Cipherdom (deprecated)

GOT DEMOCRACY?

If you don't, you're fair game, according to Dear Leader. Confronted by an oh-so-rare non-programmed questioner at one recent faux Town Hall meeting -- the woman asked, "How can Ariel Sharon be a man of peace, as you've said, if he causes death and torture among innocent Palestinians?" -- Bush made no attempt to deny her pretext. He responded:

"That's a great question. First of all, Ariel Sharon is defending his country against terrorist attacks, just like we will . . . Ariel Sharon is a duly elected official in a democracy. We would hope that the Palestinians would have that same kind of democracy."

So c'mon, all you lay-abouts! Get with the democracy program. Or else be prepared to duck, innocent or not.

(Full story)

Treason

In case anyone wonders who called the tune by which this Administration danced into Iraq, today it's reported that Douglas Feith -- one of the war's earliest architects and most ardent cheerleaders -- has employed a mole who stands accused of passing highly classified material to Israel. The alleged traitor's name is Larry Franklin.

With exquisite understatement, a New York Times article says, "American counterintelligence officials say that Israeli espionage cases are difficult to investigate, because they involve an important ally that enjoys broad political influence in Washington." I've maintained all along that people who said we were going to war over oil were no more than half right. WMDs might have been the stated rationale, but they were third on the list, at best.

Franklin works for Feith, who works for Wolfowitz, who works for Rummy, who works for Bush, who works for . . .

A Yawning Gap in Credibility

The media signaled yesterday that they're bored with the Swift boat controversy. This is particularly so, due to the fact that further coverage would require that they admit to having been duped by the Bush campaign, on whose behalf they propagated a series of vicious lies meant to soften John Kerry's support among vets. "Mission Accomplished," as the saying goes.

Bush likewise signaled that he recognizes further coverage can only hurt his cause. The damage to Kerry has been done, the Bush campaign realizes, so let's move on to other topics. Like the stirring display of compassion by Dick Cheney who yesterday boldly proclaimed that he disagrees w/ the Administration's position that gay marriage needs to be stamped out with a constitutional ammendment. Uncanny timing on that pronouncement, which they knew would cut into Kerry's counter-attack that rightly characterized Bush's tactics as "fear and smear."

But the Swift story won't die that easily. Today the Kerry campaign will dispatch Max Cleland and Jim Rassman (the guy whose life Kerry saved) to the president's ranch in Crawford, TX, to deliver a letter calling on Bush to denounce the Swift ads, which he only pretended to do earlier this week.

Before the media's Short Attention Span Theatre officially moves on, note that Bush's own campaign lawyer now admits to also advising the Swift boat liars. So much for the Six Degrees of Separation theory.

Day Two: Cipherdom Held Hostage

Again today, we renew our call for a Bush supporter -- any Bush supporter -- to give us a reason to vote for President No-op. The future of mankind might well depend on it, thanks to the mess he's stirred up in his first four years. So c'mon, all you red-blooded, oxygen-deprived conservatives: Tell us why the hapless sap deserves a mulligan.

While we're waiting, let's entertain just a few notions about why America will be better off once John Kerry gets elected.

1. Rollback of tax cuts for the obscenely rich. You may remember the concept from as recently as 2000: It was known then as "Fiscal Responsibility."

2. Establish an energy policy that isn't in thrall to Big Oil. Everyone knows progress against terrorism in the Middle East is, um, hindered by our dependence on oil. As if that weren't motivation enough to take energy policy seriously, there's this little thing called Global Warming.

3. He's not a sleaze who hides behind lying campaign surrogates who'd sell their grandma's soul to win an election.

4. National Security. Ask yourself this question: Do you feel safer now that our military is bogged down in a country that's breeding terrorists like mosquitos in a swamp? Kerry knows we have to make the best of an awful situation, so he's not promising a pull-out. But he does promise to undo as much of the past four years' damage as he can, rebuilding America's lost stature in the court of world opinion. We're going to need that credibility soon, because Iran will probably have nukes within three years, if left unimpeded. Do you really want Bush to be the guy who tackles that one?

That's enough for now.

No-op

Today's edition of Cipherdom will consist entirely of a Bush supporter's reasons why we should vote for the reelection of President No-op:

At Long Last, They Have No Sense of Decency

In Sunday's Chicago Tribune -- a notoriously conservative publication, even by the U.S. media's standards -- you will find compelling testimony by William Rood, an editor at the Trib who has broken his silence on what he witnessed while fighting in Viet Nam on the same mission that Bush surrogates are claiming John Kerry exaggerated for personal gain. In his story titled "Anti-Kerry vets not there that day," Rood writes:

Many of us wanted to put it all behind us—the rivers, the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry's service—even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune, where I work.

