But he's going to give it to charity. It's still unethical.

Oh, and file this under, "Well DUH!"

"New Bridge Strategies, LLC is a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq."

The CEO of New Bridge Strategies is Joe "You've Never Seen a Bad Haircut Until You've Seen Mine" Allbaugh, Bush-Cheney campaign manager and former director of FEMA under the Bush, Jr. Administration up until last March, when, coincidentally, the Iraq war started.


New Bridge Strategies' office is four blocks away from the White House:



I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Moment of silence for Robert Palmer and George Plimpton

I love science:

"The freezer bag at home - to my wife's disgust - is actually full of giant squid gonad samples. We're going to grind all of this up, and we're going to have this puree coming out from the camera, squirting into the water."

So if you're going to be in England in November...

Here's a post from January 17, 2003. It's by far my favorite of everything I've written on this here blog:

As I continue my schooling, I become more and more of a snob about design. Now that I’m reading the most pretentious book about typography ever written on my own accord, my snobbery is escalating to new heights. So far, I’ve been very good at quelling my urge to say things such as, “Those two typefaces don’t go together because the x-height of your body type is much too proportionally large compared to your headline type, and your body type is influenced by early 20th century French design, so I can’t see how that type is applicable to your subject matter, plus your leading is far too tight, and just because there’s white space there doesn’t mean you have to fill it.” (Deep breath.) “Furthermore...” I can get away with that in class where I pride myself with being the teacher’s pet, but at my job where I don’t have a position in the art department or to my friends who believe because they own computers they are immediately graphic designers, I bite my tongue unless I’m invited to offer criticism.

However, I do have one typographic pet peeve that I consider unforgiveable, and I will lash out violently if I haven’t had my morning coffee yet. I see it in the work of plenty of modern designs. Typography books and classes drill it into your head. Microsoft Word, Quark, InDesign, and PageMaker all make the change for you. And editors, who are hired for their mastery of the language, should know better. Yet, it’s still a scourge.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are quotation marks:

...and these are not:

The latter are called primes and are used for units of measurement, like feet and inches, or minutes and seconds when measuring angles. The curvature of typographic quotes (or smart quotes) encompasses the quoted material much like (parenthesis) and [brackets] do.

One can also compare proper quotation marks to the Spanish custom of sentence punctuation, like when a child cannot have an extra churro after dinner and he asks, “¿Por qué no?”

Of course, smart quotes don’t exist on the keyboard. And on the web, we are only stuck with "dumb" quotes unless we want to insert painstakingly all of the character codes, which I’ve done in this entry (phew). Even then, the character codes may not work for many older browsers, and with the small point size of the text and the low-resolution of monitors, you can hardly tell the difference anyway. The limitations of technology are not my beef. My beef is with lazy graphic designers.

Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop do not automatically change quotes to the proper typographical versions, though recent versions of Illustrator do have a function that searches and replaces quotes in the document. Use it. Better yet, designers already have to learn so many keyboard combinations already, so you might as well learn a few more:

	Mac	Windows*
‘	Option+]	Alt+0145
’	Shift+Option+]	Alt+0146
“	Option+[	Alt+0147
”	Shift+Option+[	Alt+0148
*Type numbers on numeric keypad!

Details are what separate the women from the girls in design. Overlooking this particular detail is a clear indication that you have no earthly idea what you’re doing. Show me a good design with detail paid to typography, and I'm sure to exclaim, “¡Su diseño es rico suave!”

(By the way, the same goes for apostrophes. And remember that you read it on Arlo’s blog.)

I'm still noticing this oversight on packaging, billboards, and in books, and it drives me nuts. When I'm a design teacher (who knows -- maybe I will be one day), if I see a prime instead of a quote without any justification, that project will get an F. You think I'm kidding?

Here's a good follow up to Monday: 75 calories and four grams of fat each.

I will post again today -- yesterday was crazy.

So it looks as if the team looking for WMDs in Iraq have unearthed a compromise. Behold: there are no weapons of mass destruction (duh!!), the facilities were fake (wuh?!), but documentary evidence proves they were trying (huh).

Were they an imminent threat? I guess the answer for the Bush administration will be a resounding "maybe." But isn't "maybe" worth a war if Americans are perhaps in imminent danger?

