In case you're wondering what's up with the new(er) Bush administration (Rummy serving penance in the Middle East), Ron Suskind's OP-ED in today's NYTimes presents a good take on the new cabinet: "The Cabinet of Incuriosities":

Mr. Bush has never been comfortable in America's so-called meritocracy. Undistinguished in college, business school and in the private sector, he spent nearly 30 years sitting in seminar rooms and corporate suites while experts and high achievers held forth.

Now it appears that he's having his revenge—speaking loudly in his wave of second-term cabinet nominations for a kind of anti-meritocracy: the idea that anyone, properly encouraged and supported, can do a thoroughly adequate job, even better than adequate, in almost any endeavor.

It's an empowering, populist idea—especially for those who, for whtever reason, have felt wrongly excluded or disrespected—that is embodied in the story of Mr. Bush himself: a man with virtually no experience in foreign affairs or national domestic policy who has been a uniquely forceful innovator in both realms.

* * *

Now that Mr. Bush has won his final campaign and holds high a gleaming national mandate, he can be even more himself. And for Mr. Bush, personality is destiny. What you do is not as important as whether you are deemed morally sound and trustworth. In other words, a "good" man—or woman—beats a leading expert every time.

I.E. living in a state of "grace" is what really counts. Suskind doesn't quite tie this element up with his OP-ED piece, but one must note that his view of Bush fits with Bush's fundamentalist's views: one is blessed without any human rationalization for the "blessing." One can either then be humble as a result or proud. The earthquake didn't kill me because it occured on the other side of the world. That's a blessing. I can either feel thankful and humble or I can feel proud and justified in my circumstances.

Timothy Noah nails it in his chatterbox article, "Principle as Narcissism," in Slate:

What "I" get to do, as president, is make promises that I know perfectly well can never be kept, and then to make Congress break those promises for me. I don't have to change "the principles I believe in" because I know more responsible people in the government will violate them and take the blame.

Those "principles," then, are really nothing more than the narcissism of a spoiled child. Why a Congress controlled by Bush's own party is willing to put up with this infantile buck-passing is anybody's guess.

If you haven't read it, you should. It's not deep thinking, just accurate.

Has anybody been paying attention to the AOL ads on TV recently? They are advertising their high priced services and running Netscape's bargain basement ads sometimes on the same networks at the same time. Doesn't AOL still own Netscape? How stupid do they think we are?

Merry Christmas America! You've got what you paid for: the Republicans have not only managed to grant the super rich, who bought your election, huge tax breaks, but you've also managed to give them a further advantage by allowing them to substantially decrease the amount of assistance they are willing to give you and your children in one of the only methods you have for moving your children out of poverty and the lower echelons of the working class. In order to save money (sic) the congress and administration have decided to cut Pell Grants to 1.3 million Americans.

So the rich get richer through their tax breaks, and the rich banks get richer by supplying more loans to needy students and their families. Next comes Social Security and the enrichment of Wall Street through the dumping of billions of dollars of working Americans' retirement funds into the hands of a few rich speculators. If you think the Fanny Mae scandel and the Savings and Loans scandels of the 1980s were bad, you ain't seen nothing yet. We're all headed for Enron territory.

Blowing in the wind: Today's New York Times comments on Michael Powell's shifting political attitudes with regards to what's decent and what ain't. Some four years ago, Powell won a Freedom of Speech Award for arguing that broadcasters shouldn't have to compete with the cable industry and the Net while having their tongues tied by antiquated decency restrictions. Since that time, Powell has led the fight to make America's air waves safe for the Religious Right. The Times reports that in 2000 fines levied by the FCC totaled less than fifty thousand dollars while, so far, this year they have almost reache the eight million dollar mark. Maybe it's Powell's way of trying to help the budget short fall that his party has created?

Have you noticed that the flack over last year's Super Bowl incident has consistantly been reffered to as "The Janet Jackson Incident"? Hey, it was the white dude who ripped her clothes off! Most of us can't even remember his name.

Let's see, what was Nixon's "southern strategy?" Oh, yes, remind the white southerners that as of the mid 1960s black Americans finally had gained the right to vote and that they were registering as Democrats. Hmmmm! Time to switch parties?

Thank goodness we've finally ended racism in this country (trans. "we'll call it by a different name").

In the Cut Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face arena: A school district in Mustang, Oklahoma voted down an $11 million bond for its schools because the superintendent cut a nativity scene at the end of the annual school play recently. That's what you get, Super, for trying to follow the law of the land! We'll show you, we'll force our kids to keep getting third rate educations!