But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there.

I'm sure the GOP machine is already busy trying to find skeletons in Mr. Rood's closet. But until Joseph Welch climbs up out of his grave, he'll do nicely.

Maureen Dowd has a fine Sunday column, as well, on the Bush family's sleazy stable of "wet" operatives, from Atwater to Rove and beyond.

Not So Swift

This is for anyone who doesn't yet recognize what a pack of scumbags the Bushes and their operatives are. Click the image to enlarge.

Planes, Trains, and Bride of Christ on a Bike

Today I had a previously unheard-of-for-me 8am meeting, which required me to be in bed by the obscenely early hour of 11pm so as to wake up by 6am. How do some people do that day after day? Anyway, as Vernam has neglected to mention hereabouts, he is now working in the Loop and commuting by train. So far, it's fun, just a 20-minute ride. I've been lucky never to have commuted even so long as 30 minutes, no matter where I've worked. Life's too short to be stuck in a car for long every day. In DC, I knew people who literally did a four-hour roundtrip every damn day.

So, way up on the 18th floor, two mere blocks from the Sears Tower, I sat in my office after the meeting ended, enjoying a southeast view of the river, the lake, and the constantly clogged Dan Ryan expressway. All of a sudden, I heard the unmistakable sound of a jet roaring past the building. "Uh, that's not right," I thought to myself. Not quite freaked out but definitely more than curious, I strode to the window and saw a fighter jet just as it streaked behind a nearby building. Then it dawned on me that this weekend is the annual Air and Water Show on the lakefront. The rest of the day was a kick, seeing the Blue Angels circle around at high speed. One executed a steep climb that we could see from start to finish. Quite a show. I do wonder if anyone working downtown was terrified by the first approach, though.

Yesterday, a loud helicopter had zipped between our building and the Sears, which is something older hands here said never happens. We wondered if it was some kind of exercise. My office neighbor said the thing went right past her window, which was mildly disconcerting. Maybe everyone's just on edge after endless months of terror warnings.

On the train home today, I spied an ingenious graffito painted on a hard-to-reach corrugated fence: "The American dream is not the only dream." It's right where thousands of people will see it daily, and where probably no one will bother to cover it up or wash it away.

Weirdest and most disturbing of all, though: Heading home from the station tonight, I saw a nun in full, ankle-length habit -- complete with Sister Betrille aerodynamic hat -- riding her bike near my house. Made me feel a little silly about rolling up my pantleg to avoid getting it caught in the chain.

The 1-Percenters

Fully one-third of President Bush's tax cuts in the last three years have gone to people with the top 1 percent of income, who have earned an average of $1.2 million annually, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to be published Friday.

The report calculated that households with incomes in that top 1 percent were receiving an average tax cut of $78,460 this year, while households in the middle 20 percent of earnings - averaging about $57,000 a year - were getting an average cut of only $1,090. From the New York Times.

Fortunately, those 1-percenters are to loyalty as Bush is to erudition. IOW, they'll show faint allegiance to the guy, despite the first-term windfall he gave them, because there's no room left in the budget to give them more. I'm sure Rove is kicking himself for not having made it a smaller cut, so they could promise to dole out some more in a second term.

Just a Thought

We all know there's the likelihood of an Al Qaeda attack on the U.S. homeland before our election. Long before their success in influencing Spain's election last spring, I was predicting to friends and fellow paranoiacs that the evil doers would try to play a role in the U.S. presidential campaign by blowing up whatever Big Thing is handy and, incidentally, killing as many Amurcans as they can. See, they really can't lose. If the seemingly inevitable attack coincides with a Bush defeat, Al Qaeda can claim that we caved in to their pressure. If Bush wins despite or because of the hypothetical attack, that's in fact the best possible outcome for them. Can anyone doubt it's what they'd love more than anything? Bush is a terrorist's wet dream. The guy has, in his ejaculatory way, played right into Bin Laden's hands by proving that we'd rather declare war on the Arab world than try to understand it.

Most people would agree that destroying native cultures in, say, South America is wrong. It's easy to empathize with the benign aboriginal tribesmen with whom Sting posed compellingly for photographs. Those people are so disconnected from Western Civilization that they literally have no defense against the intrusions of commerce and technology. To me, all that distinguishes such cultures from the Islamic world is that Muslims have been exposed to modernism and, to varying degrees, have said, "No thank you, we'll hold on to our culture just the same." Sometimes in symbolic ways, and other times in more emphatic ways, where they turn the very instruments of our modernity against us.

