Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:25 PM

Both courtesy of Claudia. Neither the choice to take these quizzes nor the results should surprise anyone who knows me in the slightest.

CLAVDIVS You're not the fool everyone takes you for. You put on a show to stay under the radar. Underneath your bumbling exterior, you are a shrewd and calculating person. You don't enjoy being in the spotlight, but you can take charge if absolutely neccessary. But trust no one, not even your best friend, because you never know who might betray you. You were portrayed by Derek Jacobi. Which I, Claudius Character are You? created by Shiny Objects

Congratulations on making Ravenclaw! Well you're one smart little cookie, aren't you? You're wise and clever, and just love to use your wit and learning to your advantage, and sometimes even the disadvantage of others. Well, you nerd, there IS a world outside of that copy of 'Hogwarts: A History', ya know.. Oh don't worry! We all know you're special. You're just a naturally good learner, right? *mummble mummble* Not too much is known about your house right now.. Wow! You're not only intellegent, you're also an enigma! be sorted @ nimbo.net

By the way, we didn't go to Harvard Square tonight after all. After work, we went down to Outer Limits in Waltham. It's been ages since I've picked up my comics (I don't think I've been there since I got the job). Ian and I took a nice stroll up Moody Street, stopping into Jordan's Furniture to take advantage of their comfy couches to read for a bit. When we got hungry, we headed into Watertown to the Sepal Restaurant. Ian's been craving felafel for a while, and I've really been jonesing for their utterly amazing lamb maklouba (lamb, golden cauliflower, eggplant and rice, sealed in a crock and baked to order). Sepal's food is incredibly good. [Yes, this is the place mentioned in the PBS special Sandwiches You Will Like!] Unfortunately, they're not terribly convenient to our home or work. However, they are convenient to Waltham.

Dinner was divine, but afterwards I was feeling too tired and full for the Square.

Another friend posted earlier today about the Festival of Fire! tomorrow, which sounds interesting. Other options for the weekend include seeing Breakfast at Tiffany's at the Brattle, or possibly catching Two Towers at the last second run theater in the area still showing it. [Ian & I have seen neither yet.] But the weather seems too nice to spend it cooped up in a movie theater.

Anyway, that's about it for tonight. I've still got a massive list of links to blog about, but some other time. Eighties music is blaring from the radio, I've got a stack of comics to read, I'm pleasantly relaxed, and I'm getting off the computer for a while.

Good night, all!

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:36 PM

Oh, darn. I just discovered (thru a friend's LJ) that yesterday was Harvard's graduation. Maybe we won't go hang out in Harvard Square tonight like I was hoping to. (The weather is gorgeous outside, I'm feeling cooped up inside, and it's been far far too long since I've gotten to browse about the Square.) But if yesterday was Harvard's big day (and I just checked - MIT is May 9), then parking is probably going to be very unlikely...

Oh well; maybe we'll still try it, maybe we won't. At any rate, since my last post, I've accumulated a huge mass of links that (at the time) I thought were worth blogging. Some may be outdated by now, but I've still got a lot of (political) news that I'll probably write up over the weekend.

But now the workday is done and as Eddie Izzard might say, "Ciao!"

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:40 PM

That line comes from a Thompson Twins song back in the Eighties. It's also a good description of what people in the blogosphere are writing about today:

• Seeing the forest also looked at the latest from Franken and Krugman, and is wondering whether we're nearing a "Have you no decency" moment, akin to the turning point that ended Joe McCarthy's reign.
  I'm not quite so confident as he is -- I haven't noticed much impact from Krugman or Franken outside the echo chamber -- but I do think public opinion is starting to turn, and could be coaxed further against Bush with some judicious handling.
  [See the forest also provides links to the C-Span videos of the debate, if you want to see it for yourself.]
• This brings me back to the Warblogging.com rant that I mentioned yesterday. I got into a brief discussion about it in a friend's LiveJournal and that got me thinking:

  How about converting that litany of governmental abuses into some form of push-poll? Edit out the opinions and the anecdotes and leave just the documented facts -- news reports and legal analyses. Then ask people whether they feel okay living in a country that has done X or where it's legal for the government to Y. If the people say something shouldn't be allowed or express doubts that such a thing could actually happen in America, give them a half-page sheet with the facts. Once they've read that, ask whether they're comfortable with the government having this ability. If they say something about the current administration being responsible, ask how they'd feel with a Democratic president in charge. This could be a very effective campaign technique, both in terms of increasing awareness and figuring out which issues are most important. Is this what you want your country to be like? Do you want people who have do this to stay in charge?

