October 31, 2003:

Happy Hallowe'en!

October 29, 2003:

Really don't want to repeat last night... I might say it was worse than being in a dental chair, but friends and family know that I fear nothing more than that, so I won't say that. Last night we went to a meeting of the parent association at the Kid Unit's school; the board had made a decision to not renew the current head's contract, and the meeting was all about the board listening to questions from parents. It was originally slated for an hour, but ran three and a half hours; the board, of course, could say very little in a circumstance like this — for legal reasons, including privacy and confidentiality, they can't talk about why they weren't interested in renewing the contract. And parents were repeatedly diligent in trying to find some magic way of asking their questions so that another dot could be revealed, allowing for connection after hours. But the board was very good at not being specific, which is really what they needed to do. I just felt like I was watching a press briefing with Ari Fleischer, with the reporters adjusting their words ever so slightly to get information. Phew!

October 27, 2003:

Fine progress is being made on the Halloween costumes. On Saturday, the Kid Unit ventured into the public (a school party) dressed as a penguin (black and white pieces, with orange felt on the feet, sewn by Ab). But I need to convince the Kid Unit that white make-up and a yellow nose is not sufficient for the head, some kind of black wrap is necessary. As for me, I'm actually dressing up for the first time in about 30 years. I'm dressing as the King of Hearts, and I'm rigging it so a plastic sword seems to pierce through my head.

Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver has made it onto my reading table. I was intrigued by the idea of a series of novels dealing with the history of the sciences, and it was well reviewed... Now, I'm only 40 or so pages into it (out of 900+!), so by no means am I committed to these opinions, but it feels as if he goes to the motif well a little too often. The quicksilver = mercury idea came up on something like page 2, with thermometer references; and Mercury's status as the messenger of the Gods is getting a lot of play in a silver haired character who communicates the status of ideas and is also carrying a letter. Seeing Ben Franklin and Isaac Newton as children he coincidentally meets is, well, a bit cute.

The latest suicide bombings in Iraq leave me more firmly convinced that it would be nuts to make a premature exit. Whether or not you agreed with the way we got involved, it's abundantly clear that the factions which would attack the Red Cross and UN offices are not interested in a free Iraq. They only want chaos, and their own power.

The US's gullibility regarding Ahmed Chalabi, and the mess which it got us into, has a familiar smell to it. Remember Ollie North, and how much he wanted to believe that he could free the Beirut hostages by shipping arms to Iran? Theodore Draper's A Very Thin Line laid out how North and Admiral John Poindexter were so intensely interested in pursuing any opportunity to free the those hostages that they ignored warnings that the arms dealers they were working with were unreliable. The dynamics of their delusion was different, I think, from what the US is doing in Iraq — in the Iran-Contra case, North and Poindexter actually increased their investment of arms in spite of a lack of progress at each step, hoping that the "next" batch of stinger and TOW missiles would be the tipping point, but it was only at the constant behest of their disreputable partners — and now in Iraq, the US is far more skeptical about Ahmed Chalabi; so I think there are some differences, albeit belated.

October 24, 2003:

Further thoughts on the "imminent threat." In my October 15 post I mentioned that denials that President Bush ever characterized Iraq as an "imminent threat" focus on a passage in his 2003 State of the Union address, wherein he seems to specifically accept that the threat is not imminent:

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

First question: does he really say that the threat is not imminent? If you answered 'yes,' go back and reread the passage, because what he actually says is that the argument that the threat needs to be imminent is irrelevant. He has not said that the threat is not imminent. In a sense, all he is really saying he doesn't need to convince anyone that the threat is imminent in order to act.

To me, then, that passage does nothing to downplay the language he used in Cincinnati in October 2002 (all emphases are mine):

• "We are resolved today, to confront every threat, from any source, that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America."
• "Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today -- and we do — does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?"
• "And that is the source of our urgent concern about Saddam Hussein's links to international terrorist groups."
• "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists."
• " And he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too great that he will use them, or provide them to a terror network."
• "Many people have asked how close Saddam Hussein is to developing a nuclear weapon. Well, we don't know exactly, and that's the problem."
• "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."
• "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. 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."
• "Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon."
• "We could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world. But I'm convinced that is a hope against all evidence."

