A Lot More of Your Tax Dollars at Work (Please Don't Miss the Last Item) January 14, 2005February 28, 2017 MORE WORDS TO LIVE BY Bart: ‘My late mother’s rule: ‘If you have to explain, it is wrong. If you do not want to explain it to your mother, it is absolutely wrong.” ENOUGH WITH THE SLIVERS Tom Roth: ‘Amazing, all that thought squandered on soap slivers when you’re potentially getting creamed with your Google puts! That loss would buy soap for the rest of your life. I handle the sliver guilt by hating the slivers. As soon as the bar breaks in half, cuz the sliver is so thin, it’s right into the trash. And I feel good about getting rid of it.’ Michael Young: ‘Dial soap already has a recess for the slivers. Very slight, but that’s all it takes.’ Jason Burmeister: ‘Vermont Country Store has both a Soap Mizer (sort of like a sponge with a pocket) or a Soap Saver wire basket. Both seem a little less icky than the soap slurry.’ DNC CHAIR John Seiffer: ‘You said ‘The DNC is comprised of 447 members.’ How does one become a member?’ ☞ It’s a mix, beginning with the 112 state chairs and vice chairs (there being 56 states when you include some of the less obvious ones), presuming the chair and vice chair are of the opposite sex . . . or else the chair and the next highest ranking state party official who is of the opposite sex. Most of the other members are elected in each state, except for 79 ‘at large’ members appointed by the chair. Click here for a little of it. (And thanks to the several of you who wrote in with very thoughtful endorsements of two candidates I did not mention, Tim Roemer and Simon Rosenberg.) YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK You’ve read about Armstrong Williams, the conservative radio talk show host whom you (as a taxpayer) quietly paid $240,000 to push for the Bush legislative agenda. Frank Rich provides more background in this coming Sunday’s New York Times (in part): . . . [P]erhaps the most fascinating Williams TV appearance took place in December 2003, the same month that he was first contracted by the government to receive his payoffs. At a time when no one in television news could get an interview with Dick Cheney, Mr. Williams, of all “journalists,” was rewarded with an extended sit-down with the vice president for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a nationwide owner of local stations affiliated with all the major networks. In that chat, Mr. Cheney criticized the press for its coverage of Halliburton and denounced “cheap shot journalism” in which “the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective.” This is a scenario out of “The Manchurian Candidate.” Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit. The interview is broadcast by the same company that would later order its ABC affiliates to ban Ted Koppel’s “Nightline” recitation of American casualties in Iraq and then propose showing an anti-Kerry documentary, “Stolen Honor,” under the rubric of “news” in prime time just before Election Day. (After fierce criticism, Sinclair retreated from that plan.) Thus the Williams interview with the vice president, implicitly presented as an example of the kind of “objective” news Mr. Cheney endorses, was in reality a completely subjective, bought-and-paid-for fake news event for a broadcast company that barely bothers to fake objectivity and both of whose chief executives were major contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Soviets couldn’t have constructed a more ingenious or insidious plot to bamboozle the citizenry. . . . there have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Census Bureau and the Office of National Drug Control Policy have all sent out news “reports” in which, to take one example, fake newsmen purport to be “reporting” why the administration’s Medicare prescription-drug policy is the best thing to come our way since the Salk vaccine. So far two Government Accountability Office investigations have found that these Orwellian stunts violated federal law that prohibits “covert propaganda” purchased with taxpayers’ money. But the Williams case is the first one in which a well-known talking head has been recruited as the public face for the fake news instead of bogus correspondents (recruited from p.r. companies) with generic eyewitness-news team names like Karen Ryan and Mike Morris. . . . [M]ight there be more paid agents at loose in the media machine? . . . [Williams] has told both James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times and David Corn of The Nation that he has “no doubt” that there are “others” like him being paid for purveying administration propaganda and that “this happens all the time.” So far he is refusing to name names – a vow of omertà all too reminiscent of that taken by the low-level operatives first apprehended in that “third-rate burglary” during the Nixon administration. . . . A LOT MORE OF YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK My hope is that elections will happen at the end of this month – I expect a surprisingly large voter turn-out – and that one of the first acts of the new government will be to order the phased withdrawal of most of our troops. (I would assume we will be pushing them very hard to order us to get out.) In the meantime, here is a compelling account of the situation for Iraqis. It’s our war, paid for with our kids’ lives and the money we have borrowed from them, so it’s a matter of some relevance – not to take anything away from our three recent Medal of Freedom awardees – how it has thus far helped and not helped the Iraqi people. It’s a long week-end in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. See you Tuesday.