  What do you think? Good idea? Bad idea?
• Along similar lines, I'm somewhat heartened by the latest Gallup poll. Tom Spencer pointed out the headline with despair and disbelief, but I appreciate reading results like these:
  • Do you think the new tax cut law will - or will not - help your family's financial situation?
     56% say No.
  • Do you think the new tax cut law will - or will not - help the U.S. economy?
     Yes and No are tied at 47% each.
  • In the next few years, do you think the United States' efforts against terrorism will - or will not - require the U.S. to put military troops in combat situations in other countries as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan?
     77% say it will.
  Again, a wily Democrat should be able to exploit those figures!
• Meanwhile, Chris from Interesting Times has another new slogan to spread around: Nobody Died When Clinton Lied.
• Atrios made an interesting observation about the administration's attitude as evidence for the non-existence of WMD: "If they [the administration] really believed they existed, the hunt for them wouldn't be motivated by a desire to justify the war, it would be motivated by the very legitimate desire to make sure the deadly weapons were not in the hands of evil-doers. Since the administration isn't sounding the alarm along these lines, it's obvious they're unconcerned." Different Strings elaborates a bit further on this.
• Last week, I shared a list of Administration lies on WMD courtesy of Whiskey Bar.
  • He's come out with a sequel: administration lies on democratizing Iraq.
  • And, MSNBC has come out with their own list of WMD quotes. [Via Road to surfdom]
• Timothy Noah (in Slate) has written an article titled A Unified Theory of Bush Lies? about how the tax cut screws over poor families and all the administration lies about that.

I've accumulated more links to other stories, but I think I'll save those for a separate post since they don't fit as nicely within the theme.

I'll close with a quote from Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force:

     "It was a surprise to me then as it remains a surprise to me now that we have not uncovered weapons in some of the forward dispersal sites. Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad and they're simply not there."
     "What the regime was intending to do in terms of its use of the weapons, we thought we understood -- or we certainly had our best guess, our most dangerous, our most likely courses of action that the intelligence folks were giving us. We were simply wrong. But whether or not we're wrong at the national level, I think, still very much remains to be seen."

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:31 PM

Zacarias Moussaoui is being tried in civilian criminal courts. He claims that another accused terrorist, named Binalshibh, has information that could exonerate him, and has requested the right to question Binalshibh and call him as a witness.
It was a tough fight, but a judge agreed. But, like most current government cases involving rights of the accused <cough>Padilla<cough>, the Justice Department isn't letting it go that easily.
Here's today's news:

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ... gave Moussaoui the right to question Binalshibh in January, ruling that even terrorism defendants have a constitutional right to information that might exonerate them, or save their lives if a capital case reached the penalty phase.

[Federal public defender Frank] Dunham said Brinkema was sensitive to national security in her ruling "but felt the trial jury, which in this case decides whether the defendant lives or dies, ought to have all the information bearing on that decision."

The government's appeal resulted in Tuesday's hearing. Prosecutors argued in written pleadings that national security should trump a defendant's rights in terrorism cases, with al Qaeda prisoners off-limits to criminal defendants like Moussaoui.

[Judge] Brinkema said the government's attempt to carve out an exception to defendants' rights was unprecedented and underscored "the difficulty of balancing the due process rights of a defendant charged with capital offenses against the United States interest in fighting a war against terrorism."

[Some] in the government reportedly favor a military tribunal that could allow greater secrecy and fewer defendants' rights.

Brinkema suggested the government might want to consider the tribunal.

"To the extent that the United States seeks a categorical, 'wartime' exception" to Moussaoui's rights, she said, "it should reconsider whether the civilian criminal courts are the appropriate fora in which to prosecute alleged terrorists captured in the context of an ongoing war."

Brinkema said in her ruling, "Because a criminal trial is a quest for the truth ... both the defendant and the public will be denied a fair trial if Moussaoui is deprived of the opportunity to present testimony."

"The defense has made a significant showing" that Binalshibh would be able to provide testimony on Moussaoui's behalf to rebut the prosecution theory, Brinkema said.

In other words, the Justice Department is (a) trying to deny an accused criminal his rights to information that could exonerate him, and (b) if they fail at that they may move him to a court where he has even fewer rights.

Information comes from AP and a newer story from Washington Post.

I expect TalkLeft to have more details on this story soon, as this topic seems to be right up her alley.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:55 PM

Osama bin Laden, October 2001:

"Neither the United States nor he who lives in the United States will enjoy security ... before all the infidel armies leave the land of Mohammed"

BBC: This was apparently a reference to the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, May 2003:

"[B]y complete mutual agreement between the U.S. and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It's been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina. I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things."

