Holy crap, dude.  This is how he’s ruined everything else he’s ever touched: ask people’s advise, get the best you can, and ignore it:

Think Progress » Bush Kneecaps Iraq Study Group: There Will Be No ‘Graceful Exit From Iraq’

The Iraq Study Group will release its recommendations on Dec. 6. The New York Times reports that the commission will “will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal.”

Today, in a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Bush sought to dismiss the commission’s recommendations before they have been officially released. Bush said, “I know there’s a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there’s going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq. We’re going to stay in Iraq to get the job done.” Watch it:

Well, there you are, then.  Nothing changes, even when the American public and Dubya’s Daddy’s cabinet is against this president.  Nothing changes.  Wonder what we do next?

Technorati Tags: Bush, Iraq, ISG, Iraq Study Group

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Joe Spector takes on this case of apparently ghastly disregard for our fallen soldiers:

Democrat & Chronicle: Local News

A woman says she saw a soldier’s flag-draped coffin put into a cart with passengers’ baggage last month at the Greater Rochester International Airport, shocking her and other onlookers.

“It looked awful, just awful,” Cynthia Hoag, 56, of Dansville, Livingston County, said Wednesday. “Maybe we made too much out of it, but it was very disturbing to us. If that had been my son, I would have been very upset.”

Officials dispute Hoag’s story, saying it is implausible. They did not disclose the name of the fallen soldier, but he appears to be Army Sgt. 1st Class Tony Knier of Sabinsville, Pa., who was killed in Iraq on Oct. 21.

Uncharacteristically, Joe doesn’t seem willing to parse the information much, here.  Allow me to point out the facts:

1. A soldier’s body was in fact transported through RIA
2. They know his name
3. A Pennsylvania funeral director picked up the body
4. Someone saw the body.  Forget whether she’s competent or not: she saw the body, otherwise she couldn’t have known about it and wouldn’t have said anything.
5. The airport director, David Damelio, states that he wasn’t even aware there *was* a body coming through RIA until this hit the fan.

Airport and government officials dispute that the policy would allow that (have the Bush Administration officials ever violated or changed policy before?), while one airport official disputes the mechanics of what she saw like it’s the Zapruder film.  But no one ~ no one ~  is offering an alternate sequence of events.  Airports are loaded with manifests and lists of every conceivable variety, can we not find out exactly what did happen?  Did she mistake a military plane for a commercial plane?  What, exactly, constitutes a “Military escort” in the Pentagon these days, and does one guy qualify?  Airport officials were unable to obtain a copy of any video tape of the event, and I think we can all say, everyone’s just flat disappointed about that.

At least, whatever other differences we might have with her, we can count on one Republican to speak up when the facts are obvious: Maggie Brooks.  Her word?  “Abhorent.”  Well, it doesn’t get much worse for a former journalist turned politician.

Whatever the circumstances, the body of a dead soldier was flown through RIA with absolutely no preparations made, no thought given to the sensibilities of other passengers, no regard for the dignity of the dead.  Mrs. Brooks is right on the money ~ regardless of the actual chain of events ~ to roundly criticize the Pentagon for it’s handling of this situation.

By the way, if the article is disheartening, the comments on it are fascinating.  Check them out.

Technorati Tags: RIA, Rochester International Airport, Iraq, Pentagon

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Am I alone in thinking the phrase “Legal Torrent” to be at least as foreign as, say, “Healthy Donuts?”:

BitTorrent Cuts More Deals With Hollywood

Users will soon be able to purchase movies and television shows from the BitTorrent website, then download the videos using the BitTorrent file sharing application. The videos will be made available as either download-to-burn or as on-demand one time rentals depending on the case, with TV shows and short features selling for as little as $1 a piece.

Technorati Tags: Bittorrent, P2P, File Sharing, Technology

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Excellent information as always from Exile at RochesterTurning.com.  Whilst lamenting Democratic Nominee Hillary and the seeming inevitability of the ‘08 elections, Exile hips us to some lesser-reported facts about former Mayor Rudy Giuliani:

rochesterturning.com: turning the tide upstate

You probably know that Giuliani was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 2001 and that he generally receives more favorable media coverage than anyone else in the world save John McCain and the pre-Katrina George W. Bush. What you may not know is that these days, Rudy is all about the Benjamins, ethics be damned. . . .

What follows in the comments is a more general horse-race discussion of just whom the nominees might be. Nothing like post-election, pre-Christmas, mid-recess speculation to warm the blood!

For my money, however, the discussion is not who the Republicans nominate ~ indeed, it never really is ~ it’s about the direction they take and whether or not they’re able to get themselves out of the Clinton’s Ditch-size rut they’ve got themselves into.  The Bushies, the DeLay/Santorum Coalition and the Frist Factor have all seen to it that the Religious Right holds the majority of the reigns in the Republican Party, even if only in numbers.  They represent a huge voting bloc to woo.

And they represent a huge question mark to fret over.  The Exit Poll numbers are worth looking over for this year and 2004.  A few things just jump right out, but the biggest one is that the Social Conservative vote slumped a bit, but not as much as feared, and their weight was not close to enough.  The Middle decided this election, and any fool better be clear on the fact that The Middle will decide the next election.

So, with all that (it now appears largely unnecessary) clout given over to Religious Conservatism, how do the Republicans now kindly ask for their party back so they can win an election?  Or do they?  McCain already made his visit to Liberty University.  Giuliani’s toast in the event of a zelot uprising. . .

“We fights Mitt Mitt?”

