sound too practiced.

Still, if the popular "misunderestimation" of Bush can be stopped, and if Kerry can bring on the warmth and succinct eloquence, then this could be a big break for Kerry. Before now, Kerry has been held beneath the surface of media coverage, and has never been seen side by side with Bush. These debates could put him squarely at the same level as Bush in the public eye, something Kerry has not been able to do until now. Once that happens, things could go Kerry's way--again, if Bush is not underestimated and if Kerry can polish his style.

The debates are scheduled for September 30 (Florida); October 8 (Missouri); and October 13 (Arizona). Cheney and Edwards will debate on October 5 in Ohio. All of the debates will last 90 minutes.

Partisan Toons

And thank goodness for them, a little comic relief is what we need at this point. Bizarro has often come up with some good ones, and this weekend was no exception:

Meanwhile, Garry Trudeau focused on Bush's staged, sycophantic town-hall meetings last week:

Bush the Flip-Flopper

Bush has been accusing Kerry of flip-flopping, primarily based upon gross distortions of Kerry's voting record in Congress. When these accusations are looked at closely, they do not hold up at all--but Bush is on record as one of the biggest flip-floppers of all time. One prominent example is his position on the Iraq war and WMD:

First Bush claimed that he did not need Congressional approval to go to war with Iraq. Then he flip-flopped and decided he did need their approval. Then Bush decided he would not go to the U.N. for a resolution on the matter, and then he flip-flopped and decided he would go. But soon after, he flopped on his flip-flop and decided that he didn't need the U.N. after all.

Then there was his ever-flipping position on WMD. At first he was consistent: in November 2002, before he invaded, he said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that's why we had to invade. Then after the invasion, in May 2003, he said that he had actually found weapons of mass destruction. But then he had to flip-flop and admit we hadn't found actual weapons yet, really.

But then he switch-flopped in June and said that Hussein had a weapons of mass destruction program, and that was why we went into Iraq. But then he had to admit that there was no evidence that Hussein had such a program since a decade ago. And by the State of the Union speech last January, he flip-flopped again with a backwards twist and a triple gainer, this time claiming we had found "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." Finally, when he had no choice but to face the facts, he admitted that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and upon doing so, did a huge, monolithic, record-breaking warp-speed flip-flop and claimed that the reason we went into Iraq was for humanitarian reasons.

An then let's not forget one of his most gigantic flip-flops, so sudden and absolute that Bush must have gotten whiplash:

December 13, 2001: We will get Osama bin Laden, no matter how long it takes, "dead or alive — either way. It doesn't matter to me."

March 13, 2002 (exactly three months later): "I don't know where [Osama bin Laden] is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important." And on the same day: "I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."

It's hard to get more flip-floppy than that. But Bush has a long record of flip flops. The major ones are covered in many places, like here, here, here, and a long list here.

Google Ascending

For some strange reason, every few months, the viewership of this blog tends to make a sudden jump. It just did it again, over the past few weeks--I'm now getting about 950 daily visitors on weekdays, and about 800 on weekend days, each up a few hundred per day over a month ago. The monthly total for September is likely to break 12,000.

At first I thought it was spammers, both blog comment spammers and referral spammers, and to be certain they have been on the rise--but they haven't made that big a difference in the 'unique visitors' column. When the spam surged in June, the overall numbers did not.

It turns out that mostly the changes are from Google. Referrals from Google have, for some reason, doubled over the past few months, from over 4000 to over 8000, and that's the only figure that jumped the same time overall numbers did. And it's not search engines in general, but just Google.

Not that I am at all displeased--Google is the #1 search engine, and they have always sent more people my way than anywhere else. But it makes me wonder, why do these things happen so suddenly? What's the equation? The only thing I can guess without research is that there must be thresholds involved; that if the total data on a site exceeds a certain amount, it gets ranked that much higher. And this blog's archives are indeed getting rather thick.

How To Be a Professional Couch Potato

I recently purchased of the Toshiba RD-XS53, the TiVo-like HDD/DVD recorder, and am quite satisfied with how it's turning out. After a steep initial learning curve, I got it all programmed and am now training myself through the various procedures, which are lengthy--the thing has countless options, which can be both good and bad. If you're not interested in techy, gadget-oriented home video kind of stuff, you may want to go on to the next post. Otherwise:

Essentially, this is like a TiVo or ReplayTV machine, but with added features. Like other DVRs, it records video on a hard disk in the MPEG-2 format (the same as on DVDs). Because it's digital, it can then be manipulated in a variety of ways.

There are a variety of Toshiba machines that do similar things, but the RD-XS53 is the only one that has the ability to work with SkyPerfecTV. Although that connection is limited to turning the tuner on and off and changing channels, that's really all you need, at least right away. The SkyP connectivity is important if you're living in Japan and want to record a good amount of English-language video. Unless your local cable has a good selection of channels and its tuner can work with a DVR box, the SkyP-Toshiba combo is probably best. The machine can also get the "BS" satellite feed as well, and of course can record off of local broadcast stations. You can also record any video input, like from a DVD player, a VCR, a video camera (there is a Firewire/iLink port for digital video cameras) or from the video-out on a PC. Want to make a DVD of a demonstration on your computer? This will let you do it.

