Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Democrats have delivered the Square Deal, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and now… the Big Joe Biden Deal.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Fight them, without becoming them!

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

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Archives for February 2006

Friday Beer Blogging – The Joy Of Black Lager

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On the other side of town my wife and I have found the best German food outside of her native Alsace, a place called Max’s Allegheny Tavern where we enjoy Schnitzel Lichtenstein and rabbit or a sausage plate for me. WIthout exception, over the thick German sauces we choose a fine black lager, or schwarzbier, from Kostritzer, served from the tap in mason jars. How do you describe a black lager? It looks like a stout but comes across more like a light ale, with a dry bitterness that complements thick sauce on a schnitzel perfectly.

Historically schwarzbier constitutes one of the happy discoveries that occurred when the west and east finally reconciled their differences over the broken pieces of the Berlin Wall. Like a barely-remembered and believed-extinct species Black Lager survived communism and has only begun to penetrate the west. Michael Jackson (the other Michael Jackson) has this brief travelogue from schwartzbier country:

While in Leipzig, I was very taken with the Schwarzes Bier as rendered by the city’s small (35,000-hectolitre) Bauer Brewery.

This beer has a purply colour so dark as to be almost slatey; a malty aroma; and solid flavours reminiscent of liquorice toffee. Despite its bigness, it slipped down easily. Its original gravity is 1046-7 and alcohol 4.8.

The Bauer Brewery was established in 1881, and its founder’s great-great grandson continued to work there during Communist rule. In 1990, the family regained control, and the following year the black beer was introduced as a speciality, in a range that also includes a Helles (pale lager), a hoppier Pils and a Bock. This year, Bauer hopes to open a brewery tap.

My nose hasn’t yet developed to the point where I can offer a credible review, aside from heartily recommending a good schwarzbier with German cuisine or dessert, but you don’t need me when you can peruse dozens of informed reviews at the Beer Advocate. The upshot: recommended.

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Today’s non-beer alternative is McEwan’s Scotch Ale, an excellent example of the full-bodied variety made by those francophiles at the northern end of the British Isles.

McEwan\'s
A wee dram won’t do it

But, you say, McEwan’s is beer. Piffle. McEwan’s tastes like they made it in scotch barrels from which they forgot to take the scotch out first. A great six-pack, if pricey, which I regret that I haven’t yet found here in PA.

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More Trouble At NASA

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Following up on two earlier posts, today’s WaPo has an extended hit piece on NASA Inspector General Robert W. Cobb. The general theme should sound familiar to administration-watchers out there: inappropriately-appointed unqualified supervisors, waste, fraud and a hostile environment that drives the career professionals out the door. Let’s tick off the familiar aspects of a recurring pattern over the last few years.

First, there’s the refusal or inability of appointed officials charged with oversight to simply do their job.

Written complaints and supporting documents from at least 16 people have been given to investigators. They allege that Cobb, appointed by President Bush in 2002, suppressed investigations of wrongdoing within NASA, and abused and penalized his own investigators when they persisted in raising concerns.

Next, the general problem of filling demanding posts with unqualified hacks:

Under the Inspector General Act of 1978, the president appoints independent officials to monitor Cabinet departments and larger federal agencies through audits and investigations. Cobb is among four of 11 inspectors general appointed by Bush who previously worked in the White House, and one of nine with no audit experience.

Yep, Cobbie, you’re doing a heck of a job.

The inevitable friction when oversight may result in making the management look bad:

Many described Cobb as abusive to subordinates and dismissive of their abilities. “He would cut people off, get up and leave during meetings,” said Dan Samoviski, who retired in 2004 as deputy IG director for audits at NASA headquarters. “Personally, I just think he created a hostile work environment.”

Dennis Coldren, the retired manager of space station and space shuttle audits, was one of several who described Cobb as a “bully,” and several sources also said they believed Cobb was too friendly with then-NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe. They said Cobb suppressed audits, stopped investigations and otherwise edited IG activities to avoid embarrassing the agency or its leadership.

The fiscal mismanagement:

In another complaint filed with the Integrity Committee, IG auditor Carroll Tom Hassell described how “a person in a South American country” over three days in late 2002 logged into the Marshall Space Flight Center’s supposedly secure computer system, stole space shuttle data valued at $1.9 billion and shipped it to a third country. The complaint said Cobb’s office refused to report the theft to the Commerce Department as an illegal transfer of intellectual property.

Steve Benen observes that as long as Congress refuses to fill its role in government oversight, the Inspectors General have become the only remaining oversight body. It may seem like an unhappy coincidence that a catastrophically incompetent government happens to have a Congress that won’t investigate and Inspectors who won’t inspect, but it’s not. It’s a prerequisite. Josh Marshall recently pointed out that just like sunlight is often the best disinfectant, rot flourishes in the dark:

The president’s critics are always accusing him of law-breaking or unconstitutional acts and then also berating the incompetence of his governance. And it’s often treated as, well … he’s power-hungry and incompetent to boot! Imagine that! The point though is that they are directly connected. Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It’s a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power. Katrina was a good example of this.

