Point Lookout
Musings from the hillside

Well, I’m off looking at CandleTech for instructions on making votive candles. At 3,000 american military death and counting, at least one hundred times that many Iraqis, and another, say, ten times that many american military wounded, we have much to mourn. Better to make the candles myself, I guess.

Orrin Hatch of Utah loves to clam that all those nice people in the government wouldn’t misuse information or violate legal process. this scathing article points to two reports almost simultaneously issued by DHS and one by the GAO (much more damaging) that clearly state that they do.

And they violated the 1974 law in ways the author of that article feels are criminal. So much for Mr. Hatch’s happy words. These people violated existing law in ways exactly as predicted by those who warn against blatant abuse of existing privacy laws. And the spin is that, well, if similar programs go forward, they should do better to pay attention. I say, when you break the law and get caught, there should be retribution, justice, and action, especially inside the very police-state organization(s) we ask to uphold the law. If they’re not accountable, who is?

Will George Bush take the hint? Long answer: NO.

It would be bad for his clients.

Juan Cole’s Top Ten Myths About Iraq 2006 is something to remember. But what does he know? He’s a left-wing academic, probably on someone’s list of subversive professors. Smart, too. And more often proven right, on subsequent review, than any or all of the “mainstream media pundits” or “government experts”, IMHO.

Well, the UK is leading the police state business after all. Orwell was both right and right from the right place.

Amusing, now they’ll have to increase the number watching to make sure they have a person per camera or, maybe, one per three or four. It wouldn’t do to spend the budget on feet on the street, mind you. That’s just not as productive. Nor, in the long run, as effective at any real objectives. Once you know the camera’s there, its value is degraded, isn’t it. The shock and power comes only when you’re surprised. Once you’re expecting it, instead of compliance, the options grow to the full range of political theater.

It’s the 24th of December. At around 4:20PM on the 21st here in Orinda (see the picture in the banner), it was exactly the winter solstice, the moment at which the sun was exactly at its lowest point in the Northern Horizon or however you want to think about it.

Actually, at 4:20PM on the 21st, we had Christmas, the christianized pagan festival marking the shortest day, the darkest day, the beginning of the new cycle. For convenience, we’ve decided that the 25th is a satisfactory approximation (which isn’t very close, but who actually cares any more) and now celebrate our pagan day of darkness with artificial light and even more artificial jollity.

Mind you, I like a good holiday as much as the next person. I find the celebration of the solstice (and it’s near miss fellow travellers) to be a very satisfactory punctuation to the year. I’m definitely a descendant of hundreds of generations of humans who are sensitive to the light to dark ratio of our days. And it is truly good to know that the 21st was as bad as it was going to get.

Happy beginning to the new cycle of light in the Northern Hemisphere and the beginning of a new cycle of darkness in the Southern! I wish you all a happy new day, new cycle, new year … whatever happiness you can find and enjoy! Now and every other day the coming year(s).

Thinking about a scooter (motor-scooter) for local bumming around. For what it takes to start one of the cars, I could probably get from here to Lafayette and back (say, 10 miles). And Fern wouldn’t need parking passes at BART if she rode one … looking at the usual suspects, Vespa ($$$) and Honda and some weird but fun looking electrics.

Ran into Kickbike America again. Sometimes they refer to this as a scooter. Slower than a bicycle. Heavy, not light, in spite of the mechanical simplicity. Looks intriguing. Put a big basket on the front with Jordan in it … a backpack for cargo …

It would probably be uncomfortable for Jordan. The thrusting of each kick is probably pretty violent for little guys sitting in the basket. But that all got me looking into baskets for the existing bike. The pet Web sites seem to recommend baskets for little dogs and they’re a cheap acquisition for the fully amortized and largely unused hybrid hanging in the garage.

When in San Francisco at a convention at the Moscone and hungry … go south a block on 4th to Folsom, turn right, and drop into Lulu’s. Rapt had their holiday party there the other night and could not have picked a better place.

Want to do a wine tasting and don’t want to drive all the way out to Napa or Sonoma? There are plenty of wineries dotting the hills south of San Francisco, but one surprising find is the Rosenblum tasting room at their facility in Alameda (that not so little Island just off Oakland). Rosenblum specializes in Zinfandels and has a number of lovely big red Zins. Also a terrific and friendly staff (and a water bowl on the floor for the dog). Nice tasting room upstairs in their warehouse building. It’s been there longer than Hangar One (St. George’s distillers) which is just down the road. Both are great fun and real convenient to the city and East Bay. Don’t forget Viano up in Martinez, also a Zinfandel producer at much lower price points but well worth consideration.

Finally, few sports complexes are as easy to get to as the Oakland Coliseum (ignoring the brand names for the moment) complex. A Warriors game is a BART ride, tickets are relatively inexpensive, and, this year, the team is fun to watch.

That’s the last three days .

Carl Levin, Democrat from Michigan, tells Face the Nation, “President Bush should tell Iraqi politicians this week that “the open-ended commitment is over” to keep U.S. troops in Iraq” per a Detroit News article. What utter nonsense. So, the incoming chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is clearly saying he believes our military is there because of some commitment we’ve made to the Iraqi politicians.

Well, the American People have made no such “open ended commitment.” I doubt that the Iraqi people requested any such “open ended commitment.” Both publics have stated, in numerous polls, that they want the U.S. military out of Iraq. It’s improbable that we were ever asked for a commitment. What Iraq is asking for is to be allowed (helped?) to put the country back together, not some open ended commitment for us to occupy their country with military force.

What’s not obvious is how, after destroying everything of value or use (except the oil and oil infrastructure), the U.S. can pull out without leaving chaos behind. The U.S. is unlikely to provide the full spectrum of weapons and infrastructure required to govern, so a withdrawal is a disaster for them as well as us.

It’s a complete mess made without foresight. It was an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, launched on a pretext of lies. And this Democrat is gracefully letting the perpetrators off the hook and not demanding justice (which polls indicate the nation wants). He’s also not taking the action his constituents demanded in the last election. I guess that’s what the Democrats are all about, these days.

The differences between the paid commercial representatives of the military industrial complex and global oil (and automobile, air transport, chemical, and food, among others) corporations in the Democratic Party and those in the Republican Party are just too subtle for me to tell them apart. The Republicans have a leader (Dick Cheney, or is it Karl Rove?), at least. The Democrats continue to bicker, leaderless.

Now this is quite an article …

I’m sure I don’t know anyone for which this is true.