Blog #30 Anyone you know in the 81%

The NYTimes/CBS poll posted 4-4-08 showed that 81% of the American people believe that “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002. However, what that poll didn’t deal with is what in the world do you do with a bunch of leaders who freely admit that they pay not one whit of attention to any poll that goes against their preconceived mindset. Anyone see any resemblance to our present leadership? Nevertheless the story by David Leonhardt and Marjorie Connelly went on the list many interesting facts that the survey discovered, even if those who should read it won’t.

“A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.” Think about that for a moment. How did we as a country let ourselves get into such a mess? By standing quietly by while a right-wing leaning Supreme Court anointed George Bush president in 2000 even though Al Gore had won the popular vote, and would likely have won Florida if the Court had allowed the recount to continue onto the end, that's how. Bush’s lead was slipping away minute by minute when the Court ordered the count stopped. And then four years later we reelected this Vietnam slacker over a bona fide Vietnam war hero on the strength of lies and defamation on the part of rabid, right wing SwiftBoat truthmanglers. More from the report:

“The dissatisfaction is especially striking because public opinion usually hits its low point only in the months and years after an economic downturn, not at the beginning of one. Today, however, Americans report being deeply worried about the country even though many say their own personal finances are still in fairly good shape.” Are we turning into a nation of soothsayers? Isn’t it a shame we didn’t realize what was down the road back in 2004 when we could have done something about it?

“Only 21 percent of respondents said the overall economy was in good condition, the lowest such number since late 1992, when the recession that began in the summer of 1990 had already been over for more than a year. In the latest poll, two in three people said they believed the economy was in recession today. Only 21 percent of respondents said the overall economy was in good condition, the lowest such number since late 1992, when the recession that began in the summer of 1990 had already been over for more than a year. In the latest poll, two in three people said they believed the economy was in recession today.” Only two in three? What’s the third one smoking?

“The unhappiness presents clear risks for Republicans in this year’s elections, given the continued unpopularity of President Bush. Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they approved of the job he was doing, a number that has barely changed since last summer. But Democrats, who have controlled the House and Senate since last year, also face the risk that unhappy voters will punish Congressional incumbents.” If we the people hold it against Democrats who tried everything they could think of the curb the Bush administration, but were met with stubbornness and vetoes at every turn, then we will get what we deserve. Surely we are smart enough to lay blame where it belongs. Perhaps it had been wrong for Democrats to put expectations so high but who could have predicted that Bush would be so entrenched? Who knew that our erstwhile president thinks of himself not as president, but as omnipotent ruler?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/us/04poll.html?hp
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Why is it that once they get in power so many of our presidents focus their attention on foreign lands, rather than work in the interests of the people in this country who elected them to office? Unfortunately this fault can be found not only in the Republican Bush/Cheney administration, although they could be faulted for not learning from the mistakes of previous administrations. But the same could be said of both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations over Korea and the Johnson and Nixon administrations over Vietnam. Under both governments American soldiers were sent to far off lands among a people of a different race, to fight for a cause they knew nothing about. And all because of a myth current at the time that if the government we supported fell it would cause a domino effect, and all the regimes in the region would fall. Even the Kennedy administration bought onto this fantasy, although shortly before his assassination JFK did disclose to some of his close advisors that he intended to pull American advisers out of Vietnam. Within five days of ascending to power after Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson changed the course of our South Vietnam mission from one of American military advisers to that of active combat, and in order to rally the country to support our presence there the Navy staged the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and just like that our troops were committed to full combat.

(Wikipedia reports the following: In 2005, it was revealed in an official NSA declassified report that the Maddox first fired warning shots on the August 2 incident and that there may have been no North Vietnamese boats at the August 4 incident. The report said it is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on 2 August.) The Congress later rescinded the Tonkin Bay resolution, but of course by then it was a day late and quite a few dollars short.

Although by the end of his term Johnson realized the futility of our involvement and attempted to bring about peace talks, the incoming president Richard Nixon sent Henry Kissinger to South Vietnam to encourage them not to capitulate, but to argue over the shape of the table and do whatever else to subvert the talks, assuring them that when the Republicans came to power they would continue US support for the South. And so the war went on until our effort finally collapsed completely and we were forced to pull our forces out. For our trouble the city of Saigon (which had been the capitol of South Vietnam) was renamed Ho Chi Minh city in honor of the North Vietnamese leader who had worked tirelessly for the freedom of his people, and who even president Eisenhower later admitted would have received 80% of the South Vietnamese vote if we had allowed the elections called for to be held.

Fortunately, although Republican nominee John McCain is a “more of the same” kind of guy, both Democratic contenders promise to pull out our troops with all possible haste, and promise to do their very best to clean up the mess left behind by Bush/Cheney. And so it is primarily a question of which Democratic candidate you feel would do a better job. Although I believe Hillary Clinton would better serve, I would not for an instant hesitate to support Obama should he end up being the nominee. And I suspect that virtually all rational Democrats will do the same, no matter who comes out on top. I ask you, what Democrat in his or her right mind would support continuing the status quo, with its unending occupation of Iraq, by voting for John McCain? That is a myth of division purported by desperate Republicans who refuse to read the writing on the wall, and who are speculating on hope and dreams. And there is one former Democrat in that corner also, you know who you are.
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One of the more intriguing posts of the past week was made by Ariana Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post, which many are pointing to these days as the first example of a truly web-based news media. On March 30, she wrote of polls which favor McCain’s handling of Iraq over Obama or Clinton’ handling of it. She reported that Gallup had him favored over either Democrat by 14 points, and the L.A.Times had a poll favoring McCain over Clinton by 14 points, Obama by 13. Why, she asks, is this anomaly happening, when the polls also show that two thirds of America think the war is a mistake? Not to mention the cost of the war bringing America to it’s financial knees. Huffington points to the dashed hopes of Democrats ending the war in 2006 as a part of the reason. Then she went on to write:

“Enter Darcy Burner, a Democratic challenger who is running for Congress in Washington state. Working with national security experts and retired military generals such as Major Gen. Paul Eaton, the officer in charge of training the Iraqi military immediately after the invasion in 2003 and 2004, she developed "A Responsible Plan to End the War," a comprehensive approach to Iraq based on legislation already introduced in Congress.

“The 20-page plan (which you can read in its entirety at: http://responsibleplan.com/plan), doesn't just lay out how to end the war – it also addresses the institutional failures that led to the tragic invasion and occupation of Iraq. This includes rebuilding the U.S. diplomatic apparatus, banning the use of armed military contractors like Blackwater, banning torture, promoting government transparency, and restoring accountability through the checks and balances laid out in the Constitution.

“As of today, 45 Democratic challengers have signed on to the plan – including 41 running for the House and 4 running for the Senate. Among the candidates who helped Burner launch the project are Chellie Pingree, running in Maine's First Congressional District; Donna Edwards, running in Maryland's Fourth Congressional District; Tom Perriello, running in Virginia's Fifth Congressional District; and Eric Massa, running in New York's Twenty-ninth Congressional District.
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The Huffington Post ran the following YouTube video where various people supporting the initiative talk about it. Because it seems to us to be a very responsible movement heading in exactly the right direction we are happy to include it here. We tried to embed it, but without any luck. However you can view it at this link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/closing-the-message-gap-o_b_94074.html

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Opposition to any kind of national health plan has long been the mantra of the American Medical Association and its member doctors. But that reality may be changing. In a story dated March 31, 2008 the news organization Reuters reported that a majority of U.S. doctors now favor switching to a national health care plan, and less than a third oppose the plan. The survey suggested that opinions have changed substantially since the last survey in 2002, as the country debates the need for serious changes to the nation’s health care system. According to the Reuters article: “Of more than 2,000 doctors surveyed, 59 percent said they support legislation to establish a national health insurance program, while 32 percent said they opposed it, researchers reported in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. The 2002 survey found that 49 percent of physicians supported national health insurance and 40 percent opposed it.

"Many claim to speak for physicians and represent their views. We asked doctors directly and found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, most doctors support national health insurance," said Dr. Aaron Carroll of the Indiana University School of Medicine, who led the study.

"As doctors, we find that our patients suffer because of increasing deductibles, co-payments, and restrictions on patient care," said Dr. Ronald Ackermann, who worked on the study with Carroll. "More and more, physicians are turning to national health insurance as a solution to this problem."

