Everyone’s already linked to James Fallows’ hilarious-in-retrospect 1982 article about how computers are awesome, but check the price — he paid $4,000 for this machine. That’s about $8,500 in contemporary money. For a computer with 48k of RAM.
UPDATE: Similarly: “You have to understand, they told me, it can take five or ten minutes to load a long draft into the computer from tapes, whereas a disk drive (which would add a thousand dollars to the cost) could do the job in seconds.”
Signs with the Bobcats for the bargain price of $57 million over six years. Rashard Lewis, we’ll recall, got a $110 million. And it’s true, of course, that if we neglect the fifty percent of the game known as “defense” that Lewis is a slightly better player.
President Bush’s approval rating according to a new Harris poll, down from a high of 88 percent shortly after 9/11. Cheney’s approval rating is just 21 percent.
Sitting on the table next to me is a copy of the imminently forthcoming masterwork, Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President by . . . Steven Hayes (yes, that Steven Hayes).
The jacket copy is priceless: “With exhaustive reporting, Hayes shines a light into the shadows of the Bush administration and finds a very different Dick Cheney from the one America thinks it knows.” In short, Hayes was able to penetrate the legendary veil of secrecy surrounding the Vice President and uncover the shocking truth that — Dick Cheney is awesome! Why, one wonders, has the administration been covering this up?
But then again, one also wonders why the administration was covering up this convincing evidence of an al-Qaeda/Iraq connection that Hayes claims to have discovered. For example, it turns out that Joe Wilson sucks! Also — Cheney’s wartime leadership is vital!
Yesterday on The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly expressed outrage over a decision by the San Diego Padres to host a children’s hat giveaway promotion and a gay pride night during the same baseball game. “So thousands of gay adults showed up and commingled with straight families,” said O’Reilly. “[C]lear-thinking people understand it is completely out of context and inappropriate.”
Jim Geraghty reports that Tony Snow is calling for a “surge of facts.” I presume that means he’ll be resigning.
Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, a Republican, “harshly criticized” President Bush yesterday for commuting the sentence of his former aide, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice. “It was plain wrong all the way around,” Cox said. “We can’t let people run from the obligation of telling the truth.”
I don’t really have a strong view on whether or not state-level health care initiatives make sense, but I do think this element of David Sirota’s typically measured critique of Ezra Klein could use a little more context:
Spend 5 minutes on Wikipedia, and you’ll learn that Canada’s much-vaunted universal health care system began as a provincial initiative. The provinces provided both the better political opportunities, and ultimately the better initial implementation platform that ended up launching the federal program.
Back when I was in Introduction to Canadian Politics class, I was taught that the reason for this is that Section 92 of the British North America Act of 1867 stipulates that “The Establishment, Maintenance, and Management of Hospitals, Asylums, Charities, and Eleemosynary Institutions in and for the Province, other than Marine Hospitals” is one of the areas in which “In each Province the Legislature may exclusively make Laws.” Much of the history of health care federalism in Canada essentially amounts to steady backdoor federalization of the nominally Province-based health care system precisely because assigning primary responsibility for these matters to the Provinces doesn’t really work well in the modern context.
Today, the National Intelligence Council of the Bush administration will release a report entitled “Al Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West,” concluding that the “network is gaining strength and has established a safe haven in remote tribal areas of western Pakistan for training and planning attacks…despite concerted U.S. attempts to smash the network.”
But this morning, both President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff attempted to play down the intelligence report. “I wouldn’t put it [the threat] at that level — in my own opinion,” said Chertoff. Bush claimed:
There is a perception in the coverage that al Qaeda may be as strong today as they were prior to September 11th. That’s simply not the case…because of the actions we’ve taken, al Qaeda is weaker today than they would have been.
Watch it:
Bush’s attempts to downplay the administration’s own intelligence is nothing new. Intelligence reports warned both before and during the war that invading Iraq would serve as a rallying cry for terrorist and extremist organizations.
Chertoff’s attempts to spin the resurgence of al Qaeda is a quick reversal on his part, as just a few days ago, he reported a “gut feeling” that there would be an al Qaeda strike on the U.S. as soon as this summer.
Some Bush administration officials recently conceded that they overestimated the damage done to al Qaeda since 2001. Unfortunately, the President and his top advisers stubbornly refuse to do the same.
Mimikatz has more.
Transcript: Read more
During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday on the U.S. attorney scandal, Sen. Arlen Specter asked former White House political director Sara Taylor “whether [former Arkansas U.S. attorney Bud] Cummins was forced out in order to make room for [Karl Rove protege Tim] Griffin.”
Taylor offered a contradictory response, arguing on the one hand Cummins “had been planning to leave” while on the other hand stating “he was, in fact, fired.”
Later in the hearing, Specter asked if “there was a political overtone to the replacement of Mr. Cummins by Mr. Griffin?” I don’t believe that’s the case at all,” Taylor responded. Watch it:
In today’s Arkansas Times, Bud Cummins shot back, expressing his disagreement with Taylor’s assesment of how and why he was forced out of office:
Taylor said Wednesday it was her understanding that Cummins had stated as early as 2004 that he was planning to leave. Better communication would have made the transition easier, she added.
Cummins said he does not believe his status played a role in his ouster.
“Tim Griffin wanted my job, they decided to give it him, and because of the arrogance and inexperience of the staff-level folks that handled the execution of a poorly thought-out plan, my loyal and arguably successful service was not considered in any way,” Cummins said.
Despite what Taylor claims, there were “political overtones” to Griffin’s replacement of Cummins. Not only did the White House intentionally bypass Senate approval of Griffin, over the objections of Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), but in December 2006, Kyle Sampson, then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, wrote in an e-mail that getting Griffin appointed was “important to Harriet, Karl, etc” — Karl being Karl Rove.
UPDATE: Alex Koppelman at Salon spoke to Cummins last night about his reaction to Taylor’s testimony:
Cummins says he thinks the “thing about me announcing to the press an intention to leave is way overblown,” and that he “would like to know who was selling [Taylor] that line.”
Transcript: Read more
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