Gentle Reader -- You are welcome to peruse my web-based journal. I assure you that my contributions to this medium will be both infrequent and inconsequential. Read on!

GOOD PRESS

My lovely wife got a mention at the top of today's popcandy blogpost because of her comix stylings and mad networking skillz. I met Whitney, the popcandy chica, briefly -- she was very cool. (That's also where I got the item about the Police, below.)

Go Molly! Per popcandy ad astra! posted by Carlton at 9:45 AM

I SMELL BACON

Could this be true -- and if true, does it Rule or Suck?

Every little thing The Police ever did was magic to the band's fans. On
Wednesday, Vancouver's Rock 101 FM's Bro' Jake Show reported that the '80s
rockers were rehearsing at North Vancouver's Lions Gate Studios, preparing for a
highly-anticipated 30-year reunion tour.

posted by Carlton at 9:33 AM

OUT, OUT THE LIGHTS, OUT ALL

After the triple fiascos of Saddam's hanging, the rollout the "surge" and the State of the Union speech, I now believe the following: The war in Iraq is over. There are still soldiers, there is still fighting, but the outcome is already decided. We are defeated. At this point, me may still be able to manage that defeat, control some of its terms, but the ultimate result will be the same.

What is that, you ask? We will withdraw, either in good order or clinging to a helicopter on the Embassy roof, and Iraq will then do whatever it will do. Getting rid of our puppet government is probably high on the list, either by blowing them up or gunning them down or sending them into exile. If I were a Sunni in Parlaiment, I would be checking into procedures for getting a New York City cab driver's license.

This surge plan is showing everyone our underwear -- we've gambled away our trousers, and this is what we have left. Adding even this inadequate number of troops involves taking undesirable measures: extending tours, calling up reserves, pulling units out of Afghanistan (where they are needed). The President can't even sound like he thinks it will succeed -- he tried to act like it wasn't even his plan (see earlier post). At this time, he is much more concerned with his own exit strategy -- from office -- than ours from Iraq.

The play is the tragedy Man, and its hero the Conqueror Worm. posted by Carlton at 1:20 PM

NOTES FROM SOUTH BEACH

For those of you who care, I started the cycle of the South Beach Diet again on or about January 1 of this year. I had good luck with it before, and felt a little piggish after the holidays, etc.
Again, it's working pretty well -- I hit my first goal the other day. If I keep this up, I'd like to get to my ultimate target weight sometime in the summer. That will mean the process has taken a year.

It has been surpising how easy the whole thing has been. I have a health/fitness conscious wife who has been very supportive, and it has been fun relearning what to do with pots and pans. You can eat an awful lot on this diet, so there's no reason to be hungry. Et cetera.

The real surprise, however, was something that dawned on me recently. Before starting this, I would have thought that there would be so many things that I would miss: chocolate, french fries, pizza. I have missed them, it's true, but not to the extent that I expected. The SB book says that your cravings are supposed to disappear after a while, and they have. I haven't had a french fry since July, and I don't really want any now. I had a slice of pizza a few months ago (and it was reeeeeally good), but I don't sit around thinking about it.

What I learned is this: It's not so much that I like these foods, although I do. I like to eat. I like the experience of chewing and swallowing. What I eat is less important that how much there is(or how crunchy!). I came pretty close to derailing this trip through Phase One with raw almonds -- they were there, and I was eating them by the handful.

It may not sound like much, but it fundamentally changes the way I see myself. posted by Carlton at 1:03 PM

RIGHT DECISION FOR NO REASON

Via Kevin Drum, this post from Unfogged (a blog I do not normally read):

So, politically useful as it is, I get a little edgy about rhetoric that
stipulates that abortion is always a strongly morally weighted decision. I don't
think it is, and if it were I'm not certain that my reasons for not wanting to
continue a pregnancy at the time qualify as sufficient to do a wrong thing -- if
abortion is an evil, it's not clear to me what evil would have been the lesser
under those circumstances. But I am thankful every day of my life that I had the
option to end that pregnancy back in 1995.

I'm pretty sure my five readers here represent a pretty wide spectrum of opinion on the abortion issue. Personally, I'm in favor of its legality and availability, probably with a few restrictions that I haven't thought through completely. I am, however, very suspicious of any decision-making process that implicitly requires you to feel something in order to reach the right conclusion.

