Bolton again...and Chafee's enlightenment

John Bolton: the media gift that keeps on giving. I'll leave it to you to remember the excitement of these highlights.

Chapter One: The numerous hearings on the Senate Foreign Relations Comittee. The pressure on Chafee to turn on the Republicans and keep the vote there. Then a shocker...Vionovich decides that Bolton isn't going to make a good UN secretary. He defers to the White House and allows a referal to the senate without reccomendation (as opposed to a positive reccomendation), and further says that he intends to vote against the nomination on the floor. Biden, the ranking Democrat, says he doesn't really think the UN position is all that big a ball of yarn, but gets righteously pissed off that the State department has refused to give the committee documents it had requested.

Chapter Two: The Senate vote. Never actually occurs because Democrats fillibuster it. Their reason/pretext? The Executive branch is still refusing to provide information that was requested. Bolton appears dead in the water, unless there is some sneaky back-door temporary appointment action.

Chapter Three: Early July. Bush passes up an opportuity to install Bolton over a short recess. Just after, a supreme court justice retires. In the midst, there is finally a series of leaks in the two-year-old Plame case and the vultures start circling over Rove. But this is chapter three of another story isn't it?

Chapter Four: In the course of the same federal investigation that has everyone wondering about Rove, it suddenly comes out that Bolton had been called in to answer questions about the faulty intel at the heart of the Wilson fiasco. Was he or was he not involved in the faulty Nigerian intel? What did he omit from the forms the senate required and was it consciously ommitted or just "forgotten"?

and now!

Chapter Five: Bush poised to appoint Bolton over recess next week.

Whatever you think about the executive denying papers to the senate, Whatever you think about Bolton's personal arrogance, or the arrogance it took to nominate him, and whether you think this link between the two scandals is a flock of dirty birds coming home to roost or a completely irrational leftist conspiracy theory, you gotta admit: this is good soap-opera-type material.

Says Chafee:

Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he would vote against Bolton — if given the chance — and would oppose a recess appointment if it is accurate that Bolton’s form was originally incorrect. “Any intimidation of the facts, or suppression of information getting to the public which led us to the war, absolutely should preclude him from a recess appointment,” said Chafee, of Rhode Island

Like a Greek tragedy, realization of the fatal flaw comes too late. Way too late.

UPDATE: Speaking of fatal flaws....I've corrected mispellings of 'Chafee' which I had not only spelled incorrectly but also differently in every occurrance. It was far beyond my casual disrespect for spelling, typing, and grammar. As a penance I agree to proof-read all my posts. No, really, I don't. But I will admit my shame in this update.

GWOT is so 2004...

Wanted new name. The Global War on Terror just isn't catchy anymore. Says BBC:

The Bush administration is abandoning the phrase "war on terror" to better express the fight against al-Qaeda and other groups as an ideological struggle as much as a military mission.

While the slogan - first used by President George W Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks - may still be heard from time to time, the White House says it will increasingly be couched in other language..

In recent days, senior administration figures have been speaking publicly of "a global struggle against the enemies of freedom", and of the need to use all "tools of statecraft" to defeat them.

With over 100,000 troops abroad we are definitely at war with someone. Still, terror isn't a conventional war. By which I mean it's more like the war on drugs. By which I mean it's a new fat of life where, in reality, simply holding the status quo is probably the best we can do.

For what it's worth, I agree with a terminology change. (excepting Iraq) The war on terrorism is fought on the fringes. There is no front, except occasionally the front page. Just as the Cold War (another non-war) was spy vs spy, the major battles of this conflict will be fought deep undercover.

Omnipresent "White House Official":
"The 'war' is more than a military response, it is a battle of ideas and a struggle against extremism, and all aspects of the US Government and its allies around the world need to be called upon in fighting it."

We need a word that captures the multi-faceted essence of the struggle: the battle of ideas and ideology. The word that begs to be used, "crusade", is a bad idea. "Jihad" is already taken. We'll just have to wait and see what they come up with.

Spanish Soaps All Day?

Interesting news news....