Also, the RD-XS53 (at least in Japan) has a whopping 320 GB of hard drive space, allowing for up to 570 hours of recording at the lowest quality setting--144 hours at "high." That's more than enough to have a great deal of video saved up before archiving is necessary--and that's where the DVD recorder comes in handy; more on that later. The large hard drive also allows you to record all your shows while you're on vacation, and it even claims (though I have yet to come close to figuring it out) that you can set programming by remote control using your cell phone, sending a text message with coded instructions that the machine will receive via the Internet connection.

The RD-XS53 does fall short in a few areas, such as ease-of-use, as evidenced that sharp learning curve I mentioned. There are four different main special activity areas, dozens of preferences screens, and so many menus that I can't count them. And not all processes are easily performed; deleting commercial breaks, for example, requires you to go to the editing area, going through a process of determining "chapters," and then going back to the recorded-shows area, and deleting the vaguely-titled chapters one by one, each time having to navigate back to the recorded-video area. Another problem not really Toshiba's fault is the inability to record "bilingual" shows in English on Fox or Disney channels--they have a unique bilingual mode which must be set by hand each time.

But if you can put up with little stuff like that, there is a lot of compensation. You can access an Internet-based program schedule with the next week of programming included, with search options available. You can surf the programming schedule area, up and down for channels, left and right for times, with all the available broadcasts shown on the grid. Unfortunately, it's all in Japanese (if you can't read at least Katakana, then you shouldn't get this), though the SkyP box can show you the same grid in English for reference if you want. The programming has to be done on the Toshiba, though.

Once you find a show, you can reserve it for automatic recording. You're given the flexibility to change the exact time it starts and ends, which days it will record the show (every Tuesday, or every Monday-Saturday, for example); you can set the recording quality exactly on a 1-9 scale or use presets, and you can direct the recorder to save the show in a specific folder. Unlike most VCRs, which only allow 8 programmed recording times, this machine can keep a large number of pre-set recordings. I don't know if there's a limit--I have 21 set at present.

The machine also has two tuners/encoders, so it can record two shows at the same time--though only if they are on different inputs. For example, you could record two shows simultaneously if one is on SkyP and the other is on local antenna, but you can't do that if both shows are coming from SkyP.

Like most DVRs, this one has "Timeslip," which allows you to "pause" live TV. This comes from the ability to both watch and record at the same time. When you hit "Timeslip," the DVR starts recording the show on the hard disk, and at the same time plays back the file it is recording, but pauses it at the start. The show can keep on recording for as many hours as you like, and you can come back any time and then play the recording from the beginning, going forward or "rewinding" or pausing or skipping around to your heart's content, until you "catch up" with the live picture.

My father uses this on his ReplayTV to avoid endless commercials in football games. He sets the Timeslip, then keeps it on pause and does something else for half an hour. Then he comes back and watches the part of the game that was just recorded (as the recording continues), skipping through commercials until he catches up with the live game. Then when a live commercial rears its ugly head, he pauses and goes away for a half hour again so he can come back and skip through the commercials again. But this feature is handy in other ways, too--have you ever been settling down to watch your favorite show and the phone rings? Just pause it, and pick up where you left off.

While the file system is a bit clunky on the TV display, because this machine connects to your computer network (in order to download the programming information) it is also visible from your PC. The Toshiba people did a pretty good job of creating a browser control interface for the machine. Just find out which IP Address the machine was designated (e.g., 192.168.0.5) and type it into the browser's address box, and you get the machine's control interface. You can program recordings, create and title folders, see the recorded show titles and view and alter their information (titles, show info, assign chapter titles, etc.)--and most handy, you can author DVD titles and menus.

For example, I recorded Groundhog Day as a test. On the RD-XS53 directly, I then cut off the excess recording before the start and after the end so it was just the movie. Then I broke it into chapters, like on a DVD, and for each one set the thumbnail image. Then I went into the browser interface and viewed the thumbnails, giving each a title (it is so much nicer to type that than to use the cell-phone-like remote control typing feature). Then, also on the computer, I searched the Internet for a nice photo from the movie. I found a few, patched them together in Photoshop, and saved it as a BMP image, which I could them export to the RD-XS53. Also using the browser controls, I set the exact color scheme for the titles, then went back to the RD-XS53 and went through the DVD authoring process. After recording the DVD, I had the equivalent of a commercial DVD of the movie, with menus like this:

Granted, it's a bit of a chore, especially at first, but if you don't mind it or even enjoy it, you can build a pretty nice library on your own.

The DVD recording features are very nice--with them, you can archive any number of shows or movies. It is still a little pricey--the cheapest brand-name DVD-Rs I can find are ¥150 ($1.35) apiece. In high-quality mode, you could save three episodes of a one-hour TV show on one DVD, costing perhaps ¥1200 (about $11) for one season--but considering the $40 ~ $130 cost of these seasons on commercial DVD, this is an acceptable price. Record enough stuff like this and the machine pays for itself, in a way. The RD-XS53 can also record on DVD-RW or DVD-RAM media, for those of you who don't keep permanent copies of your recordings (I usually do, so I stick with the cheaper DVD-Rs).