Words To Live By And How to Run for DNC Chair January 13, 2005February 28, 2017 WOOT Dan Critchett: ‘Don’t forget to remind people that they can get Woot delivered to their Inbox at precisely a minute past midnight Central time by Quickbrowse so they don’t miss out on something good.’ ☞ Good idea! WORDS TO LIVE BY ‘My father used to say: ‘Things are either right or wrong. And if you’re not sure, they’re wrong.” – John Hauge, son of former Manufacturer’s Hanover Bank chairman Gabriel Hauge SOAP SLIVERS Karen: ‘Have you lost your copy of The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn? She would have clued you in to the soap sliver problem, and much more. Admittedly, not as easily as Google, but you’d get all the extra info and reminders about extreme frugality by flipping through the pages. (Other caveat – her focus is raising six kids on $30K/year; not exactly your reference.) But VERY good when it comes to saving money.’ Derek Deer: ‘I’ve been using tiny bits (not much larger than my pinky fingernail) in lieu of dishwasher prewash soap. It works well to loosen up the dishes before the grit kicks in during the main wash. Just toss it into the machine and don’t fill the prewash cup. A little bit goes a LONG way.’ ☞ The prewash cup? Is that what that extra compartment is? Walter Willis: ‘Soap removes the oil from your skin. The oil holds the skin-oil-feeding bacteria compounds that make you stink. It also protects you against bacteria, viruses, and fungi. You do not want to simultaneously remove the skin oil and introduce strange predators to your skin’s ecosystem. Bad idea, BAD IDEA!’ ☞ By strange predators you perhaps refer to the soap slivers I filch when I visit friends. What if I wash their soap first? Rachel: ‘For years I did the soap slurry thing with soap slivers. I even had a really nice Tupperware liquid soap dispenser that someone gave me for this purpose. But the sad truth is that the consistency of the homemade liquid soap was…um…sort of gross. After years of this, I finally built up enough karma to start throwing away the slivers without feeling remorse. It’s liberating to be utterly guilt-free when tossing a sliver into the wastebasket.’ ☞ Yes. Charles keeps saying . . . ‘free yourself!’ Don Hurter: ‘I’m one who grafts the remains of an old bar to the beginning of the new, simply because I always buy the same soap, and in bulk. (Gee, where did I get that recommendation?) One idea I’ve had that would make the grafting process a lot easier is for the soap manufacturers to build a recess into new bars for the purpose of receiving the remains of the old. When the sliver gets small enough (and here, all manner of expensive government studies can be conducted to determine just how ‘small enough’ a bar of soap must become to qualify as a ‘sliver’) the soap operator simply moistens a new bar and presses said sliver into the waiting recess much as one drops a battery into a cell phone. Voila! – the bloodlines are continued. ‘Now this brings up all sorts of questions, not the least of which is whether it’s socially acceptable to graft two different types of soap together if they are not the same species. But you can imagine the imponderables: Will the soap manufactures approve of this idea? (After all, a soap company is in the business of selling soap. Once that’s accomplished, they’d just as soon you throw it out so you need to buy more.) Or might the first adopter of this idea actually ‘lock in’ their customer base because once they reach the sliver stage they’ll have a reason to use the convenient recess feature of a new bar? Will the recess throw off the ‘styling’ of some of the more swoopy bars out there? (Who has the job of styling soap, anyway?) And what do you put in the recess if this were the first bar of soap that you’ve ever owned in your life?’ [A cell phone battery, perhaps?] YOU CAN STILL RUN FOR DNC CHAIR Ian Kaplan: ‘There has been much discussion about choosing a new Chairman of the Democratic Party. This is a topic that I am passionately interested in, since I would like to see the party that claims to represent me change in some important ways. I am embarrassed to say that I have no idea how the chairman is chosen.’ ☞ The DNC is composed of 447 members who will elect the new chair by a majority vote on February 12. Anyone can run. You need persuade only 20 of those 447 to sign your nominating petition by February 10 and you’re in the race. Right now, it looks to me as if Martin Frost and Howard Dean are the front-runners. They are among several terrific candidates who are in the running. Stay tuned. DAN RATHER Jim Petersen: ‘Your comments about the truth in the CBS story imply you are advocating a new standard of journalism – it is OK to use false documents as evidence in a news story as long as you think the story is true.’ ☞ Not at all. I said serious mistakes were made. I just think it’s interesting that none of the reports on this ever mention the underlying story. I think they should. Imagine if the press had pilloried President Bush and his team for citing an obviously forged and previously discredited document in his State of the Union message – without also reporting that the basic argument he was a trying to make (that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was developing more) was TRUE! (Well, or in this case, false. But see? That’s my point. I think it matters whether the underlying story is true or false, and worth a mention. Should some CBS heads have rolled? Probably. And they did. CBS certainly didn’t give its slam-dunk producer a Medal of Freedom.)
Google Puts and Soap Slivers (Really) January 12, 2005February 28, 2017 Google is just the most wonderful company that ever was. Whether it is worth $53 billion is the question of the day, but first let me give you just the latest example of what it does for my life. Soap slivers. For some time now, I have been working my way through a bar of some kind of soap I can’t identify, it’s logo having long since washed away . . . thinking good thoughts – I like this soap, whatever it is – yet hoping for its demise. Once a satisfying handful, this bar of soap has become, as they all do, a sharp-edged sliver, best suited for greasing skids (but I have no skids). I want this soap gone. Not least so I can engage the enticing new bar, filched from a four-star hotel, on deck in the soap bull pen. But what to do? When is one morally justified in killing a bar of soap? (I’d like to say here that with toothpaste I face no such dilemma. I squeeze every last iota from each tube and still get three or four brushfulls before I toss it.) My first thought was to ask you for help. Amongst my estimable readership (yes, you) there resides a collective expertise of astonishing breadth, depth, and good will. But then I realized I didn’t have to trouble you – I could maybe just Google it. And this is as it should be, of course, because you don’t come to this site looking for questions; you come, at least in part, I hope, looking for answers. I managed to hold this thought in my increasingly challenged brain long enough to get from the sink to the tool bar on my browser. (I assume you have placed Google on your toolbar. If not, click here. You will be so pleased you did. Not least because it can ‘autofill’ in your name and address and e-mail and such almost anywhere they’re called for.) 1. I typed SOAP SLIVERS. 