I had a distinct sense, after the 9/11 attacks, that the Internet had played an unspoken role. I'm not talking about the ciphered messages that Al Qaeda operatives supposedly routinely ship across the Web. No, I think the rampant porn that America is spewing like so many cigarettes probably went a long way toward radicalizing certain Muslims who came in contact with it in the late '90s. What further proof is needed that America is a soulless instrument of evil? In that context, our excursion into Iraq may only be icing on the cake.

Are we so far gone that any attempt to understand an alien culture must be perceived as weakness? Is it naive to suggest this all wouldn't be so complicated if not for the Israel-Palestine problem? Absent the current Administration's rubber stamping of Ariel Sharon's every whim, our leaders might try demonstrating some respect for Islam and resisting the urge to bestow faux democracies upon them. That might undermine their radicals far more than flinging bombs, occupying countries, and propping up dictators.

But let's suppose it wouldn't have that effect. Resisting the urge to obliterate humans and their societies would still give us the unmistakable moral high ground, in comparison to zealots who think God grants them the right to decide who's worthy of living. Because quoting Bible verses does nothing to combat the quoters of Koranic verses, maybe we should try behaving more like Christians than like barbarians. Just a thought.

More Broooce

Interviewed yesterday on Nightline by Ted Koppel.

Much more Broooce: A surprisingly lucid fanzine interviewer pumped him for info about how he decided to be part of Vote for Change.

Brooooce

Springsteen contributed a must-see editorial to today's New York Times. I've never been prouder to be a fan of the guy. A couple of excerpts:

I don't think John Kerry and John Edwards have all the answers. I do believe they are sincerely interested in asking the right questions and working their way toward honest solutions. They understand that we need an administration that places a priority on fairness, curiosity, openness, humility, concern for all America's citizens, courage and faith . . .

. . . It is through the truthful exercising of the best of human qualities -- respect for others, honesty about ourselves, faith in our ideals - that we come to life in God's eyes. It is how our soul, as a nation and as individuals, is revealed. Our American government has strayed too far from American values. It is time to move forward. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.

Vote or Die

Most important election of our lifetimes? God, I hope so.

Moonwatcher

Some tidbits in this interview with Keir Dullea on 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Free registration required.) Namely:

• Martin Balsam was originally the voice of HAL.
  
• Then Nigel Davenport, a Brit.
  
• An assistant to Kubrick did the voice on-set, sounding like Michael Caine. Fortunately, they added Douglas Rain's voice in post-production. Can't imagine anyone else doing it.
  
• Dullea claims Kubrick's intention with the scenes in which his character ages rapidly in a series of sterile rooms was to depict a highly evolved alien intelligence's version of a zoo cell for homo sapiens. I guess that works, but it reduces the whole thing to a Twilight Zone episode, which is sort of a letdown.

Alien project manager: Give me an update on the monolith plan.
Alien analyst: Do you want the good news or the bad news?
Alien project manager: It's been a bad millennium, let's hear something good.
Alien analyst: The plan worked great, we sped up evolution a zillion times.
Alien project manager: Wonderful! And the bad news?
Alien analyst: Well, you remember those dumb ape creatures we wanted to get rid of? Our security system broke and they reached the monolith first. Now we've got human beings all over the Solar System!

Whither Cipherdom?

Or maybe that's Withered Cipherdom. Ol' Vernam has been without connectivity at home during an eventful few weeks when he started a new job, watched the White Sox climb into and promptly fall out of first place, played some really fun gigs, and generally found better things to do with his summer than stay on-line all the time.

But screw all that! Whether the unblogged life isn't worth living or blogging's just a poor excuse for life, Cipherdom is here to stay. Love it or shove it, as our beloved next First Lady would say. Whoa, some kind of double standard there, eh? Her comment was somehow spun as more obnoxious than Cheney's f-bomb on the Senate floor. I missed all the Democratic convention except for Kerry's speech, which was at least adequate.

Glad to see the world is catching up w/ Ali G. He's like Andy Kaufman, only funny more often than not. He's reportedly got a movie deal now -- smart, since he'll soon be too famous to trick people like Newt Gingrich and Marlin Fitzwater into doing interviews. Borat, the Kazak emigre, should have a much longer shelf life. He's funnier than Ali G himself, IMO, and that's saying something.