There are a lot more features, some too insignificant to explain, others I haven't discovered or figured out yet. But as you can tell from the length of this post, I am sort of getting into it. One thing I'll admit, it's not gonna be good for my health; I am turning into a veteran couch potato!

Pay Garbage

When I first moved into my apartment building, something I considered a nice feature of the complex was the garbage removal. They had these big metal bins with covers so you could toss your garbage outside any day of the week, and not worry about the smell or crows getting at it. It was also easier for the garbage collectors; they could simply attach the bins to a lifting device on their truck, and it would all just slide in. They did it fast and didn't have to get their hands too dirty.

But then, the city leaders of Inagi, in their infinite wisdom, decreed that bins like that could not be used. So we had to switch to the standard Japanese-style throw-your-garbage-by-the-side-of-the-street method, which stinks up the area and attracts crows and cats who fish through the garbage and make a mess, increasing maintenance costs. It's harder for the trash collectors, too; they now have to sling every bag by hand, dealing with spillage and stink.

I would have thought that the city couldn't go one worse, but I was wrong: now they're telling us we have to pay for each bag of garbage thrown out. We can no longer use any garbage bag we please (say goodbye to pull-string bags, or to using grocery store bags, they get wasted now), we have to buy city-made bags at fee-inflated prices. It's still relatively cheap--80 yen (about 75 cents) for ten grocery-store-size bags, 150 yen for double that size, and 300 yen for double that--but the point is that a price has now been set, meaning that price can easily go up anytime the city wants more money, and they inevitably will. This kind of thing should be paid for with tax revenues, at least then they can be honest about raising taxes. Though it is possible that this is a follow-up to the less-than-successful campaign of a few years ago when they tried to make everyone use transparent garbage bags and require people to write their names on each bag.

The change begins everywhere in Inagi City on October 1, and applies to burnable and unburnable garbage. Are there any other cities where they're doing this?

Americans Abroad: Register Here

If you haven't registered yet, then do it now--time is running out. The web site Overseas Vote 2004 has voter registration and absentee ballot requests online. The deadline is now two weeks away.

Register. Get your ballot. Vote. Any way you can. This one is crucial, folks. Every vote counts.

Iraq or a Hard Place

Some soldiers say that they are being presented with a harsh ultimatum from the Army: re-enlist for three more years or start packing for Iraq, where they would stay for extended duty. If they do re-enlist, then they would be sent somewhere safe to replace soldiers who are being sent to the Middle East.

If this is true, then it is likely localized rather than a national policy, and yet it is not the first time we have seen recruiters resorting to harsh tactics against the soldiers to pressure them into extending their duty. Is this SOP for recruitment, or are things getting a bit desperate for the recruiters?

Or Maybe They've Just Got It Wrong

In my immediately previous post, I opined about the unreliability of polls, but now with more information in hand, the issue may be more clear--it may be the "very different models" answer. As I had mentioned quickly in a post a week and a half ago, Rasmussen had explained the discrepancy between their polls and TIME and Newsweek polls by pointing out that those two news magazines weighted Republican voters far more greatly than Democrats. And now it looks like Gallup has been doing the same.

This post by Steve Soto at The Left Coaster (via DailyKos) points to specific data about Gallup's polling model: they predict that Republicans will make up 40% of all voters, and Democrats 33%, and that's reflected in their polling data. So no wonder Bush is ahead.

The next obvious question is, are those numbers accurate? Steve points to this quote from Zogby:

If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000.

Read the whole Zogby article if you can, it discusses TIME and Newsweek in detail--just like the Rasmussen article.

But Zogby makes it pretty clear: in the last three elections, Democrats voted either just as much as Republicans, or more--D:34-R:34, D:39-R:34, D:39-R:35. So why are organizations like Newsweek (D:31-R:38) and Gallup (D:33-R:40) weighting so heavily for Republicans? If anything, recent elections suggest it should be the other way around, and in this election, Democrats are galvanized like crazy--I personally (and very unscientifically) am expecting a heavy Democratic turnout.

So a key question in evaluating a poll is, how do they weight by party affiliation? A new CBS poll just came out a few hours ago(source PDF file), and they have Bush ahead by 9 points (50% - 41%), and though their poll is not so outrageously weighted towards Republicans, it is still weighted in their direction (D: 31-R: 33), when, by the last two election figures, it should probably be more like 39-35 or 38-36, weighted towards Democrats--at least.

And where we find ourselves winding up is, essentially the same as in the last post--in the land of unpredictability--albeit with a crude compass for which data to dismiss with extreme prejudice. But there are still too many factors out there even after party affiliation weighting is factored out, I believe, to make any of the polls believable to a point where it would make too much of a difference. In other words, mind those margins of error, boys and girls.

The Polls Must Be Crazy

One really has to wonder if the polls mean anything this year. Ever since the Republican convention, they've been going nuts. Just a few days ago Harris had Kerry out in front by one point. But now Gallup comes up and says that Bush leads by fourteen points. No way both are true, or even close to agreeing upon anything. Other polls show similar discrepancies. Kerry is at 41% or at 48%, Bush at 46% or 54%.

