Alternate Entries

Saturday, October 11, 2003

The Bush Administration rejected calls for an independent counsel in the matter of Valerie Plame, whose identity as an undercover CIA operative was revealed by at least one senior White House official, possibly Karl Rove, in retribution for her husband's skeptical remarks about the president's case against Iraq. Rove, the president's political adviser, denied being the source of the leak, though he was reportedly fired from George H.W. Bush's 1992 reelection campaign for leaking damaging information about a rival to Bob Novak, the very columnist who exposed Plame in July.

posted by jeev | 10:30 AM |

A pinch of this, a touch of that:

"Many items needed to establish a laboratory for making biological warfare agents were being sold on the Internet to the public from DoD's excess property inventory for pennies on the dollar, making them both easy and economical to obtain," the GAO draft report said.

Thanks, Melinda.

posted by jeev | 10:15 AM |

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

Maybe it's because he was scarred by having that name?

From Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo

A few days ago I heard from several readers that anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, who is a close advisor to President Bush and Karl Rove, compared the Estate Tax to Nazi persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust. Not kinda sorta. He really did.

When NPR host Terry Gross did a double-take and asked him if he really meant to equate the two, Norquist responded he didn't say they were the same but that ...
the morality that says it's okay to do something to a group because they're a small percentage of the population is the morality that says that the Holocaust is okay because they didn't target everybody. "It's just a small percentage, what are you worried about? It's not you. It's not you. It's them." And arguing that it's okay to loot some group because it's them, or kill some group because it's them -- and because it's a small number -- has no place in a democratic society that treats people equally.
That sounds to me like he is equating the two, or at least the 'morality' behind them.
That's outrageous.

posted by jeev | 11:29 PM |

Who voted for the recall?

From the Secretary of State's office.

posted by jeev | 4:51 PM |

From those wacky folks at the Patent Office:

Microsoft has been granted a patent for "for monitoring user activity in an instant messaging session on a computer network periodically sends an activity message to other participants in the instant messaging session if the user has actively entered data during a first predetermined time interval. " That is, they've been granted a patent for indicating when your interlocuter is typing a message before it is actually sent. Trouble is, other IM systems have been doing this for eons. Not quite as good as the patent on swinging sideways, but close.

Via Good Morning Silicon Valley.

posted by jeev | 12:21 PM |

Why Older Women Work:

Three years ago, before the recession officially began, 50.3 percent of women ages 55 to 64 were working full- or part-time. As of last month, according to figures released yesterday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, that had risen to 54.1 percent, an increase that becomes even more considerable when compared with every other sector of the workforce.

This is the only demographic which registered increases. Why?

Among women only, the need for money was the top answer by far, which becomes more understandable when viewed in the context of another study, by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, noting that the median annual income of women between 50 and 61 is just under $29,000, about two-thirds of what it is for similarly aged men. "These are among the most vulnerable people in our society, women aged 50 and up," says Heidi Hartmann, an economist who is president of the institute. Many women on the high side of the median may be executives or managers who work because they want to, she says, but many on the low side work because their husbands have lost their jobs, or they lost their savings when the stock market declined, or they need even the most basic of benefits they otherwise would not have. "Because they have to," she says.

posted by jeev | 11:06 AM |

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

It's time for more Erno:

Nice kitty, nice baby.

posted by jeev | 2:42 PM |

As others remember him:

Bit by bit, Arnold Schwarzenegger chips away at his myth. The stories he told in the 1970s of orgies and pot smoking and cruel tricks were fantastic fibs, he now says, a way to draw attention to himself and his beloved sport of bodybuilding.

But the men who sweated beside him in those years - fellow Mr. Olympias and Mr. Universes - say Schwarzenegger is tidying up his past as he eyes a new crown, the California governorship. The Schwarzenegger they knew was extreme in everything, from the weights he pounded to the anabolic steroids he consumed, from the merciless tricks he played on lesser men to the women he stole from friends.

posted by jeev | 1:50 PM |

Clark and Barksdale hit it big, again:

Computer network security provider NetScreen Technologies Inc. on Monday agreed to buy startup Neoteris Inc. for $295 million, the latest sign of renewed interest up-and-coming firms are generating in down-and-out Silicon Valley.
[]
The stock-and-cash deal is a coup for two of the nation's best known entrepreneurs, Netscape Communications co-founders Jim Clark and Jim Barksdale, who both hold stock in Neoteris.

Clark, who also helped start Silicon Graphics and WebMD, is Neoteris' chairman and Barksdale's venture capital group also had a seat on the board. The two men contributed part of the initial $5 million investment that launched Neoteris.

posted by jeev | 10:48 AM |

And from Greg Palast, a cranky, but often quite accurate reporter:

According to a series of memoranda our office obtained today, Arnold Schwarzenegger's dalliance with boys in a hotel room just two years ago is every bit as scandalous as his manhandling of women during his career as celebrity he-man.

The wannabe governor has yet to deny that on May 17, 2001, at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles, he had consensual political intercourse with Enron chieftain Kenneth Lay. Also frolicking with Arnold and Ken was convicted stock swindler Mike Milken.

Now, thirty-four pages of internal Enron memoranda have just come through this reporter's fax machine tell all about the tryst between Maria's husband and the corporate con men. It turns out that
Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they carried off.

posted by jeev | 10:38 AM |

From the Chronicle:

-- New law providing legal rights for same-sex couples
BUSTAMANTE: Supports

CAMEJO: Supports

DAVIS: Support - signed bill

MCCLINTOCK: Opposes

SCHWARZENEGGER: Would not have signed the legislation, but has expressed support for domestic partnerships

What does it mean to "support" domestic partnerships if you don't think they should have legally protected status?

posted by jeev | 10:34 AM |

Okay. You know this. VOTE.

posted by jeev | 10:30 AM |

Sunday, October 05, 2003

The Ripple Effect:

The leak of a CIA operative's name has also exposed the identity of a CIA front company, potentially expanding the damage caused by the original disclosure, Bush administration officials said yesterday.

and this:

The inadvertent disclosure of the name of a business affiliated with the CIA underscores the potential damage to the agency and its operatives caused by the leak of Plame's identity. Intelligence officials have said that once Plame's job as an undercover operative was revealed, other agency secrets could be unraveled and her sources might be compromised or endangered.

A former diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said yesterday that every foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities.

posted by jeev | 5:22 PM |