If you read the entire Cincinnati speech, you'll see that the word "threat" (or its forms) is used 17 times. And the language above ("urgent" etc.) certainly suggests imminence. And that, outside of Cincinnati, administration figures were using similar language.

October 21, 2003:

WELCOME to all visitors from Ishbadiddle! I'm glad to share Mike's neighborhood... This skin and bones web site is created through that ever-so-technical software program WordPerfect. Hard coding with basic html, learned through View->Source and an old manual. (I once tried using MS Word, but when it realized I was coding html, it started inserting IE-proprietary code, so I've been using WP for the last six years.)

I continue to be a New Yorker because every time I turn around something really wrong happens in my home state, Florida. Whenever you have a case like that of Terri Schiavo, with vehemently opposed, locked sides, a sense of what's right or wrong often comes down to a non-legal matter of faith, and faith isn't something that is very relevant in the legal spheres. But to see politicians step in and presume that they know what is right and wrong is reprehensible. The special case law which was drafted today, allowing the governor to reinsert her feeding tube, is an example of how easy it is to circumvent the balance of power. Florida has a balance of power just like the Federal government's, and the Florida Supreme Court had decided to let the lower court's ruling stand.

(You could easily assume that I wasn't thrilled with the way the Presidential election turned out in Florida, but I have a long memory of other instances, too. Like the dove bar manager in North Palm Beach [my hometown] who was murdered by a hawk patron at the end of his shift; like the member of the legislature who tried pushing through a bill which would deny state aid to foreign students from "terrorist" nations — not realizing how many of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabians, and that Saudi Arabia is not on the federal list of terrorist nations...)

October 15, 2003:

What is the nature of an "imminent" threat? These days, the word imminent, and its use, seems to be more important than the concept of imminent. For instance, the words in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address show that he wanted to avoid using the word "imminent":

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

That is to say, the threat is not imminent, but we couldn't allow it to achieve imminence.

Some Democratic politicians and media figures have been criticized for suggesting that Bush said the threat was imminent. For instance, Andrew Sullivan criticized Ted Kennedy for having charged Bush thus; similarly, a producer for PBS' Frontline opened himself up to the charge.

Now, while it's evident that in the State of the Union speech the President avoided applying the word imminent, isn't it obvious that's what he meant? Let's look at the definition of the word first.

The American Heritage Dictionary gives only one definition, "About to occur; impending." Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary gives three definitions, one of which is very close to the American Heritage Dictionary's, but also this: "Full of danger; threatening; menacing; perilous."

Now. I'd say everything Bush described in his speech meets the second definition, no doubt about it. But as for the first, Bush implied that if we let Hussein continue, that on some uncertain time table all the materials he'd amassed would become actual weapons. (Otherwise, he's no threat, right?) And, if the timetable is uncertain, then it may as well be imminent, correct?

Now, if we take the administration at their words, that Hussein was not an imminent threat, but merely one in the making, would we have behaved any differently than we did? As it was, we bypassed the UN and threw away decades' worth of alliances. What would we have done otherwise, just not gone to the UN at all? As a practical matter, it doesn't look like the impact of using the word imminent is significant: we'd still have warred.

Lastly, even if Bush avoided using the word imminent, look at the words of others in the White House: the Vice President, for instance, who in August (2002) said "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." And in March, said "And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons" (and didn't get around to correcting until this past September). Does anyone believe that Bush and Cheney don't compare notes? Seriously, who needs to hear them use the word "imminent" when they are using the idea all the time?

