Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:56:31 GMT

An Upopular President Heading Into SOTU.

A quick rundown of recent job approval ratings for the president heading into tomorrow’s State of the Union address:

Time Poll. Jan. 24-26, 2006. N=1,002 adults nationwide. MoE +/- 3%

“In general, do you approve or disapprove of the way President Bush is handling his job as president?”

Approve: 41% (41)
Disapprove: 55% (53)
Unsure: 4% (5)

ABC News/Washington Post Poll. Jan. 23-26, 2006. N=1,002 adults nationwide. MoE +/- 3%

“Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?”

Approve: 42% (46)
Disapprove: 56% (52)
Unsure: 2% (2)

FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll. Jan. 24-25, 2006. N=900 registered voters nationwide. MoE +/- 3%

“Do you approve or disapprove of the job George W. Bush is doing as president?”

Approve: 41% (42)
Disapprove: 51% (49)
Unsure: 8% (9)

Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll. Jan. 22-25, 2006. N=1,555 adults nationwide. MoE +/- 3%

“Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?”

Approve: 43% (50)
Disapprove: 54% (47)
Unsure: 3% (3)

CBS News/New York Times Poll. Jan. 20-25, 2006. N=1,229 adults nationwide. MoE +/- 3%

“Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?”

Approve: 42% (41)
Disapprove: 51% (52)
Unsure: 7% (7)

In each and every one of those polls, the majority of Americans disapprove of the way President Bush is handling his job. And in all but one of them, his numbers have fallen since the last poll; that must be what the press means when they gleefully report on the “Bush Bounce.”

Keep that in mind as the president addresses the nation tomorrow evening — an extremely unpopular leader peddling even more unpopular plans for the country. It’s no wonder an overwhelming majority of Americans want to see him change the course and follow the lead of the Democratic Party.

[Democratic National Committee:]

What is interestig is how much of the media is talking about his numbers improving. These show a slight decline, with over 50% of the people disapproving of his job performance. The media is just too enamored of itself, as I am sure even people on the right are aware.

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:52:49 GMT

U.S. must make entry simple for Canadians. On Jan. 26 we commented on how important it is to us to have a federal government in place in Canada that is sympathetic to working across the border with Americans.
We need to follow up that point by saying the United States needs to return the favor.
Unfortunately our federal government is currently headed the opposite way. [Tidepool's Front Page News for Salmon Nation]

Another law that does nothing but hamper lawful citizens. The only criminals/terrorists this will catch are the ones who are too stupid. And those got caught without this in 2000. The economic effects on border communities will be large though. So, little or no protection, huge economic impact. This county voted for Bush in 2000. They learned their mistake and voted for Kerry in 2004. A quick perusal of the counties along the Canadian border where major commerce occurs reveals that many, if not most, are Blue. So this is the consequence of voting for Kerry, I guess. What a great country!

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:43:39 GMT

Federal Mine Agency Considers New Mine Rules. After one of the deadliest months for coal mining in years, federal mine regulators last week began formally considering safety improvements to help miners survive underground fires and explosions. Among the proposals: mandatory caches of oxygen tanks and breathing masks inside every coal mine.

The idea may have struck some miners as familiar, because it was. A similar proposal was put forward by the same regulators six years ago, only to be scrapped by the Bush administration shortly after it took office. And the oxygen caches were not the only proposed safety improvement to be withdrawn. [Tidepool's Front Page News for Salmon Nation]

Perhaps someone is finally listening. Or not. Let’s see if they actually DO anything.

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:10:32 GMT

TUAW Tip: you can rotate windows, too.

Filed under: OS, Software, Productivity, TUAW Tip

For
today’s TUAW Tip, I thought I’d build on Scott’s tip yesterday
(concerning the Application Switcher) with a simple tip about cycling windows, not applications. Many of us know (or
will soon) that using cmd – tab will switch between applications, but plenty of users still haven’t discovered the
wonders of cmd – ` (the key right above tab), which allows you to switch between windows within an application. So if
you, for example, have a few documents open in Word, cmd – ` will easily let you switch between just those documents,
without having to bother with any other windows and apps you have open.One catch: this works in most apps
such as browsers, iChat and even iPhoto, but not in a select few, such as Photoshop. In fact: if anyone knows how to
cycle windows in Photoshop, please sound off in the comments.

Now that you’re armed with both cmd – tab and
cmd – `, virtually no window is safe from your view. Combine this trick with a little Exposé action and you could obtain the ranking of “OS X
window management ninja.”