Considering that the margin of error is between 3% and 4%, it is highly unlikely that reality is converging at the center and all the polls are off completely to one side. It is more likely that the data is simply greatly unreliable. Perhaps, for some reason or another, the different polling organizations started using very different models, or introduced new variables at about that time. Or maybe it's just that this election is so unpredictable that surveys simply don't work at all.

We may have to fly this one in blind.

Depressing News from Iraq

Meanwhile, the situation in Iraq continues to spin out of control. American casualties have been steadily increasing for four months now. At this rate, September will become at least the third deadliest month of the war with a hundred or more U.S. soldiers killed.

And now more and more analysts are beginning to come out and say it outright: we are losing the war in Iraq. Or, more specifically, Bush is losing the war in Iraq. The soldiers fight on, doing their best, but all a soldier can do is just that--their best. If their commander-in-chief chooses the wrong battle or mishandles his strategy, then there's little that any soldier can do.

Before the war started, the Arab league predicted that if Bush invaded, it would "open the gates of hell in the Middle East," and now they're saying that the gates of hell are indeed open; some analysts see the was as already lost; and this writer notes that the correspondence between Bush's rosy assessments and the reality on the ground are becoming more and more dissonant.

The question now is, will the realization of Bush's horrific blunder sink in with the populace in time to do something about it, or will a jingoistic, crowd-pleasing, gung-ho "if you diss me then you diss the soldiers" song-and-dance routine by Dubya sway voters enough to lock us into four more years in Iraq? If Bush gets voted in, then we're in Iraq for good, because his inability to admit to error will force him to drive us into the ground there.

The war was a mistake from the start, and many of us saw it before the whole thing started:

Contrary to the rosy the-Arabs-will-love-us-for-saving-them pipe dream that Cheney has been hawking, the Arab people do not and never have reacted kindly to U.S. intervention, even when their governments allow it; should we go in with everyone opposing us, tempers will flare further still. Cheney argued that "extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad." Is he truly so utterly naive? An unsupported attack by America on an Arab nation would generate such fear and hostility in so many people that extremists would be swamped with volunteers willing to die for their cause. It would fire the call for a greater jihad, not frighten the extremists into impotency. Conflict is the friend of the terrorist.

That's from a pre-Movable-Type blog entry of mine from August 27th, 2002. I was hardly batting 1000 in the entirety of the post, but a lot of what I predicted came to pass, and a lot of other people were closer to the truth than I was. It's not like it was really that hard to see coming. But Bush and his handlers were either blind to it or didn't even care.

The sad thing is, it may already be too late. Bush has ceded huge swaths of territory to the insurgents (like he did in Afghanistan when he depleted forces there to fight in Iraq), who now know that a victory is possible. A great deal of that was made possible by things like the prison torture fiasco, turning hearts and minds against us.

The solution would have been for America to go to the United Nations and work out a real coalition, with strong cooperation by Arab nations, to send in a multinational force under U.N. control. Had that been implemented a year ago perhaps, it might have worked. But now Bush has wrecked the Iraq car, totaling it beyond any hope of repair, and we are probably left with the unsavory and yet very real choice of either leaving Iraq to the insurgents and letting it descend into hell, or staying there and still have it descend into hell. The way Bush has taken us in, there is not painless way out. In fact, there is no way out that is not going to be excruciatingly painful.

Bush will inevitably talk about where to go from here, and that is indeed relevant. But even more relevant in deciding the next president is this: what kind of decisions has Bush made, and where have they taken us--because if he gets re-elected, we will be in for more and more decisions just like it.

F-9/11 Breaks $200 Million Worldwide

I just checked back on the box office figures for Fahrenheit 9/11, and noted that it had broken the $200 million landmark. The $118 million domestic take is amazing enough, but $85 million overseas--for what is a very American, very political film--is outstanding. And note that the second-highest overseas gross is in Japan, where grosses don't usually go very high--and those figures are just after three weeks of release!

The DVD is due for release on October 5th (pre-order your copy!), and since DVDs now often sell more than at the box office, and since this one is coming out unusually early, it should gross even more, breaking more records. But the DVD will also mark a breakthrough in viewership, since a lot more people either on the fence or even on the other side of the fence will be more liable to plop down three bucks for the rental to watch at home rather than pay more than twice that much, per person, not including popcorn, to go to the theater.

In the meantime, Republicans feebly gathered in Dallas for their conservative-laden "American Film Renaissance," featuring the anti-Moore polemic, "Michael Moore Hates America." In a rather pathetic wannabe us-too display, the crowd rose and gave the film a ten-minute standing ovation, which did not speak well for the film. After all, a less partisan crowd gave F-9/11 a 15-minute ovation at Cannes; if a staunchly conservative crowd trying their hardest to match that for their best-effort hate movie can only eke out ten minutes on their feet, there must be some enthusiasm missing there. The documentary's maker aspires to get a theatrical release sometime in October. Well, maybe--but if it does, it won't be on the film's merits, but rather because, ironically, Moore's own film paved the way.