October 12, 2003:

October 9, 2003:

Now, this is cool! Louis Armstrong's house in Queens is finally opening up as a museum next week. See how Pops and Lucille lived:

"I don't think there's a square inch of paint in the house," said Michael Cogswell, director of the Louis Armstrong House and Archives at Queens College. "Even the ceilings of the closets have wallpaper." In this setting, gold-plated Selmer trumpets compete with golden swan-head bathroom fixtures by Sherle Wagner International and an almost pristine 1960's kitchen. The Sub-Zero refrigerator is paneled in turquoise to match the floor-to-ceiling cabinetwork. There are also a built-in countertop NuTone blender, a KitchenAid dishwasher with a "party" setting and a six-range, double-oven Crown stove, which was custom made for the Armstrongs. (New York Times)

THIS, however, is NOT cool: Yesterday's Times reported that "a large number of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles that were part of the arsenal of Saddam Hussein" can't be located. With the proper training, these are capable of bringing down aircraft. "[P]ortable missiles were fired at incoming planes several times in recent weeks, one senior official said. Most of those incidents have not been reported to the public. The missiles missed their targets widely, suggesting that the people who fired them had not been extensively trained."

October 8, 2003:

Submitting to the circus. I'm disappointed that California voted to recall Governor Gray Davis. I was never surprised that enough signatures were collected to start the process — although the idea that the effort began before his second term even started is repulsive — but the idea that the majority of voting Californians couldn't differentiate between what was in his control or not is scary. The $38 billion dollar deficit they faced at one point (reduced to $8bn after everyone focused) was largely due to an economy which had grown too large and then crashed (remember the Internet bubble? Silicon Valley is not in Detroit); the Internet bubble had national implications, if you've been tracking your 401(k) in the past few years, not just in California. The rolling black-outs and high electric costs of a few years ago have been found out to have been the end result of manipulations by the energy companies, not mismanagement by the state.

But for one reason or another, Californians couldn't see that. I don't know why not. But the implications of this successful venture are disheartening. For instance, NYC's mayor, Mike Bloomberg, continually has low job approval ratings, and if there were a similar provision in the city charter he'd be vulnerable also. Yet I think that he's doing a really fine job under the budgetary circumstances, and New Yorkers haven't realized that one, the good old days under Rudy Giuliani happened to occur during the long economic expansion of the Clinton years; and two, maybe they've overly romanticized Giuliani on the basis of his response to September 11. Personally, I don't think Giuliani was outstanding, so much as he responded decently to outstanding circumstances; I hope that Mayor Bloomberg doesn't face similar circumstances, and that voters remember what a jerk Giuliani was in the early years of his tenure. (I will grant that Bloomberg alienated many by pushing for higher taxes on cigarettes and completely banning smoking in bars and restaurants, but hey, the complainers may have more years to vote now, and that's not such a bad deal.)

Should absentee ballot laws be revised? There were something like 3 million absentee ballots in play in the California vote, and 2 million of them had already been cast more than a week before the election. These voters were essentially unaware of the allegations that Schwarzenegger had groped or sexually harassed several women. I'm not saying it would have changed their votes, but is it better for the state when people make their minds up early and shut themselves off from reconsideration? Personally, I don't think so: and it's not just because of the last-minute accusations and my hopes that Davis could have stayed in; but candidates should have an opportunity to be heard right up to election day. Some candidates may want to be able to clarify their points; there might be room for an additional debate, which would have no impact on early voters. I grant that it is the voters themselves who get shortchanged in these situations, but I think democracies are better served by a well-informed, participating populace.

October 2, 2003:

It would have been a horrible time. Last night I was asked to participate in a focus group where the client was clearly a company I used to work at; and since I worked in the marketing research department there, it's likely that I would have known a few of the people behind the mirror. They wouldn't have wanted me (I wouldn't be a normal participant for them), and I wouldn't have felt like a normal participant. I told the recruiter I couldn't do it.

I'm not going to say much about the Valerie Plame scandal, but why isn't there more outrage from Republicans about what appears to be a treasonous act from someone in the White House?