If you're making a rule that applies to everyone, you have to expect every different type of reaction. If you impose a waiting period, for example, with the expectation that the woman may "think it over" and decide to have the baby, you also have to be ready for the girl who wanted an abortion today to still want one a week from now -- or to want one more. People come in all kinds, from serious to sentimental, hot to cold. If the woman is to have the choice, and I think that she definitely should, we can't ask any more that she make it. She may plumb the depths of her soul, or flip a coin, or pray to a higher power for guidance. Freedom to choose is also, in my book, freedom from having to justify the choice. posted by Carlton at 8:58 PM

MOLLY'S SKETCHBLOG

My wife's blog has long been the top link at the left -- I'd encourage any of you who have a spare moment to go there and scroll down through the goodness. She's good at the drawing, she is. posted by Carlton at 9:51 PM

THE CHAIR YIELDS TO THE GENTLEMAN FROM THE PLANET CETI ALPHA SEVEN

Here's a link to U.S. Rep. David Wu going all Star Trek on the White House. (audio/video) posted by Carlton at 5:27 PM

A VIDEO LINK

Probably only of interest if you like the new Doctor Who.

Here it is. posted by Carlton at 10:02 AM

iPHONE: BURNING QUESTIONS

A partial list: (the rest here)

• How badly will the iPhone’s touch-sensitive screen smudge? Because I am
pretty greasy.

• Will the iPhone be able to synch wirelessly with my computer or
another iPhone? If two or more users touch our iPhones together, will it
multiply our powers?

• Where can I buy powers? Please, please sell powers
as an add-on.

• I heard Steve Jobs’s iPhone includes a Taser. What about
the rest of us – do we get Tasers, too? The cellphone/Taser would be a
killer app.

• How will my greasy hands affect Taser performance? Because I
am pretty greasy.

• How many iPhones would it take to repel a wild baboon?
I had a bad experience with a baboon.

• If I don’t like Cingular’s service, will the iPhone have a self-destruct sequence, like the Enterprise? How far away do I have to run?

• The proximity sensor that turns the touchscreen off when
you bring the iPhone near your head to talk – what about a user who doesn’t have
a head?

posted by Carlton at 9:51 AM

SIX OF ONE, HALF DOZEN OF THE OTHER

Greg (who has a new blog by the way, no link at the mo), asks about the anecdote regarding Bush's lack of awareness of the distinction between Sunni and Shia Muslims as late as just before the invasion of Iraq. I find a reference to it here.

Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W.
Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before
the President ordered troops to invade Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.
In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, Galbraith, the son of the late economist
John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about
the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow
of Saddam Hussein.

Sigh. posted by Carlton at 7:46 PM

CHILDREN OF MEN

. . . is a really good movie. I don't want to say much more about it, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and may very well see it again while Molly is out of town this weekend. posted by Carlton at 11:15 AM

DEFINED TERM

The administration is obsessed with controlling the language of the debate over what to do in Iraq. Is it a “counterinsurgency”? Is it a “civil war”? (Answer: neither. It is chaos.)
The speech last night cemented something for me, though: the Bush people are consistently misusing a term of this debate, and misusing equals misunderstanding.

As Inigo Montoya said: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The word is “Iraq.”

Bush refers to Iraq as though it were a country, like America, and the Iraqis as though they are a group of people who, no matter what their differences, identify as a group, like it or not.

That Iraq doesn’t exist.

In America, even the bitterest political enemies will admit that they are both American – or better yet, will make an insult of the claim that the other is not a “real” American. The underlying assumption is that “American” is a real, if abstract, quality, and that it is an identity that can be waved like a flag or hidden in shame, but that it is real.

Iraq is a geographical area that had its boundaries drawn by Europeans less than a hundred years ago. The people within those boundaries belong to groups that all hate one another with murderous passion – that's too simple, of course, but watch the news and tell me how much. Saddam Hussein, as bad as he was, held a lid down on a boiling pot for decades and made Iraq look like a country. But it isn’t one.

So when Bush speaks of the “Iraqi people,” and what they want or what they are going to do, you can be sure that he doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. posted by Carlton at 11:12 AM

WHOSE PLAN IS IT, ANYWAY?

Last night I watched some television. First I watched the PBS Newshour, in which the anchor (not Jim Lehrer) spoke with the NY Times’ John Burns, who has been in Baghdad since the war started, looks like. (He also looks like across between Kurt Vonnegut and Doctor Who, but whatever -- he's evidently a badass.) They discussed Bush’s new strategy, and Burns made very clear that this strategy was coming from Bush, and that Maliki didn’t like having it imposed on him. (He writes something similar here.)

Then the Newshour cut to David Brooks and Mark Shields chatting with Jim Lehrer about what Burns had just said. That’s funny, said somebody, because the White House has been trying to spread Iraq all over this plan with a knife, hoping that people would identify it as coming from Maliki. They all agreed that it was so, and that they trusted Burns’ information al great deal more than anything coming out of the White House.

