POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

A Normal Part of Life, Coming to a Neighborhood Near You

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Website Services for Conservatives

Some words about Enoch's business, SunAnt.com. As you know, this business was established by Enoch and his good friend James Shore, now departed (as a result of his having been baked to death by James Arthur Ray, harmonic guru). Let's leave that latter part aside for the moment, and focus on the former.

SunAnt.com create commercial and other websites. They also offer optimization for existing websites, as well as hosting services. Optimization includes but is never limited to what is generally referred to as SEO (search engine optimization), because that alone is seldom enough to make a business's web presence much more effective.

The simple fact, though, is that they prefer to do business with conservative enterprises, as reflective of their values. Because they're located in Milwaukee, rather than on one of the coasts, they can do the work more cheaply than would be possible in those high cost of living coastal locations. And they bring that Midwestern work ethic to what they do, as well.

If you have any questions, please ask in comments, and Enoch will respond, and if you've got any referrals . . . woo hoo!

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Q: Why Did You Lie About Serving in Vietnam?

A: Don't question my patriotism!

Some in the media, trying to explain Blumenthal's lie, resort to mumbo jumbo about "generational guilt." (Ellis tried that ludicrously self-important tack too, explaining his concocted service as a form of anguish for having let others die in his place.) Generational guilt? Try generational egotism. Blumenthal is just another creepy narcissist in American politics who couldn't bear attending military service ceremonies without bragging about his own "service."

A liberal generation that "loathed" the military (as Bill Clinton put it in his draft-dodging letter) now loves it and doesn't want to be cut out of the glory. For Blumenthal to have spelled out the nature of his service specifically would have left his ego ungratified and his audiences less than impressed. Even in his non-apology apology on Tuesday, he couldn't resist more pointless bragging, patting himself on the back for having looked up the Marine Corps Reserve all by himself "in a phone book" and having left for training "at midnight."

Blumenthal took "full responsibility" for his lie while in reality taking none. Besides, who takes "full responsibility" for (what he calls) an innocent misstatement? Why would you need to? So even in that tiresomely shabby and grandiose formulation he gives himself away. He says that he didn't correct multiple news stories that said he served in Vietnam because he never saw the stories -- one more deception to add into the mix since he is the one who launched this misinformation through his vague and dishonest references to his "service."

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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War! Hoo! Good Gawd, Y’awl!

What is it good for? Protecting teachers' paychecks!

House Democrats are preparing to pass an Afghanistan war-spending bill on a party-line vote as Republicans balk at extra provisions the White House wants in the measure.

Passing such a spending bill through the lower chamber will be difficult because some anti-war Democrats routinely vote no on war bills. Moreover, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has vowed not to lean on her caucus on this year’s war supplemental after whipping the measure in 2009.

House Democratic leaders are planning to take up the package funding President Barack Obama’s troop increase in Afghanistan after it passes the Senate. Senior Democrats in the upper chamber and the Obama administration are looking to attach to the war bill a $23 billion fund to help state and local governments stave off teacher layoffs.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Jeremiah Wright Thrown Under Bus, “Literally”

Toxic, radioactive pastor underbusted:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press that he is "toxic" to the Obama administration and that the president "threw me under the bus."

In his strongest language to date about the administration's 2-year-old rift with the Chicago pastor, Wright told a group raising money for African relief that his pleas to release frozen funds for use in earthquake-ravaged Haiti would likely be ignored.

"No one in the Obama administration will respond to me, listen to me, talk to me or read anything that I write to them. I am 'toxic' in terms of the Obama administration," Wright wrote the president of Africa 6000 International earlier this year.

"I am 'radioactive,' Sir. When Obama threw me under the bus, he threw me under the bus literally!" he wrote. "Any advice that I offer is going to be taken as something to be avoided. Please understand that!"

The White House didn't respond to requests for comment Monday about Wright's remarks. Several phone messages left by the AP for Wright at the Trinity United Church of Christ, where he is listed as a pastor emeritus, were not returned. Wright's spokeswoman, his daughter Jeri Wright, did not immediately comment on the substance of the letter.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Cerfing the Web

Deputy US Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin gets wrist slapped:

The controversy that began in March with an accusatory report on the conservative clearinghouse BigGovernment.com has resulted in an official reprimand for Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin, according to records and an internal memo obtained by techPresident this weekend.

*******

The ethics pledge signed by Executive Branch employees reads, in relevant part, "I will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts."

About three-fifths of the McLaughlin email conversations produced at Consumer Watchdog's request involve conversations with Vint Cerf, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist who is often honored with the sobriquet "Father of the Internet" for his work in developing the Internet's core standards. But Cerf also happens to wear another hat. Until recently, the 66 year old also served as Chair (and is now Vice Chair) of a federal advisory committee, the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technologies at the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology, better known as NIST.

McLaughlin and Cerf were frequent email contacts, though often with Cerf's missives going unresponded. But, in the Holdren memo, the White House OSTP contends that those exchanges don't violate the ethics pledge signed by McLaughlin because of Cerf's second hat as a government advisor. Email discussions about everything from the internal politics of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) on which both Cerf and McLaughlin once served to the adoption of Internet Protocol version 6 to getting fuel for a Haitian network access point at Boutilier in the post-earthquake scramble are, says the White House, unconcerning because Cerf was acting in his "official capacity as a member of a Federal Advisory Committee."

