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I’ve implimented printer-friendly entries on this site. Just click the “Print” link at the bottom of each entry, and you will be taken to a simplified view of that entry, with a “print” button. All it does it feed the browser a stylesheet that hides all the stuff I don’t want and slightly rearranges things.

Posted by Mark | October 13th, 2004 @ 3:51 AM | Category: "Site Announcements"

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Lockergnome has a great article on Why You Should Dump Internet Explorer (0)

Kerry’s Plan

John Kerry has pledged to cut the deficit in half in 4 years. But if you take into account all the new spending he wants to enact, Kerry’s plan ends up actually increasing the deficit, while raising taxes on small business owners, which will cost us jobs. In order to pay for all his programs and cut the deficit in half, Kerry will need to raise taxes by $2,090 per family. These numbers all come from Kerry’s numbers and claims about how much his plans will cost.

Read all about it at heritage.org

Posted by Mark | October 12th, 2004 @ 6:57 PM | Category: "Political Commentary"

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Florida has an initiative to raise the minimum wage. Bad idea. (0)

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Shi’ite Fighters Disarm

In what will likely be seen as a big win for the Bush administration and its handling of the war in Iraq, Iraqi Shi’ite militia began handing in their weapons in exchange for cash in Baghdad’s Sadr City district.

“I’ve given up my weapons, I’m with the interim government now,” said Ahmed Hashem after handing over 22 rocket-propelled grenades. “We want peace and I won’t fight the Americans.”

Hashem got $1,100 for his arsenal under a plan that pays $50 for any AK-47, rocket-propelled grenade or mortar round.

That’s a really impressive quote. Note how a former militant is now beginning to identify with his country’s new leadership.

Look for Bush to talk about this during the last presidential debate on Wednesday.

Posted by Mark | October 12th, 2004 @ 2:48 AM | Categories: "News" and "Politics"

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Libertarians Sue Over Debate

The final presidential debate is to be held on Wednesday at Arizona State University. There is something missing from it right now that was also missing from the previous debates: candidates other than Bush and Kerry. The three other major contenders for president are Ralph Nader of the Reform party, David Cobb of the Green party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian party.

The debate in Arizona is being funded by taxpayer dollars.

Arizona Libertarians filed suit to stop the event on October 1, claiming that the state Constitution prohibits donations of taxpayer money to corporations like the Commission on Presidential debates. “If all of the candidates were invited, it might be portrayed as an educational program,” says David Euchner, the Tucson attorney pressing the Libertarians’ case. “When legitimate candidates whose names will appear on the Arizona ballot are excluded, the only word for it is ‘campaign commercial.’”

The case is scheduled to be heard at 9:00 AM today in the East Court Building of the Maricopa County Superior Court.

Personally, I think their case is solid. I would also love to see a 5-way debate between Bush, Kerry, Nader, Cobb, and Badnarik.

Posted by Mark | October 12th, 2004 @ 2:21 AM | Category: "Politics"

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Terrorism: Such a Nuisance

John Kerry said in a New York Times Magzine interview:

“we have to get back to the place where we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.”

He then went on to compare terrorism to prostitution, where it is acceptable for some level of it to exist.

For the love of everything you hold dear, don’t let this man get elected.

Posted by Mark | October 11th, 2004 @ 6:08 PM | Category: "Commentary"

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It’s a pity that you chose to quote Kerry’s words out of context. It doesn’t read quite the same in full as he followed that sentence with:

As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.

The rest of the article in the NYT is also enlightening:

In other words, Kerry was among the first policy makers in Washington to begin mapping out a strategy to combat an entirely new kind of enemy. Americans were conditioned, by two world wars and a long standoff with a rival superpower, to see foreign policy as a mix of cooperation and tension between civilized states. Kerry came to believe, however, that Americans were in greater danger from the more shadowy groups he had been investigating — nonstate actors, armed with cellphones and laptops — who might detonate suitcase bombs or release lethal chemicals into the subway just to make a point. They lived in remote regions and exploited weak governments. Their goal wasn’t to govern states but to destabilize them.

