Tag: Open Thread

The Stars Hollow Gazette

Well we got our first real snow out of that last batch.  Even if I hadn’t seen it I could have told you from the roar of the snow blowers and the scrape of the plow.

While I was growing up we had a very difficult driveway to shovel.  It was made of gravel stuck together with asphalt and the gravel made it impossible slide your shovel along so it was always a pain in the ass.

Still I considered it a good snowfall if the twin piles at the end of the driveway were high enough to make good forts out of.

We’d do the whole snowman thing too, but it wasn’t like we ever had the kind of winters that you could put it up in November and say goodbye in March.

Usually you don’t get really permanent cover until mid January and by the end of February it was warming up again, at least to the extent you’d get a couple of good rains that would turn everything kind of crusty and grey as all those asphalt covered pieces of gravel that you’d scraped out of the driveway and thrown in the snow piles peeked out again.

Used to love the first mow in the spring too.  Don’t stand in front of the grass exhaust unless you want to get stung with chunks of gravel.

Docudharma Times Thursday Dec.13

This is an Open Thread: Its Still Free

Headlines For Thursday December 13: From a Critic of Tribunals to Top Judge: Study Faults Charities for Veterans: State accuses Blue Shield of illegal cancellations: Kasparov won’t run for Russian president:

USA

From a Critic of Tribunals to Top Judge

By WILLIAM GLABERSON

Published: December 13, 2007

Back in 2002, a master’s degree candidate at the Naval War College wrote a paper on the Bush administration’s plan to use military commissions to try Guantánamo suspects, concluding that “even a good military tribunal is a bad idea.”

It drew little notice at the time, but the paper has gained a second life because of its author’s big promotion: Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann of the Marines is now the chief judge of the military commissions at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The system, Judge Kohlmann wrote in 2002, would face criticism for the “apparent lack of independence” of military judges and would have “credibility problems,” the very argument made by Guantánamo’s critics.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

One tradition of the south I really like is Waffle House.  If you’re not acquainted with them they’re basically grill joints that only serve breakfast food 24/7.  Waffle House is always open.

They’re also pretty cheap.  For a couple of bucks you can stuff yourself full of greasy goodness.

When I travel it’s not that I don’t eat fast food, it’s that I want to eat something different from the ubiquitous McKing crap.

So Bojangles and Sonic, if you know where to look even here in the Northeast you can track down an A & W stand.

When I travel to places I go to a lot, I’ve got an agenda that revolves around cheap gas stations and food.  I like Sbarro’s pizza OK and fortunately it’s the kind of thing that’s easily found and quick to purchase.  I hate to spend longer than 10 minutes from Highway to Highway because that really shows up in your elapsed time more than the speed you drive because you’re basically standing still.

Driving is relaxing too.  I’m an AM guy and a summer’s drive with the Mets on the radio can be quite enjoyable.  Not much into music for some reason, perhaps because I’ve DJed a lot and I don’t much like today’s plastic celebrity artists.

I’d rather take what the road gives me though than hook up an cassette, cd, or ipod.  If I’ve heard it before I’ve heard it.  My Aunt on the other hand swears by books on tape and I’ve ridden with her and not been bored- it was new to me.  One thing I do wish I could listen to again is my copy of Alice In Wonderland as read by Cyril Ritchard.  Unfortunately it’s on vinyl.

The Morning News

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Questions linger after Hayden testimony

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

3 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – CIA Director Michael Hayden, testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee behind closed doors Tuesday, failed to answer central questions about the destruction of secret videotapes showing harsh interrogation of terror suspects, the panel’s chairman said.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., called the committee’s 90-minute session with Hayden “a useful and not yet complete hearing” and vowed the committee would get to the bottom of the matter. Among lingering questions: Who authorized destruction of the tapes, and why Congress wasn’t told about it?

Hayden told reporters afterward that he had “a chance to lay out the narrative, the history of why the tapes were destroyed” and the process that led to that decision. But since the tapes were made under one of his predecessors, George Tenet, and destroyed under another, Porter Goss, he wasn’t able to completely answer all questions, he said.