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

[The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]

I live by these keyboard commands. Combine these with a 4 button trackball and I am smokin’.

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 04:40:33 GMT

Legitimacy. January 30, 2006, Practically everyone I know spends hours each day wringing his hands over George W. Bush becoming a fascist despot. But Bush is not the one to worry about as far as that goes — anymore than Louis… [Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler]

As often happens in history, people will demand a despot, rather than the other way around. With all the various collapses facing us, I do not doubt that a large group of people will look for a strong man to fix it all. That is one reason why I oppose Bush. Not because he is that strong man, but he is preparing the way for him, making it just that much easier for the despot, benevolent or otherwise, to slip in.

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 05:48:51 GMT

‘State of the Union’ Satire Burns Up Internet.

A hilarious, pitch-perfect satire of the upcoming State of the Union address draws 26,000 viewers in just over 12 hours. | video

READ THE WHOLE ITEM

[Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines]

It is funny. He has the mannerisms down.

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 05:47:47 GMT

U.S. Army Seized Wives as Tactic.

In at least two instances, American forces have seized wives of insurgents as a means of “leverage.” | story

READ THE WHOLE ITEM

[Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines]

Violates the Geneva Conventions. So what, right? One of the Iraqi generals who died under torture while in our custody surrendered because we had arrested his sons. For stuffing the man in a sleeping bag, wrapping iit in cord, sitting on his chect until he died, the soldier was docked a little pay, given a reprimand and given house arrest for a few weeks. And what was really accomplished by torturing a man to death? No useful information and a whle lot of Iraqis who are pissed off.

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 05:35:24 GMT

NBC Viewers Catch Dangling Camera. … [mediabistro.com: TVNewser]

Watch the video. It is really pretty funny.

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 05:27:43 GMT

Gay Civil Rights Bill Passes. in Washington state’s senate … just announced on KUOW (Seattle NPR). Here’s what the Seattle Times is reporting: A gay civil rights measure passed the state Senate today, a major victory for gay rights activists who have watched the measure fail in the Legislature for nearly 30 years. The bill passed on a 25-23 vote, with a lone Republican joining majority Democrats. The measure adds “sexual orientation” to a state law that bans discrimination in housing, employment and insurance. Sixteen states have passed similar laws for gays and lesbians; six… [Booman Tribune]

That lone Republican is the one who represents Redmond, WA, where MS is located. Used to be my State Senator. MS got in a ton of trouble last year for having Ralph Reed as a consultant on this issue and appearing to cave in to the demands of a local preacher. Looks like MS wanted to make a statement.

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 05:20:06 GMT

The Media is Conservative. The media is conservative. All my life I have heard people say that the media is liberal. But the media is not liberal. The media is conservative. The first way in which the media is conservative is demonstrated in their tendency to attack any ideas that are out of the ‘mainstream’. The ‘mainstream’ is pretty much another word for the ‘way things are and have been’. The media falsely considers the way things are to be a fair reflection of how most voters wants things to be. But if a… [Booman Tribune]

Yep. They are but in the old meaning of the word. They do not recognize that the current ‘conservative’ Administration believes in Big Government and interventionist policies.

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 05:17:23 GMT

Another Centrist Voice On Warrantless Wiretaps. Alan Stewart Carl breaks it down… [The Moderate Voice]

This is one of my main thoughts. Even if you wanted to grant Bush the god-like ability NOT to be tempted by too much power, a future president may not be so trustworthy. Our government was designed to prevent power from being concentrated in a single person. Allowing it to happen is, frankly, un-American.

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 05:38:45 GMT

Congress catching up on the importance of blogs. Interesting article from CNet about how members of Congress are using blogs. By noemail@noemail.org (John in DC). [AMERICAblog]

Blogs will increase. It is way too easy to mobilize the grass roots and personalize ones politics. Becoming part of a community means that the community supports you. It makes it easier for people to understand.

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 05:34:54 GMT

Stopping 9/11

I spent yesterday recovering from a particularly nasty flu, hence the lack of commentary on Bush’s speech right here in Kansas, or on Dembski’s speech last night at KU. I was more or less dead to the world at the time.

Hope and Politics explains
why Bush chose Kansas State for his defense of illegal spying.

She also points out
a poll from USA Today
in which 51% of people think Bush was wrong to undertake warrantless wiretapping and 58% think there ought to be a special prosecutor.

Apparently, the head of NSA said yesterday that if we were doing this stuff before 9/11, “we would have detected some of the 9/11 al-Qaeda operatives in the United States.”