[…]

If Kerry’s foreign-policy frame is correct, then law enforcement probably is the most important, though not the only, strategy you can employ against such forces, who need passports and bank accounts and weapons in order to survive and flourish. Such a theory suggests that, in our grief and fury, we have overrated the military threat posed by Al Qaeda, paradoxically elevating what was essentially a criminal enterprise, albeit a devastatingly sophisticated and global one, into the ideological successor to Hitler and Stalin — and thus conferring on the jihadists a kind of stature that might actually work in their favor, enabling them to attract more donations and more recruits.

[…]

He may well have understood the threat from Al Qaeda long before the rest of us. And he may well be right, despite the ridicule from Cheney and others, when he says that a multinational, law-enforcement-like approach can be more effective in fighting terrorists.

The Mahatma

#1 Comment by SLH | October 12th, 2004 3:10 am | Permalink

That doesn’t change the fact that Kerry views the fight against terror as a law enforcement issue. In fact, it rather solidifies it. Somehow I don’t think we would have been able to round up 75% of Al Qaeda without use of military force.

#2 Comment by Mark | October 12th, 2004 4:01 am | Permalink

Mark,

Do you really think that military force can stop terrorism? It doesn’t matter whether 99% of AQ have been rounded up - it only needs the remaining 1% to hijack planes or carry a suitcase device into a city and the numbers become meaningless.

I was watching a good doco the other day that looked at Chechnya. The Russians have one soldier there for every five Chechen citizens and they are still being held down by a mere 2,000 rebels. A military solution is not the way and I can’t think of any similar situation that has been resolved by such methods.

And then there’s the debt that your generation - and possibly your children’s generation - has been saddled with.

Good luck with the future as I think you’ll need lots of it with the current admin.

The Mahatma

#3 Comment by The Mahatma | October 12th, 2004 10:37 pm | Permalink

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Say Anything is Back

Say Anything Blog is back up and running!

Posted by Mark | October 11th, 2004 @ 5:51 PM | Category: "Announcements"

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Baby-harvester-wannabe Dies

Actor and paraplegic Christopher Reeve died a few hours ago when his heart failed. This kind of reminds me about how his heart died when he became paralyzed after a fall off a horse and decided that he was going to devote his life to harvesting babies. The “Superman” actor who never gave a sh** about victims of spinal cord injuries until he became one himself, displayed remarkable selfishness in his final years. He might possibly be the only person to start a crusade for a cure solely so that he could cure himself.

Christopher Reeve decided that the best way to cure his paralysis would be to harvest stem cells from living human embryos (killing them in the process). Reeve was convinced that embryonic stem cells would be a miracle cure, despite the fact that they’ve never been successfully used in a single human. Stem cells harvested from the umbilical cord actually have a proven human benefit, and can be harvested without taking a life. Still, Reeve pushed for embryonic stem cell research. “Kill babies so that I can walk,” was his philosophy.

Don’t worry Chris, I’m sure your eternal resting place has wheelchair ramps.

Edit: Doh! I never could remember the man’s last name. As it turns out, it lacks an “s.”

Posted by Mark | October 11th, 2004 @ 4:05 AM | Categories: "News" and "Rants"

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Say “Nothing” Blog

My friend Rob over at Say Anything Blog has been having some hosting problems.

Apparently his host has been migrating to some sort of “shared load” system that isn’t working so well. Most of Rob’s site has been inaccessible for a few days now. With some patience, I have been able to get his main page to load, and I’m still getting notified when he posts articles in my news reader, but his individual entries take about 5 minutes to load, if at all.

Curious if this problem was unique to Rob, or shared with other PowWeb users, I tried to go to their website. I won’t even bother linking it, because as of this writing, it isn’t responding either. I always say, when your hosting provider can’t even keep their own site live… that’s trouble.

Hang in there Rob. I’ll be sure to put out an announcement when your troubles get resolved. And now might be a good time for me to again give my strong recommendations for ICDsoft and WordPress, my host and blog software. :-)

Posted by Mark | October 10th, 2004 @ 1:11 AM | Category: "Announcements"

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Tempus Fugit

Tempus Fugit is Mark Jaquith's weblog: current events, humor, politics, religion, technology, entertainment, and personal topics.

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