2. An instant later, I was an expert. To wit: A participant named Otter, on the Guiding Light Christian Forum: Recently we took about a year’s worth of soap slivers that have been saved up and put them into a plastic tub and added water. We used a potato masher and stirred really well. (A mixer if you have one would be even better.) When you get the soap and water to the consistency of Soft Soap you can add it to an old bottle (we used an old bottle that shampoo came in that had a pump dispenser) and now we have this huge bottle of hand soap for the bathroom. With the soap slivers we had we made enough soap to fill that bottle two or three more times. It’s a perfect way to use all of your bar soap and save money on buying those expensive liquid hand soaps. I have begun my own soap sliver jar. And relieving friends of their soap slivers when I visit. I can’t wait for the day I make soap soup. If you don’t like that idea – and have $3 – you can buy one of these soap sliver hand cloths. Or you can graft the old sliver onto its replacement: The purpose of this soap splicing [writes Raymond Weisling] is twofold. One is that it affords some respect for the pith of the piece that once was much greater. If the outer part provided good service, the inner part should be no different. And secondly, why discard something that is still useful? Nobody will get rich by being thrifty with their soap bars, but it is a starting point toward a greater awareness of thrift in everything we do. If the average soap bar lasts for three to five weeks per person, I figure that about 50 billion bars of soap are produced every year. If 5% of each are discarded it amounts to a quarter million tons of soap going to waste every year. I don’t know who this guy is, but I love him. (You can read his entire essay here. But in a soapnut shell: ‘If a little sliver of soap takes a short bath in warm water it can often become supple enough to conform to the contours of its big brother, the new bar that just arrived. With a little gentle pressure these two will cling together, at first not very tenaciously, but as the relationship develops and each one absorbs something from the slippery, soppy bond, they might well become one until the lesser of the two fades away totally.’) Or you could find this guy and invest in his proposed electric Soap Reanimator. That venture should have a market cap of, oh, say, zero. But what about Google? Is it cheap here at $53 billion? Dear? Last October I admitted to buying Google puts. ‘Google rules,’ I wrote. ‘Google wins! I could not live without it. It has made my life better and our world more productive . . . But what is it worth?’ It came public August 19 at $85 a share and jumped by the end of the day to $100 (which was a truer reflection of supply and demand, because Google had purposely picked a price at which only 74% of the orders were fulfilled, leaving demand for more and the likelihood of a nice first-day bounce). It closed trading Friday at $144, giving the entire enterprise a valuation of $39 billion. What has happened to make the company 44% more valuable than it was at the close of trading 60 days earlier? It’s not as if this was a little-noticed public offering people are only now discovering. I don’t think any public offering has ever attracted more attention. Whatever Google is worth, there might be some employees and insiders wanting to sell shares to buy a Porsche or a house or a plane. According to Yahoo, 38.5 million shares will be freed from lockup 90 days from the day of the offering – November 19, by my rough calculation – and another 177 million shares 90 days after that (February 19 or so) . . . with some more in between . . . which is why, not meaning to be a Googapuss, and perfectly prepared to lose my entire bet, which one so often does when one speculates with options, I bought some March 155 Google puts Friday afternoon. Well, it’s a good thing I was ‘perfectly prepared to lose my entire bet,’ because the stock today is around $195, which makes the right to sell it at $155 worth no more than an electric soap reanimator. (If I had the right to sell shares at $255, that would be good – I could buy them for $195 and ‘put’ them to some poor fool at $255 – ‘let it put it to you this way’ – and laugh all the way to the bank, with a quick detour over to the IRS to share some of my winnings.) The game’s not over yet, to be sure, and some of us compounded our problem by buying more puts at 185 . . . some of those might work out by the third Friday in March. (Options always expire the third Friday of their expiration month. It’s like Thanksgiving, only a week early and a day late and every month of the year and you don’t get to take the day off. I digress.) But it’s not looking terribly good. And I have to tell you – this is not fake good sportsmanship, this is what I really mean – I really don’t mind losing money on this one, if that’s what happens. (I feel terrible if you lose money on it, but that’s a different story.) Look what Google’s done! Their latest effort is to scan essentially every book ever written, 15 million of them, for instant free search and viewing on the net. How cool is that? A very smart, wealthy friend who shorted the stock, writes: ‘They hated it at 115 and 135. Using >Google makes my life better. Shorting Google makes my life miserable. I don’t think this is the top and I don’t think I can hold on much longer.’ What he means by ‘they hated the stock at 135’ is that this is where Google had first hoped to sell shares to the public, but not enough people wanted to buy. Nor would they buy at 115. So if they didn’t want it at 115 a few months ago, why do they clamor for it at 195 today? And the higher it goes, the more he stands to lose. (Unlike buying puts, where you can only lose what you bet, shorting a stock gives you the potential for unlimited loss.) Let’s say he shorted 1,000 shares at $130 and then, not believing his good fortune at the number of fools in the world willing to buy shares from him at this crazy price, shorted another 1,000 shares at 140 and then 1,000 more at 150. But then he got too nervous to short more (that’s what happens) and so now he watches as he loses $3,000 for each point Google gains. Should the stock leap to 400 in a matter of weeks – the way Amazon did a few years back – he’d be out a further $612,000 from here. Some very smart people wind up covering at the top – they are the ones buying at 400, they who know better than anyone that 400 is a ridiculous overvaluation – and this story has been replayed over and over throughout financial history. So the fact that my friend thinks this is not yet the top and may cover his short (however large or small it actually is) could mean that it is the top . . . and, thus, a good time to buy puts. But the fact that he has not yet covered and taken his loss could mean there’s more pain (for him) to come. My own thought is that the high may have been $203.64 this past Monday, January 3. That was the day after ’60 Minutes’ did 40 minutes (less commercials and Andy Rooney) on Google. That’s the sort of event that typically draws in inexperienced buyers at the same time as it signals the smart money that it’s time to get out. But who knows? Who knows how large and profitable the company might grow in a few years? Who knows whether little outfits like Microsoft and Yahoo might someday find a way to compete? I somehow think it’s more likely Google will be worth ‘only’ $10 billion someday (losing four-fifths its value) than $210 billion (a four-fold gain). But if I’ve proved anything since October, it is that I don’t know where GOOG is going. So I sit with my puts expecting to lose . . . but cheering Google on. I’d say something about ‘washing my hands of it,’ to circle back to the soap slivers, but actually the more Google in my life, the happier I am.