Ungodly Faxing

This usually happens when I make a special effort to get a solid eight hours of sleep. I'm usually a night owl, so going to sleep at midnight is early for me. I have to get up at eight, so that'll be a good chunk of sleep, which I have been lacking of late. So what happens? Some blazing idiot starts trying to fax me at six in the morning. For me, it's over on the first ring; I'm up now and can't get back to sleep. But the idiot has left his machine on auto-redial, so every ten minutes, as I'm futilely trying to get back to sleep, the phone keeps going off, like the Snooze Alarm from Hell.

That's a great way to start the day.

Sometimes You Know It's Just Got to Be a Scam

A few years ago, I bought a good leather jacket while on a business trip to Wisconsin. The jacket was cheap, but seemed of good quality--and that has borne out to be true. Good material, rugged, warm, comfortable, and (not that I know anything about fashion) it looked good, at least to me.

At the end of last Spring, I found the one part of the jacket that reflected its price. On the zipper, there is a small, flat metal tab on the fastening mechanism that you pull up and down to open or close the zipper. You know, the little metal flap that you hold between your thumb and forefinger while zipping. That thing broke, snapped in the middle, making it impossible to pull the fastener up or down.

Not a problem, I thought. It's, what, a simple piece of metal, gotta cost five cents tops to produce. I examined the remaining stump, and with a little twisting, it came right off. Replacing it should be a cinch--get a new metal tab, twist it a bit to snap it on, and Bob's your uncle. So I went to this large sewing and clothing supply store in Shinjuku I know of, figuring they must have a small rack of these things. Would cost a dollar at most, including a significant markup for the store.

I go in, wait for a salesperson to be free, and asked about it. Go to the sixth floor, she told me. I went to the elevator, which had left the first floor just before I had gotten to it, stopping at every floor on the way up, and on the way down. Sensing one of those frustrating series of piddling annoyances, I speculated that I would be told on the sixth (and top) floor that what I need is actually on the first floor. That happens often enough.

I get to the sixth floor, but don't see the right materials. So I wait to talk to someone, and am redirected again--twice. When I finally reach someone who deals with these things, she looks at the broken fastener tab with doubt, then goes to the back of the store for a few minutes. When she comes back out, she's carrying zippers and fasteners. "It's not YKK, is it?" she observes. YKK is a Japanese company which makes something like 90% of all the zippers in the world. I know because I visited their factory once years and years ago, I forget even why.

The salesperson meticulously compares the zippers that she brought out with mine, attempting to divine their size, mumbling in apparently distress about this non-YKK zipper I've got. I try to tell her, I don't need the fastening mechanism, it's not broken. I just need a new tab. See? Simple little thing. You must have some. She tried to explain that they don't sell them. Why not, I wondered--it must be the most breakable part of most zippers, it's simple, it should be cheap. (Though maybe that's why they don't carry them.)

She got that face that shopkeepers get in Japan when you ask for something they don't have, and they don't want to disappoint you, yet they know they have little other choice. Here we go, I thought. She's gonna send me to the first floor for something.

She outdid my expectations. "I can't tell if the size is right," she told me. "You'll have to go to the repair corner. Go down to the first floor, go across the street, and up to the fifth floor." Great. She found a way to make me go even farther--no doubt to be redirected back again.

So off I went, and sure enough, the elevator down had just left the floor, and was stopping at, well, you know. I walked down the stairs, crossed the street, and got to the elevator just as it had taken off from the first floor. Sometimes you can't catch a break.

When I got to the fifth floor, naturally I got redirected after waiting yet again, and found the right person. "It's not a YKK zipper, is it? she mused. "No," I replied, "but I don't need the zipper, I just need that little tab. Surely you must have one."

"No," she said, "you can't replace that part." This is where my BS sensors started going off. It's a small piece of metal. The operative part is a simple straight bar divided in the middle to allow the piece to be worked into place on assembly. If it's not available, it must be by choice, not because of a mechanical impossibility. It would be child's play to replace, you don't need to be an engineer to figure that out.

Further, she opined that my zipper, being of the non-YKK variety, was probably not going to work with any of their fasteners. "We'll have to take out the whole zipper and replace it with a new one." I asked her the cost, and it approached the cost of the original jacket. This is most definitely not right, I knew it.

At that point, I was hit with an inspiration. "Wait, I bet I could use a key ring in there. Just thread it through and use that. It wouldn't be very stylish--or maybe it would be, I don't know--but I bet it would work."

She shook her head sagely, telling me with absolute confidence that it would never work. There's a locking mechanism in the fastener, she told me; "if the pulling tab isn't just right, the fastener will lock up. It'll never work." Still, I wasn't about to leave my jacket there for a week or two while they massively overcharged me for unnecessary work--well, not without looking into things first--so I left.

On my way out (the elevator was there for once), I grumbled to myself that the whole thing was ridiculous, I should have been able to snap on an extra part in ten seconds and walked away. Once on the street, I decided to trust my instincts. I fished out my keys, found a key ring which was about the right size and thickness, and rearranged the keys to free up the ring. I then threaded it through the hole in the fastener on the jacket's zipper.

It works perfectly.

