Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

“It means that after we cut your heart out, we actually stop to sew you back up.”
      – Bob Dole after being asked by David Letterman to define “compassionate conservative.”

Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” has a lot of problems to it. One of which is that the word “compassionate” really shouldn’t be a word that you have to append to your political beliefs in order to make them more palatable to the mainstream. The second is that when you declare yourself to be a “compassionate conservative,” you had damn well better be ready to earn that initial adjective. Anything less will show you for the smirking, double-dealing chimp you really are.

So, of course, Bush works tirelessly to show the world that, yes, it is possible to be both compassionate and conservative. Unless you’re dealing with the elderly. Or women. Or immigrants – both legal and illegal. Or liberals. Or especially when you’re dealing with AIDS patients and developing countries.

THE NATION – Fighting AIDS was supposed to show George W. Bush’s softer side. “Seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many,” he said in his State of the Union address this past January. He has since reconsidered, deciding instead to offer a few more opportunities to the few. First he handed the top job of his Global AIDS Initiative to a Big Pharma boss, then he broke his $3 billion promise of AIDS relief and now there are concerns that he may sabotage a plan to send cheap drugs to countries ravaged by AIDS.

Bush’s plan to fund global AIDS relief was a joke from the start – passing up effective means of stemming the spread of HIV for the old stand-by of abstinence-based sexual education. As a matter of fact, it did more than just pass up other options – it forbid them. Under Bush’s AIDS package, nations could only receive funding if they did not distribute condoms, if they did notteach safe sex in schools, if they did notallow gay marriage, and if they did not allow legal abortions (nice how he slipped that one into the package, ain’t it?). Plus, the nation had to promote abstinence-based sex education, and only abstinence-based messages. Anything else and funding would disappear faster than a keg at Bush’s old fraternity.

And now it seems that the little bit of hope that was being held out by other nations – the production of inexpensive generic retrovirals for third world countries – is under attack by the Bush administration.

The WTO proposed a plan to allow patents on AIDS and HIV medication to be relaxed as long as the drugs were intended for third world countries where AIDS is a major epidemic. The US said that this would, of course, be fine – provided that there were miles and miles of red tape to cut through in order for the deal to ever be put into effect. By effectively making the bureaucratic burden too heavy for most nations to bear while still passing the plan, the Bush administration won a double victory – they insured that pharmaceutical companies would be able to continue gouging the markets where they were in heavy demand (in most third world countries, the cost of a month’s supply of AZT is more than the average yearly salary), and still walked away with something to show just how “compassionate” they were. After all – they did pass a plan that would technically allow other nations to provide cheap generics. So what if there was so much red tape, nobody would ever bother?

Then, Canada announced that they were ready to tackle the red tape involved.

So, no. The plan Bush’s administration championed is now the work of the Devil. And people are holding their breath to see what exactly the Chimp in Chief is going to use to make his about-face this time. Will it be NAFTA? Will it be the FTAA? Will it be our considerable military power? Our political pressure?

It’ll be whatever Bush deems necessary. Because God knows, medicine is a luxury.

TalkLeft points us toward this CBS News story. Remember those heartfelt letters from GI’s at the front that appeared in your local newspaper?

But another letter, purportedly written by a GI hospitalized for wounds suffered in a grenade attack, came as a surprise to Pfc. Nick Deaconson of Beckley, W.Va., according to his dad.

The soldier received a congratulatory phone call from his father, Timothy, for getting the letter published in the local newspaper.

“When I told him he wrote such a good letter, he said: ‘What letter?’” Timothy Deaconson told Gannett. “This is just not his (writing) style.”

Whoops.

While it’s not exactly nice, it’s a comfort to know that other people are experiencing something like comment spamming, as well.

Reading & Writing has a nice entry that includes some important details about the spammers. TalkLeft is dealing with it, as well. And I know that Thud and BristolCountry have been dealing with the issue, too.

And I understand there’s a MoveableType hack coming soon that should take care of this. So things are starting to look up.

Satan stokes a special furnace for the ring of Hell that is reserved for Comments spammers.

Today, alone, I have had to remove four comments that contained nothing but porn links posted by a spammer (in the process, one real comment was accidentally deleted – my apologies to the commentor). These messages had nothing to do with the content of the article.

In the past two weeks, I have deleted eight messages posted in a similar manner.