“The United States has no single organized health care system. Instead it relies on a patchwork of insurance provided by the federal and state governments to the elderly, poor, disabled and to some children, along with private insurance and employer-sponsored plans.

“Many other countries have national plans, including Britain, France and Canada, and several studies have shown the United States spends more per capita on health care, without achieving better results for patients. An estimated 47 million people have no insurance coverage at all, meaning they must pay out of their pockets for health care or skip it.

“Contenders in the election for president in November all have proposed various changes, but none of the major party candidates has called for a fully national health plan. Insurance companies, retailers and other employers have joined forces with unions and other interest groups to propose their own plans.

"Across the board, more physicians feel that our fragmented and for-profit insurance system is obstructing good patient care, and a majority now support national insurance as the remedy," Ackermann said in a statement. The Indiana survey found that 83 percent of psychiatrists, 69 percent of emergency medicine specialists, 65 percent of pediatricians, 64 percent of internists, 60 percent of family physicians and 55 percent of general surgeons favor a national health insurance plan. The researchers said they believe the survey was representative of the 800,000 U.S. medical doctors.” (Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Will Dunham and Xavier Briand)

We wonder how many of the doctors in the survey saw Michael Moore’s film “Sicko.” We’ll bet a lot of them did, and those who were honest agreed with it, and that fact is reflected in the survey. Remember America, health care should be a right for every American, and should come before foreign commitments to countries like Iraq. Support your local Democrats who have made national health care a priority. Keep America’s resources in America.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN3143203520080331?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&rpc=22&sp=true
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If you’re in the thinning ranks of Hillary Clinton supporters, and/or you like music, we happily refer you to this cool tribute to Hillary by Gene Wang for your listening pleasure. http://www.genewang.com/HillaryintheHouse.mp3
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News just keeps getting rosier for Apple, the company that used to be noted for its computers, but has found new fame and fortune utilizing gadgets and services prefixed with the small letter i. As in iPods, the iPhone, and iTunes. The NYTimes blogrunner column on technology reported that Apple’s diminutive iTunes Store has passed WalMart and is now the #1 music reailer in the US. The iTunes Store leads the pack with 19 percent, Wal-Mart (which includes the brick-and-mortar stores as well as its online properties) is second with 15 percent, and Best Buy is third with 13 percent. Amazon is a distant fourth at 6 percent, trailed by the likes of Borders, Circuit City, and Barnes & Noble. Rhapsody is in the tenth slot with 1 percent. More at:
___________________________________________________ http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080402-apple-passes-wal-mart-now-1-music-retailer-in-us.html

On top of a report that a survey of merchants world wide has named Apple’s products the most admired (Google ranked fourth) Morgan Stanley reports that 40% of college students plan to buy Macs. According to AppleInsider: “Apple's rapidly rising mindshare amongst current generation college students is setting the company up for an "aging phenomenon" that will spur further market share and revenue growth as those students enter the work force, investment bank Morgan Stanley said Wednesday.

“A recent higher-education survey cited by analyst Katy Huberty reveals that roughly 40 percent of college students say their next computer purchase will be a Mac, well ahead of Apple's current 15 percent market share in the demographic.

“In the near term, this sets the Cupertino-based Mac maker up for a strong September quarter – a three-month period that embodies the heart of the back-to-school buying season, where incoming freshmen, existing undergraduates, and universities all plunk down considerable sums of cash in order to invest in computer hardware for the coming school year.

"Longer term," Huberty said, "we see an 'aging phenomenon' that will put Apple in a more mainstream market share position as students enter the work force, much like Linux adoption in the 1998-2003 time frame."

“For Apple, which holds just shy of 3 percent worldwide share of the personal computer market, each incremental percentage point of share gain means billions, Huberty said; approximately 6 billion in yearly revenues, and a full dollar in per share earnings for investors. The analyst maintained her Overweight rating on shares of Apple, with a $185 per-share Base Case scenario that assumes Mac unit share rises to 3.5 percent from 2.9 percent in the next 12 months, and that consumers continue to buy up into the Mac product family, providing the company with some gross margin leverage.
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http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/26/morgan_stanley_40_of_college_students_plan_to_buy_macs.html

Under the pretense of maintaining balance we should report that Apple is being sued because of a failure to live up to advertised claims by the new 20” aluminum iMacs. The claim is that the iMac is “New and inferior.” The plaintiff – a Texan named Chandra Sanders – claims to represent tens of thousands of customers who purchased the smaller of the two iMacs that were introduced last August. She is demanding a trial by jury. At the center of her complaint is the allegation that while 24-inch iMacs are capable of displaying 16,777,216 colors on 8-bit, in-plane switching (IPS) screens, the 20-inch iMac have 6-bit twisted nematic film (TN) LCD screens that can display only 262,144 colors. I wonder where she lives in Texas. Sounds to us like she caught a bad case of SwiftBoat fever.
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http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/03/31/apple-charged-with-fraudulent-concealment-in-imac-suit/
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/27/60minutes/main3974389.shtml

Leslie Stahl interviewed Al Gore, the political candidate who ran for president and won the popular vote but was denied the election by Supreme Court fiat. Stahl tried to get his take on the current candidates.

"We were with you in the San Jose Airport,” Stahl said, “and a man came over to you and he says,'Who are you supporting, Obama or Hillary? Gore's response to the man? "Uh ha." "So, let me ask you. Who are you supporting?" Stahl asked. "I'm tryin' to stay out of it," Gore replied.

Getting Al Gore to talk about politics these days is hard work. But as a party leader and uncommitted superdelegate, his staying "out of it" isn't easy. "Are they calling you every minute?" Stahl asked. "Not every minute," Gore said. "No? Lotta pressure though, I'll bet," Stahl remarked.

"We unplugged the phones for this interview, so I can't say with authority. But no, everyone – they both call. And I appreciate that fact," Gore replied. "And what about the idea of the honest broker who goes to the two candidates and helps push one or the other of them off to the side?" Stahl asked. "Yeah, kind of a modern Boss Tweed," Gore remarked. "Except his name would be Al Gore," Stahl said.

"Well, I'm not applying for the job of broker," Gore replied, laughing. He's not ruling it out, but he says he already has a job, as he puts it, "P.R." agent for the planet. "You have said, and I'm going to quote you, 'If I do my job right, all the candidates will be talking about the climate crisis,'" Stahl said. "I can't think of a time I've heard the candidates talk about it." "Right. Well, I'm not finished yet," Gore said.

The Gore campaign on global warming went into high gear when his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" was an unexpected hit. What he's been doing is holding seminars, where he trains other people to give his famous slideshow about the effects of greenhouse gases. So far in all, he's coached about 2,000 people, teaching one little workshop at a time.
His slideshows are tailored to his audiences. For example, when he talks to evangelical Christians, he includes passages from the Bible.

Gore is trying to redefine this as a moral and spiritual issue. "We all share the exact same interest in doing the right thing on this. Who are we as human beings? Are we destined to destroy this place that we call home, planet earth? I can't believe that that's our destiny. It is not our destiny. But we have to awaken to the moral duty that we have to do the right thing and get out of this silly political game-playing about it. This is about survival," he said.

To the chagrin of Bushies everywhere Gore was awarded both an oscar and a Nobel Peace prize for his work alerting the world about global warming.
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And finally a federal judge in New York has dealt the Recording Industry Association of America a setback in their thousands of lawsuits over piracy on peer-to-peer networks. Declan McCullagh reports on C/Net’s News.com that U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas ruled Monday to reject the claim that a KaZaA user who merely “made available” copyrighted music necessarily violated the law. Rather, he said that the RIAA would have to demonstrate that unlawful copying actually took place. If this ruling becomes widely accepted cases that the RIAA has won under that premise like the ruling against Jammie Thomas, whose story I printed in Blog #10, will likely be overturned. Maybe there is hope for justice in the legal system after all.
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http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9908353-38.html
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And on this happy note (every note that brings frustration to the RIAA we consider a happy note) we bring to an end this week’s ramblings. We do this once a week, and hope to see you again next week. Bye now.

The Real Little Eddy

Blog #29 Still Mulling Cheney’s Candid Moment . . .

