Saturday, February 14, 2004

Josh Marshal is special Commenting on John B. Calhoun, who's the feller who says he saw W reading magazines in 'Bama: Interestingly, though, as the Houston Chronicle notes this morning, the documents released Friday night show "Bush's transfer to the Alabama squadron wasn't approved until September 1972, months after Bush's presence as recalled by Calhoun." Oops. Now, needless to say, if we were still operating under the rules that prevailed in the mid-1990s, James Carville would have been appointed Independent Counsel in the late summer of 2002 to investigate Halliburton. He'd have had the Intel shenanigans, the Plame matter and the Niger documents added to his brief since then. A cowed AG would have given him the Guard matter around the middle of last week. And in a couple days some FBI agents would be showing up on Calhoun's doorstep ready to squeeze him as silly as any freshly sliced wedge of lime in close proximity to a bottle of Corona. 1:45:38 PM    Comment []  trackback []

Dummies at Microsoft Secular Blasphemy has a couple of the comments made by programmers of Windows 2000/NT source code, as leaked to the vast uncontrollable internet yesterday: /* I hope this messy code doesn't fuck up too many computers */ /* Does anyone have any idea what the hell this subroutine does? */ /* Routine to fuck up Real Audio good */ /* Shit on Java. Dodge this, Sun! */ Now, speaking as a professional code dude (and no newbie:  I wrote my first program, a small "hello world" in Fortran, in 1967), this is just bad, bad, bad.  You don't do this kind of thing -- it's not amusing, helpful, instructive, or professional.  You use comments to explain what you've done so that when you or, more important, someone else must work on it sometime in the future, you don't spend half a week trying to unwind the logic.  When it's ready for testing, you make sure the comments are up to date, and pass it along for testing. To me, this looks like the product of a shop filled with amateurs and run by managers who only want immediate results, with little or no regard for future useability. What makes this a real *shudder* is that these are the programmers working on OPERATING SYSTEMS.  They SHOULD be the best and most experienced and professional. 10:14:21 AM    Comment []  trackback []

So what? From today's Dana Milbank/Mike Allen data dump article in the Washington Post: Bush, in applying for pilot training in 1968, signed a statement saying he has "applied for pilot training with the goal of making flying a lifetime pursuit." In due time, W just blew off the whole "making flying a lifetime pursuit" dream (not to mention the whole National Guard thing, too). Big deal, just a kid making a bit of an overstatement on an application.  Everyone does it now and then. But not like this man has done it, from his application to fly, to this very day.  He seems completely incapable of accepting the idea that his promises mean something, that his actions have real consequences, both to himself and to others.  It is impossible for him to consider that he can fall in to a pile of manure, and NOT come out smelling like a rose. His casual "I didn't really mean it, so what?" attitude is a core characteristic of the man in virtually every public act he's ever performed.  I filed my SEC insider trading papers late, so what?  Daddy's boys at the SEC gave me a hall pass. I don't know the name of the president of Pakistan, so what?  Condi Rice will help me cram for the exam. I was a wild ass drunk, so what?  I got Jesus today. We used the local government to seize private property for the stadium, so what?  It's business. There are no WMD's, so what?  Saddam was a bully. Enact a "No Child Left Behind Act", or an AIDS relief package for Africa, but not fund them?  So what?  It's just politics, even when thousands suffer. Submit a budget that doesn't allocate funds for Afghanistan or Iraq?  So what?  It gives me numbers I can sell. As the leader of a party that preaches personal accountability as the emotional core of it efforts to dismantle of the federal government, could there be a worse resume to represent their values?  This is just the way the man is, he won't change.  The tragedy here is that this type of completly selfish man can be pushed or pulled in any direction his committee of viceroys choose.  It's their responsibility to counsel him wisely and put some spine in the man.  I suspect that history will judge his administration not as one with a "strong, moral leader", but one with an indecisive, vacuous man in above his head, who was badly victimized by those closest to him. The buck still stops with him, of course.  But so what? 8:56:56 AM    Comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2004 Jon Moyer. Last update: 2/15/2004; 5:40:42 AM.