Four at Four

Some news and the afternoon’s open thread.

  1. Well, it’s a start – according to The Guardian, Forest protection expected to form key part of Bali climate deal. “Officials said steps to protect forests were included in a new draft of the so-called Bali roadmap, and that they expected them to appear in the final text produced at the end of the talks on Friday. The move would make financial rewards for not cutting down trees a key part of a new climate deal.” But, of course, the Bush administration is obstructing progress on emissions target. From the NY Times: “the United States and the European Union remained deadlocked today on whether countries should commit now to including specific cuts in climate-warming emissions in a new climate pact.” EU wants each industrialized country to cut emissions 25-40% by 2020, which is opposed by the Bush administration and its polluting partners in Canada, Japan, India, and China.

    “Logic requires that we listen to the science,” Stavros Dimas, the European Union’s environment commissioner, said today. “I would expect others to follow that logic.”

  2. According to the AP, the U.S. Military undergoes command changes in Iraq. “With the exception of Petraeus, senior commanders generally arrive and depart with their units, which means most of those now leaving or preparing to leave have been there for up to 15 months. Topping the list of departures is Petraeus’ second-in-command, Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, who is due to leave in February when the 3rd Corps finishes its command tour and returns to Fort Hood, Texas. He will be replaced by Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, commander of 18th Airborne Corps, from Fort Bragg, N.C.”

  3. We’re still in Iraq and the Democrats in Congress might have noticed this time that we’re pissed about it. The LA Times reports Democrats face outrage from liberals over funding for the war and a veto of the $500-billion package. “Senior Democrats are facing a restive liberal base incensed by talk that a budget deal would provide more money for the war in Iraq without attaching any conditions aimed at forcing troop withdrawals. Additional war funding would represent a major concession to the president”.

  4. The Los Angeles Times reports Study finds humans still evolving, and quickly. “The pace of human evolution has been increasing at a stunning rate since our ancestors began spreading through Europe, Asia and Africa 40,000 years ago, quickening to 100 times historical levels after agriculture became widespread, according to a study published today. By examining more than 3 million variants of DNA in 269 people, researchers identified about 1,800 genes that have been widely adopted in relatively recent times because they offer some evolutionary benefit.”

Docudharma Times Tuesday Dec.11

This is an Open Thread: Come On Take a Test Drive.

Headlines For Tuesday December 11: Poll Finds G.O.P. Field Isn’t Touching Voters: Waterboarding Recounted: Lost tapes may entangle CIA: Putin anoints deputy prime minister as heir to presidency:

USA

Poll Finds G.O.P. Field Isn’t Touching Voters

Three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Republican voters across the country appear uninspired by their field of presidential candidates, with a vast majority saying they have not made a final decision about whom to support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Not one of the Republican candidates is viewed favorably by even half the Republican electorate, the poll found. And in a sign of the fluidity of the race, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who barely registered in early polls several months ago, is now locked in a tight contest nationally with Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney

Waterboarding Recounted

Ex-CIA Officer Says It ‘Probably Saved Lives’ but Is Torture

By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, December 11, 2007; Page A01

A former CIA officer who participated in the capture and questioning of the first al-Qaeda terrorist suspect to be waterboarded said yesterday that the harsh technique provided an intelligence breakthrough that “probably saved lives,” but that he now regards the tactic as torture.

Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein abu Zubaida, the first high-ranking al-Qaeda member captured after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, broke in less than a minute after he was subjected to the technique and began providing interrogators with information that led to the disruption of several planned attacks, said John Kiriakou, who served as a CIA interrogator in Pakistan.

Four at Four

Afternoon news and open thread.

  1. Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were in Oslo today to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Here are excerpts from Gore’s Nobel Lecture.

    Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken – if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose…

    We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst – though not all – of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.