Or, as To The Barricades put it:

What a wonderful precedent to set for the next mouse who roars. Just kill several thousand Americans and the U.S. will accede to your demands. Don't you feel safer already?

Thank you so much, President Bush.

Credit goes to To The Barricades, The Watch and Uggabugga.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:15 PM

Krugman today writes about the administration's pattern of lies and the need for more accountability. He points out how the right-wing abuse notions of balance in the media: "Each time the administration comes up with another whopper, partisan supporters -- a group that includes a large segment of the news media -- obediently insist that black is white and up is down. Meanwhile the 'liberal' media report only that some people say that black is black and up is up." As I've said before, this is the same technique Holocaust deniers use -- trying to present falsehoods as just another side of the story and thus deserve equal coverage.

I found an audio of the Al Franken/Bill O'Reilly/Molly Ivins talk in the comments to Atrios' blog. Wow, Franken gave O'Reilly a sound drubbing. It's an hour long, a large file, and the audio quality's not the best, but until C-Span puts up a streaming version, it's worth hearing. Atrios and the Hamster carefully document O'Reilly's statements, demonstrating that Al Franken was right and O'Reilly lied. [Also, I was watching WinAmp's counter -- Franken initially spoke for only 20 minutes, not the 35+ as O'Reilly tried to paint it.]

What did O'Reilly say about this on his own radio show? Tom Tomorrow transcribed a portion: "In the old west, that woulda got you shot. See in the old west, and I woulda loved to have been in the old west, Al and I woulda just had a little, uh, a little shootout. ... I woulda put a bullet right between his head." If you don't believe that, uggabugga's got the audio clip.

Oh, that quote I use in the title of this post? That's Bill O'Reilly, four minutes from the end of the panel discussion with Franken. Follow the links above and judge for yourself who's telling the truth and who's lying.

To borrow a phrase, I report, you decide.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:35 PM

A couple weeks ago, Oliver Willis wrote "Saw that JFK had sex with an intern, and realized that horny Democrats make great presidents."

Adam Felber goes one step further. To excerpt:

Why can't Bush stimulate the economy? Doesn't the economy find him attractive? Hasn't he shown the economy his love and devotion, creating an environment wherein she can feel safe to let herself go a little bit?

Well, no.

Maybe it has something to do with his private life, but Clinton sure knew how to stimulate the economy. He did a hundred little things, massaging so many different areas so subtly and expertly, that by the mid 90's he'd worked the economy up into a state of breathless stimulation generally only seen in bodice-rippin' airport novels.

Read the rest of it on Adam Felber's Fanatical Apathy.

Anyway, that's about all for now. If you haven't read Ian's journal in a while, I recommend it. He's had some interesting posts in the last week.

Oh, and if you live in Melrose, don't forget to vote tomorrow.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:20 PM

That's the new anti-Bush slogan making the rounds. Short and pithy enough for campaign signs and bumper stickers. Spread the meme.

Meanwhile, warblogging.com has written an amazingly powerful piece expressing his anger with the Bush administration and their disregard for the Constitution. I strongly recommend reading it.

As he writes in a later post,

As Senator Robert Byrd has famously said, "this Republic is at its greatest danger in its history because of this Administration." This is the truth. The contempt the Bush Administration shows for basic American values is absolutely appalling. Our founding fathers are collectively turning over in their graves every fifteen minutes. Every time John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush open their mouths, our beloved fathers of the American Republic die just a little bit more.

On a related note, I'm not sure how I feel about this, but it's certainly thought-provoking. Kathryn Cramer suggests:

While there is really a lot to complain about in the Bush administration's involvement in Iraq and in its tax cut which redisributes a whole lot of wealth back to the coffers of the wealthy where the Bush administration truly feels wealth belongs, we are being distracted by these ongoing news stories from something really big: what appear to me to be the attempts by the Bush administration and its minions to derail the EU constitutional process.

All weekend, I've been hearing great things about a debate on C-Span between Al Franken and Bill O'Reilly. Hesiod has found some news articles describing it. As expected, the rightwing talk radio types can dish it out, but just can't take it. For another example of hysterically funny deflation of rightwing bluster, read this Atrios transcript of RFK Jr. and Hannity!

Also in today's news, the FCC voted along party lines to deregulate mass media and the Supreme Court voted unanimously in favor of public domain rights.

But for now, I'm off to grab lunch.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:41 AM

Whoever believes cats are intelligent and graceful need to watch this video. It requires Windows Media Player, but is tears-rolling-down-your-face funny.