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Blog #28: Iraq War Turns 5, LE turns 82

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 marked the fifth anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq and in commemoration of this (blood soaked) red letter day President Bush and vice president Cheney separately waltzed through the Alice in Wonderland magic looking glass, setting off a distortion field of Steve Jobs proportions. Bush claimed he was lo0king victory in Iraq squarely in the eye, and announced we were on the very cusp of that elusive commodity. And vice-president Cheney when confronted by a reporter with polls that showed two thirds of Americans oppose our presence in Iraq said, “So?” then went on the relate that it doesn’t matter to him whether or not the public supports the continued US presence in Iraq. “I think you cannot be blown off course by fluctuations in opinion polls,” he said, as if the opinions of the people he and Bush were elected to serve meant absolutely nothing to him, which you better believe is correct. Then he went on to liken Bush’s leadership to that of Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War. Can you believe that? Damn, I wish he would pass around whatever it is he’s smoking. Fella, true scouts SHARE!

Stephen Colbert took note of Bush's videoconference with U.S. personnel in Afghanistan last week, in which Bush said: "I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you . . . in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks."

Colbert responds with outrage – at the soldiers in Afghanistan: "Soldiers, shame on you for arousing our president's envy. You must stop making multiple tours of duty battling foreign militias in a faraway land look like so much fun. While you're romantically running around dodging roadside bombs and rounding up potential terrorists, the president is stuck in the White House, pushing glazed salmon around his dinner plate and pretending to pay attention while Condi plays the piano. . . .

"Stop enticing the president. We could lose him again. Remember the last time he got excited about a war? He joined the Alabama Air National Guard, and nobody could find him."
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If you would excuse me, I would like to reflect seriously for a few moments on politics, and in particular those as practiced by the Republican Party and the George W. Bush Administration. If you would think back to 2000, George Bush, with the quiet approval of the Republican Party establishment, was running for president. He smiled a lot, ran with the label “compassionate conservative” (although once elected the only taxpayers he was compassionate with were the super rich, which he gave a bye on taxes) and he effused the appearance of being the good ole boy down the street that Joe SixPack would enjoy having a beer with. However after being elected his true colors came out as he invaded Iraq, a war that since he had given the very rich a free pass, he left the rest of us to pay for. And our children, and their children.

Back when he was running for the office of president he claimed that as Texas governor he had worked with the Texas Democratic party, and he promised to do that again with Washington Democrats if he was elected president. He was going to, and I quote, “bring the country together. He was a uniter, not a divider.” He was telling the truth for a change, he did work with Texas Democrats, but only because at the time they controlled the state legislature, he could not have picked his nose without a nod of Democratic approval. But upon being elected president (and in a way that many of us feel was by Supreme Court fiat, not by a fair election victory) did he indeed carry out his solemn pledge to work with Democrats? Well, let us take an unblinking look.

During the first six years when Republicans ruled both houses, he and they not only excluded Democrats from the writing of bills, they excluded them from being present at their creation, as Republicans turned over the drafting of bill after bill to the lobbyists and special interests whom the bills would affect. AND although Republicans had screamed about Hillary Clinton’s secret meetings on health care in the 90’s, Cheney has managed to keep secret the oil industry leaders he met with who he allowed to dictate the Bush/Cheney energy policy, a group that had included the late, disgraced Ken Lay of Enron. Lesson: Democratic secrecy is Bad, Bad, Bad. Republican secrecy is Necessary. It’s none of the public’s damn business who Republicans meet with to formulate policies that will control the price of their gasoline and heating oil. The Cheney, G.O.P. magic formula for a smooth running government: Secret = PTW + CYA translation: (PTW = pull the wool, CYA = cover your ass.)

Bush did not even make the slightest attempt to work with Democrats until they got their razor slim majorities in 2006. In short it took Bush six years before he attempted to live up to his campaign pledge, and then it was only because he had no other choice. If he was to get anything done in during his final two years, he had to work with Democrats. So in your book how would you grade Mr. Bush? A president who gave his word and followed it to the letter? Or, just another president in a long line who said one thing before getting elected, and once in power did quite the opposite.

One way Mr. Bush is attempting to shore up his legacy is by seeking to justify his misguided invasion of Iraq by insuring a long term military presence remains in Iraq. Hillary Clinton among other Democrats is calling attention to his behind the scenes manipulation. The military brass who remain in the military support this attempt, of course. Admirals and generals who did not support the Bush Iraq policy have either retired unexpectedly or been pushed out, and many of them support a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Notice how Mr. Bush appears on television these past few days. Although the meetings he was chairing were on the US rapidly tanking economy, picture a nation of home owners losing their homes and a major banking entity going bellyup, Mr. Bush harbors that silly grin as if he thinks the mess he’s made of the economy is funny. Of course, there is no real glee in that smile, it is triggered by nervousness at the shambles his legacy is becoming, and he is obsessed with leaving a positive legacy in the wake of his presidency. If public skepticism keeps up at the rate it’s going the only entity that will agree to house the Bush Presidential Library will be your local city garbage dump. And hungry circling seagulls will be quite distracting to the handful of scholars perusing his papers as they try to ferret some sense out of his 8 year term of office.

John McCain is many things. A war hero who was captured and abused in Vietnam, a Republican maverick who used to not be afraid of going against the mainstream of the Republican party, that is until he decided to run for president. So after initially criticizing the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy (saying quite logically, that the rich didn’t need them), now he has come full circle vowing that if elected he will make those tax cuts permanent. What is it about running for the presidency that can turn an honest and principled man into a shabby politician? Next can we expect John McBush to come out in favor of the C.I.A.’s waterboarding policy? Despite his own experience with torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese and his previous courageous stand against America engaging in so dangerous and inhumane a practice? Fascist and Communist governments deal freely in torture to keep themselves in power, it is their bread and butter. They were alone with that mentality until Bush/Cheney began clandestine efforts to lead an unwitting America to keep the facists and commies company.
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Ever wonder what your kids are saying when they are texting one another. Even if you can intercept their messages, can you understand them? Laura M. Holson writing in the Bits blog in the N.Y. Times has an amusing overview of the problem, and a place where a solution for your problem can be found. Some of the terms she discusses follow: “Some of the more unique terms – not including the off-color references of which there are many– are: NIFOC (nude in front of computer), OFIS (on floor in stitches), TSDMC (tears streaming down my cheeks) and DITYID (did I tell you I’m distressed). My personal favorite is SAMAGAL (stop annoying me and get a life.)”

The key to you and I understanding their terms may be found in a website called: http://www.teenchatdecoder.com/ A curious parent can go there and type in the letters he is curious about, and the answer springs forth. Being really out of things myself (I am perhaps the only person on the planet who didn’t know what lol stood for until a few minute ago) I went to the site and typed in lol. It reported:

LOL - laugh out loud
LOLAROTG - Laughing out loud and rolling on the ground
loli - Lollipop
LOLLZ - Laugh out Loud Literally Zapped
lolol - saying "lol" out loud.
Well now, there’s yet another frontier we just conquered.
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http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/the-technological-divide-between-parents-and-their-children/#more-983
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PBS’ Charlie Rose tripped on a NY City pothole on his way to the studio, and fell. He was carrying his newly acquired MacBook Air. Which do you think he protected as he fell, his face or his MacBook Air? If you saw the program that night, and noted the bandaids on his face and forehead, you knew the answer – his MacBook Air.
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http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/18/charlie-rose-sacrifices-face-for-macbook-air/

And speaking of Apple, guess what company’s pc sales snagged 14% of the US market last month? (as opposed to 8% for the year before.) I’ll just bet that with a lead in like that you won’t have a bit of trouble guessing the name of the company? At any rate according to the market research firm NPD as reported on the AppleInsider website, “growth in Apple's personal computer business continued to outpace the industry average last month, with Macs accounting for a 14 percent unit share and 25 percent dollar share of all US-based PC retail sales. The results – first revealed in an investor note from Pacific Crest Securities analyst Andy Hargreaves on Monday – represent 60 percent unit growth and 67 percent revenue growth over the same period one year ago. At the same time, overall US PC retail shipments grew just 9 percent on a 5 percent increase in revenues. Apple saw particular strength in notebook systems, which rose 64 percent in units and 67 percent in revenues, suggesting strong sell-through of the company's new MacBook Air, noted Hargreaves.

