Thursday, April 01, 2004
Bush doesn't give a shit about tracking down terrorists
Jeanne points to a Times article stating that Bush has turned down the IRS's request for more investigators into the sources of terrorist funding:
The Bush administration has scuttled a plan to increase by 50 percent the number of criminal financial investigators working to disrupt the finances of Al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations to save $12 million, a Congressional hearing was told on Tuesday.
Twelve million lousy dollars! Holy shit! That's right folks: $1.5 billion to promote marriage is dandy, to say nothing of hundreds of billions in tax cuts for the rich, but $12 million to track down terrorist financiers breaks the piggy bank. All credible reports say that stateless groups like Al Qaeda depend heavily on an international network of financial supporters. The IRS possesses particular institutional expertise in finance. A serious strategy for attacking terrorism should give them funding and tap their resources, in cooperation with the FBI and the CIA and under the direction of the DHS.
I've realized that one of the recurring themes on my blog is that the Bush administration has never demonstrated any seriousness about attacking terrorism. Terrorism is a particularly vicious form of crime; terrorists must possess the classic criminal triad of "motive, means, and opportunity" as a prerequisite for committing terrorist acts. The Bush administration has shown no interest in any of these: they attack neither motive (by adopting a foreign policy less likely to win Al Qaeda converts), nor means (by tracking down the financiers, which according to credible reports include many Saudis), nor opportunity (by investigating the intelligence failures that made the attacks possible, or by increasing port security).
In other words, on national security, the current Republican Party leadership is a total joke.
Which puts the lie to the weird popular conception in America that conservatives are somehow "stronger" or "tougher" on national security than liberals. As far as I can tell, this attitude stems mostly from two factors. First, there are lingering grudges from the culture clashes of "the Sixties" --- "Those Democrats are the same long-haired hippies and peaceniks who protested against Nixon!" Second, and I think even more importantly, I think people have a reptilian-brain-stem instinct which tells them that muscular, aggressive rhetoric correlates with effective self-defense: "I am a lizard which raises my frill and hisses loudly at any challenge, therefore I will hurt people who try to hurt me, therefore you want me on your side." Of course, this instinct is completely obsolete in the modern world, when ingenuity, craftiness, and alliance-building are more effective means to self-defense than aggression. But primitive instincts persist, and too often prevail.
Kerry to Bush: If you really believe Clarke is lying...
Nathan Newman reports on Kerry's rejoinder to Bush administration claims that Richard Clarke is lying:
"My challenge to the Bush administration would be, if (Clarke) is not believable and they have reason to show it, then prosecute him for perjury because he is under oath," Kerry told CBS's MarketWatch
Heh. Newman notes that as long as they don't prosecute Clarke, they are tacitly admitting that he's credible.
Isn't it great to have a candidate who, you know, actually fights back? Let's imagine the alternate universe where Lieberman was nominated:
"My challenge to Richard Clarke would be, if you really believe in these divisive claims, which are tearing the nation apart in a time of crisis, why didn't you raise them before we went to war? It simply isn't credible," Lieberman told CBS's MarketWatch.
He added: "So really, Clarke should just shut his trap and vote for Bush in the upcoming election, like I'm planning on doing. I mean, voting for me would just intensify the partisan bickering in Washington, which is something I really want to rise above."
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Next up: US Patent #6,273,287, "Breathing While Using the Internet"
Politech reports the following from the Chronicle of Higher Education:
When Regis University put some of its courses online in the 1990s, officials there figured that it was a no-brainer to administer tests online as well. And so they did.
Last fall, however, they received a threatening letter from Test Central Inc., which holds a patent on various types of online testing. The company claims that Regis and other colleges may be infringing on that patent and, if so, must pay thousands of dollars to continue offering tests online.
Ellen K. Waterman, director of distance learning at the Denver institution, says she was stunned to see that somebody claimed to own the rights to online testing itself. The patent claims made by Test Central are so broad, she says, that they seem to cover any type of testing in cyberspace.
"It's very, very general," she says. "If you can patent anything that people do on the Web, we are not protected at all."
Alas, the U.S. Patent Office's attitude towards online patents has long been exactly that: For any activity X, it awards patents to "Method and Apparatus for X on the Internet". It's a bonanza for land-grabbing "intellectual property" speculators, and a disaster for actual innovation. See: Priceline, One-Click, Eolas... the list goes on and on.
Wake up call, David E. Sanger
Today's Times news analysis, When Goals Meet Reality: Bush's Reversal on 9/11 Testimony, contains a perfect example of what's wrong with our White House press corps, and more generally with our entire political media. The article opens with the claim:
When George W. Bush and Dick Cheney took office three years ago, they made no secret of their intention to restore presidential powers and prerogatives that they believed had withered under the onslaught of Washington's cycle of televised, all-consuming investigations.
According to Sanger, Bush and Cheney are making a clear claim about Presidential history: that "Presidential powers and prerogatives" have "withered" under pressure from the media and Congressional investigations. The logical followup would be to ask at least one or two historians whether Presidential powers have really withered; and if so, why?* This would not take many words, but it would give readers the crucial historical context needed to understand the White House's behavior.
Instead, Sanger elects to write mostly about the political spin that's being put on Bush and Cheney's reluctance to be forthcoming. There's some good stuff in there, recounting evidence of that reluctance; but all we get about this historical claim is the White House spin, plus one unnamed diplomat confirming that this is indeed the White House's attitude.
By now, it's a cliché that the press covers politics like a horse race, obsessing over tactics and spin instead of substance. This is just one small example.
*Incidentally, I suspect that we'd learn the following from these hypothetical interviews with historians:
- No, the Presidential powers have not withered.
- But, they have been subject to greater public scrutiny, especially since Watergate.
- Most historians and political scientists believe this is a good thing.
- The Bush/Cheney administration is almost unprecedented in its extreme unwillingness to be the object of public scrutiny or Congressional oversight.
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
What I'm listening to
'N' every gimmick hungry yob digging gold from rock 'n' roll
Grabs the mike to tell us he'll die before he's sold
But i believe in this-and it's been tested by research
he who fucks nuns will later join the church
More generally, London Calling is excellent. About a third of it is filler, but with the magic of juk it's easy to skip what you don't like.