I felt kind of foolish for not thinking of it way earlier, and for not trusting my instincts immediately. After all, sometimes you know it's just gotta be a scam.

Bush and the Easy Audience

Bush spoke before yet another easy audience the other day: veterans of the National Guard. After all, if you want to address your service in the National Guard and have virtually no one in the audience able to object, where else would you go? Not exactly a tough crowd there.

And Bush couldn't help but dissemble again. Josh Marshall points out that when bush claimed that he was "proud to be one of" 19 presidents to serve in the Guard, he was being less than fully honest. He was, in essence, counting every president who served in the military before 1903, when the National Guard was formed out of the pre-existing organized militias.

In short, Bush was equating himself with former presidents like George Washington, who served in the militia--but was not exactly doing the same sort of thing in the militia that Bush was. Marshall goes on to point out that if one were instead to count all presidents who joined the "National Guard" to get out of combat, the list would have only one member: George W. Bush.

Blog Comment Spammers Way Out of Control

In the past seven days, MT Blacklist (a program that stops blog comment spam for Movable Type blogs) has stopped no fewer than 1,400 blog comment spams from getting on my site--and another 100 got through the protection and had to be removed manually. That's over 200 spams a day. This represents a rather significant surge in spam volume over previous levels.

I hate to do this, but next chance I get, I'm installing some sort of registration system--provided that they work. Anyone know if they do, or which system is best? I'd really like to stay with MT. I presume MT v. 3.0 would allow me to do that. Any advice would be appreciated.

It is pitiful to go around the web and look at blogs that are not cleaned out by their owners--their comment areas are a cesspool of spam. These people should just shut down comments altogether. They're just making it worse for the rest of us.

I'm also getting a lot of referral spam, and they've evolved--IP Deny no longer blocks them out.

Spammers are the cockroaches of cyberspace. I don't think anyone with a blog would disagree with that. Unless the blog is run by a spammer, of course. And even then...

An Overlooked Question

Critics point out that Bush failed to take a physical exam required of him by the Texas Air National Guard in 1972, and this got his flight status revoked.

The White House counters that Bush didn't take the physical because he "was not going to be flying." Okay, even if we ignore earlier conflicting White House claims about that issue, let's say that what they now say is true. Bush was not going to be flying.

So here's the question: why was Bush not going to be flying?

Bush had entered the Guard claiming that he wanted to make flying a part of his life. He has commented on how important flying was to him. Was being a flunky on the campaign staff for a House seat in Alabama more important than that? And why go permanently off of flight status? He would have returned after a few months, why would he not fly again after that?

When you think about it, it doesn't make too much sense. A physical exam only takes, what, an hour? I don't think I have ever heard the president say why he made that decision. I'd like to hear it asked, because the only explanation that comes close to making sense is this one.

A Famine Where Abundance Lies

Some days it's just hard to write. You see clearly what is going on, but stand in almost despair as others look the other way. You see a man who had everything paid for and handed to him, everything taken care of for him all his life, who drank, almost certainly used drugs; a man who broke the law many times, though arrested only three times that we know of; a man who has spoken outright lies too many to count; who evaded service while admonishing his peers not to do the same--engaging in hypocrisy, cowardice, and then lying about it. A man who displayed cruelty to many people, including a woman about to be put to death on his own watch.

And yet, despite all of these facts, millions of people who see character, dignity, and honor as critical somehow are able to see this man as strong in character. You wonder in disbelief how they can possibly think that.

You see a man who started a war that didn't need to be fought, sent a thousand young men and women to die and Lord knows how many thousands more to be maimed and cut up, all based on lies about how dangerous the other country was, lies proven wrong beyond any doubt whatsoever; a man who still forwards many of these same bald-faced lies. A man who hides behind the honor of fallen soldiers. A man who did all of this at the cost of fighting an effective war on terror, when from the very start he began to draw resources away from the hunt for those who had actually attacked our people. A man who has allowed and even caused by his words and actions the enemy numbers to swell, while still refusing to adequately fund real defense at home.

And yet, to so many patriotic Americans who see their children's lives as sacred and the security of our nation as paramount, this same man is somehow seen as a strong, decisive leader who is our only chance for peace and safety.

You see a man who has treated the people with disdain, stealing away their rights in the dead of night, and yet to many who cherish our freedoms and liberties, this man is somehow a protector.

You see a man who has taken a massive surplus and turned it into an unheard-of deficit, a man whose spending has gone far beyond control, and yet among people to whom small government and financial responsibility is essential, somehow this man is seen as a trustworthy manager of the treasury.

You see a man who has presided of massive job losses, over the lowering of uncounted jobs to minimal pay, who has done nothing for education or health care, and yet so many people seem to think he is the best man to accomplish these things and raise our standards of living, tasks which he has proven he cannot accomplish.

And then we turn and see the other man. A man also born to wealth and privilege, and yet he chose to serve, and did serve in combat, with such stature and bravery that a band of his comrades have given up a year of their lives to follow him and declare to anyone who will listen that they owe their lives to him, that he is a man who will lead with honor and dignity. And yet many people who respect military service and honor bravery would sooner listen to political hacks funded by wealthy partisan donors who attack this man with easily punctured lies and thinly veiled hypocrisy--and yet believe them instead. You see the first man attack not just the second, but many others (think of McCain and Cleland) who served and sacrificed with honor, attacking them with bitter lies and calling these patriots traitors, and somehow many people believe the coward who never fought, and disbelieve the men who offered their lives for their country.