"Macbook Air sales appear to be additive to total sales, rather than replacing Macbook Pro sales," he said. "We believe a new set of corporate customers make up a meaningful portion of MacBook Air buyers." I guess it would be safe to add Charlie Rose to that list of corporate customers.
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http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/17/apple_snags_14_percent_of_us_based_pc_retail_sales_in_february.html

And now, inevitable news of the iPhone: “85 percent of iPhone users browse the mobile Web; iPhone is top device for news and information accessed on mobile browsers.” These headlines are from M:Metrics Press and the story follows:

“SEATTLE and LONDON — March 18, 2008 — Six months after the iPhone’s U.S. launch, has the device changed the mobile landscape? According to M:Metrics, the mobile media authority, the answer is yes. Today, the measurement firm reports that the iPhone is already the most popular device for accessing news and information on the mobile Web, with 85 percent of iPhone users accessing news and information in the month of January.

Mark Donovan, an analyst at M:Metrics, says a major factor in the iPhone’s success as a media platform can be credited to AT&T and its unlimited data plan for iPhone users. “Once you take away the uncertainty of data charging, you really incentivize people to use the device,” he said. But then he gushes about the iPhone, sounding a lot like another dyed-in-the-wool iPhone convert (which, he concedes, he is.) “Apple really made a device that is Internet-centric and really fits the kind of digital lifestyle that a lot of people who are jacked into the Internet all the time are used to,” he said. “They did a great job of cruising some of the sweet spots of mobile Internet usage.” There Steve Ballmer, another spoon of sugar for the tea of your nightmares.
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http://mmetrics.com/press/PressRelease.aspx?article=20080318-iphonehype

And finally the Windows World has been up in arms about Apple’s audacity in it’s attempt to use it’s Windows iTunes updater to push the new Safari 3.1 for Windows. As if America’s favorite computer Monopoly hasn’t be strong arming Windows users for years thrusting Internet Explorer at them without mercy, among other things. At least Apple gave users a choice, if you don’t want Safari simply uncheck the box. Windows has been known to arbitrarily push it’s updates onto you at its convenience whether or not you wanted them.
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The Houston Rockets, the professional basketball team which we here at Little Eddy’s Blog been known to mention from time to time, made NBA history recently with a winning streak which reached 22 games, the second longest in NBA history, with their defeat of the Los Angeles Lakers last Sunday afternoon, in a game broadcast on national television on ABC. The streak ended Tuesday night with a 94-74 loss to the Boston Celtics, the team with the best overall record in the NBA. A trip to New Orleans to play the Hornets the next night found them tied at the end of three quarters, but losing the game 90-69, bringing their brand new losing streak to two. Friday night they finally broke their two game losing streak with a 109-106 victory over the Golden State Warriors. Keep your fingers crossed as tonight (Saturday) they go to Phoenix to play the Suns.

Meantime it turns out that a most interesting part of the Rockets story of the streak concerns not the players so much as the new general manager. Our story comes to us by way of the Toronto Star’s online website, in a story signed by Dave Feschuk. According to the story, Daryl Morey is 35, and this year assumed the general managership after serving an apprenticeship under former GM Carrol Dawson. He holds a a computer science degree from Northwestern University, and an MBA from M.I.T.

“But Morey is the first NBA GM to be heralded as a disciple of what's been termed the "Moneyball" approach to sports management. He's a self-professed stats geek who has studied the work of both Bill James, the baseball-versed pioneer of sports statistical analysis, and Billy Beane, the Oakland A's GM who famously (and successfully) applied some of James's principles to his team architecture.

“Now that the Rockets have become one of the great stories of the season – with an 83-75 victory over the Lakers on Sunday they were two games past the Milwaukee Bucks for the second-longest win streak in NBA history at 22 games – Morey's approach is likely to get a lot more attention. The skeptics have been waiting for Yao Ming's out-for-the-season absence to finally derail the juggernaut (although only the first 12 games of streak came before the Chinese center was felled by a stress fracture in his foot).

“They've been waiting for Rafer Alston to implode (although Alston has been an efficient stalwart as Houston's starting point man). They've been waiting for Tracy McGrady's usual injury problems, which already kept him out of 15 games before the streak, to sideline him again. And they're waiting for the Rockets to revert to the form that saw them open the season 15-17.

“As they wait, Morey has been heralded for fleshing out this season's supporting cast, most notably by acquiring starting power forward Luis Scola from the Spurs in the summer. It's far too early to tell not only how serious a championship threat the Rockets can be, but how influential Morey's stat-engrossed approach can become. He has said the Rockets have invested millions in everything from the massive computer servers required to store the hours and hours of digital video from which statistical trends are mined, to the analysts who do the prospecting. And if Morey has hit on something revolutionary, nobody is expecting him to share the wealth of proprietary data.

“What's en vogue all comes down to winning, of course. When the Rockets got off to their slow start this season after last year's first-round playoff flameout, there were those lamenting how, a couple of summers before, the Rockets had traded the rights to a lottery pick named Rudy Gay, among other assets, to Memphis for Shane Battier. But Battier, who has averaged about 10 points and five rebounds a game as an NBAer, may well be the quintessential Morey-type player, a performer whose value to the team goes far deeper than the conventional numbers. He is, in the vernacular, a glue guy. And Morey presumably has the esoteric numbers to prove it.

“Traditionalists will argue that you don't need an exhaustive database to make that kind of beyond-the-boxscore observation, which is why Battier was a sixth-overall pick in the NBA draft. Traditionalists will also understand that if the Rockets roll in the playoffs the way they've been succeeding in the past six weeks, exhaustive databases compiled by Morey clones are likely to quickly become a very fine idea in the minds of NBA CEOs.”
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http://www.thestar.com/article/345327
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Arthur C. Clarke, the scientist and science fiction author died on March 19, 2008 at the age of 90. We would like to honor his work by reprinting some quotations from the Wikipedia page of his writings.

* I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long
o The Sentinel" (1948), original titled "Sentinel of Eternity" this is the short story which later provided the fundamental ideas for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) written by Clarke and Stanley Kubrick.

* We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return ... The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation ... the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began.
o Exploration of Space (1952)

* It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.
o The Exploration of Space (1951), p. 187

* All explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest.
o The City and the Stars (1956)

* Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.
o "Maelstrom II" (1965)

* Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor — but they have few followers now.
o Across the Sea of Stars (1959), p. 262

* As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
o Voices from the Sky: Previews of the Coming Space Age (1967)

* Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.
o 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) "Foreword"

* One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. Two-thirds of 2001 is realistic — hardware and technology — to establish background for the metaphysical, philosophical, and religious meanings later.
o As quoted in The Making of Kubrick's 2001 (1970) by Jerome Agel, p. 300

* Perhaps our role on this planet is not to worship God — but to create Him.
o "The Mind of the Machine" in Report on Planet Three and Other Speculations (1972)
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If you read here regularly you know of our uncompromising view of Cary Sherman and his RIAA as RICO violators, shamelessly threatening to sue mostly college students who offer content to file sharing sites, unless they agree to make a $3000 settlement. Well, with the worm seeming to be turning, one state has even countersued the RIAA in court for trying to blackmail a university to turn over the names of its students, Nate Anderson reports on the ars technica website of a new idea floating around:

“With P2P file-swapping still proceeding almost unchecked and CD sales swirling down the toilet, music labels have shown an increased willingness to consider new business models over the last couple of years, even going so far as to drop their once-ubiquitous DRM. One intriguing idea that has been bandied about is levies: pay your ISP, say, five bucks a month,and you can legally listen to all the music you can find. Though such an arrangement raises plenty of questions (should the levy be compulsory, or can people opt out of it?), stakeholders across North America are at least open to the idea.

“Wired has a piece up on Jim Griffin, a proponent of the $5 ISP model, who appeared on a panel last week at SXSW in Austin to continue flogging his idea in public. P2P would suddenly become legal (for those who paid, anyway), with the cash doled out to labels and artists based on the number of times each artists' work was traded each month. Such a system sounds wide open to gaming, of course, but if that problem could be solved, the music industry at least has a good chance at converting millions of file-swappers into paying customers.

“Barenaked Ladies frontman Steven Page told Ars last year that he supported such a plan. "Not everyone's an artist," Page said, "but people can now express themselves like artists do, by sharing something that means something to them. If we had a system of compulsory licenses, they don't have to worry about going and getting a license to do it, or circumventing the system."
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http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080313-5-a-month-for-legal-p2p-could-happen-sooner-than-you-think.html
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And so another rant/rage blog winds down. We post weekly, on Saturday mornings, and hope you’ll come and visit us again any time next week. Meantime thanks for coming.