Google Puts and Soap Slivers January 11, 2005January 19, 2017 But first . . . HOTEL RWANDA You must see this movie. SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION Click here. (Or not. I’m including this link mainly for my Mom.) WOOT! This site is worth visiting just for its amusing FAQs. Marshall Field’s it is not. For one thing, they sell just one product a day, starting just past midnight, Central time. I signed on seconds later and bought three speaker systems of some kind. I’m not quite sure what it is I bought, really, but they were so cheap, at $12.99, and they bore the Dell logo – I could not resist. Thanks to Steve Sapka for pointing me to this site. I can see the far reaches of the top shelf of my closet filling fast with all this irresistible stuff. DAN RATHER We need to be able to trust what we see and hear on 60 Minutes. Serious mistakes were made. But does it matter at all that the secretary who says she didn’t type the memo in question nonetheless confirms the essence of its content? Does it matter at all that the 60 Minutes story was essentially true? Should that not at least be mentioned from time to time, if only as an ironic twist? Just asking. (Here’s another view of the report.) ECONOMIC OVERVIEW From the Los Angeles Times. In part: Over the next 75 years, the best estimate is that Bush’s tax cuts will cost from $10 trillion to $12 trillion. The prescription drug bill will cost about $8 trillion. All this comes while bills mount for the global war against terrorism. In essence, we’ve voted ourselves more services and lower taxes and billed both to our children through a higher national debt that is soaring again after shrinking in the late 1990s. The combined cost of the tax cut and prescription drug benefit is about five times larger than the projected gap between Social Security’s revenue and its promised benefits over the next 75 years. Yet Washington has decided that the Social Security shortfall is the real crisis. So the administration is discussing changes that would sharply reduce guaranteed Social Security benefits for young workers while protecting benefits for those at or near retirement today. Bush would allow young workers to offset some of the benefit reductions loss by diverting part of their payroll taxes into private accounts they could invest in stocks and bonds. But there’s a hard pit even in that cherry: The accounts would be funded with trillions of dollars in additional debt. Click here to read the rest. All we need do to get things at least largely back in whack is to repeal the tax cuts . . . but only on that portion of your income that exceeds, say, $100,000. A break point like that would exempt the bare essentials of middle-class life. On income above that, you’d be back to Clintonian tax rates. At the same time, we could make the fairly modest tweaks to Social Security suggested here last month. In those two swoops, America’s fiscal house would be largely back in order (though health care would still be an issue), and the intergenerational thievery shut down. And now . . . No, I’m sorry. We’ve run out of time. Tomorrow: Google Puts and Soap Slivers. But seriously: Hotel Rwanda is going to win Best Picture, so you may as well see it now.
Frango Mints and A.G. the New A.G. January 10, 2005February 28, 2017 Tomorrow: Google Puts and Soap Slivers. But today . . . TSUNAMI DEDUCTIONS For those who itemize, Congress has given you a choice: You may deduct charitable contributions made this month for tsunami relief either this year or last year. Kaye Thomas makes it clear and simple here. AOL DEFECTIONS I still use it, but come ever closer to escape. If that’s you, too, this may help you figure out how to make the move without losing your address book or favorite places. (Thanks to Hal Crawford for spotting it.) BOREALIS Jim Labant: ‘Borealis brings to mind the recent book, Copies in Seconds: How a Lone Inventor and an Unknown Company Created the Biggest Communication Breakthrough Since Gutenberg–Chester Carlson and the Birth of the Xerox Machine. Carlson tried to convince dozens of big corporations to develop his invention. Eventually, after 20 years and his patent expired, a successful machine revolutionized copying.’ MARHSALL FIELDS Robert: ‘I’m not surprised your reader couldn’t get his money back for the baby clothes at Marshall Field’s. When that first person you talked about received her money back even after many years [for a bedspread she had gotten as a wedding gift 50 years earlier], the Marshall Field’s store was still owned by the Field family. In 1990, Marshall Field’s was gobbled up by Dayton-Hudson, the same conglomerate that owns Target and several other department store chains. When that happened, Marshall Field’s changed from an upscale Chicago institution that catered to local tastes, to just another department store one might find anywhere. One of the first things they did, for example, was to eliminate the kitchen where the Frango mints were made on the top floor of the flagship store on State Street. The fact that the mints had been made there by hand for over a hundred years didn’t matter; the company thought that it would be better if a candy factory in Pennsylvania that makes house brands for several grocery stores made the Frango mints. This kind of reflects the attitude that Dayton-Hudson had and why they lost money when people stopped shopping at Marshall Field’s. Marshall Field’s is now owned by May Department Stores. I don’t when May acquired it from Dayton-Hudson.’ OUR NEW ATTORNEY GENERAL Bernard Kerik proved not to be the best choice to head the Department of Homeland Security. What are we to make of Alberto Gonzales, our soon-to-be A.G.? The letter that follows is harsh; but it does make you wonder what message we send the world when we select the man generally credited with paving the way for torture to be our Attorney General. The letter: Dear Mr. Gonzales By Marjorie Cohn t r u t h o u t | Perspective Monday 10 January 2005 Dear Mr. Gonzales, You have been rewarded for your unflinching loyalty to George W. Bush with a nomination for Attorney General of the United States. As White House Counsel, you have walked in lockstep with the President. As Attorney General, you will be charged with representing all the people of the United States. Your performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday verified that you will continue to be a yes-man for Bush once you are confirmed. In the face of interrogation by members of the Committee, you waffled, equivocated, lied, feigned lack of memory, and even remained silent, in the face of the most probing questions. Your refusals to answer prompted Senator Patrick Leahy to say, “Mr. Gonzales, I’d almost think that you’d served in the Senate, you’ve learned how to filibuster so well.” Even though the Department of Justice retracted the August 2002 torture memo, and replaced it with a new one on the eve of your confirmation hearing, you still refuse to denounce the old memo’s narrow and illegal definition of torture. You permitted that definition to remain as government policy for 2 1/2 years, which enabled the torture of countless prisoners in U.S. custody. You continually evaded inquiries about your responsibility for drafting the now-repudiated memo by portraying yourself as a mere conduit for legal opinions from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. This puzzled Senator Russ Feingold, who said, “If you were my lawyer, I’d sure want to know your opinion about something like that.” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told you, “I think we’ve dramatically undermined the war effort by getting on the slippery slope in terms of playing cute with the law, because it’s come back to bite us.” Indeed, 12 retired professional military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces wrote to the Judiciary Committee, expressing “deep concern” about your nomination because detention and interrogation operations which you appeared to have “played a significant role in shaping” have “undermined our intelligence gathering efforts, and added to the risks facing our troops serving around the world.” When Senator Graham, an Air Force judge advocate, asked you if you agreed with a professional military lawyer’s opinion that the August memo may have put our troops in jeopardy, you were tongue tied. You said nothing for several embarrassing seconds, until Senator Graham suggested you think it over and respond later. When Senator Richard Durbin asked “Do you believe there are circumstances where other legal restrictions, like the War Crimes Act, would not apply to U.S. personnel?” you again sat mute for several seconds, and then asked to respond later. It is alarming, Mr. Gonzales, that a lawyer with your pedigree would be stumped into silence by these questions. You have taken the unprecedented step of advising the President that the Geneva Conventions have become “obsolete.” You testified that since “we are fighting a new type of enemy and a new type of war,” you “think it is appropriate to revisit whether or not Geneva should be revisited.” You admitted preliminary discussions are already underway. The 12 former military leaders wrote, “Repeatedly in our past, the United States has confronted foes that, at the time they emerged, posed threats of a scope or nature unlike any we had previously faced. But we have been far more steadfast in the past in keeping faith with our national commitment to the rule of law.” Mr. Gonzales, you have concurred in, even commissioned, advice that led to the following: Sodomy with a broomstick, chemical light, metal object Severe beatings Water boarding (simulated drowning) Electric shock Attaching electrodes to private parts Forced masturbation Pulling out fingernails Pushing lit cigarettes into ears Chaining hand and foot in fetal position without food or water Forced standing on one leg in the sun Feigned suffocation Gagging with duct tape Tormenting with loud music and strobe lights Sleep deprivation Hooding Subjecting to freezing/sweltering temperatures “Dietary manipulation” Repeated, prolonged rectal exams Hanging by arms from hooks Permitting serious dog bites Bending back fingers Intense isolation for more than 3 months Grabbing genitals Severe burning Stacking of naked prisoners in pyramids Injecting with drugs Leaving bullet in body of wounded prisoner Taping naked prisoner to board Shooting into containers with men inside Keeping prisoners in small, outdoor cages Pepper spraying in face Forcing heads into toilets and flushing Threatening live burial, drowning, electrocution, rape and death Beating prisoners to death Killing wounded prisoners Throwing off bridge into river and drowning Rape Murder Saddam Hussein would be proud of you, Mr. Gonzales. Perhaps most alarming was your response to Senator Durbin’s question, “Can U.S. personnel legally engage in torture under any circumstances?” You answered, “I don’t believe so, but I’d want to get back to you on that.” You failed to give a categorical “no” answer. You surely know, Mr. Gonzales, that the Convention Against Torture prohibits torture at any time. That treaty, ratified by the United States and therefore part of the Supreme law of the land under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, says, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability, or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.” Mr. Gonzales, based on your record and your performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have critical concerns about your appointment as Attorney General. I believe you would stand mute if George W. Bush told you he planned to collapse the three branches of government into one, destroying the Constitutional separation of powers. Even though Article, Section 8 of the Constitution gives only Congress the authority “to make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water,” you refused to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that the President is not above the law. You think the President has the power to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional. You would rationalize the torture of prisoners. Where even the strident John Ashcroft thought prisoners in United States custody are entitled to due process, you designed the military tribunals to deny it to them. As counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush, you wrote abbreviated clemency memos in capital cases omitting crucial defenses such as ineffective assistance of counsel, even evidence of factual innocence. Your counsel led Bush to deny pardons in 56 of 57 death penalty cases. You sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the American people for seven hours with a smug grin on your face, lying to us, knowing you will be confirmed. Your testimony led the New York Times to opine, “Mr. Bush had made the wrong choice when he rewarded Mr. Gonzales for his loyalty,” and the conservative Washington Post to say, “The message Mr. Gonzales left with senators was unmistakable: As attorney general, he will seek no change in practices that have led to the torture and killing of scores of detainees and to the blackening of U.S. moral authority around the world.” The Post concluded, “Those senators who are able to reach clear conclusions about torture and whether the United States should engage in it have reason for grave reservations about Mr. Gonzales.” You will have the distinction of being the first Latino Attorney General of the United States. You come from humble roots in Humble, Texas. You should understand the struggles of people of color, yet you have turned your back on them. As overseer of the policies that led to the torture of myriad people of color in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, you have betrayed your roots. Your actions have shamed us in the eyes of the world and endangered our fighting men and women. You do not deserve to be our country’s top prosecutor, head of the Department of Justice, charged with protecting our civil rights. Mr. Gonzales, you should be ashamed. Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.