For years, I’ve said that the main difference between spam e-mail and junk postal mail is that we pay to receive spam. The spam munches our bandwidth, takes time to delete, and tries our patience. I’ve received three good e-mails today – the other 149 were spam. All of this on a connection that is paid for. On the other hand, I’ve known people who kept trash cans by their front doors. Junk mail comes out of the mailbox, straight to the trash can – and the mailer’s the only one who paid anything for it.

Comment spamming is another thing, entirely. To delete the spam, I not only have to go through my MT menus – I also have to rebuild the site. Which takes time and is annoying. Not only that, but for the period before I take it down, my site lists links to material I have not approved (and probably would not approve).

Additionally – when our websites gets spammed, we not only wind up paying to receive the message – we pay to publish it. And this really torques me off. The forums are there for an exchange of ideas and for feedback. They’re there to promote discussion.

The last thing they are there for is to let spammers and junk mailers piggyback off of our bandwidth costs and steal our traffic without remuneration or approval. I have two banner exchanges – one for the main site and one for the digital goods store. I decide that those ads get displayed, and I get compensated for it with banner displays on other sites. If I choose to sell advertising, I’ll choose who I sell it to and I will be paid for it.

If you ever meet one of these blog spammers, punch them in the stomach for me.

Cheney’s still singing the WMD Boogie every time he takes the mic, even though the tune is dated and more forgotten than “Livin’ La Vida Loca.”

“We could not accept the grave danger of Saddam Hussein and his allies turning weapons of mass destruction against us or our friends and allies,” Cheney told the conservative Heritage Foundation today.

Cheney struck back at criticism of the Iraq war that has built over the months since Bush declared major combat over May 1. His speech picked up where President Bush left off a day earlier, when the president told listeners in Portsmouth, N.H., “The challenges we face today cannot be met with timid actions or bitter words.”

Of course not. It’s so much easier to meet them with lots and lots of bombs.

We haven’t found WMD’s in Iraq. We haven’t found any evidence of WMD’s. We haven’t found any reason to believe that we will find WMD’s. And we’ve pretty much seen that there was no real connection between Hussein and Al Qaeda – aside from the fact that they both happen to hail from the Middle East. Of course, most of us said all of this before the war. But this isn’t a time to be playing “I told you so.”

Except that Bush and Co. continue to spout off about how we had to take care of Iraq before it could use its Weapons O’ Mass Destruction ^TM to kill “Tens of thousands of Americans.” Although Bush himself seems more and more content to play the whipped puppy dog and pout because nobody cares that he “liberated” the Iraqi people.

And God forbid that anybody should bring up our troops overseas.

The vice president’s 25-minute speech also largely dismissed the continuing violence in Iraq, the lack of broad international collaboration, and the failure so far to find any weapons of mass destruction, mentioning only in passing the “difficulties we knew would occur.”

“Difficulties we knew would occur”? “Difficulties we knew would occur”? Somebody pull the footage out of the vaults and let’s replay phrases like “cakewalk” and “troops welcomed with open arms.” While we’re at it, let’s check and see what exactly Bush has been doing with the soldiers’ hazard pay, survivor’s benefits, and his unprecedented extension of the duration of their original orders.

Support our troops. Bring them home.

But Cheney’s determined not to be a one-hit wonder. No, he’s also singing “The We Gots Revenge Rag.”

“They have begun to realize what a grave miscalculation it was to make an enemy of this country,” Cheney told Republican donors at a fund-raising luncheon on the University of Notre Dame campus.

And he’s joined in it by the Bush Man himself.

“They’re trying desperately to undermine Iraq’s progress and throw that country into chaos,” Bush said at an Air National Guard base in Portsmouth, N.H. “They believe that America will run from a challenge. They’re mistaken. Americans are not the running kind.”

Americans, he said, “did not run from Germany and Japan following World War II.”

“We helped those countries become strong and decent and democratic societies that no longer waged war on America, and that’s our mission in Iraq right now,” Bush said.

Of course, Bush was not part of those particular efforts. As a matter of fact, there’s a strong connection between Bush’s family and shady business dealings with the Nazi party – even after the U.S. entered into WWII.

No, Bush’s past experience with nationbuilding happens to be Afghanistan. And, let’s face it, he didn’t exactly prove his competence with that job.

But people keep telling me that Iraq is old news. There’s an election coming up, and without the U.S. currently embroiled in a war with Hussein there’s going to be a tough sell with the Bush campaign. He really needs something big to take to the American public.