The Real Little Eddy

Blog #27: War’s real costs, Squabbles, Happy Birthday!

On March 20th, the first day of spring, I turn 82 year old. Whee! Who would’ve thunk it? Certainly not me. I can remember back when I thought 30 was the end of the line. Memory is indeed a fickle friend, sometimes a memory from my youth is as clear as if it happened yesterday, and the next minute I have trouble trying to recall what happened to me yesterday. Or an hour ago, for that matter. And you know how your mind flits here and there, and how often it is that what you are trying to recall is lying tantalizingly just beyond your reach. I had just such an experience the other day, but I was saved by the finest memory jogger I know, that remarkable tool called Google. Let me tell you about it.

I was fooling around with some songs for the third Nightsong Podcast. I have finished two one hour episodes and was busily working on the third. My mind suddenly began recalling a very unique female singer-songwriter who was active in the 1970’s, but I could not for the life of me remember her name. All I could recall about her was that she had been married to an orchestra conductor, but his name also drew a blank. What to do? I opened Camino (the poor man’s Safari and a Mac OS X cousin to Firefox), did a search for orchestra conductors in Wikipedia (just like in Alice’s Restaurant you can get anything you want in Wikipedia), and finally near the end I came across a name that rang a bell, Andre Previn. Voila! And it immediately came rushing back to me, the name of the lady was Dory Previn, she had been married to Andre at one time. Dory Previn’s song lyrics perfectly represented her era, she was a kind of musical Jules Feiffer, a lyrical Nichols and May. I googled her and went to her Wikipedia page. It was like meeting up with an old friend. In case you haven’t heard of her, I reprint the lyrics to her song Brando.

of course
i always told myself
you know how women get
i'll bet i could have
handled him
if only we had met
where other women failed him
when other women tried
i alone
could cater to
his passions and
his pride

talk about
deflated egos
that was the woman's thing
christ we only felt complete
at the feet
at the feet
of a king
of course
i'm liberated now
i see life as it is
i call my soul
my very own
and i no longer
covet his
no one else can get you through
i've learned
with some regret
i've outgrown all my heroes
i am cured of kings
and yet

and yet
the other night
by chance i saw him
there on the tv screen
overbearing arrogant
marvelous marvelous
and oh so mean
and that old addiction
gripped me
you know how women get
i'll bet i could have
handled him
if only we had met
oh i'll bet
i could have handled him
if only
we had met.

Rediscovering that lyric made my day. I hope reading it brightens yours. I’ve since found that a great deal of her work is available from Amazon, which is indeed another priceless entity, but unfortunately Amazon is a store. Items there cost money. And so before you could say Cary Sherman I was on bit torrent, where I found one blessed album. By 11:10 on Sunday night 39.3% of it had arrived. Hopefully it will be complete by morning, I said as I shut down my studio for the night. I checked the first thing the next morning but unfortunately it wasn’t complete, it was frozen at 43.7%. I guess my one seed had gone offline. Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers. I’ll keep it open and hope for the best. (Endnote: It was completed by day two.)
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The big secret that the Bush administration and the Republican party is desperately trying to hide from us is the true cost of this Iraq adventure. Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz had an article in Sunday’s Washington Post online reporting on the true cost that should be required reading for all Americans of voting age. Their article begins by saying, “There is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is no such thing as a free war. The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can't spend $3 trillion – yes, $3 trillion -- on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home.

“Some people will scoff at that number, but we've done the math. Senior Bush administration aides certainly pooh-poohed worrisome estimates in the run-up to the war. Former White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey reckoned that the conflict would cost $100 billion to $200 billion; Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld later called his estimate "baloney." Administration officials insisted that the costs would be more like $50 billion to $60 billion. In April 2003, Andrew S. Natsios, the thoughtful head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said on "Nightline" that reconstructing Iraq would cost the American taxpayer just $1.7 billion. Ted Koppel, in disbelief, pressed Natsios on the question, but Natsios stuck to his guns. Others in the administration, such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, hoped that U.S. partners would chip in, as they had in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, or that Iraq's oil would pay for the damages.

“The end result of all this wishful thinking? As we approach the fifth anniversary of the invasion, Iraq is not only the second longest war in U.S. history (after Vietnam), it is also the second most costly – surpassed only by World War II.”

Now I would come in here to remind you that it is those loudmouth Republicans who are always shrilly screaming about Tax and Spend Democrats (however it should be pointed out that Democrats usually tax and spend for the good of the country, not to fund some misguided holocaust on foreign shores.) Republicans claim to be the party of prudence in government, the minders of the nation’s fiscal store. What a joke! I would remind you that the Republican party is the one currently in power and gigging the national treasury to the tune of $3 Trillion which they are busily shoveling into that fiscal sink hole called Iraq. And the “no surrender” military types are insisting that we stay there, either until the “job is done” or I guess until our economy collapses of its own weight. Dare we find out which will come first?

Remember the Clinton years. It was during those years that we had a taste of *real* fiscal responsibility would be like. In his recently published memoirs even the Republican appointed ex Fed Chief Alan Greenspan couldn't help but praise Bill Clinton’s persistence in trimming the nation’s spending during his eight year term as president, while the Republican slander machine was working full time shamelessly trying to negate everything he was doing. Fortunately they couldn’t stop him. He guided us through our most recent period of tranquility, a period that saw no wars, brought diplomatic solutions to offshore problems, a period that saw the national debt shrink until it turned into a surplus.

That is the very reason that we at the Real Little Eddy Blog support Hillary Clinton for president. Obama’s campaign is all too human and flawed, as several recent glimpses have shown. An aide assuring a Canadian embassy worker that Obama didn’t really mean what he was saying in Ohio about NAFTA, he had to take that position to win votes; a military adviser assuring the military that of course Obama would not move the troops out of Iraq until it was prudent to do so, which was exactly the position Clinton had taken from the beginning. And what was it that an Obama campaign manager called Hillary Clinton on the BBC, a “monster?” Well, methinks a “monster” is exactly what we’re going to need in the White House come January to try and right this listing American Ship of State, before it crashes into the rocks of bankruptcy, flounders, and sinks into the cold, cold depths of irrelevancy. To check out the Washington Post story for yourself, copy and paste the URL below into your browser window:
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
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Democratic inter-party squabbling had better come to an end soon or people are liable to get soured on both candidates and either sit this one out, or God forbid, vote for McCain. For one thing is for sure: McCain's not Able! One more thing, Florida and Michigan Democratic voters must be heard from, Howard Dean and the DNC are doing a credible imitation of the waitress in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (not to mention Nurse Ratched) in hard headedly depriving Florida and Michigan voters their votes as punishment for the states moving their primary dates forward. By refusing to pay anything towards giving those voters what they are constitutionally entitled to, their vote, they are on a sure course to alienate Democratic voters in two states of definite importance. And in Florida the Florida Democratic Party had nothing to do with the decision to move up the primary, it was made by a Republican governor and passed by a Republican legislature.

Whereas a mail-in ballot in both states is the cheapest solution, a practical one must be found and funded, and Howard Dean and the DMC hierarchy in their unholy hardheadedness, should contribute to it, as should the governments of both states. Of course the Hillary Clinton camp would undoubtedly be happy just to see the votes that were cast honored. Wink, wink. If Dean continues his obstinacy the Florida and Michigan Democrats should get together and treat Howard to their very own version of the famous Dean scream.
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Does today’s acceptance by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates of the resignation of Admiral William J. Fallon, who just one year ago was the first navy man to be named commander of the United States Central Command, indicate the intention on the part of the Bush administration to provoke a military confrontation with Iran. Of course both Gates and Fallon hotly deny it. But if military action *is* in the offing they sure as hell aren’t going to admit it. Back in 2004 Republican guru Karl Rove got King George reelected on the strength of the war in Iraq (accompanied by a boatload of SwiftBoat lies), and with their under whelming imaginations the Republican leadership probably thinks that expanding the conflagration to Iran is a move right out of the Rove playbook. So our best advice, keep a sharp eye on the middle east. And now back to the fantasy land of the Bush Administration.

“Admiral Fallon had rankled senior officials of the Bush administration with outspoken comments on such issues as dealing with Iran and on setting the pace of troop reductions from Iraq — even though his comments were well within the range of views expressed by Mr. Gates.