(bonus points awarded to anyone who can name that reference in the comments)

Technorati Tags: President, 2008, Giuliani, McCain, Republicans

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So, apparently, some woman named Clara Lowery really liked my “Northern Liberal” tee-shirt and bought one on CafePress. I didn’t even know about it until I saw the commission statement on my CP home page.

Hey! How’s about some other folks follow her example? She’s not even living in Rochester, though perhaps she’s from Rochester. Go get yourselves some DragonSwag!!!

So, there’s not too much going on right now, and even less originality about what to report or analyze.  So, for you news junkies, get ready for the latest “Washinton D.C., 20006″ episode:

Son also rises in testy Webb-Bush exchange

At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.

Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.

“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.

In other, equally useless news, I tuned in to CNN as I do whenever I feel the need to rid myself of useful information to find that they have awoken, bleary-eyed as drunks, from their long slumber and formulated what appears to be an entirely unique and original question at least in their own minds. That question is the subject of tonight’s Wolf Blitzer “Situation Room” moron-aton: “Will the Iraq Government Fall?”

In summary, let me simply point out that Wolf Blitzer is the singular least intelligent major headliner on this sad little network, and the one in possesion of the poorest sense of humor. He’s too conceited to know when jokes happen, because in his world, what happens in The Situation Room is of the utmost importance.

Bah. I want my Christmas tree.

Technorati Tags: Media, Journalism, CNN, Wolf Blitzer

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The Supreme Court is hearing an interesting case with even more interesting and far-reaching consequences, this time about so-called “Trivial Patents.”  Read here:

Supremes skeptical toward trivial patents | The Register

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of KSR International v. Teleflex, in which the limits of combination patents and so-called obvious patents are being considered. According to several wire reports, KSR argued that its design for adjustable vehicle accelerator pedals does not violate a patent held by Teleflex for a similar gizmo, because Teleflex did not legitimately invent anything when it combined two existing technologies in an obvious way, and does not, therefore, deserve the patent.

So, basically, lawyers and corporations have been making millions and probably billions of dollars by claiming patents on objects so obvious that even the Supreme Court can’t find a way to over-complicate.  The law is so vague on trivial patents that it led Justice Scalia to declaim it as (hang on to your hats, folks, he’s about to curse) “gobbledygook.”

What’s interesting about this is that so far, the Supreme Court seems to be siding with the “Open Source” community, if not directly.  Trivial patents mean that companies and entrepreneurs spend more time and money making sure they’re not violating someone else’s patent than in actually inventing anything.  That’s not too good for the economy, now is it?  Freeing up some room in the patent landscape would do wonders for innovation, online and off.

What’s even more interesting is the opposition: Big Pharma.  Here is one among many old industries that has made a good living off of declaring the slightest innovation a solemn brain-trust of the company.  Their direct interests are in the line-of-sight up there on the SCOTUS.

As much as I know that there are many members of the SCOTUS of whom we have good reason to be suspicious where cases involving corporations are concerned, I’m inclined to think that even this court may prove itself to be full of surprises. They’ve already ruled against the president’s interests in Guantanamo, which was the big question mark for most of us.

The case will be argued and decided by about July.  Just in time for corn.

Technorati Tags: SCOTUS, Patents, Open Source

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Patent Search Search Patent Genius’ 4 million patents by inventor, patent holder, patent date, or type of patent. View full text and patent drawings for free.

Is it time to say goodbye to CDs, DVDs, Zip drives? The extremely low-cost technology, named “Rainbow Technology”, will drastically reduce the cost of storage and provide for high-speed storage as well.

Check out this article, this technology is pretty amazing and has a lot of potential consequences. Imagine going back to storage technology that’s as cheap as paper! Of course, it’s possible that your dog could in fact eat your hard drive, but whatever. Oh! And there’s also the possiblity of rain damage.

But, never fear, Christian Consumers and Citizens Against the Environment: this price savings will be too much of a threat for the current media giants to bear, and they will sue to keep it out of America for a long, long time. Just like they did with cassettes, CDs and DVDs.

read more | digg story

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been making a few adjustments to the website, but this one was a biggie, I thought. It’s tough capturing just that right look for each section, and it’s really just a question of experimentation. The header of the Culture section came about at the last minute long after I’d thought I’d run out of ideas.

So, that’s something, anyways. Meanwhile, I’m reading up on JavaScript in an attempt to provide more useful active content to the sections. I’ve spent the long holiday weekend intentionally achieving a moratorium on blogging and writing, focusing any pent-up coding/blogging yearnings on the business of reading up on this newest of my web-design skills. It’s going rather well, as far as I can tell, but I think starting even later on tonight, the actual coding will commence, and from there we shall see.

And slowly, somewhat begrudgingly, the wheels are beginning to turn again. The lights are coming on in the DFE factory, the machines are firing up, and I will once again resume course.

Incidentally, I woke this morning to a wonderful compliment on one of my social network sites. A woman who is a “friend” on that network wrote me to ask if I had been where she works this weekend. She said she didn’t want to have been wrong and felt foolish (a good instinct, because it wasn’t me), but she had wanted to introduce herself and say she appreciated what I’ve been trying to do for Rochester with my website.

Well, that puffed my chest out a few notches, I don’t mind saying. For one, with 300+ friends, it’s hard to know who’s listening and who’s just got me on their list just for the sake of having larger numbers. That she and others have written me in the past to say they appreciate what I do, especially since I don’t know them, really means quite a bit. Without realizing it, I found one more reason in a very long list to be thankful.