US President George W Bush has announced fresh measures designed to hasten the end of communist rule in Cuba.

They include tightening an American travel embargo to the island, cracking down on illegal cash transfers, and a more robust information campaign aimed at Cuba.

Mr Bush said the punitive measures were being introduced because the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, had acted with “defiance and contempt and a new round of brutal oppression that outraged world conscience”.

Of course, Bush was the one who sent fifteen Cuban immigrants who had set foot on dry land (let’s talk “Dry Foot Policy” here…) back to Cuba based on the government’s promise that they wouldn’t be executed. And, of course, most of the fifteen were taken from the plane and promptly… executed. Whoops.

Yes, 2004 is around the corner. And it’s the Cuban refugees that helped put Bush in the White House, right? So maybe if he plays hardball with Castro now, we’ll all of us – Cuban immigrants and the rest of the people – forget how poorly he’s treated refugees. Or how much he’s slashed aid to the poor and middle class. Or how many non-ctizens he’s sent over to die in Iraq.

But we’re smarter than that.

Right?

The New York Post tells us exactly what a $30 million dollar advertising budget and an unprecedented talent agency deal got the U.S. government:

Most city store owners who were questioned yesterday about the redesigned $20 bill featuring the seventh president said they didn’t want it.

“There’s no way I would accept this. Have you got anything else?” said Riaz Mohammed, the manager of Gramercy Park Photo on Park Avenue South.

Come on folks. I mean, the new $20 bill is represented by the William Morris Agency fercryin’outloudindamud.

The big news on the tech shows tonight is the rebirth of Napster. Of course, it’s less a reincarnation and more like that creepy scene in Silence of the Lambs where Hannibal skins a man’s face and uses it as a mask. And on that cheerful note…

Everybody wants onto the iTunes bandwagon. Too bad that iTunes is just about ready to launch for PC users, now – it makes these PC-only services a little bit less attractive.

Which brings me to something that kinda cheeses me off. Napster is PC only now? It uses WMA’s? And it’s almost exactly the same pricing scheme as iTunes? You know what? The new version of Napster can bite me.

In a fun little bit of news, multi-million dollar monolithic exploiter of artists mp3.com forgot to pay $35 bucks to re-register its URL.

“This is a very serious allegation that has been made,” McClellan said. “It is a criminal matter being investigated by the Department of Justice, and no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States.”

The New York Times today leaves us with the impression that the Bush administration is serious about discovering who leaked the identity of a former CIA undercover agent. Too bad that’s not the message Bush is really sending.

WASHINGTON—President Bush said Tuesday he has “no idea” whether the Justice Department will catch the person who disclosed an undercover CIA officer’s identity.

“This is a large administration,” Bush said.

So was the Clinton administration. But Republicans had absolutely no problem spending billions of dollars to find a single intern with an oral fixation.

Bush seems to belive that we’re never going to find the person who leaked the information because, “This is a town where a lot of people leak.”

And that’s a straight line I’m not even going to touch.

But he has a point. There are a lot of leaks around Washington. Before the day is over, a few hundred Washington area reporters will have exclusive information from internal sources. They’ll know where Senator Kennedy is planning to spend his next vacation. They’ll know how much Justice Clarence Thomas spent on his new watch. They’ll know what the Speaker of the House had for lunch and which politicians don’t like cauliflower. If they’re lucky, they’ll get a few advance copies of speeches from around the political world. Maybe one will actually get an advance copy of a new bill or initiative that the White House is going to push.

Most of them, however, will not walk away with the identity of a covert operative.

I hate to break it to Bush, but the size of his administration doesn’t matter [make of that line what you will]. The reason most leaks never get found is because they’re not worth finding. The man who leaked George Herbert Walker Bush’s dislike of broccoli didn’t exactly reveal state secrets. The person who leaks a copy of Bush’s upcoming speech to the children of Martin Luther H.S. of Walla Walla, Washington is not a security risk. We don’t find most of these leaks or ask for them to be exposed because the leak doesn’t really give us any serious, secret information.

And in those cases where serious information has been leaked to the press (Watergate), we haven’t found the people who leaked it because they went to great pains not to be found. They meet reporters in parking garages and behind warehouses. They don’t e-mail sensitive information or use the easily-tapped and traced phones.

This information, however, was leaked by phone. It was leaked from within the administration. And it was leaked to more than one reporter.

If the investigation is fair, the chances are good we’ll find the informant.

Or, at least, the person the informant gets to take the blame.