“Officials said the last straw, however, came in an article in Esquire magazine by Thomas P. M. Barnett, a respected military analyst, that profiled Admiral Fallon under the headline, “The Man Between War and Peace.” The article highlighted comments Admiral Fallon made to the Arab television station Al Jazeera last fall, in which he said that a “constant drumbeat of conflict” from Washington that was directed at Iran and Iraq was “not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions.”

It is interesting to note that this public airing of a disagreement in the policy of General Petraeus is being done just before the General returns in April to give his report card on the war in Iraq. Our exalted leader, our Most Omnipotent Shrub, doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about any side other than his own, and is widely known not to tolerate dissent from underlings for one minute, which is why all those Republican Attorneys Generals were fired a couple of years back, and why our Republic is floundering fiscally under the weight of a mountain of federal government incompetence and ineptitude. No wonder Republicans have only contempt for the federal government. The way they run it, not even a mother could love it. And will April bring a General Petraeus coming back to try to justify upcoming military strikes against Iran, thereby living up to moveon.org’s original assessment of him as General Betrayus? We shall see what we shall see.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/washington/11cnd-fallon.html?hp
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And for those of you of a salacious nature we hereby reprint the Timeline of Client #9 according to reporting by Alan Feuer and Ian Urbina in the N.Y. Times which was published March 11, 2008:

“It was after 9 p.m. the night before Valentine’s Day when she arrived, a young brunette named Kristen. She was 5-foot-5, 105 pounds. Pretty and petite.

“This was at the Mayflower, one of Washington’s finer hotels. Her client for the evening had booked Room 871. He was a return customer. The hundreds of dollars he had promised to pay would cover all expenses: the room, the minibar, room service should they order it, the train ticket that had brought her from New York and, naturally, Kristen’s time.

“A 47-page federal affidavit from an F.B.I. agent investigating a prostitution ring lists the man at the hotel as “Client 9,” and includes considerable details about him, the prostitutes and his methods of paying for them. A law enforcement official and another person briefed on the prostitution case have identified Client 9 as Eliot Spitzer, the governor of New York.

“Kristen, having already passed through the lobby, with its wing chairs and its gilded half-clad cherubs, arrived in a small room in a quiet corner of the “Club Floor,” a special wing for V.I.P.’s. A king-size bed commanded the carpeted floor. Two photos — of the Capitol and the Washington Monument — hung on the walls.

“As soon as she came in, Kristen called her boss, Temeka Lewis, who was the booking agent for the Emperor’s Club, an online prostitution ring, the affidavit said. Ms. Lewis told her that the client had arrived. He was headed for the room. An assignation of more than an hour ensued, according to the affidavit, which was unsealed Thursday morning in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

“Room 871 had been booked under the name George Fox, a pseudonym that Client 9 had been using, and one by which several people in the ring knew him, according to a law enforcement official. However, a few of the prostitutes had recently come to realize who the man really was, the official said.

“The affidavit said Client 9 approached the Emperor’s Club last month, requesting an appointment on Feb. 13 at 9 or 10 p.m. The appointment was to be in Washington, and he sent along what appears to have been a deposit of cash by mail.

“Apparently, it was not his first time using the service. The affidavit captures the almost mundane financial back-and-forth prior to the meeting, quoting Ms. Lewis as telling her boss, Mark Brener, the owner of the ring, that Client 9 had a $400 or $500 credit to his name and wished to use it toward his next appointment. When Ms. Lewis spoke to the client on Feb. 12, the affidavit said, she told him that his deposit had not yet arrived and asked if he had sent it to a business known as Qat.

“Yup, same as in the past,” the client said. “No question about it.”

“After these initial matters were discussed, Ms. Lewis reached out to Kristen, the affidavit said, writing in a text message : “If D.C. appt. happens u will need 2 leave NYC @ 4:45 p.m.” The next day she sent along a possible itinerary: Amtrak’s Train No. 129 departed Pennsylvania Station at 5:39 p.m. and arrived in Washington at 9.

“Minutes after sending this text message, Ms. Lewis took another call from Client 9 and told him that his “package” had arrived. In a prior conversation, Client 9 had already told her that he had booked a room and had paid for it in his own name and now asked who was coming. Ms. Lewis told him it would be Kristen and, according to the affidavit, he responded: “Great, O.K., wonderful.”

“Still, there were some “payment issues” to discuss. Ms. Lewis asked if he could give Kristen “extra funds” at the appointment and the client said that he would see what he could do. The agency did not like models to handle money for future meetings, Ms. Lewis said, but this time they would make an exception so they wouldn’t have to go through it again.

“The papers quote Kristen and the woman who sent her on the job talking about a man believed to be Client 9, who might make requests of prostitutes “you might not think were safe.” But Kristen, according to the papers, was prepared: “I have a way of dealing with that,” she is quoted as having told the woman. “I’d be like, ‘Listen, dude, you really want the sex?’ ... You know what I mean.”

Kristen was subsequently unmasked by the N.Y. Times. Born Ashley Youmans but now known as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, she is 22 years old and spoke softly and with good humor as she added with significant understatement: “This has been a very difficult time. It is complicated.” As indeed it was, and so ended the N.Y. Governor’s tenor of office. Personally I think it’s a damn shame that this country is so centered on Sex as Sin that a politician, a governor must leave office if caught having some on the side. That people will throw out the good a politician might happen to have accomplished along with the bathwater of his indiscretions is so hypocritical in my opinion. However in Number Nine’s case, he was exceptionally hypocritical in that as attorney general of the state he had been Mister Righteousness Personified and had come down heavily both on Wall Street wrongdoers and on prostitution rings. And so there will be very few tears shed for the come Monday ex-Governor of New York.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/nyregion/11nighttop.html?scp=2&sq=no.+9&st=nyt
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To me one of the wonders of this life is the fear of death and the look a trapped animal will get as fate closes in on him. This lesson was brought home to me when I was twentyone and was working as an radio announcer on KPRC-FM, located in a butler’s pantry on the 16th floor of the Lamar Hotel in downtown Houston. One night after I got off I elevatored down to the hotel’s mezzanine floor where the main station was located. It was late at night, and when I got there there were only three people on hand, an announcer, an engineer, and a reporter from the KPRC newsroom. But excitement was flashing through the place, the newsman had cornered a large rat in one of the offices. He was confronting the animal with a broom, and he was joined by the announcer, who had no duties until the next stati0n break as the station was on the network and who was also holding a broom. I joined the group brandishing a mop.

Unlike the would be chef of Pixar’s charming Ratatouille, this rat wasn’t the least bit cute or attractive. He was huge and ugly, the type known as a wharf rat, with two beady eyes, a mouth full of sharp teeth, and a ragged, streaky coat of many shades of gray. Of course he was terrified, with good reason having three wild eyed radio types chasing him around the room waving utensils threatenly at him. The three of us closed in on him in one corner of the room, a corner with no cover. He was trapped. There was no escape. The most violent among us was the newsman, we announcer types are usually laid back, even in the face of invading rodents. Then there came this moment which even after all these years is still frozen in my memory. The newsman was in striking distance, his weapon upraised. The rat looked at him with sweat pouring from it’s brow, a look of sheer terror lighting up it’s face, eyes that were almost deafening as they silently pleaded for mercy. Who would have thought such an ugly creature would have loved it’s life and feared so for it’s end? It was striking. But there was no mercy to be had. The newsman slammed the broom on the rat’s head repeatedly, until this condition we call life had left the animal. We announcers stood and watched. I will admit I could not have brought myself to harm so pitiful looking a creature, and I guess the other guy felt the same way. Pacifists in a world of red blooded action.
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And we close this week’s blog with a little YouTube video giving you a glimpse into the future of controling computers with your fingertips.



Bye bye until next week.

The Real Little Eddy

Blog #26 Of Candidates and Windmills and SDK's

Well friends, the Democratic presidential battle lines are clearly drawn. Ohio and Texas have spoken. Ohio spoke with a voice loud and clear, but Texas hath spoken with forked tongue, the primary popular vote naming two-thirds of the delegates to the Democratic convention was substantially for Hillary Clinton but the caucus vote which picks the other third of the delegates favored Barack Obama. And since Obama is running ahead in the delegate count he invites us to do the math, which he thinks hands him the nomination. But if you actually do the math you find you’ve only muddied the water, for it tells you that neither candidate can possibly reach the necessary total to insure victory by convention time. And so my friends we have a plain, old fashioned horse race. Although thanks to our ongoing trade embargo Cuban cigars will be in short supply, smoke filled rooms will surely abound during the Denver convention. For the first time in recent memory the Democratic candidate is likely to be chosen amid coughs and sputters. And at that altitude the delegates should find themselves on a true rocky-mountain high.

