'Twas the Night Before Fitzmas

Twas the night before Fitzmas, when all through the House
The Senate was stirring, scared of what Fitz had found
The press corps was reporting the news with care,
in hopes that the indictments would soon be there.

The Democrats were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of arrest warrants danced in the heads.
DeLay was the first, then Frist next in the task,
Rove and then Libby, who would not be the last.

And out on K Street, there arose such a clatter
Outing an a covert agent is a serious matter.
Away to the internet, I rushed to get dirt,
For the GOP's plans, that's really gotta hurt.

"Now Dubya! Now Condi!
Now Rove is in trouble"
And if they get Cheney,
then it will be double!
Now, Libby and McClellan!
Ari Fleisher may be one of
the convicted felons!
Now indict away! Indict away!
Indict them all!"

Fitz sprang to the grand jury, and told them his tale,
And they prepped indictments to send Rove & Libby to jail.
But I heard him exclaim, 'ere he drove out of sight,
Happy Fitzmas to all and to all a good night!"

Catching up

I sometimes forget to post all the politcally-related stuff I've been
thinking of on this blog. There are tons of new items arising everyday,
but the lanscape changes so quickly, it's not really worth posting here
unless I can get to it daily.

To catch up...

Matt Lauer rakes Bush over the coals on live TV. Crooks and Liars has the video.


The Washington Post chimes in too...

Photo Op Bites Back
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, October 11, 2005; 1:15 PM

It was such a lovely photo op -- President Bush and his wife joining
the volunteers building a house in Louisiana. The perfect backdrop
for an upbeat interview, live on NBC's Today Show.

But then Matt Lauer had to go and pull back the curtain and ask: Isn't
this all just an empty photo op?

What ensued was an unusually testy interview, with Bush waving off more questions than he answered, chiding Lauer for quoting too many Democrats in his windups and making it clear that he would have been much happier fielding questions about the charitable nature of the American people than about politics.

Continued here with transcript and video.

---

Huffington Post:

"The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are working on stories that point to Vice President Dick Cheney as the target of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name. "

USA Today on prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald:

Friends and critics agree that his integrity is unassailable and that he is
relentless. The list of people he has prosecuted -- including al-Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden, former Illinois governor George Ryan and New
York mobsters -- shows he has no qualms about going after the powerful.

Fitzgerald's politics, motivations and style have prompted debate.

He has no agenda," says David Kelley, former U.S. attorney in New
York and a longtime friend. "He looks at the facts, uncovers
the facts and goes where the facts lead him.

Mary Jo White, who was Fitzgerald's boss when she was U.S. attorney in
Manhattan, says she knows nothing about his political views if he has any, and he may not.

Fitzgerald, who declined interview requests, is registered to vote with no party affiliation.

---

From Reuters:

"President George W. Bush vowed on Saturday that the United States "will not run" from Iraq as it did from Vietnam, as he welcomed voting on a new Iraqi constitution and called it step forward for democracy."

The fact that Bush thinks we should have stayed and continue fighting in Vietnam shows exactly HOW out of touch he is with the feelings of Americans. Most people think that war was a waste of American lives.

---

A friend just e-mailed me and is taking bets. He thinks Bush is going to withdraw Miers from SCOTUS running on a Friday afternoon so it will
disappear into a weekend news cycle. Maybe not this week, but next.

Any takers?

Meltdown, Part 3

This has been my year of computer mishaps. Earlier this year, I wrote about that incident where my very substantial iTunes playlist got corrupted. It took several nights to rebuild those considerable libraries.

Then, while installing Tiger, I forgot to back-up my e-mail boxes. I ended up losing four years of correspondence. That one hurt bad. There were a lot of important contacts in that meltdown.

Well, I got hit worse of all last weekend. My PowerBook G4 Titanium died.

Worse, I had been backing up religiously using Apple’s Backup since my earlier problems, but this particular weekend, I had nothing backed up. On Thursday of last week, Apple released Backup 3. But it was giving me problems, so I hadn’t backed up anything. Worse, I trashed my old back up, thinking I’d be okay for a few days.

I repeat, I trashed my backup.

Saturday morning, my laptop died. Oddly enough, I did not have a personal meltdown. I think going through two other meltdowns earlier in the year helped desensitize me to data loss. That afternoon, I went to the Apple Store and bought an interim iBook. I had been holding out until the Intel-based models were to be released next year, but that plan went out the window when my hard drive failed.

In 15 years of using Macs, I’ve never had a computer die on me. Ever. I was not familiar with "the click of death". If I were, I would have heard the warning chimes of death. My Titanium had been clicking on and off for a couple of months. In retrospect, I was lucky it held together as long as it did.

Luckilly, I obsessively backup my work files onto my iPod daily. AND onto an external FireWire drive weekly. I was covered workwise. But once again, I lost all my e-mail boxes. Worse, I lost FIVE YEARS of digital photos; Thanksgivings, Christmases, births, parties… all gone. And once again, all my iTunes playlists were toast.

Two days later, I recovered everything.

God bless DiskWarrior. It couldn’t save the laptop hard drive, but it did rescue the actual data. I hooked up an external drive and copied all the important preferences and photos. I transferred them all to my new iBook and everything worked… every mailbox restored. Every digital photo intact. Every playlist in order. A miracle.

Then I backed it all up using Backup 3. All is right in the world.

Next, I’m going to buy a replacement drive for my dead laptop, either for resale or as a back-up laptop. I keep you in the loop.