I wonder if you can use an almanac to find the White House
Sometimes it’s just too hard to think of something smartass to say.

The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning.

[…]

"The practice of researching potential targets is consistent with known methods of al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations that seek to maximize the likelihood of operational success through careful planning," the FBI wrote.

Some of them actually plan? The bastards!

Knocking down herrings
The news part of this is Viceroy Paul Bremmer insulting our noble ally Tony Blair, by my favorite part is the mangled metaphor.

Tony Blair faced new charges of exaggerating information about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction last night after America's senior official in the country rejected his claim that "massive evidence" of secret laboratories had been found.

[…]

The Tories leapt on the contradiction as proof that despite the Hutton Inquiry into the death of the Government scientist Dr David Kelly, Mr Blair continued to "sex up" information about Iraq's weapons in order to defend his political position.

[…]

In his Christmas message to troops a fortnight ago, which reached British soldiers in the Gulf, Mr Blair said the Iraq Survey Group searching for evidence of Saddam's weapons had unearthed "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories". This, he claimed, showed that the former Iraqi dictator had attempted to "conceal weapons".

But Mr Bremer, interviewed on ITV1's Jonathan Dimbleby Programme, who was initially unaware that it was the Prime Minister who had made the claim, ridiculed the comment.

"I don't know where those words come from, but that is not what [ISG chief] David Kay has said," he told Dimbleby as the interviewer tried to interrupt to tell him the source.

"I have read his reports so I don't know who said that. It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me. It sounds like someone who doesn't agree with the policy sets up a red herring then knocks it down."

When Dimbleby finally managed to tell him it was Mr Blair who made the comment, Mr Bremer beat a partial retreat, saying: "There is actually a lot of evidence that had been made public."

“Sets up a red herring then knocks it down." I like that. After that he drags a straw man through the underbrush to create a false trail. This still falls into a distant second place behind my all-time favorite mangled metaphor, made by then Alaskan governor Jay Hammond who announced, “the ship of state is breaking new ground.” Now that was a herring that deserved to be knocked down.

Quote of the day
Rev. Al Sharpton at the Commonwealth club in San Francisco (courtesy the Left I):

This is an administration where the Vice-President says, 'I'm not going to tell you what I was meeting with Enron about in the executive office of the White House, but I want the right to know what your librarian gives you as a book to go to your home. We want the right to eavesdrop on lawyer-client conversations; we want the right to do anything we want to invade your privacy, in the name of [fighting] terrorism.' We cannot say to the world to join us, we are the land of the free and the home of the brave -- and then say, we are going to suspend freedom and you better not be brave enough to question us.

The White House is missing
This is over a week old, but it’s too fun to pass over.

Call it the case of the missing White House. Users of Mapquest's free aerial photo database recently noticed that details of several Washington D.C. government buildings were no longer discernable in overhead images of the U.S. capital.

A comparison of old and new images posted on the government secrecy watchdog site Cryptome shows that portions of overhead color photos of the Capitol building and the grounds of the Naval Observatory, where the Vice President's residence is located, have been distorted -- pixilated into an digital blur.

The White House and the adjacent Old Executive Office Building and Treasury Department headquarters were subject to more subtle tampering: the buildings are still sharp, but the roofs have been digitally painted over with featureless solid colors seeming picked from the surrounding landscape. The lot at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue now resembles a White House-shaped dirt field more than the seat of executive power.

Kevin Poulsen of SecurityFocus followed the trail from Mapquest to EarthData International of Maryland, the company that processes the aerial photos under contract with the U.S. Geological Survey. According to the USGS, the digital airbrushing was done at the request of the Secret Service in exchange for permission to fly in restricted Washington, DC airspace. “Analyst John Pescatore, a former Secret Service agent, says the image distortions could be a response to real, if unlikely, attack scenarios: like a homemade drone aircraft armed with explosives, remotely piloted by a terrorist using aerial photographs as a navigation aid.”

There is a great comedy routine in this. There are hundreds—probably thousands—of good road maps, street maps, satellite photos, and aerial photos of Washington, DC available to tourists and terrorists. Many of these views are available from the DC department of tourism and the White House itself. Picture a wild-eyed terrorist having just launched a remote control, balsa-wood V1 armed with a generic Iraqi WMD. He’s hunched over the controls staring at the flickering image broadcast from the V1’s nose camera. His regularly dart to the MapQuest photos at his side. Photos that are necessary for this mission. Photos that he has not even casually glanced at before this moment. The V1 follows the street grid as he counts down the addresses to his target, “1900 Pennsylvania Avenue, 1800, 1700, big cow pasture, 1500… What wizardry is this?!!”

I know there is something to be said for not making a potential terrorist’s job too easy, but surely there are more effective uses of the Secret Service’s time than this.

How to end terrorism
It’s Christmas and, infused as I am with the spirit of good will and giving, I’m going to give the Bush administration the secret to getting reelected. I’m going to tell them how to end terrorism by the end of the summer.