My son Joel, the doctor in residence, worries that such a long conflict will show both Democratic candidates in a bad light and might divert people to John McCain’s candidacy. McCain is looking tired and somewhat out of things, but he has flung off his competition and is marching towards the Republican convention in step with his own drummer. Before the Dems go any further, Joel’s solution is for each contender to guarantee that if they are the winner, they will ask the other one to join the ticket as vice president. Of course, that’s the ideal solution for all loyal Democrats, for no matter which candidate you favor, you respect the other one and would quickly support each occupying a place on the other’s ticket. Only problem, I doubt that either candidate would agree to name the other at this stage. But it is a helluva idea, and it would convey the message that without a doubt, each candidate respects the other and will go out of his or her way to share responsibility in the upcoming election.

Republicans giggle and sneer at the Democratic situation, figuring (hoping, hallucinating?) that our Democratic candidates will tear each other apart in the many months before the convention while their man cruises (make that stumbles) his way into the presidency with no problems. But if they say that then they are either dreaming or they’re smoking something they should immediately be required to share. It would seem they have no idea of the intensity of the anti-Republican feelings running rampart through Democratic and even Independent quarters these days. A desperation triggered by a Republican president constantly attempting to justify an unjustifiable and out-of-control war that is bleeding the American people of it’s youth and piling up a debt that is turning the ownership of much of our country over to foreign interests like China, as we bankrupt our economy in the irresponsible pursuit of an impossible victory in Iraq. George W. Bush is a modern day Don Quixote, with sidekick Dick Cheney at his side he is tilting swords at a bunch of Iraqi windmills which live only in his mind. And as he contemplates his legacy he is desperate to justify his unconscionable actions. And for those of you rocking along with him here’s Republican candidate John McCain offering you four more years of McBush, eight if we’d be foolish enough to reelect him.
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“And now,” as our old friends from Monty Python used to say, “for something completely different.” This different concerns the world of professional basketball. Our very own streaking Houston Rockets played their old nemesis the Dallas Mavericks on the second night of a back to back in Dallas Thursday night in a game broadcast nationally on TNT, and they won the game handily, 113-98. And this was in spite of NBA pundit Charles Barkley’s pregame declaration that the Rockets streak would end in Dallas, that the Rockets had absolutely no chance of winning. No way, boldly spoke Barkley.

So much for punditry, Barkley like most so-called experts completely underestimated the skills and resolve of these Rockets, who have not lost a game in 2008 and who have been forced to play their last five games without their high scorer, Yao Ming, who is out for the rest of this season with a stress fracture in his left foot. This streak betters by two the largest previous win streak of a Rockets team, the 1993-4 team which began the season with a 15 game win streak, and then went on to win the first of back to back championships.

Not that this Rocket team will be able to do that, at least not in the mind of its former coach and current ESPN analyst, Jeff Van Gundy. He told the Houston Chronicle recently that they might well win home court advantage in the playoffs, and perhaps even make it out of the first round. “But,” he said, “without Yao Ming they most certainly won’t win a championship.” He’s probably right, but nothing is certain in the wide wild world of professional basketball. After all, just last year in the west the lowest ranking Golden State Warriors beat out the Dallas Mavericks, the top ranked team in the entire NBA, in the first round of the playoffs. So anything is possible. As they’re always saying, that’s why they play the games.
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While we’re talking Dallas, I’m sure you’ll be anxious to learn that 2004’s Swiftboaters for Lies About Democrats are gearing up to once again practice their odd mixture of slander and malarkey. These well funded charlatans aim to put their fantasies out there in the public domain in the fond hope that, as in 2004, enough voters will believe them to swing the election their way. And because of Hillary Clinton’s history of helping children, this time they seem to be using kids in their attacks. When we were taken in 2004 we could honestly say a pox on them who would mislead us. If in 2008 we are once again taken in, all we’ll be able to say is a pox on ourselves for twice falling for it.

As a Texan I can report Dallas to be a hotbead of fanatic conservatism. Where else would you expect to have a leader as charismatic as was JFK meet an assassin’s bullet? The assassins of JFK were not Dallasites, but the people of Dallas had created an environment which allowed it to happen there. I can’t imagine anyone willingly wanting to check out the latest in sicko SwiftBoat fantasies, but just in case you do wish to here’s a URL you can check out:
http://www.236.com/video/?bcpid=1272014315&bclid=1125909605&bctid=1443772514

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to it’s knees
Oh, but it’s alright, it’s alright
For we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
Road we’re traveling on
I wonder what’s gone wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong
– Paul Simon, American Tune
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The word is out: the upcoming edition of the Microsoft web browser, Internet Explorer 8, is finally going to play nice and adhere to current web standards. Whether this is to impress the European Union which has rather taken exception to Redman’s having previously ignored it’s 2004 antitrust ruling by fining it an additional $1.3 billion, or perhaps spring has come early in Redman and Microsoft finds itself embroiled in balmy spring days, but the big MS announced the other day that version 8 of their web browser, Internet Explorer, would finally (and for the first time) conform to current web standards.

IE’s previous attempts to go by its own standards was a vain attempt by Microsoft to extend their desktop monopoly to the web, hoping as they were to force surfers to either use IE or experience failure when trying to open MS approved sites. But as Redmond has focused on other technologies it has allowed IE to get further and further behind Firefox, and it’s browser lead has shrunk to only 80%. And that coupled with the European Union’s coming down heavily on them lately, evidently made a balmy Ballmer realize that alas, the web was even bigger than the mighty Microsoft, and if they want to stay in the browser race at all they had better quit their games and get on board.

However taking a lead from Apple computers which outfit their computers with a raft of useful free programs, Microsoft has announced that a brand new technology called WorldWide Telescope which it demonstrated at the recent TED conference, will be free when it goes beyond beta, but it will only work on Windows (Sorry OSX and Linux Freetards.) And so if astronomy is among your interests and you would covet a new computer program which to all accounts breathtakingly employs all sorts of telescopic data from the Hubble and other sources, then a computer running Windows will have to be your choice. Of course, these days Intel Macs run Windows by way of Boot Camp, so that widens your choice by a mile. Hubble fans might be interested in this, available to all.
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Peter Elkind, an editor at large of Fortune Magazine, has written an interesting assessment of Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs which is found here: http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/news/companies/elkind_jobs.fortune/
I would like to publish a few excerpts from it to inspire you to read it:

“No less an authority than Jack Welch has called Jobs "the most successful CEO today." Jobs, at age 53, has even become a global cultural guru, shaping what entertainment we watch, how we listen to music, and what sort of objects we use to work and play. He has changed the game for entire industries.

“History, of course, is littered with tales of combustible geniuses. What's astounding is how well Jobs has performed atop a large public company - by its nature a collaborative enterprise. Pondering this issue, Stanford management science professor Robert Sutton discussed Jobs in his bestselling 2007 book, "The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't." "As soon as people heard I was writing a book on assholes, they would come up to me and start telling a Steve Jobs story," says Sutton.

"The degree to which people in Silicon Valley are afraid of Jobs is unbelievable. He made people feel terrible; he made people cry. But he was almost always right, and even when he was wrong, it was so creative it was still amazing," says Palo Alto venture capitalist Jean-Louis Gasse, a former Apple executive who once worked with Jobs: "Democracies don't make great products. You need a competent tyrant."

The article focuses on Jobs’ bout with pancreatic cancer and how Jobs’ initial attempt to try and treat it with diet, all in complete secrecy, seems to want to cast doubt on Jobs with investors. However, the point is that Jobs finally did agree to an operation, and that the average person with this type of cancer lives for at least ten years afterwards, which more or less renders Elkind’s brooding contemplation moot.