You know Dean's still the guy I'd prefer to see as president, but I'm gonna throw my support behind whoever is running against Bush.

Yes, even Lieberman.

It may not be a feeble cause, either. One polls is showing Wesley Clarkstatistically tying with Bush. In fact, Clark came out a full nine-points ahead of Dean.

Of course, this article (which appeared on page 10, liberal media my ass) also points out what I pointed out a few days ago: Clark still hasn't outlined his stance on the issues. Okay, other than his vague 100-year vision.

I don't think I can yell it loud enough: CLARK HAS NO POLITICAL EXPERIENCE. That's why I want the Dean/Clark ticket. A boy can have dreams, right?

Something I thought would be fun for the first anniversary of this site would be to repost some of my favorite entries from the past year and react to what I wrote. Because, after all, I'm usually the only one who reads this shit.

Here's a screed that I wrote September 25, 2002, about vegetarianism:

I admire anyone who can adhere to a strict diet. Vegetarians and pescatarians who can actually stick with it have an iron will that I admire. I tried my hand at vegetarianism for a full year. I even called myself a vegan for two of those months, which I gave up for want of milk and honey. But I didn't feel any better than when I did eat meat. And since I was only a vegetarian so I could pick up cute, dope-smoking hippie chicks and I hadn't gotten laid in six months, I gave it up. The cheeseburger I ate that night was the best cheeseburger I've ever eaten.

Vegans are committed to something so difficult, so impossible, that the fight is quixotic at best. I have yet to read a convincing argument for completely eschewing the byproducts of animals.

If you argue that veganism is about health, then why do you have to work so hard to get the right balance of legumes and grains to approximate the necessary proteins that occur in meat? No one is saying that if you are omnivorous that you have to eat a pound of ground pork every day.

If you argue that human beings are not designed to eat meat, then, yet again, why do we need the proteins that are found in meat? Why are my cuspids so pointy? Why do our stomachs -- and we each only have one, not four -- produce hydrochloric acid? Sure, our intestines aren't short like a carnivore's, but a typical herbivore's digestive tract is far longer and more complex than a human's. We're in the middle because we're omnivorous.

If you argue that we should not enslave and misuse living organisms this side of plants, enjoy your life living in a cave. You cannot spend an entire day in modern society without at some point utilizing the byproduct of an animal. Your cat or dog cannot survive as a vegetarian. And isn't the keeping of that pet an act of animal slavery, too? Aren't mules and horses used in farming fruits and vegetables? In fact, you've probably consumed something today that has a living organism in it; for example, alcoholic beverages require yeast. I'm sorry if you feel guilty for being at the top of the food chain, but that's where you are. Deal with it.

If you're a vegan, you're doing it to prove a point, and I defy you to disagree with me on that point. I'm all for heralding a cause, but don't belabor a point just for the sake of being different. There aren't any excellent reasons to be a vegan other than to think it makes you cool and unique -- much like smoking or being a communist.

Don't eat hot dogs and cheeseburgers every day. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Reduce your fat and calorie intake. Drink more water. Eat healthy, but don't eat insane. A balanced diet is one thing, but extremes in either direction are not what your body is designed for.

By the way, I'm all for genetically modified food, too.

Well, I've changed a little.

After reading Fast Food Nation, I gave up cheeseburgers. ALL cheeseburgers, not just McDonald's. It's so impossible to cook a patty of ground beef thoroughly enough to kill anything that may be lurking inside of it without making it taste terrible. Oh, not anything inherent in the meat -- I'm talking about the e.Coli from the cow poo that gets on the meat and gets ground up all up in there.

As for genetically modified food, I'm okay with it if it doesn't affect humans, something which should be studied over a long period of time. The existence of bovine growth hormone in beef is one factor in the obesity rate in America. If people want to get fat, fine. However, the untold costs on insurance companies is, I would suspect, a factor in the difficulties of obtaining healthcare in this country. (Of course, this is coming from someone who smokes, so who am I to talk about social disease that negatively affects the healthcare industry.)

So I see the health angle of a vegetarian diet a little more clearly, though I have yet to entirely embrace it. I still believe we need to eat meat.

And as I've said before -- if Mother Nature didn't want us to eat animals, she wouldn't have made them delicious.