A new pan-Latin American TV channel, Telesur, has begun its first broadcast from the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.

It is backed by the governments of Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay who say they want it to promote Latin American integration.

Last week the House of Representatives voted to enable the US administration to begin broadcasting its own TV signals to Venezuela.

The US plan is intended to counter what it called anti-US propaganda

Naturally, the idea of state-sponsored TV scares me (we're not talking PBS here). I can cope with using it to passify the masses in Iraq, but that's about it. This is the South American network explicitly built to rival CNN. Given the Venezuelan President's paranoia complex about the US goals to kill him or invade, I'm betting on a fiercely anti-US flavor to this station. I do wonder though...just what on Earth we're planning on broadcasting back in. (in the interest of democracy, I hope it's Baywatch) And who's paying for it.

Also interesting to be reading this on BBC, it's not there on CNN.

How to throw a rant...

Angry with the Democrats for continually losing? Probably not this angry.

I really try to avoid ranting here, but it certainly can be entertaining.

Speaking of the ACLU...

How long have they been advertising on Andrew Sullivan's site? Imagine that.

Buried secrets: Part One. (apparent resurgence)

Back on June 1, 2005 the courts ordered that the US turn over 1 gross of additional Abu Gharib photos, as well as 4 potentially incediary videos. Including, most likely, the infamous rape video. This is what I had to say at the time.

These are photos that the Democrats, in an election year, agreed to cover up. I don't know what atrocities they contain, but I'm betting they're worse than the ones we've seen.

1 month until the world hates us twice as much as they already do. I'll still be amazed if these photos see the light of day. It will be a bad day, I'll tell you that.

Later, I even went so far as to accuse poor Karl Rove of using incendiary comments to frame the release of the photos. Silly me. I had total egg on my face when that turned out to not be the case. It was not the case because the June 28th deadline came and went without a whisper. Nothing from the news. Nothing on the ACLU website. Nothing. I'll be honest...the lack of news set my conspiracy theory paranoia on overload. I could see a few news organizations being shut-down, but why wasn't there an update on the ACLU webpage? Had they made a deal? What was it that so utterly and completely buried this court order?

Turns out I was way off, and somehow the due date was allowed to slip to July 22. (Thanks for the update news media/ACLU). I wasn't so far off in the end though, because the executive has simply refused the judicial department. There's a New York Times story (that I haven't read), but why not get it straight from the horse's mouth? (ACLU) Regardless, now that NYT has broken the moratorium, there will be oodles of noisy loud bloggers chattering away.

So what is worse? Scenario one: compromise the War on Terror by inspiring legions of new Islamic radicals, and potentially exposing the US government as a pack of dishonest liars for their idiotic cover-up (and scapegoating of a few low-lifes). Welcome to everyone hates America.

Or Scenario Two: allow the exectutive, and in particular the military to withhold evidence from the court and the American people? Welcome to the Police State.

100th post

I have to admit, blogging amuses me. I'll prolly do another 100.

To commemorate , I'll give a little backstory on the name of the blog.

What the hell is a Cognitive Apostate? I think people tend to think in a certain way, and that certain way is generally whatever enables them to think less. So much of what we see and read whether it be in the news or on blogs boils down to regurgitated talking points. People choose sides and stick to them, even when they start saying things that don't make sense. Conventional wisdom could do with some apostacy because it is frequently wrong. Any desire to bring our troops home so they can't be killed shows a lack of support. Is consideration of their lives disrespectful? We're told the government needs access to internet transmissions to fight terrorism but would they see the message hidden in these photos?

Cognitive Apostate is about breaking down the barriers and stereotypes we too willingly subject ourselves to. Say you're a scientist: you know for damn certain that the world is more than a few thousand years old. You've got a pretty good grasp on this whole evolution thing. But what does that say about God? Probably nothing How about the Bible? Well, here we know of at least one glaring error, but maybe parts are right...why not look into it? And just just for kicks, see whether you can break the routine mundacity of human thought and recognize a pattern.