Also covered by the advisor-exemption, says the White House, is an exchange where Cerf asks McLaughlin whether the Obama White House is shying away from its commitment to net neutrality. "Don’t be silly," responded McLaughlin. "No one’s backing away from anything.”

And often, McLaughlin seems well aware that his contacts with his non-Cerf former colleagues at Google are to be avoided. An invitation to an cocktail event at Google headquarters in DC gets this response from the Deputy CTO: "Thanks for the kind invite, Manuel. I keep a very strict line between myself and Google (and Googlers)." A request for intervention in a Google Earth dispute over the boundaries between Cambodia and Thailand produces this: "Norbert, in my current position, I'm recused from anything having to do with Google, so I'll leave it to you and Vint to sort this out. :)" A request from a Google staffer to meet to discuss Asia policy resulted in this response: "Thanks, but I recuse myself from anything Google-specific, on account of past employment." Several other emails from Googlers on topics like copyright treaties and Google's fiber-to-the-home experiment go ignored.

Oh, well, just so long as people are wearing multiple hats.

Related: Kagan and speech rationing.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Varia and minima

I'm waiting for a solution to recover my stuff off my defunct computers, but in the interim, a few links:

Plan B: Skip College -- I keep reading about the gender gap in college education, but the facts are that most majors are useless and many women are majoring in said useless majors. Navel-gaving studies? [pretty much any major ending with the word "studies" is useless] It's high school part 2, electric bugaloo. I don't even have to look up the stats to know that men still greatly outnumber women in many useful majors such as engineering and computer science.

California in top ten governments likely to default on bonds - and a link that pulls out the pertinent table. Obviously this relates to much of what I've written about public pensions. Later, I will pull up a recent Calpers report that shows pension plans going from near-fully-funded status to around 60% fundedness in two years. That's a good sign, don't you think?

Bad coverage of Japanese politics and culture. Can't say I'm surprised. I will not pass myself off as a Japan expert, but it was very interesting seeing the disparities of what I was told [in my Japanese classes and various PBS videos] and what I saw in Hakodate. That was an eye-opener, to be sure.

ADDITIONAL: The Product Paradox -- computers vs. consumer electronics, basic mindsets.

Meep

Meep is a member of the Irish Catholic mafia, having a suspiciously high number of green-eyed, red-haired friends. While she doesn’t have red hair herself [except when she goes into the sun (rare for any vampire)], she does have green eyes. She’s a raving Papist and is a life actuary on the side [i.e., she counts dead people]. An amateur pain-in-the-ass [willing to go pro!], she likes covering retirement, mortality, math, and education issues.

Soundtrack of Hope N Change – baby in taxi – comfortable

A song of Hope:

A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done
We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young

Erm...  click me...

Just like the real thing. Only different. And different is diversity. Diversity is good.

A song of Change:

Fitter, happier, more productive, comfortable, not drinking too much
Regular exercise at the gym, 3 days a week
Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries at ease
Eating well, no more microwave dinners and saturated fats
A patient, better driver, a safer car, baby smiling in back seat
Sleeping well, no bad dreams, no paranoia
Careful to all animals, never washing spiders down the plughole
Keep in contact with old friends, enjoy a drink now and then
Will frequently check credit at moral bank, hole in wall
Favors for favors, fond but not in love
Charity standing orders on Sundays ring road supermarket
No killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants
Car wash, also on Sundays, no longer afraid of the dark or mid-day shadows
Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate, nothing so childish
At a better pace, slower and more calculated, no chance of escape
Now self-employed, concerned, but powerless
An empowered and informed member of society, pragmatism not idealism
Will not cry in public, less chance of illness, tires that grip in the wet
Shot of baby strapped in back seat, a good memory, still cries at a good film
Still kisses with saliva, no longer empty and frantic like a cat tied to a stick
That's driven into frozen winter shit, the ability to laugh at weakness
Calm fitter, healthier and more productive, a pig in a cage on antibiotics

Enoch_Root

AKA. Bobby Donn Brubaker (the most popular man in Mesa, AZ), the Umbrella of Terror, Jack Ketch.

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Homeophobia Strikes NHS

Could it happen here?

Hundreds of members of the BMA have passed a motion denouncing the use of the alternative medicine, saying taxpayers should not foot the bill for remedies with no scientific basis to support them.

The BMA has previously expressed scepticism about homoeopathy, arguing that the rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence should examine the evidence base and make a definitive ruling about the use of the remedies in the NHS.

Now, the annual conference of junior doctors has gone further, with a vote overwhelmingly supporting a blanket ban, and an end to all placements for trainee doctors which teach them homeopathic principles.

Dr Tom Dolphin, deputy chairman of the BMA's junior doctors committee in England told the conference: "Homeopathy is witchcraft. It is a disgrace that nestling between the National Hospital for Neurology and Great Ormond Street [in London] there is a National Hospital for Homeopathy which is paid for by the NHS".

It's with some personal risk that I side with the physicians and dismiss homeopathy as twaddle, because, as you may know, my kids attended Waldorf schools (The Girl does still), and my wife teaches at one, and this is popular there. Still, this is the kind of gobbledygook that "health care reform" is likely to cover, now that Obama's restoring science to its rightful place and all. I know, I know: modern medicine's all so mechanistic and blah blah blah.

Well, it's alternative, right? Shouldn't that really be good enough for me? Maybe some dolphins are evil.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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