Thanks to Steelwngs" for pointing it out.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:35 AM

I mentioned last weekend that Boopsie was off her food for a few days, in what looked like a headcold. Ian took her to the vet last week for her regular checkup, and although her temperature was on the high side of normal, everything else seemed fine. She was eating again, and it looked like the spell had passed.

Then Ian got a call from the vet regarding her bloodwork saying something about her liver, but since she had been under the weather, they suggested maybe we wait another week or so and test it again.

And now, every day since about Thursday, Boopsie's been pissing on the bed. And (pardon me, this may be a little gross), Friday morning when we had the white comforter on the bed, the urine stain looked reddish-orange. I'm worried about her. [Fortunately last night's bed stain was not oddly colored; unfortunately, the rest of the sheets and blankets were in the wash when she did it, so she soaked thru the mattress pad and into the mattress, meaning I slept lengthwise on the bottom of the bed and Ian slept on the floor. <crick>]

I made the mistake of looking at one cat health site about liver disease in cats and I hope to hell this isn't serious. Ian's avoided reading anything on the subject, because with the vet closed for the weekend there's really nothing we can do. But he has been giving her tuna in addition to her regular food, to keep her weight up (never thought we'd have to do that for her!) and in case this was ketosis from last week's loss of appetite.

I found Boopsie the last week of June, 1991. It was the summer after my graduation, and I was living in a sublet on Vernon Street in Waltham. I was walking to the library to do some research for a job interview I had the next day when I saw her. Right by the fire station, this little boy was screaming -- looking like the kid from Home Alone. I and other adults ran over to see what was the matter and found him staring in horror at this little kitten. They were both paralyzed with fear, and thus caught in an impasse -- a little standoff. By the time I had raced across the street, other adults had calmed the kid, so I gave the kitten a few pats for good measure and resumed walking towards Main. The kitten followed. When I reached the intersection, I knew it wasn't safe for the kitten to cross Main, so I turned around and walked the two-and-a-half blocks home. And she diligently continued to pace me.

"Guess what followed me home. Can we keep it?"

We let her in the house, and my housemate went back out to a nearby pet store to pick up food, litter box and some supplies. We took her to the vet the next day and she had a clean bill of health. We turned her into an indoor cat and she went into heat about one week later, pinpointing her age at about six months. I named her Bubastis because the white curl on her cheek reminded me of the Comedian's scar, and Bubastis was the cat in Watchmen. I nicknamed her Boopsie after the Doonesbury character, because she was too goofily undignified for me to call her a goddess. [Not only did she keep forgetting to stick her tongue back in her mouth, but it was summer in an unairconditioned apartment, so she had a tendency to pant like a dog.]

I think I traumatized her that September by inflicting several major changes on her in the space of about two weeks. 1) My summer housemate moved out and I found a fulltime job, so was now alone for most of the day, 2) I had her fixed (since I now had a job and could afford it) and it got infected, meaning pain and more time at the vet, and 3) I moved into a new apartment.

In many ways, living with Boopsie was more like having a roommate than having a pet. She wasn't a lapcat or very overtly affectionate, but in those lonely days when I first started working, I really appreciated having somebody to come home to and be responsible for. And I could tell how much she loved me. I remember the time after I had my wisdom teeth out. I had made plans to spend the night with friends, but had a bad reaction to the anesthesia and stayed away an extra day. When I came home, she reacted with haughty disdain. "Oh, it's you. I don't need you; Other people came by to feed me." But then, when I was lying in bed, half-asleep, she curled up on the bed and pressed her body so close to mine that I knew how much she cared. She was my sweet little latchkey kitten.

Like any good Jewish mother, I showed her my love through food. There were times where I was too disorganized or poor to eat dinner, but I always made sure she was fed and taken care of. Of course, as a former stray, she was just a girl who couldn't say no. Her weight ballooned, reaching a high of over 15 lbs. She also developed nervous, self-destructive habits, such as licking patches of skin raw until they bled, generally on her paws and feet so they looked like stigmata.

Once Ian moved in with me, and she had his company as well as mine, she started doing much better. She's stopped the mutilation and has been gradually losing weight. She's still an only cat and will always be an only cat -- she likes people well enough, but can't stand other felines.

Geez. Reading this over sounds like I'm eulogizing her. I really hope it doesn't come to that.

I just want to say that I love Boopsie very, very much. We've been together for nearly eleven years now -- more than a third of my life -- and I hope we have many more happy years together.

Ian's going to call the vet again first thing tomorrow morning. Wish her, and us, well.