    However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: “They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.” …

    Now comes the threat of climate crisis – a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion? …

    The world needs an alliance – especially of those nations that weigh heaviest in the scales where Earth is in the balance… But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do enough: the United States and China…

    Both countries should stop using the other’s behavior as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment.

  2. The Telegraph reports the US refuses to set Bali target for emissions. “The United States warned it was unwilling to accept numeric targets in the plan which will be at the centre of debate among negotiators attempting to hammer out a final document by Friday. Harlan Watson, the United States’s chief negotiator, said the US was in Bali to work in a ‘constructive manner’ to get a roadmap for negotiations to be completed by 2009… Dr Watson also said the figures, which were derived from… IPCC most recent assessment report this year, are surrounded by ‘many uncertainties’… Mr Watson also told a press conference in Bali he does not think the EU target of limiting global warming to 2ºC above pre-industrial levels was a ‘helpful’starting point.”

  3. In an interview with the AP, John Kerry indicated the US Senate wouldn’t ratify climate deal without developing countries. “If China and other emerging economies don’t contribute to reining in greenhouse gases, ‘it would be very difficult’ to get a new global climate deal through the U.S. Senate, even under a Democratic president, Sen. John Kerry said Monday. ‘At some point in time, they will have to take on those reductions, for several reasons, most importantly the developed countries are not going to be able to do this on their own,’ Kerry said… Kerry noted that one reason Kyoto found no support in the late 1990s in the Senate, which must ratify such international accords, was that it didn’t demand emissions cuts by developing nations.”

  4. The AP reports Huckabee Pardons Under Scrutiny. “As governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee had a hand in twice as many pardons and commutations as his three predecessors combined. The case he’s asked about most concerns the parole of a castrated rapist who later killed a woman… The [other] acts of clemency benefited the stepson of a staff member, murderers who worked at the governor’s mansion, a rock star and inmates who received good words from their pastors.”

Docudharma Times Monday Dec.10

This is an Open Thread: Please join us.

Headline For Monday December 10: Hoyer Is Proof of Earmarks’ Endurance: Republicans sing new tune on Iraq for Spanish station : U.S. Is No Haven, Canadian Judge Finds: Mortar shells hit Iraq prison, killing 7: Iraq calmer, but more divided: PM: Quick conclusion needed on Kosovo: CIA photos ‘show UK Guantanamo detainee was tortured’: Merkel’s comment on Zimbabwe fascist: official: Archbishop discards dog collar ‘until tyrant goes’: New York Philharmonic to play in N.Korea: paper: US balks at Bali carbon targets

USA

Hoyer Is Proof of Earmarks’ Endurance

Md. Democrat’s Campaign Donors Among Grantees

By Mary Beth Sheridan

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, December 10, 2007; Page A01

Even as House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer has joined in steps to clean up pork-barrel spending, the Maryland congressman has tucked $96 million worth of pet projects into next year’s federal budget, including $450,000 for a campaign donor’s foundation.

Hoyer (D) is one of the top 10 earmarkers in the House for 2008, based on budget requests in bills so far, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, an independent watchdog group.

Earmarks are spending items inserted into bills to benefit designated companies or projects, often in the sponsoring lawmaker’s district. They make up a small percentage of the federal budget.

Republicans sing new tune on Iraq for Spanish station

The GOP hopefuls speak out for the ‘surge’ and minimize illegal immigration concerns at the Univision debate.

By Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

December 10, 2007

CORAL GABLES, FLA. — Citing a recent decline in violence in Iraq, top Republican presidential candidates on Sunday offered gushing assessments of the U.S. war effort there — an unusual moment in a GOP primary campaign that for months usually has stepped gingerly around the Bush administration’s unpopular policies in that country.

The candidates’ comments, coming in a debate on the Spanish-language television network Univision, went further than even the White House and top military leaders have gone as they have watched civilian and military deaths ebb since President Bush launched a controversial U.S. troop “surge” strategy.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

I must admit I’m pretty tense and nervous this time of year.  There are incredible numbers of deadlines, much more than usual and an impossible amount of work to be done.