You see the other man come forward with workable, sensible and fair plans where the first man has nothing but failures. You see the other man spell out his plans for education in detail, for health care that benefits the people and not the pharmaceutical corporations, a man who would tax fairly, use taxes fairly, and who would reduce the deficit, build better jobs and turn us around from four years of economic failure. But you see that nobody hears of any of this because though the man is speaking of these plans often, the cameras and the journalists do not pass them on as they are supposed to; they instead focus on what the first man is saying without questioning his veracity, and then only how the other man responds to that, and little else. You see the other man trying to tell a country how he can help, how he wishes to serve, but you only read stories and see reports buried low on the page and far into the broadcast, and even then more often than not focusing on how he's being berated or not being angry enough.

Just today, two of the top half dozen major media sites don't even mention Kerry's name on their main pages, though they all name Bush; two more of that number do not mention him until near the bottom of the page. And yet we are less than two months away from an election.

You may or may not share my views or judgments, and I am far from being without bias. There are other things to be said that oppose what I have written above, to be certain. But even taking all that into account, I still cannot fathom how so many can dismiss so much which is vital in a leader and accept a man such as Bush; I cannot believe how a man like Kerry, who, for all his faults, fought for his nation and fights for it still, a man of ambition and yet still of conscience, can be so beaten in the media and disbelieved and unheard by so many who value the things that he has accomplished and promises to do.

You look at the papers and read the news and listen to the broadcasts, and sometimes it hurts to see how the truth is being played with by veterans of spin, how you know what is right and yet also see how millions will see it as wrong, or wrong as right.

This does not mean that I am giving up, however. It does not mean I have abandoned hope, far from it. My hope is that those who fear what will come from another four years, and those who hope for what a new administration could bring, will be galvanized by the blind eye of much of the country and the jaded eye of the media. My hope still remains in my mantra now quite long in speaking: turnout, turnout, turnout.

I fear for my country, but above all I hope for it.

Bush Did Not Finish His Service

Here is an article from U.S. News and World Report that is saying the same thing I've been saying for more than a year now. About time somebody in the media finally realized it. In short: Bush did not fulfill his duties; even if you take all of the records released by the White House at face value, Bush still fell short on points in the Guard. Interesting, though, that they don't mention the "gratuitous" points Bush was awarded to put him over the top. Performing your duty would earn you points for the year; if you achieved 50 points, you got awarded 15 "gratuitous" points. Bush, in 1972 for example, only earned 41 points, but was awarded the extra 15 points to bring him over minimum requirements--and yet that was not supposed to happen. You only got the extra points if you first fulfilled your duty. The White House has been trying to tell everyone that since Bush got over 50 points, he finished his stint. He did not.

Toshiba Support Sucks

As I mentioned before, the manual for the $1,000 machine I just bought comes nowhere near being informative enough to tell me how to operate the thing. After hours and hours of translating, reading, and fiddling around I worked out maybe half of the bare minimum to get the machine to function. So I have to resort to the support line. Except there's a problem. I've been hitting "redial" every fifteen seconds for 45 minutes now, and every number Toshiba has for support--three different numbers--have been solidly busy since opening time. And when I called the main support line over the weekend, the same person answered each time, suggesting that they only had one person on staff to answer the phones. You plop down that much money for a machine, you'd think that they'd either put more effort into writing the manual, or hire a few extra people to answer the phone...

I don't suppose there's anyone out there with an RD-XS53 who could give me some tips?

Where's That Darn Heart O' Mine?

Just thought you might enjoy this AP Photo. Even the little girl knows generally where her heart is located. One can easily imagine what Bush might be thinking. "I can't belive I ate that whole pizza all by myself." Or maybe, "Damn those pretzels! If they don't choke me, they give me indigestion!"

Anyone care to suggest other captions?

...And He Lied Back Then As Well

You might or might not be aware the George W. Bush once ran for Congress. It was 1978, and after winning the primary race, he lost to Democrat Kent Hance. What is interesting is that in his campaign materials, Bush claimed to have served in the Air Force as well as in the Texas Air National Guard.

Of course, this is nothing new. In his 1999 biography, he stated that after June 1970, "I continued flying with my unit for the next several years," which is now known to be false. In 1999 and 2000, Bush lied--twice--about his drunk driving arrest. And then there was the time that Bush, as Governor of Texas in 1999, lied under oath (isn't that an impeachable offense now?) in a criminal investigation.

Ah, but those were five years ago, and so were just youthful indiscretions. After all, he wouldn't ever lie as president, would he?

Probably Not Nuclear, But a Reminder Nevertheless

A huge explosion in the northern part of North Korea sent a plume of smoke more than two miles wide into the air on an important anniversary of the secretive communist regime, a South Korean news agency reported Sunday. ...