Pat Revealed January 7, 2005January 19, 2017 MARSHALL FIELDS – Counterpoint Chris Hanacek: ‘About two years ago, when I still lived in Chicago, I tried to return a baby gift that my daughter had received. It was the wrong size. I had a gift receipt, but they changed their policy to only accept returns within 90 days of purchase and wouldn’t give me a thing. No money, no credit, no exchange. The supervisor and manager provided no better solution. I asked for a scissor and cut up my Fields charge in front of them. True story.’ BOREALIS Stuart: ‘Your discussion of Borealis today set off warning bells. I am a physicist with a lot of experience developing bleeding-edge technology (not electric motors though). There is one classic sign of a bogus technology. It is that the technology is not only revolutionary, but none of the standard tests confirm it. Think Cold Fusion. An example in my own field is room temperature superconductivity. There are standard tests to determine if a material is superconducting. Yet mysteriously none of the discovered ‘room temperature superconductors’ can ever be tested the standard way. ‘Testing the torque and efficiency of a motor is not rocket science. Besides, if the company doesn’t have $100,000 in funds to prove its technology, then how could it ever develop a product? It does take around 25 years for a new technology to develop into products (even something as simple as vulcanized rubber). If the company showed tests that were only marginally better than what currently exists, saying they have to develop the technology more to achieve their expected performance, then I would be more willing to believe them.’ Scott Nicol: ‘The whole part about not spending $100k to run a real test just about says it all. An individual could pull off $100k by maxing out a few credit cards (not the greatest method, but it’ll work), remortgage the house, hit up relatives, etc. Or cut a deal with the university that does the testing. Any way you slice it, $100k is easy. I’m 100% convinced it is a scam. Either out-and-out, or the principals are simply deluding themselves.’ Jonathan Hochman: ‘We need to have much more patience. Do you know when the first patent was issued for the barcode scanner? 1952. How long it took to commercialize the technology? On June 26, 1974, all the tests were done, all the proposals were complete, all the standards were set, and at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, a single pack of chewing gum became the first retail product sold with the help of a scanner. ‘As for not paying $100,000 to test the motor, I imagine that there is no point in spending that money, because Borealis is going to work with manufacturing partners, such as Boeing, who will test the motors for free; and even if the motor works well, the more important question is whether it can be manufactured at a reasonable cost. In my view, red flags would go up if Borealis ordered a study and took the results public. The public isn’t their market. If the technology has promise, they will cut development deals with large industrial conglomerates who can provide funding. We need to watch the progress of those deals.’ Derek Rose: ‘I have been a fan of Borealis for several years now. I own a few shares in the Chorus Motors subsidiary, as I reckon it will be the first to do bankable deals. I sometimes have a drink with a friend who works occasionally for Borealis. He is a quantum physicist who helps out with their mathematical modeling for Power/Cool Chips and has done so for several years now. I was skeptical, but I am becoming more convinced with time that what they have is real. As a qualified mining engineer I can see the potential of their Roche Bay project especially allied to their revolutionary green steel manufacturing process although I have little knowledge of the process. But it is Power and Cool Chips that really excite me. The incredible efficiency of these chips . . . for example, the idea that a Cool Chip half the size of small envelope could potentially replace all the tubes, compressor, and liquids in your fridge, freezer, air conditioning, computer cooling and run at a fraction of the cost is mind boggling in its implications. And the Power Chips as a source of cheap, reliable and non-polluting electricity is awesome. It can be used to increase the efficiencies of existing technology but more importantly, if successfully scaled up, will require a whole new paradigm in engineering thinking allowing previously impossible things to be done. ‘I understand that already Boeing and Rolls Royce have been playing with Power Chips by surrounding the exhaust of engines to generate efficient electricity and the American military is testing Power Chips as a remote power source for communication devices. How true/advanced these tests are I do I not know as it is hearsay at present. Borealis runs as an Internet company with scientists and engineers employed as needed in various countries, Russia and my own country, the UK. Most employees as I understand are paid in shares which firstly makes the overheads very low and as scientists must realize the value of their work or they wouldn’t accept this form of payment. My own friend is one of these and is a believer in their technology. We have speculated over a drink on the implications. We have laughed over an electric car powered by a block of ice and wondered about linked carpets of power chips on the tops of mountains to use the temperature differential between snow underneath and sunlight on top to produce cheap electricity in developed and undeveloped countries. I notice now that they have a patent on an electric car. Perhaps our fantasies were not so far off the mark. Whether it will all ends in tears I do not know but as a person who despairs over the future of our planet, Borealis does at least offer some hope of correcting some of the environmental abuse we have subjected her to. ‘Please keep writing about them. I value your independent and cynical judgment, as it is easy to be carried away by what is after all very experimental technology. Do you know of any public Internet bulletin boards where Borealis or its subsidiaries are discussed? I have searched on the net with no success.’ ☞ ‘Cynical?’ Me?? Never, sir! Skeptical, yes. Wry. Sarcastic when I can’t help myself. But not cynical. (Just so you know, right now I am being jaunty.) But actually, of course, I appreciate your comments, which at the very least fuel my own wishful thinking. The only message board I know of that discusses Borealis is over at Raging Bull. And, like many stock-market message boards, the level of discourse is . . . well, not always inspired. I would add two things: As always, it’s important to stress that no one should gamble even a dime on this that he or she cannot truly afford to lose. If Chorus Motors does prove real, your stock will soar. But stock in the parent company would likely do better. (Not that you’d be complaining.) Each Borealis share represents ownership of – very approximately – one share in each of the subsidiaries. So why pay $11 for a share of CHOMF when you can buy a share in BOREF for $8.50 and get the equivalent of a share of CHOMF – plus a share each in COLCF, PWCHF, and RCHBF tossed in “for free?” As well as a stake in all their other incubating technologies, whatever those may turn out to be. (As hinted yesterday, I am hoping they will come out with an aerosol spray I can use to render myself invisible.) PAT’S A ——! Sue Hoell: “As you probably actually know, Pat was played by a female, Julia Sweeney. You may not know that Julia has recently become very active in the Freedom From Religion Movement, ffrf.org, a shining light in a world subject to so much religious oppression.” ☞ Mass gender confusion, atheism – this woman alone could add a point to the Rapture Index. RAPTURE Emily Rizzo: “When I was phoning for Kerry in our rural, heavily conservative area, one gentleman, a registered Democrat, explained that he was voting for Bush because he was hastening the Rapture by waging the war in Iraq. All I could do was remind him to vote on Wednesday.”