It’s probably no surprise to you, dear readers, when I tell you that the administration has gone about its War on Terror all wrong. From day one they have been charging 180 degrees in the wrong direction. And unnecessarily so. There is a tactic that they have consistently misapplied in the War on Terror. It is a tactic that is well tested, effective, inexpensive, and philosophically consistent with the values demonstrated by the administration. Redefine terror out of existence.

This is hardly a new technique. Governments and administrations of all stripes have massaged statistics almost as long as statistics have existed. Look at unemployment. The government doesn’t even try to count the actual unemployed. They count those who apply for Unemployment Insurance. They count them only as long as they qualify for the program. They do not count those who don’t seek out the program. They do not count those who don’t qualify for the program. Even then, they calculate adjustments for a long list of categories that might qualify to collect Unemployment Insurance but aren’t counted into the officially announced statistics. Every administration tinkers with the numbers. It goes without saying that almost all adjustments reduce the number of unemployed.

I’ve been unemployed about two dozen times in my life. Most of those times I was carried over to the next job on savings or by freeloading off my sisters. Only during one of those times did I file for unemployment. So, I was only part of the statistics that one time. Had I remained unemployed three weeks longer, I would have disappeared off the other end and ceased to be counted, even though I would still have been unemployed.

Other statistics are similarly adjusted in the name of making the party in power look more effective and responsive to peoples needs than it really is. The technique is simple, change the definition of a problem to reduce the scope of that problem. Just Tuesday The Wall Street Journal reported an incident of this (quoted in the American Prospect online):

The Bush administration released a pair of much-awaited reports on the quality of American health care, after extensive revisions that made the findings more upbeat than some experts thought justified.
[…]
Some outside health-care advocates suggested that the two studies were toned down and delayed until after the Medicare overhaul and prescription-drug bill passed Congress for fear Democrats might seize on the reports to press for greater funding for quality initiatives, possibly complicating Republican efforts to pass the bill.

Last August, just as everybody was leaving for the Labor Day weekend, the Bush Environmental Protection Agency (who really shouldn’t even be allowed to use that name) announced that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Voila, in one shot they reduced the amount of pollution produced by the United States by an order of magnitude. In that same spirit the administration and its supporters have redefined logging as fire prevention, affirmative action as racism, and gay rights as religious persecution.

Obviously, the current administration understands the technique and has no qualms about using it. But for some reason they blow it when they get to terrorism. Instead, they keep expanding the definition of terrorism.

To be fair, they didn’t start this. Sometime around 1990, the FBI began investigating Earth First as a terrorist organization. About this time logging industry public relations people and Wise Use property rights activists began using the term “eco-terrorist” to describe any crime in the name of the environment, whether it be tree-spiking, moving survey stakes, arson, pie-throwing, tire-slashing, or graffiti. The mainstream media indiscriminately accepted the term and have used it ever since. Needless to say, if the Clinton administration was merely unwilling to object to the term, the present administration has enthusiastically continued its use.

Last March, a Republican Oregon State Senator, upset at anti-war protesters in Portland, introduced a bill in the legislature that would have made blocking traffic a crime punishable by life in prison. Section one of John Minnis’ proposal (Senate Bill 742) stated:

A person commits the crime of terrorism if the person knowingly plans, participates in or carries out any act that is intended, by at least one of its participants, to disrupt: (a) The free and orderly assembly of the inhabitants of the State of Oregon; (b) Commerce or the transportation systems of the State of Oregon; or (c) The educational or governmental institutions of the State of Oregon or its inhabitants.

In August, John Ashcroft took to the road to push the “Victory Act.” This Orwellian named gem contained significant parts of the wish list of expanded powers that had earlier been leaked as “Patriot Act II.” Among other things, the Victory Act would have elevated a whole raft to drug crimes (including possession) to the level of terrorism. They even created a catchy name for these crimes: narcoterrorism.

At this point, it seem the goal of the Right is to reclassify everything they disapprove of as terrorism (unless you’re an Ann Coulter reader, then you’d rather call all nasty things treason). This reminds me of a Mad magazine gag from the sixties where they proposed simplifying the courts by having one penalty for all crimes: assault and battery—ten years at hard labor, littering—ten years at hard labor, burning down the orphanage—ten years at hard labor, spitting on the sidewalk—ten years at hard labor. Only now if you monkeywrench a bulldozer, you’re an eco-terrorist; if you score some pot for your mom’s glaucoma, you’re a narcoterrorist; if you protest against a Ten Commandments monument at the courthouse, you’re a secularoterrorist; and if you call John Ashcroft an idiot, you’re objectively pro-terrorist.

This trend is not only dangerous, insulting, and un-American, it’s counter productive. How can Bush go before the American people and claim we’re winning the War on Terrorism if, by their own policies, there is more and more terror every day? They’ve tried out the line that more terrorism means we’re winning, but that line of argument doesn’t seem to be that effective. They need a big chart with a jagged line headed down towards zero and victory.