It's about countering hysteria and making sensible predictions. It's about asking the obvious questions we always forget to ask, and noting why things go unseen. But mostly, (as exemplified here) it's about the wandering thoughts and opinions of one Lanky Bastard. Agree? Disagree? I don't care. It's enough for me if I get you to think.

The new conspiracy theory...

Dozens of people have pointed out how interested the White House is in deflecting attention from the Rove controversy with the appointment of Roberts. Enough that the Democrats and the media seem to have not taken the bait. But think about it...isn't it strange that an investigation that has been ongoing for years would climax right around the first Supreme Court nomination in years? This virtually silent case, once lauded for it's control of leaks now has a new memo or tidbit to feed the media every few days. Of course, it's is the big story. Who will it take down (if anyone)?

But that doesn't detract from the bigger game. If sacrificing an advisor, a press secretary, or a vice presidential advisor is all it costs to get a young conservative justice on the supreme court bench...hey that's a no-brainer.

Stuff like this makes me paranoid

Drezner has advice for Graduate students: don't blog. Especially under your real name.

Food for thought.

If only I knew then...

I recently took a camping trip to Ithaca NY, to the beautiful Taughannok Falls. It was a great romantic getaway where my companion and I discovered a bottle of wine per night greatly reduces the discomfort of sleeping on the ground. (Though waking up in the pitch dark and having to pee kinda sucks). Engrossed as we were in the local wine scene, we didn't really drink anything else. One of the beautiful things about NY is you can buy beer anywhere. When I lived there we usually got it at the supermarket, though it's easy to get at gas stations and the like. In short we were slaves to convenience and never really thought about it...

...leading us to never discover this. I'm hoping my agents in Ithaca will turn out a report. Someday I shall return to sample.

London Bombers

Four for four followed by zero for four. Evidently the brains of the operation went two weeks ago. Obvious question: What happens August 4?

Blogroll addition: A kindred spirit

As has become my custom, I will induct a new blog to the blogroll with a recent excerpt. In this case the blog is Freedom Democrats. And the posting is here. The author is one Logan Ferree and though Congressional hopeful Paul Hackett steals the show in that link, the quotation very well sums up Logan's blog.

Says Hackett:

I'm for limited government, I'm for fiscal responsibility, I'’m for a strong national defense, and I'’m for fair trade. What do these concepts stand for? That means I don't need Washington to tell me how to live my personal life, or how to pray to my God. And I don't need Washington to dictate to my wife the decisions that she makes with her doctor, any more than I need Washington to tell me which guns I can keep in my gun safe.

Hackett is running in an impossibly Republican district of Ohio, but he makes sense and he's fighting hard. I can't think of a better metaphor for Freedom Democrats.

As is also becoming my custom, I'll not let a blog in without a first critique. I'm a little dismayed that Logan moved from http://libertariansforamerica.blogs.com/ to http://www.freedomdemocrats.org/ It now sounds more party-oriented than policy-oriented. To underscore the change, the blog-name has changed as well. Democratic Freedom just became the Freedom Democrats. Same objection. Noted. (Undoubtedly overuled).

And with my most severe criticism a matter of semantics...I am pleased to add Freedom Democrats to the blogroll. This addition is long past due. I gather a lot of people read blogs on the internet and find themselves in echo chambers of like-minded peers...but that hasn't really been my experience. I love reading TPM and Legal Fiction but I just can't buy into what they're selling. Instead I look with hope at the rare right-wing blogs whose authors are capable of indepentent thought. Those are stimulating, but I only rarely agree. Freedom Democrats is different from other blogs in that it is very me. It is the first (and only) blog that I will claim shares my views and outlook on the world. I reccomend very highly.

A toast then...to Libertarians who caucus with Democrats.

Those wacky econophysicists

Warning geekiness ahead:

Physicists are pretty much at the extreme end of science. Call them the uber-scientists. They're more theoretical, more technical, more pie-in-the-sky, wacky, too brilliant to figure out how to tie their own shoes weird. I'm told that part of being a scientist is being able to read another's research and tell whether or not it is good science...and I agree: except for physicists. The line between genius and batshit-crazy is just too thin there to call.