Disrobing Pat Finally! Borealis Revealed. January 6, 2005February 28, 2017 But first . . . THE ‘TICK SCAM’ SCAM Several of you wrote to tell me that the scam alert Roger sent in Monday is actually bogus. People are not really ringing your doorbell and asking you to dance around naked to shake the deer ticks off so they can see you naked. I find it a little scary that anyone could have imagined this was not simply a joke (bulletin: a guy didn’t really walk into a bar with a talking dog, and the dog didn’t really order a gin and tonic), but I know at least two of you who wrote in, and you are very, very bright people. So it just goes to show. And now (while we’re talking about seeing people naked) . . . DISROBING PAT Do you know the old Saturday Night Live sketch, ‘It’s Pat’? Where the long-running joke was that . . . well, you didn’t want to come right out and ask, but – and this is really embarrassing – you just for the life of you couldn’t figure out whether Pat was a man or a woman. Pat claimed to be dating Chris, for example – what kind of clue is that? The Pat sketch developed such a following they even made it into a movie. (‘So dreadfully bad it’s good,’ wrote one viewer.) Not that it mattered what gender Pat was, but it just annoyed the heck out of you that you couldn’t figure it out. Was Pat played by an actor or an actress? Now, imagine this same frustration multiplied, oh, maybe a thousand fold, because you happen to have some cash riding on the outcome. This is how I feel about Borealis, the stock I first introduced as ‘surely going to zero’ when it was $3.50 or so five years ago, and that – disclosing each time that I own a ton of it, and cautioning you not to risk even a penny on it that you cannot truly and cheerfully afford to lose – I have been writing about ever since. The stock these days is around $8. This week they were issued yet two more patents. (‘Mesh Connected Electrical Rotating Machine with Span Changing,’ #6,838,791, and ‘Polyphase Hydraulic Drive System,’ #6,837,141.) Is Borealis real? Not real? How hard, by now, should it be to be able to tell? As regular readers of this column know, the company claims to have, among other things, a revolutionary electric motor that delivers far more oomph (I’m sorry, but technical terms can sometimes not be avoided) than traditional motors. If true, the implications are huge (Boeing, for one, is testing whether its 767s could drive around the tarmac like golf carts) – and it would suggest that Borealis’s other claimed bonanzas should be taken seriously as well (a chip with no moving parts that converts heat to electricity; one of the world’s richest iron ore deposits conveniently located near a deep water Canadian dock-site; and more). Indeed, one of the reddest of many red flags with Borealis (a company with no debt and a market cap so small that if it were real, it could easily explode a hundredfold) is that it has not one astonishing, undiscovered bonanza, but several. So I continue to assume that this can’t be real . . . and then noises are made about how Boeing or Rolls Royce or Semikron have not dismissed it out of hand . . . and, well, FOR GOD’S SAKE, PAT, TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES! (As David8733 put it in his October 27, 2003, post on the imdb message board: ‘is pat a man or a woman? i need to know cause its bugging the hell out of me.’) Now that they have a prototype 1.5 horsepower Chorus Motor, why can’t they just have it tested side-by-side against a regular motor? Is this an astonishing breakthrough or isn’t it? If I claimed to be able to make myself invisible, and you were skeptical, wouldn’t it make sense for me to grab your arm and then – while still gripping it firmly – disappear? I called an old, trusted friend who works with these folks and – despite having no technical background himself – believes it’s all real. ‘Have you ever actually seen one of these motors,’ I ask him. ‘Yes. We have prototypes. You can go see one of them yourself.’ ‘But I wouldn’t know what I’m looking at – and neither do you. Can’t you just get them tested by some independent lab?’ Well, it’s not that simple, he tells me. Which is one more reason I’m all but certain Pat is a man (or a woman) and that I will lose all my money. Apparently, electric motor technology is so stodgy, so established, so set in its ways, he tells me, that virtually no one even studies it any more. There are only two real experts that he knows of, one at M.I.T. . . . who won’t even go look at what they’re doing because he’s sure it’s impossible (so why don’t you take it to him, I ask) . . . and another at a well known university in the heartland, who has seen it. ‘What’s his name,’ I want to know. My friend tells me a name, not exactly sure how to spell it. ‘Can I call him?’ ‘Sure!’ So now, after five years of this nonsense, I finally get to disrobe Pat. One way or the other. I Google my best approximation of the spelling of this guy’s name and university, and darned if it doesn’t come right up – he is vice chairman of the electrical engineering department. (I am being vague about who he is because I called him as a private investor, not to be interviewed on the record.) I e-mail asking whether I can call and he e-mails back to try him before lunch. I call and get his machine. I call 15 minutes later – again, the machine. (I’m not sure what time heartland professors have lunch, but I know it’s an hour earlier there – have I missed him?) I call 15 minutes later – and there he is! Forgive the melodrama, but I’ve been waiting a long, long time for this, and, well, a small fortune is at stake – namely, the one I would make if Borealis really can turn base metals into gold, or whatever they will announce next. Yes, said the professor, he knows these people. (Score one!) They are very sharp and serious about their work. (Score two! Score three! Score six!) But academics are pretty conservative, he says, and he hasn’t been in touch with them for quite a while (he did not know about the Boeing developments, for example), and it would cost a modest – but not a trivial – amount (something less than $100,000) to test the motor in a thorough way, which he has offered to do, but they did not have the budget for. My worry, of course, is that if any of this were real, the company would have been falling all over itself to get him to test and verify it. And the only reason I can think of that they haven’t is that, well, they know deep down that this is all a dream. But is it? The professor says he understands the technology and believes that it has merit. So – if he’s right – Borealis is not a scam scam (in the sense of actors pretending to be scientists or scientists consciously faking results). And that would mean they could have some very valuable patents. So Pat remains clothed – probably a woman, but almost surely a man. Could it be like television? An astonishing and legitimate technology that did eventually change the world . . . but that made no one a dime from the year of its invention (1926, I think) to sometime after the end of World War II? Boeing’s test is scheduled for April. At that point, the Boeing 767 will either tool jauntily along the tarmac powered by one of our Chorus Motors – or it won’t. And we will finally know. Or not. My assumption is that the test will be postponed or – somehow – inconclusive. How could it be inconclusive? The writers from Saturday Night Live could come up with a dozen different scenarios. And so I continue to believe that this is an all but irresistible gamble – but only to the extent you could accept a total loss without the slightest hardship or remorse.