They can only get that result two ways. One is by actually ridding the world of terrorism. That’s just not possible. Aside from the obvious fact that the world will always have angry and alienated young people ready to die for a cause, we’ve been on the loosing side of a technological race ever since the introduction of gunpowder (appropriately enough during the crusades). Prior to that, killing was a personal business where the skilled guys with swords always beat an equal number of unskilled guys with sharp sticks. Gunpowder made it possible for a small number of people, with limited skills (light fuse, run), to inflict large casualties on the authorities. On 9/11, those 19 young men killed approximately 150 times their own number.

The other way is to just define terror out of existence. Sure, a couple people at the Justice Department seem to understand that. They do their best to keep the numbers down by charging white guys who try bomb Planned Parenthood clinics only with weapons violations. But that’s not enough. The whole administration needs to get behind this. Monkeywrenching needs to go back to being vandalism. Drug smuggling needs to go back to being a controlled substances violation. At each step, the administration pulls out the chart, points out the drop in terror crimes, and, with a straight face, credits their policies and moral clarity for the drop.

I'm offering this advice in the spirit of goodwill and too much eggnog. This is a sure-fire plan to beat terrorism. That is, if you really want to beat terrorism. If you have some reason to want to keep the public in a state of anxiety and emergency... well, I won't speculate. That would just be giving aid and comfort to our enemies.

Not the worst idea I've heard
Svein Olav Nyberg, a correspondant of Ken Macleod's, seems to have a worthy suggestion to cosider on dealing with spam:

Beating spammers to death with baseball bats is a terrible idea. But beating them to death with v.i.a.g.r.a. bottles and pe.nis exten.sors may not be.

Time to take the pledge
Kos has established a policy for the rest of the primary season that I think we all should adopt (if we aren't already doing so):

It is clear that our nominee will be either Dean or Clark. No one else has a shot. Therefore, I will not criticize or point to criticism of either of those two candidates. Each one of those guys has his plusses and his cons, and each one of them can beat Bush. That's all that matters.

I sincerely suggest you footsoldiers in the Dean vs. Clark flamewars start reconsidering your tactics. Stick to being positive about your guys. Don't gleefully point to every anti-Dean or anti-Clark smear coming from a wingnut or mediawhore. You are doing their bidding.

We are all on the same team, and the time to "merge the tribes" is just a month or two away. We need to start coming together for the sake of the party and our country.

I've been pretty disgusted lately as Democrats do what they always do in times of pressure, that is pull the wagons into a circle and fire inward. It's not helpful to moan that our party is suicidal, weak-willed, or useless; we need to actively change our behavior. Nothing is more important to us, as a party, as Americans, and as inhabitants of this planet, than getting Bush out of office. The first step is--as in the Hippocratic oath--to do no harm. For us that means do not damage our eventual candidate (at this point it looks like that person will be Clark or Dean, but Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards, or Lieberman could still pull off an upset, so I'm saying don't hurt any of them). Do not tolerate flamers, even if you agree with them. Do not provide material for the Republicans to use against us later.

This should be obvious. If you can't say something nice about a Democrat, don't talk about Democrats. Save you're bile for the Busheviks and Ralph Nader.

Will this affect our grades?

CONYERS, Georgia (AP) -- The estranged husband of a high school Spanish teacher burst into her classroom during a final exam and tried to stab her in the chest before students tackled him and pinned him to the floor, authorities said.

[...]

"Me and a couple of other guys grabbed him and threw him to the ground and basically sat on him until the cops came," said [Nimesh] Patel, [17].

What the --
Kevin over at Calpundit has posted a disturbing quote from Glenn Reynolds. Kevin can't figure out what the hell he's getting at and neither can I.

The story linked above is right to heap scorn on Condi Rice's statement that the attacks were unimaginable before they happened. There was plenty of reason to imagine them before they happened. That in itself doesn't mean that they could have, or even should have, been prevented -- I can imagine a lot of things that I couldn't prevent -- but Rice's statement has always struck me as absurd to the point of being insulting.

Even as a semi-traitorous, Bush-hating liberal, I find the suggestion that there might have been some reason to let those nineteen terrorists fly four planes full of people into four buildings full of people (the fact that they missed one of the buildings is beside the point) to be completely outrageous. What on earth could he mean? Bush's reelection might be more difficult if he actually had to base it on his policies rather than a reflex rally around the leader response to threat? This blow was necessary to mobilize the American people into discarding the Bill of Rights? Do we have some kind of Ultra-like hotline into their communications that stopping the hijackings would have exposed? We needed this to lure fifth-columnist pacifists into the open?

The kindest explanation I can think of is that Reynolds has started inserting weasel phrases like "or even should have" into his prose as a matter of habit and this one just slipped by on autopilot. His mouth got ahead of his brain I hope something like that's true, because the other possibility is means he's finally slipped over the edge from merely annoying to dangerously unhinged.

Circular firing squad alert

Democrats now find themselves sniping at each other over Iraq rather than at the President…

This is from the BBC. If our inability to keep our eyes on the prize is this obvious to foreigners, we are doomed. Whatever respect I once had for Lieberman, Kerry, and Gephart (and I did have some) has completely flown out the door this last week.