''We understand that a mushroom-shaped cloud about 3.5 to 4 kilometers (2.1 to 2.5 miles) in diameter was monitored during the explosion,'' the news agency quoted an unidentified diplomatic source in Seoul, the South Korean capital, as saying. (source)

Whatever it was, it's not good. Something damned big blew up there on Thursday, for the mushroom cloud to be more than 2 miles across. If it's not nuclear, then I have no idea what it could be. Powell is saying that it's not nuclear, and one would assume that if it were a nuke, Powell wouldn't be quite so definitive. We'll probably find out what it was in a few days.

Initial reports have a U.S. official claiming it was a forest fire. That's gotta be some forest fire... but in all seriousness, it can't be that. So what is it? If it is nuclear, then Bush is in huge trouble. Remember his statement, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Considering the advancements made with North korea under a Democratic president, and how Bush immediately blew all of that off and called North Korea "evil," a nuclear test by that country would be greatly embarrassing. It should also be noted that the explosion happened on a keynote date (the anniversary of North Korea's foundation), which would be a logical day for something like a first successful nuclear test.

It should also be noted that this also comes at about the same time as a revelation that South Korea started enriching uranium four years ago with America not objecting, throwing yet another wrench into the whole situation.

But this should be a reminder of one other important fact: Kim Jong Il is still there, and still a greater threat to his own people and to us than Saddam Hussein ever was. North Korea is still developing nuclear weapons when Hussein was doing nothing even close to that. People in North Korea are unimaginably more oppressed than Iraqis ever were. And yet we went into Iraq, first under the pretense that Hussein was building nukes, which later (when WMD were never found) morphed into a humanitarian mission because the Iraqis were so terrorized by their leader. Both of those excuses are shown up as feeble in light of the threat of North Korea. I'm not saying that we should have invaded North Korea instead, I'm pointing out that the reasons given for invading Iraq were, to put it kindly, false.

The current situation also begs the question, what has Bush been doing about North Korea? Because as far as I can tell, he's been doing pretty much nothing at all.

It Reads Like Stereo Instructions

So I broke down and went out and bought the Toshiba RD-XS53 HDD/DVD Recorder. That's the (supposedly) TiVo-like machine which works with SkyPerfecTV (which I just got), recording whatever you like and doing all the programming work for you. Or not.

In order to get enough time to set up the gadgets that I buy, I usually get them Friday evening on the way home from work, or on Saturday afternoon (like this time); that'll leave me the weekend, before I have to go back to work, to fiddle with the thing and get it just right.

And every time I seem to forget what happens every time before--the manual is frustratingly confusing, and the 24/7 telephone number is for pre-sales only--tech support won't open till Monday at 10 am, by which time I have to go to work. Yargh.

One of the main features--and they advertise the spit out of the machine as having this very feature--is that it can control the SkyP tuner box through a control cable, turning it on and off, changing the channel, switching the bilingual mode. But just try getting it to do that. The "easy setup" manual is unforgivably lacking in detail--it only explains a portion of what you have to do before you can even do the most basic of tasks--and in order to get things to work right, you have to reference the thicker manual, without prompting from the "easy setup," and, well, you get the picture. I could rant on, but I doubt you'd want to read about it.

Short story: I have figured out enough after a few hours of reading, fixing the settings, arranging the channels manually and so on, to get the thing to simply record whatever I manually set it to. Which will hold me, I suppose, until the tech support people come in from the weekend.

Spiffy features I hadn't known about: you can divide any recorded show into DVD chapters, and delete any chapter you want--which can be used to separate out and then delete commercial breaks, if you want to take the time to do that. That I could figure out, though I wouldn't even have known about it except that the Yodobashi Camera sales guy showed it to me. Another nifty feature is the ability to manually set the compression. Instead of just having "regular" (4.6) or "long" (3.2), you can set the quality from 1 to almost 10, so a DVD could hold anywhere from 1 to 8 hours of programming, depending on the quality you select. My current task is to figure out how much DVD play time is added by going up or down each step in compression so I can set the quality just right for X amount of video to fill up a disk.

One drawback: the DVD recorder will produce only Region-2 DVDs, so if you want to send homemade DVDs--even self-made things, like home movies--to anyone outside Japan, they'll need a region-free DVD player to view them. And there is copy-protection, so you can't just pop in a rental DVD, save it to disk, then record back onto a DVD-R (unless you have a pirate box that defeats the DVD protection).

I'm sure there are quite a few other ups and downs to come... And if anyone in the U.S. is interested in this kind of a machine, it'll be released there next month, at about $700. I presume it'll be geared to hook up to American satellite systems, and will probably have equivalent features.

TANG Documents: Real or Forgeries?

Well, here is an excellent example of damage control on the part of Republicans. As stated in yesterday's post, CBS uncovered some highly damaging documents from Bush's superior officer in the TANG concerning his using family ties & influence to get out of fulfilling his duties. The documents are from the early 70's.

It did not take long for stories to be released claiming the documents are forgeries. The proof? Col. Jerry Killian's wife says he never kept papers! His son say he wouldn't write like that!

Beg pardon? Did his wife and son hang out at his base and observe his writing and paper-pushing proclivit