As for Jobs’ peculiar brand of tyranny, this quality is done in service to the consumer. Take one tiny annoyance to the average computer user: fans in their computers. They are noisy, and given the amount of heat electric components give off these days, there is probably more than one in most modern computers. Jobs hated these, and when the original iMac was in the design stage he insisted that a heat convection system be worked out so that the machine could run silently without the need for noisy fans. And it was so designed, and the original iMacs ran so quietly you could hear the subdued clicks as the hard drive strove to access its data. And my bet is that one reason Jobs forsook the IBM power pc chip replacing it with Intel chips it was primarily because they ran a lot cooler, which was especially important in regards to laptops. The fact that Macs could now be dual-booted into Windows, and thereby execute virtually any computer program written, was simply a bonus, but one which I’m sure has increased Apple’s sales measurably.

And according to tech writer Tom Krazit’s blog at c/net news.com Apple’s shareholds peppered Jobs and co. with a lot of questions at the company’s annual meeting, covering ground from the iPhone to its plans for succession in the case off Steve Jobs’ retirement or illness.

“It's been an open question for years: what will Apple do if Jobs decides to retire or falls ill? It's hard to imagine another company – at least in the tech industry – whose image is tied so closely to that of its CEO.

“Jobs avoided directly answering a question about Apple's succession plan. However, "we talk about it a lot," he said, and noted that it's the board of directors job to "make sure everybody is a potential successor to me," referring to Apple's senior management. COO Tim Cook generally operates as the No. 2 at Apple, running the company's logistics, answering questions during earnings calls, and speaking on its behalf at investor conferences. But he lacks Jobs' stage presence, and it's difficult to envision him keynoting Macworld with anything like Jobs' penchant for the spotlight.”

“A question somewhat tangentially related to the MacHeads movie asked Jobs whether the company's runaway success of the past several years has broken the bonds between the company and the longtime Mac community, and whether Apple "still cares" about these people. Some of these folks see Apple as the local rock band that made it big, losing some of its innocence and humility along the way.

“Jobs acknowledged, "We have a lot more customers now." There has been some angst among longtime Apple users that the company is getting away from its Mac roots with projects like the iPod and the iPhone, which manifested itself during some early problems with Leopard, the latest version of Mac OS X.

“But "we do care ... We drop the ball sometimes, when some of those customers have a problem, but the vast majority do well with their Apple experience," he said, citing high customer satisfaction ratings.

“Only one question was posed about the recent swoon, from an investor who wanted to know why Jobs didn't release a letter to shareholders like the one he did to employees, urging them to keep their heads up in the face of a sharp decline in Apple's stock. Jobs said he believed his management team's job was to focus on managing the company's employees, not its shareholders.

“And truth be told, the drop in Apple's stock price seems to have more to do with the health of the overall economy than anything Apple is doing, other than some recent concern over iPhone sales. Jobs may be one of the most powerful executives in technology, but there's not much he could have done about the effects of subprime mortgage crisis that are causing much of the current concern.”

And the other news from Apple concerned the iPhone and iTouch. Hoping that Microsoft’s improved search results might lure Steve Ballmer to our Google blog, it gives us great pleasure to offer a little sugar for Ballmer's tea by reporting on what Jason wrote in the weblog Signals vs. Noise about Apple’s introducing SDK for iPhone/iTouch developers:

“What we saw today was the spark. The explosion will continue for twenty years. We will all feel the warmth. What we saw today was the beginning of two-decades of mobile domination by Apple. What Microsoft and Windows was to the desktop, Apple and iTouch will be to mobile.

“And while mobile platforms have been around for a while, they never really gained passionate traction. Palm sorta had it for a while. Windows Mobile has been getting better. RIM is the current choice for business email on the go. But just like there were a lot of players in the portable music space, there were no clear leaders. Until Apple came to town.

“The same thing is happening today in the mobile space. Palm, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Symbian. They’ve been players, but no one has broken out big. No one has managed to grab both the business and consumer markets like Windows did on the desktop. Until Apple came to town. At least that’s my prediction.

“Apple has the superior product, the big momentum, the cool, the lust, the business hooks, the consumer hooks, the customer experience, the interface, the design (interface and industrial), the smooth development environment, the vision. And, maybe the secret key to it all, they have the commercial platform that makes it possible for a developer to actually sell, distribute, and update their software with the flip of a switch. And don’t forget the customer experience revolution — buying and it-just-works – installation of iPhone software will be as one-click easy as buying music from the iTunes store. It’s all wrapped into one beautiful package. A package that only Apple can deliver.

This is brand new big shit. It all started today.
_________________________________________________________
http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9885708-37.html
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/900-iphone-sdk-apples-touch-platform-and-the-next-two-decades
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And for you music loving downloaders out there whose consciences have been carrying a certain amount of guilt recently, here is good news from Nine Inch Nails. According to Matt Rosoff, who writes a blog called Digital Noise for C/NET Blogs, “the release of Ghosts I-IV in five different formats is the perfect example of how recorded music can, and should, and will inevitably be sold in a world where free has become the norm.

He goes on to write: “I suggested several business models for recorded music in my post the other day, which was a response to Chris Anderson's Wired article about "free" as the future of business. Ghosts employs at least two of them.

First and foremost, it's a great example of the "freemium" model, in which the hardcore NIN fans subsidize the cheaper offerings – the highest-priced $300 edition is personally signed by Trent Reznor and includes the regular CDs, a data DVD with the entire album in .wav files, a Blu-ray DVD with a high-definition (24-bit, 96kHz) version and slideshow, four vinyl LPs, and more.

Implicitly, NIN is also using the cross-subsidy model. All the offerings include non-DRM-protected data files, and some even include lossless files, which offer the same quality as a CD. Trent Reznor isn't dumb – he knows that somebody will post these files online within seconds of receiving them. In fact, the band has even posted the first nine tracks (the free MP3 versions) to several BitTorrent trackers. But he hopes that casual listeners or one-time fans who haven't checked out NIN's recent work will be sufficiently attracted by these free files to check the band out when it comes through town, and may eventually become big enough fans to pay for future releases.

“It looks foolproof to me. NIN minimizes the risk of unsold physical inventory by taking advance orders, and with downloads, there's almost no incremental cost of distribution. The only potential problem would be if the band doesn't sell enough to cover the cost of recording the album, which seems unlikely. Any label lucky enough to have an artist with a devoted following and decent live show should be paying attention – although they might find that selling a two-CD set for $10 makes it hard to pay for the upkeep on those private jets.”
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And for all of you who suffer from memory quirks, there is a new computer program about to come to our aid. What you’re about to read comes from Chris Morrison who writes for Venture Beat.

“Information overload” is the call-word for the modern lifestyle. Even with the help of calendars, alarms, notes and other memory aids, it’s easy to lose track of what you need to do in the swirl of what’s going on. The latest tool I’ve found to help out is called ReQall.

“The brain-child of Sunil Vemuri, an MIT Ph.D. who focused his dissertation on memory, ReQall keeps track of notes you send to it by email, instant message or, best of all, a dial-in number from your phone that allows you to just state the task. The notes can be retrieved by the same methods or be set to automatically ping you when a task needs to be done.

“ReQall could be useful for any number of things, from reminders to pick up something at the grocery store to keeping tabs on what you need to do at work. Helpfully, it can also send reminders to others — for instance, if someone on your team also has an account, you can leave a note or reminder for them.

“All is not perfect. Pictures are an essential memory aid, but so far, ReQall only integrates with Picasa albums; it needs its own picture storage to shine. The interface, also, could take a while to become familiar with, as it requires specific wordings to get ReQall to distinguish between different kinds of notes. As bad as our memories seem to be, they’re actually good enough that building a truly effective alternative is a challenging task.

“The most difficult point for a memory program may be tying all our aids — calendars, notes, pictures and so forth — into one effective utility. ReQall already plugs into iCal and offers an RSS feed; in the future, Vemuri plans on opening an API so other developers can plug into the data.
“ReQall has some serious competition, too. One of the best is Evernote, a note- and record-keeping tool that I reviewed last year. Evernote has so far been a Windows-only download, but is opening a web-based version in late March. Vemuri claims that his greatest competition is actually the post-it note, but if someone could merge the best features of both ReQall and Evernote, we might just have the perfect memory aid.

“ReQall took a seed investment of $2.5 million back in 2006, from IT Ventures and Edge Ventures. It is based in India, with offices in China and the USA.
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My how time flies. In the interests of remembering to sign off, we hereby leave you for another week. We hope to see you again next week, any time, at your convenience. Bye bye.

The Real Little Eddy