This is what we in the business call “revisionist history.” An NSA intercept lead the CIA to a meeting in Kuala Lumpur. The CIA identified several people at the meeting, and followed several of them with varying competence. They failed to ask the NSA to run the names of people through its database, which would have given better names, and running the names through the State Department would have revealed the fact that at least two people had visas to come to the US.

The CIA failed to pass on its information to the FBI, so when one of those men stayed with an FBI informant in LA, no one had thought to ask the informant to keep his eyes peeled.

According to NSA head Michael Hayden (who is now blaming the absence of warrantless spying for 9/11) “Throughout the summer of 2001, we had more than thirty warnings that something was imminent” (from Bamford’s
A Pretext for War
).

The hijackers stayed in a hotel just outside the NSA campus, used their real names, paid with a credit card, etc. They communicated with Afghanistan using internet chat at a local Kinko’s.

Again, according to Bamford “For more than a year, the NSA had occasionally picked up [hijacker] Almihdhar’s phone calls to teh al-Qaeda safe house in Yemen, never knowing that his calls were coming from the United States � or possibly even the same town.”

On Sept. 10, the NSA intercepted two messages, one translates to “The match begins tomorrow,” the other to “Tomorrow is zero hour.” They came from al-Qaeda locations in Afghanistan, but were not translated until September 12.

And this brings us to a key fact about the NSA. Despite having the most powerful assemblage of computers in the world, there is vastly more material coming in than they can possibly analyze in a timely manner. It’s difficult to imagine how increasing the workload would have made them more effective, given that the NSA, like the CIA and FBI, failed to capitalize on all the opportunities that al Qaeda gave them for years prior to 9/11.

- Josh Rosenau [Thoughts from Kansas]

These are the items that will be used to write books about how they let it happen. If Roosevelt let Pearl Harbor happen, then these facts will really be a treasure trove.

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 05:31:54 GMT

Military response to Bush’s speech

via
Blue Girl, Red State
, a former military nurse, who watched from an Officers’ club:

Everyone except the president seems to be painfully aware that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the attacks on America. You could almost hear the audience mentally shouting “Oh Yeah? Where the hell is Osama bin Laden?” when he said we were hunting down the terrorists and fighting them there. Indeed, a chorus of officers shouted just that in the O-club where I was watching and listening.

Indeed.

- Josh Rosenau [Thoughts from Kansas]

This needs no further comment.

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 05:28:43 GMT

Bush Press Conference

In his conference, the President explained that a brief contact with a potential criminal is justification enough for intense surveillance unless the surveillance is politically harmful.

In the first, he explained that it was justifiable on its face to surveil people connected in any loose sense to al Qaeda. The fact that someone is prepared to assert such a connection is safeguard enough.

He’s refusing to release photographs of himself with Jack Abramoff because he talks to lots of people and shakes lots of hands, and doesn’t see why anyone should tar him simply for shaking a hand.

And that would be a fair point if he weren’t insisting that any connection at all to al Qaeda is sufficient to justify intense invasions of privacy.

The logic he’s applying in case 1 is: Person A is suspected of being a criminal, or at least of associating with criminals and wanting to be one. Person B, simply by contacting person A, is a legitimate target of surveillance.

The logic of the second case is: Person A is a confessed criminal and an associate of murderers and other criminals, convicted and indicted. Person B, simply by contacting person A, should not be a target of surveillance.

No one minds surveilling terrorists. That’s fine. Warrants aren’t there to interfere with surveilling criminals, they make certain that the surveillance doesn’t sweep up innocent people. Which is exactly why the administration claims it doesn’t want to release these photos. I wish they’d extend that same protection and some sort of safeguards to the rest of us.

Now the President explains, “FISA passed in 1978� it’s 2006.” Also, he asked his staff if they could do this under the existing law, they said “no,” so we went ahead with it anyway. But he resents the implication that he circumvented the law. Very bizarre.

- Josh Rosenau [Thoughts from Kansas]

Making a logical argument appears to be beyond this man. The lament that if I do it it is not illegal is getting tiresome. He still has not answered why they could not get warrants for these wiretaps. Secret warrants from a secret court (something i find distressing but at least it is the law) that could be gotten 72 hours after the wiretap. If they needed to hear the conversations between the phone calls, what was the reason to not get a warrant? Simply saying that they feel this is legal is not good enough, not from an Administration that has already shown way too much incompetence regarding the rightful use of information it gathers.