Meanwhile in North Carolina a minister took out a full-page ad, admonishing residents of Raleigh not to shop at stores unless the had the phrase, "Merry Christmas," in their promotions. Never forget, it ain't about Christ, it's about gaining personal power. "Hey, look at me! See what I can cause to happen!"

Just remember that the Christmas these good folks want brought back to America was invented in the 1850s to promote consumerism. The purpose was to prey upon people's superstitious side to cause them to go out and buy, buy, buy.

Never forget that the same conservatives who blast the ACLU are also the ones who run to them for help when they are caught using drugs illegally.

Technology: If you aren't using Firefox to read this, why not? Is it because you're using Opera? I've been using Firefox for over a year. A recent NYTimes report stated that IE's market share has dropped below 90 percent. It's about time.

Unfortunately, the more people who use Firefox, the more likely that the virus writers and the spyware creeps are likely to start exploiting it vulnerabilities. Let's face it, no software is safe. And your bank and credit card companies want you to do everything on line! Are they going to pick up the tab for all the theft that is about to occur?

The F. D. A.: Since 1992 the Food and Drug Administration has slipped steadily into the hands of the drug companies. These big money makers want new drugs approved, and financing the FDA's programs is directly linked to the drug companies themselves. (See Gardiner Harris' NYTimes article for Dec. 6, 2004.)

About a hundred years ago, the federal government created the FDA to protect American citizens from exploitation by snake oil salesmen and big companies intent on liberating our grandparents from their hard earned daily wages with phony promises about the benefits of untested products (much of which had cocain as the chief active ingredient).

In the past dozen years, the sleezy con men have come back with a new pitch: "Approve our drugs now and save lives." Hidden is the lack of care in follow up studies that will get products like Vioxx off the market before it can take lives.

On a side note: The Supreme Court is now considering the medicinal use of marijuana. Those who are "taking" this drug for medicinal purposes either grow the plant themselves or purchase it (for the most part) from small growers. The big drug companies have no control over its production or distribution. So who's pushing the federal government to prosecute these cases, especially in light of the fact that growing the plant and taking the drug has been made legal in various states?

It will be very interesting to see if the Supreme Court has the courage to back the states in this issue or if they will cave to the pressures of the drug companies. Don't assume this an argument between blue and red staters, liberals and conservatives.

Telling my computer what to type: David Pogue's December 2, 2004 column in the New York Times praises the new edition of Dragon Naturally Speaking, a software program that turns spoken language into text for its accuracy. He also praises the company for spending the past two years for actually working to make the software function better rather than simply adding more bells and whistles.

That's good, but he also expressed surprise and some dismay about the fact that the number of speech to text applications had diminished and little work seems to be going on in this area, which caused me to wonder about the situation as well. Why aren't more people interested in speech to text programs?

Maybe most people are like me. I simply have no interest in such a program. I don't want to talk aloud to my computer.

I can readily imagine situations where this software, however, might be particularly useful, and I am a bit surprised more hasn't been done with it. Business settings come immediately to mind. The real advantage, other than for people who for any variety of reasons simply cannot type, is to free up the user's hands for other tasks. Thus I suspect that this sort of multi-tasking must simply be beyond the capacity of most of us.

There was a time, in the not so distant past, when every manager (mostly males) had a secretary (almost always female) who would take the boss's dictation. Every letter, every memo, nearly every note, required two people to produce it. The secretary would be called into the boss's office where the boss would speak the letter to the secretary, who would in turn form the message into something that could be understood by its intended recipient. Think of the energy that required, and the time.

Computers have cut those energy costs and the time needed to produce that sort of communication down significantly. In addition, now the boss, who pressumably knows her or his submect matter much better than a secretary might be expected to, is responsible for the accuracy of the transmission of information.

So why isn't the modern manager talking to his computer instead of typing the information in? He/she had no problem speaking to a secretary in the good old days. Maybe because the only time we really feel comfortable speaking to a machine is when we curse it for misbehaving? I do like to seem some response in a person's face when I talk to them. (Think about the lectures given to teenage daughters and the blank stares they use to respond with—it's maddening.)

Quote of the day: "For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do," Tommy G. Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services said during his resignation speech: Thanks, Tommy, and be sure to remind the kids that burning the house down only requires them to get the gas can out of the garage and use the matches in the kitchen drawer! Gee, why haven't they thought of that already?