That having been said...physicists tend to be pretty smart (even the crazy ones) and it looks like some have made very cool inroads into economics. The field is called econophysics and the theory goes something like this. The economic universe, just like the physical universe is built on the countless smaller interactions that follow general rules. Tracking a dollar bill throughout the country might not make any more sense than tracking a water molecule around the Earth, but given enough monetary transactions or molecular collisions you start to see bulk behaviors that follow another set of rules.

One of those higher order rules is the oft-cited "rich get richer" rule. Explained here. It's a good read. Follow up with Victor Yakovenko if you've taken statistical mechanics, or read on if you prefer my lopsided interpretation.

Here's the deal. The income profile for the majority of people (>97% of us) marvelously resembles a mathematical equation that pops up in science: the Boltzmann equation. This equation is primarily used to describe how energy is divided up amongst gas molecules. Gas molecules are like the break at a pool table, some are moving fast, some slow, some spinning, (some less spinning) - except they don't slow down and stop. Their equilibrium state is to keep colliding and bouncing and zooming around as gas molecules. While the speed of individual molecules changes all the time, predictions can be made for the collection of molecules. For example sorry-ass graduate students are routinely forced to caluculate what fraction of air molecules are moving at roughly 500 ft/second and what fraction are moving at 300....whatever. The point is that economic bulk properties are curiously similar to physical bulk properties. Since the Boltzmann equation is the statistical result of a known set of events perhaps economics has the same underlying events. (Ogres are like onions!)

Yakovenko goes on to explain that the daily economic transactions most people make are similar to collisions between molecules, yadda yadda yadda... I won't repeat it, cause I don't buy it myself. (Energy it neither created nor destroyed, money is created/destroyed all the time.) However there are two important things that can be learned without delving too far into the theory.

First is it's good to be rich. If you're still reading you're probably pretty geeky. Geeky enough to have already perused the chart at the top of this post and noticed that there are two different lines on the curve. The top ~1% of earners in the country don't follow gas behavior. They are "super-thermal", earning at higher rates than would be expected from the very even distribution of the rest of the populace. (Shades of John Kerry! It's like 2 Americas!!) The income profiles of the wealthy follow Pareto's Law and they're raking it in faster than the suckers in the lower and middle class could dream of. Yakovenko doesn't really get into why that is, but what we see is a distinct economic breakpoint between two classes of people. I'm going to guess it's the beginnings of the investor class, but I don't know. I do know that when physical phenomenon shift from one defined dynamic to another, it's because different parameters have become critical or different governing laws are important.

Second bit of info: it's good to know is where Boltzmann ends and Pareto begins. (John Kerry could tell you again) It's at 200k/yr. Make it there and it's easy money all the way.

So three points 1: Mathematically, there is a break point at 200k/year: that makes it a good reference for defining upper-class. 2: Folks above that don't operate on the same governing economic principles that most do. (Bastards.) 3: Physicists are geeky and weird...and so are you for reading this to completion.

Via con Dios,
-LB

The Half-blood Prince

Pretty much as expected...starts really slow and finishes really fast. It's definitely worth reading if you're a fan of Harry, but be warned. The book is for older audiences and has more of a coming of age feel than the pure story telling genre. Harry is a teenager, replete with teenaged angst (and even a bit of lust). If you don't like the coming of age thing...you might not like the first 3/4 of the book. Hold out for the ending if you can though...they're always good.

Shuttle Launch Postponed

It's a no go. I'm going to go out on a limb here. The shuttle was finished in 1983. Isn't it time for new vehicles? Seriously, I wouldn't try to drive a car from 1983 across the country...let alone take it into space.

(That having been said, I think military has a number of active subs and carriers that predate 1983 still cruising around on their nuclear engines)

2008 Presidential Candidates

Since I'm registered Independent, I don't vote in primaries.