The fact that there is so little daylight to go buzzing around in contributes to the sense of urgency as do the cars and crowds everywhere at every time of day.  I find it almost claustrophobic.

I have a whole crowd of places to be and people to see too.  Folks want me to hang out with them for some reason, so the mail is full of invitations most of which I have politely declined.  I’ve done the 4 parties in 3 days Thanksgiving to New Years about as much as I really need to satisfy myself.

Family is of course not easily put off and this year as usual the Gilmores will visit my sister and her kids for a few days right on the 25th.  It may not be so easy for me to get internet access right from the 23rd to the  26th.  After that I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to spend some time with my Aunty Mame (who really likes this blog much better than the orange one, says it’s more relaxing) in the frozen north.

She has good ‘net, I’ve used it before, the problem is that the TV is across the hall in the other room and if I turn it up too loud it disturbs everyone else.

And of course I watch TV all.  the.  time.

That’s why it grieves me so much to bring you the following discouraging news from Reuters on the Writer’s strike-

Prolonged writers strike a nightmare for TV biz

By Paul J. Gough, Reuters

1 hour, 12 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – Television executives’ nightmare scenarios for 2008 are coming closer to reality as the Hollywood writers strike enters its sixth week Monday.

Renewed contract talks between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) broke off abruptly Friday, and industry executives see no end in sight to the worst Hollywood labor dispute in almost two decades.

If the strike lasts another four to six weeks, it could spell the end for 2008 pilot production. The most-circulated scenario in that case involves the networks renewing all their existing series for next fall, producing their pilots in the summer and launching their new crop of shows in midseason 2009.

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Biden wants special counsel in tape case

By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer

1 minute ago

WASHINGTON – A Senate Democratic leader said Sunday the attorney general should appoint a special counsel to investigate the CIA’s destruction of videotaped interrogations of two suspected terrorists.

Sen. Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, cited Michael Mukasey’s refusal during confirmation hearings in October to describe waterboarding as torture.

Mukasey’s Justice Department and the CIA’s internal watchdog announced Saturday they would conduct a joint inquiry into the matter. That review will determine whether a full investigation is warranted. “He’s the same guy who couldn’t decide whether or not waterboarding was torture and he’s going to be doing this investigation,” said Biden, who noted that he voted against making Mukasey the country’s top law enforcer.

Docudharma Times Sunday Dec.9

This is an Open Thread: Come in: Look around.

Headlines For Sunday December 9: As Iraqis Vie for Kirkuk’s Oil, Kurds Become Pawns: Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002 :Parole Case and ’90s AIDS View Trail Huckabee: Runaway trailers leave random victims: Bosnian Serbs vote in presidential election

As Iraqis Vie for Kirkuk’s Oil, Kurds Become Pawns

KIRKUK, Iraq – Even by the skewed standards of a country where millions are homeless or in exile, the squalor of the Kirkuk soccer stadium is a startling sight.

On the outskirts of a city adjoining some of Iraq’s most lucrative oil reserves, a rivulet of urine flows past the entrance to the barren playing field.

There are no spectators, only 2,200 Kurdish squatters who have converted the dugouts, stands and parking lot into a refugee city of cinder-block hovels covered in Kurdish political graffiti, some for President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

USA

Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002

In Meetings, Spy Panels’ Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say

By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, December 9, 2007; Page A01

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

Weekend News Digest: 43 Stories

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 World climate change protests kick off

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 33 minutes ago

LONDON – Skiers, fire-eaters and an ice sculptor joined in worldwide demonstrations Saturday to draw attention to climate change and push their governments to take stronger action to fight global warming.

From costume parades in the Philippines to a cyclist’s protest in London, marches were held in more than 50 cities around the world to coincide with the two-week U.N. Climate Change Conference, which runs through Friday in Bali, Indonesia.

Hundreds of people rallied in the Philippine capital, Manila, wearing miniature windmills atop hats, or framing their faces in cardboard cutouts of the sun.

Load more