Then I watched reruns of the Daily Show and Colbert Report. That’s some funny stuff.
(Colbert made a joke about how Bush can't be hurt at this point because he's already politically dead -- a zombie. I made a similar joke a while back about Dick Cheney. I should write for TV.)

Then, I watched the speech. Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews went through what the President was expected to say: more troops, new plan, last chance. Most significantly, he was going to level with the American people, admit to mistakes (!) and tell the truth about where we are and where we are going.

Bush said:

Only Iraqis can end the sectarian violence and secure their people. And their
government has put forward an aggressive plan to do it.

So, it’s not his plan. It’s their plan.

Then he outlined the plan. The Iraqi government with do this, and the Iraqi government will do that, he said. Here’s part of it:

Now let me explain the main elements of this effort: The Iraqi government will
appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The
Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across
Baghdad's nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18
Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort, along with
local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations --
conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain
the trust of Baghdad residents.

And

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility
for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen
a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil
revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better
life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on
reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower
local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to
allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will
reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering
amendments to Iraq's constitution.

I’m with the PBS boys, in that I believe that this is really Bush’s plan, not Maliki’s. Even putting aside what Burns said, it sounds like the kind of plan that you make for somebody else. First, you’ll have to spend some of your own money to let me know that you are serious. Second, you have to pass some laws that I give you. Don’t talk to me about the legislature not wanting to pass them, you’re the President, make it happen. OK, Prime Minister. Same thing. Third, here’s what you are going to do with your soldiers.

So, Bush can't even cop to his own plan? Sure, he lies all the time, but this time he's making a point of being honest with us, prepping all the spinmeisters and talking heads with the word.

The man can't even be honest without lying.

posted by Carlton at 10:28 AM

FORD, ADDENDUM

In the interest of full disclosure, or something, I feel compelled to mention that I and every other federal employee (save those necessary for national security) had the day off because of his funeral.

I should also mention that federal employees were waiting for the "Gerald Ford vacation day" ever since I've been with the government, and for who knows how long before that. posted by Carlton at 10:49 PM

FORD PREFECT

Molly and I spent New Years' Eve in the company of another nice couple who are a smidge older than we are. At some point over dinner, I asked if anyone had any memories of Gerald Ford as president. I don't, and Molly only remembers the Chevy Chase routine (and that probably from reruns). Our hosts each said they had only the faintest of memories of the man's face on the television.

After Ford's death last week, there have been a passel of opinion articles about the Nixon pardon and whether it was right or wrong, good or bad, vile or sublime. Not having been cognizant at the time, however, I find it hard to have strong feelings about it -- whether it was appropriate or not, the thing is done, and was a fait accompli before I knew my left hand from my right. For those a bit younger than me, the Ford funeral could easily be the first time they've heard about this bit of Presidential history -- more cynically, it's been their first chance to ignore it.

I suppose that in the year 2036, the thirtysomething professionals of that day will think of the Iraq war as something that just happened, that some guys did back in the olden days. Maybe the suspension of habeas corpus, the unlawful wiretaps, the mindless wars, will be as far away from their thoughts as the Nixon pardon and Vietnam are to us. Is that a good thing?

I don't suppose I have a larger point than simply to remark on Americans' (myself included) failure to understand even the most recent of our own history, and that the ability to forget major societal crises is a testament to the stability and resilience of that society. But am I correct? Are we really a nation of fortunate amnesiacs? posted by Carlton at 4:41 PM

LET IT DIE, WHY DON'T I

Just thought I'd mention that, while I can't tell who the (pitifully few) visitors are to this site, exactly, I can tell certain things about how you got here and what part of the world you live in (hello, Roseland, NJ!). So, someone recently was sent here by a Google search for "hate jacob twop." Intrigued, I did the search myself -- and it appears that I'm either a part of the great silent majority or there really are a lot of people out there who think his recaps are the cat's pajamas.

That doesn't mean they suck any less, however!

And why does this page come up titled "legal"? posted by Carlton at 4:32 PM

BACK TO THE BEACH

I'm in the middle of cooking a big mess of collard greens and hoppin' john (a black-eyed pea dish not involving Fergie), but I thought I'd mention that my New Years' resolution is to go through the South Beach phases one more time.

To recap: I started SB in July and lost about 20 pounds, which was great but a bit shy of where I wanted to be. I don't seem to have any problems maintaining this weight if I keep my wits about me, but why not push it a little harder? So, two weeks or so on Phase One, which is fairly restrictive (although this New Years' feast is acceptable, interestingly enough), another few of Phase Two, which is less so, and then we'll see where we are.

Wishing all of you and yours a Happy New Year. posted by Carlton at 3:10 PM