Whether you want to call that unbiased, abivalent, or apathetic, I'll stick to my position for now and not offer legitimate advice to either party. Instead, let me indulge in the perverse sepculation that our press often promotes. What ticket would be the most fun?

For extreme fun quotient:

Clinton (Hillary) / Gore
vs.
Rice / Gonzales

That would be awesome.

No one wants to get to the bottom of this more than the President of the United States

...except maybe publius.

I'm speaking, of course, about the Karl Rove criminal investigation. I think there's a good chance they'll skip on free...but not so good a chance as there was a few weeks ago.

I'm pretty amazed by the White House Press Corp. Usually a herd of docile sheep, they've started circling like sharks with blood in the water. Evidently, WaPo also thought it remarkable: they've published a transcript.

Note how the White House Press Secretary says 3 times that no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the President. I think that's the funniest line of the bunch. Shouldn't the President have known about this for roughly two years? Was he duped by Rove or abetting a criminal?

Was he stupid or crooked?

Follow that up with the fact that this whole case is based on a smear campaign over forged documents on Iraqi WMD. The president took us to war based on those forged documents. The echos of that stupid or crooked question just became more relevant.

Shield Laws

I don't agree with them. Honestly, I think they would cause more harm than good. Suppose a journalist couldn't be prosecuted for refusing to reveal a source. What's to keep one from publishing abject lies and claiming a source told them? I think the 'cure' is better than the disease in this case. Let's take it on faith that journalists ethics aren't so far above everyone else's. If you know of a crime you have a moral obligation to say somthing. Above and beyond that you've a legal obligation to testify. If that holds for presidents and judges, it should certainly hold for reporters.

On the other hand, it is a shame when you have people locked up for stories they never even wrote. (And of course the guy who did publish the news running free) Now maybe he heard from one of the other reporters. Maybe the story was good and leaked long before it was published. The whole deal is shady.

In Lanky's world, reporters would be more discreet. Truly anonymous sources (unknown to even the reporter) could made a leak. The reporter would then decide whether or not to write a story. If writing a story the reporter would be obligated to determine the source, and subsequently protect it. If the reporter doesn't want to publish he/she has no definitive knowledge and can say whatever. That is the risk the source takes, but still anonymously. On the other hand if the story is published, the reporter should strive to protect the source (purely out of professional ethics). That is a risk of agreeing to publish. If the reporter thinks it is too hot, perhaps a referral is order. Reporters should not have legal protection. Maybe some go to jail...let it be known as a risk (and I'm talking relatively light sentences). Maybe some roll on their sources...let sources choose reporters carefully. I think this moderate approach preserves both the rule of law and the protection of the state. Maybe there is a story that is so big it is worth going to jail for. Ask Woodward.

One way to amuse oneself

One way to have fun is to take the occasional piece of scandalous news, say hypothetically... claims that Karl Rove betrayed our intelligence services by outing Valarie Plame. Then surf on over to the highly biased conservative sounding board "The Drudge Report" and see whether he's posted on it. Curiously, he hadn't. Never fear though, I sent him a link. I'm sure our ace reporter Matt Drudge will be all over the story...as soon as he gets the appropriate spin from above.

Mea Culpa: Sudden revelation after months of blogging

Ok, it's not my revelation: I was told. I've enabled comments from non-registered users. I apologize for ostracizing any of you who may have wanted wanted to comment.

I swear I didn't know!!

I predict you won't comment anyway...but do your worst...

-Lanky

PS: drunk blogging twice in one week...shameful.

No photos?

So there was a court order to turn over 144 Abu Ghraib photos to the ACLU by June 30th. No sign it has happened. No sign it hasn't. The June 2nd Press Release from the ACLU indicated they expected the photos within 6 weeks. Maybe there was some sort of extention? Maybe like the Democrats in the Senate, the ACLU decided the photos were too incendiary to publish? Maybe the photos became non-existant like Sean Baker's videotape?

Maybe the court order is unenforcable because the process is in appeal, maybe there was an issuance of executive authority. Any of those seem possible, but what gets me: what gives me the creeps is the very strange moratorium on this subject. What's going on?