Amen. Proper oversight at every level will go a long way towards giving us a government capable of actually governing.

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How Boehner Won

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The Cincinnati Post has an interesting piece on how John Boehner won that provides some background on the race, but the article spends too little attention on the impact of John Shadegg entering the race. I point the article out because it contained the following phrase:

Boehner, a perpetually tanned conservative, had spent much of the past year meeting secretly with Republicans who complained about the current leadership team, especially Blunt and his mentor, DeLay, and encouraged Boehner to launch a political comeback. More than a year ago, Blunt and Boehner discussed how they may soon be pitted against one another in face-off over DeLay’s successor.

I had always thought he looked a little tan.

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The End of the Intertrons?

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Jeff Chester has very disturbing piece in the Nation about the future of the internet:

The nation’s largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.

Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets–corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers–would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.

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Why are the Bells and cable companies aggressively advancing such plans? With the arrival of the long-awaited “convergence” of communications, our media system is undergoing a major transformation. Telephone and cable giants envision a potential lucrative “triple play,” as they impose near-monopoly control over the residential broadband services that send video, voice and data communications flowing into our televisions, home computers, cell phones and iPods. All of these many billions of bits will be delivered over the telephone and cable lines.

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These “deep packet inspection” technologies are partly designed to make sure that the Internet pipeline doesn’t become so congested it chokes off the delivery of timely communications. Such products have already been sold to universities and large businesses that want to more economically manage their Internet services. They are also being used to limit some peer-to-peer downloading, especially for music.

But these tools are also being promoted as ways that companies, such as Comcast and Bell South, can simply grab greater control over the Internet. For example, in a series of recent white papers, Internet technology giant Cisco urges these companies to “meter individual subscriber usage by application,” as individuals’ online travels are “tracked” and “integrated with billing systems.” Such tracking and billing is made possible because they will know “the identity and profile of the individual subscriber,” “what the subscriber is doing” and “where the subscriber resides.”

Read the whole disturbing piece, and then go visit some of the websites listed in the article for more information.

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A Shot Across the Bow

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The Ny Times reports that the election of John Boehner reflects a general unease regarding the 2006 elections:

The surprise election of Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio as House majority leader was a cry of concern by an entrenched Republican majority, acutely worried that voter unease about corruption and partisan excesses could threaten its control of Congress this November.

Mr. Boehner packaged himself as the reform candidate, methodically distancing himself from Representative Tom DeLay, the hard-driving former majority leader identified with both ethics investigations and a searingly partisan manner. His victory, following the restrained and politically unadventurous State of the Union speech on Tuesday night by President Bush, left the impression of a party on the defensive as it surveys the inhospitable electoral terrain.

White House officials have grown increasingly anxious about the prospect that Democrats could regain control of the House this November, even as they have become less worried about holding on to the Senate. Their concern is particularly pointed because if Republicans lose control of either house of Congress, it is difficult to see what Mr. Bush could accomplish in his last two years in office.

After 12 years of Republican control of the House, the White House views House Republicans as vulnerable to precisely the wave of voter discontent that gave them control of the House in the first place in 1994.

I am sure the usual suspects will, rather than heed the advice in the article, flail away at Adam Nagourney. That would be stupid, which is why I completely expect it to happen.

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The Damage Done

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Members of the intelligence community yesterday testified that public leaks have damaged their ability to do their work:

U.S. intelligence officials told Congress on Thursday that disclosure of once-classified projects like President Bush’s no-warrant eavesdropping program have undermined their work.

“The damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission,” CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing disclosures about a variety of CIA programs that he suggested may have been compromised.

Goss said a federal grand jury should be empaneled to determine “who is leaking this information.”

***

National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, who oversees all intelligence activities, strongly defended the program, calling it crucial for protecting the nation against its most menacing threat.

“This was not about domestic surveillance,” he said.

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Goss complained that leaks to the news media about classified CIA programs — such as reported CIA secret prisons abroad — had damaged his own agency’s work.

“I use the words `very severe’ intentionally. And I think the evidence will show that,” he said.

Goss cited a “disruption to our plans, things that we have under way.” Some CIA sources and “assets” had been rendered “no longer viable or usable, or less effective by a large degree,” he said.

The revelations have also made intelligence agencies in other countries mistrustful of their U.S. counterparts, Goss said.

“I’m stunned to the quick when I get questions from my professional counterparts saying, `Mr. Goss, can’t you Americans keep a secret?”

Goss, when pressed, said he was speaking of programs run by the CIA, and would let NSA officials speak for themselves.

Gen. Michael Hayden, the principal deputy director of national intelligence and a former NSA director, said it was hard to characterize any damage done to his agency in an open session.

But, he said, “Some people claim that somehow or another our capabilities are immune to this kind of information going out into the public domain.”

“And, I can tell you, in a broad sense, that is certainly not true.”

After a public session lasting just under four hours, the committee and its witnesses went into a closed-door session.

While the damage done to civil liberties (or the threat of damage done to civl liberties) has received widespread coverage, and debates over the legality v. illegality of the NSA wiretapping have received widespread coverage, there has been little discussion about any actual damage from these disclosures.

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