Gee-Gees January 5, 2005February 28, 2017 Lynn: ‘Forget those Rapture fanatics. Here are better things to worry about. But have some champagne first!’ ☞ You can relax about giant asteroids hurtling toward Earth. It seems we may be able to deflect them before too long. But an Atlantic tsunami far worse than the current Indian Ocean catastrophe is just waiting for a 500 billion ton rock in the Canary Islands to drop. You should really click the link above (and make out your will). (Except that, of course, it very likely won’t drop for hundreds of years – one estimate puts the chances in any given century at 5% – and there’s not much point worrying about it, because my plan for a continuous convoy of tanker trucks pouring epoxy glue into the fissure seems not to be workable.) And then, while you’re feeling smug that you live nowhere near the Atlantic coast, click here. There aren’t many supervolcanic spots around the world (‘the last supervolcano to erupt was Toba 74,000 years ago in Sumatra . . . ten thousand times bigger than Mt. St. Helens’), but one of them lies under Yellowstone National Park. It erupts roughly every 600,000 years – most recently 640,000 years ago. Cataclysms like these are called Gee-Gees – Global Geophysical Events. Thanks for helping the tsunami victims.
A Word, A Scam, And More January 4, 2005January 19, 2017 A WORD But just a word – because I can’t imagine what I could really add: it’s great that so many are rallying around to help. More than 168,000 donations have come in to the American Red Cross already through Amazon’s ‘one-click’ feature alone. (Amazon is taking no processing fee on these transactions.) We are at our best when we are helping others. A SCAM From Roger: Subject: Tick Scam Subject: FW: WARNING WARNING WARNING Send this warning to everyone on your e-mail list! It’s urgent. If someone comes to your front door saying they are conducting a survey on deer ticks and asks you to take your clothes off and dance around to shake off the ticks, do not do it! IT IS A SCAM; they only want to see you naked. I wish I’d gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid … A REPUTABLE RETAILER Deborah Peifer: ‘Loved the Marshall Field’s story, and I have one of my own. When she was 20, my grandmother bought an umbrella from Field’s. It came with a lifetime guarantee. When she was 65 it broke, and she took it back to Field’s. Her reasoning was that nowhere had the guarantee said that she had to die before she was 65. Field’s didn’t give her a refund (which would have been about $1.50). Instead, she was allowed to choose any umbrella she wanted, with the promise that if it broke, it would be covered under the same guarantee. I’ve lived in California for 12 years, and I still miss Field’s!’ AN I.O.U. I owe you some thoughts about money every once in a while . . . and the 10 Commandments of E-Mail . . . and the denouement of the calico cat story. The days fly by, but I have not forgotten. THE RAPTURE Randall Harris: ‘I don’t doubt the accuracy of the Bill Moyers speech, but I think some of the ideas attributed to Christian fundamentalists are not as widespread as he implied. Having spent more than 40 years as a Christian fundamentalist myself, I have some insight into their beliefs. I fear Bill Moyers has committed a journalistic blunder by lumping together the majority of Christian fundamentalists and the fanatical fringe. You liberals are careful to make a distinction between the reasonable majority and the radical minority when it comes to the Muslim religion. Please extend that same courtesy to the Christian religion.’ ☞ I don’t know how large the group is that Moyers was speaking about. But with 62 million copies of the Left Behind series sold (or some number in that ballpark), I wouldn’t be surprised if, as he estimated, it were several million. Enough, for example, to determine a presidential election and the course of history. So while you are completely right that people shouldn’t be lumped together (and I expect Moyers agrees), I do think he was within bounds to express his concerns. (FYI: The Rapture Index, updated yesterday, stands unchanged from last week at 155.) Dave: ‘You are on the wrong track and, uncharacteristically, insulting, biased and, yes, doing just what you accuse gay bashers of doing. I too find the Rapture idea odd, to say the least. But let’s let others think what they want, and, no, I do not feel they are a danger. Moyers is a danger with his diatribe.‘ ☞ People should surely be free to believe what they want (and be treated decently as the fellow citizens that they are). But I wonder whether it’s not fair game to perceive a danger in people who look forward to a rapturous apocalypse, and to comment thereon. Toby Gottfried: ‘This Rapture nonsense is not all that the family LaHaye is up to. Mrs. LaHaye is the founder and chairperson of Concerned Women for America, one of the staunchest components of the Religious Right. Read about the group here.’ ☞ I did. They have every right to hold conservative views (as I’m sure you’d agree). I just wish they would not attempt to impose them on others through legislation. OK . . . tomorrow the big rock. But beware: it could give you the heebee-gee-gees.
A Story and a Quiz January 3, 2005February 28, 2017 A STORY FOR THE NEW YEAR ‘My mother told me that when her parents were married – my grandparents – one of the gifts they got was a beautiful bedspread,’ recalled Nell Minow, the wonderful corporate responsibility guru and movie critic, to a group of us this past weekend. Apparently, it was a really exquisite gift – so much so that they decided not to take it out of its packaging, but rather wait for a really special occasion. Well, the children were born and there were holidays and anniversaries . . . we won World War II . . . and yet somehow, the time never exactly seemed right. ‘And then,’ Nell’s mother told her, ‘your grandfather died.’ Long, wistful pause. ‘And my mother took the bedspread’ – [here I expected her to say something about draping the casket] – ‘and took it back to Marshall Field, unopened after all those years, and got a refund.’ Shorter pause. ‘Do you see what I’m trying to tell you, Nell?’ ‘Yes, Mom,’ Nell replied. ‘I think I do. Live for today. Make every moment count. Don’t let life pass you by . . .’ ‘Oh,’ replied her mother, thrown slightly off center. ‘Well, yes. I suppose that, too. But the point I wanted to make . . . always deal with a reputable retailer.‘ (Nell tells it better, but I did my best.) QUIZ If you have time for fooling around, here is the New York Times 27-question 2004 Trivia Quiz. I don’t have time for fooling around, but couldn’t resist. I got 18 right, putting me at the top of the ‘well-informed’ range, just below ‘suspiciously well-informed’ and safely short of (23 or more) ‘get a life.’ Tomorrow: A word – but just a word – about the horrendous devastation abroad . . . and supervolcanic reasons to enjoy that bedspread now, while you can (and one very large rock in the Canary Islands)