Done.

As promised yesterday, in honor of the first anniversary of my blog, I've given it a makeover.

This new layout marks my first web design using not one single TABLE tag for the layout. That's all pure CSS, baby. And, though I can't guarantee that all of the archive pages will be XHTML compliant, I'm shooting for all future pages to be.

Plus, I lost those annoying IFRAMEs so folks can Google me.

Next week, when I'm off from school, I'll take some time to make it look fantastic in every browser imaginable (it currently looks best in, believe it or not, Safari). Until then, if the page looks funky to you, like overlapping text or something, e-mail me. Let me know what browser you're using, and I'll see what I can do. Thanks.

Today marks the first anniversary of this blog. In honor of this event, I'm going to use tomorrow to redesign it. I will not leave my little hovel of an office until it's done. Wish me luck.

The White House says the economy is improving.

And they're right. Life is getting easier... for the super rich.

God bless a Republican-controlled government.

For proof that Howard Dean has defined the Democratic campaign, let's compare his website to Wesley Clark's.

	Dean	Clark
URL	deanforamerica.com	americansforclark.com
Link to MeetUp.com	Yes	Yes
Link to Blog	Yes (official)	Yes (but un-official)
Link to contribute on-line	Yes	Yes
Anything about where he stands on the issues	Yes	No

Though the Draft Wesley Clark site has a page about where he stands on issues (and damn if I don't like what it says), not a single thing has come out from his camp with any specificity. It looks as if Wesley Clark is going to play the George Bush method of running for president -- don't say shit.

I occasionally post articles about why you should consider owning a Macintosh. For the record, I have only found three groups of computer users who are better off without Macs: animators, architects, and video game afficionados. The first two groups are certainly taking second glances now that the G5 has reared its head and is kicking serious benchmarking ass. The gamers are still happy building their own machines and tricking them out like Hot Rods, so they'll never be won over to the Mac side. They'll also never get laid.

But to the rest of you, if you need to buy a computer, save up. A Mac may cost more than that $299 piece-of-poo eMachine you're spying (as soon as you add up all the amenities required to run it, you could have purchased an eMac), but you'll save time and money not having to put up with Microsoft's shoddy software.

Case in point: Why students should learn Windows and not Macs -- so they learn that life sucks.

Nice to see he's finally admitting the truth.

Guess I was wrong. And if indeed Wesley Clark enters the race tomorrow, I will be torn. I've become very committed to the Howard Dean campaign, but Wesley Clark, let's face it, would have a better chance of defeating Bush on record and experience alone. If a decorated military general is telling America that the war in Iraq is wrong, that the War on Terrorism is being executed wrong, then the unwashed masses will be more apt to listen.

I don't think, however, that Clark can catch up with Dean in four months, which is why I think he should join the Dean ticket. After all, they agree on pretty much everything, and they complement each other perfectly. Clark is from the South, Dean is from the North. Clark has vast military experience, Dean has none. Clark has no political experience, Dean has a bunch. And both are outsiders very critical of Bush. The Dean/Clark ticket could kick some serious ass.

<conspiracyTheory>Or perhaps he really is teaming up with Dean and this is all part of the plan to get his name out there. He knows he has no name recognition and needs to get some. He knows that there are nine candidates, many of whom have no chance, and the herd needs thinning. With formidable forces like Clark and Dean in the race, Mosely-Braun, Kucinich, and Graham would immediately drop out. The rest will peter out. Then, when all that's left is Dean, Clark, and Kerry, Dean and Clark team up, gang up on Kerry, and Kerry drops out, too.</conspiracyTheory>

It's a theory, but it's sound political strategy. And if it does play out that way, I hope to get the credit. (Ha.)

New to BORED?: Misleader.org, daily doses of the Commander-in-Cheat's disinformation.

It was only delayed because of outdated punch cards (and not because it's a crock of shit), but we'll take what we can get.

The White House has made an appointment to the Pentagon's Inspector General's office. The Inspector General's office "investigates fraud and audits Pentagon contracts, including the billions of dollars being awarded in Iraq to companies like Halliburton and Bechtel."

So who better to appoint to that office than L. Jean Lewis, a key figure in the we-found-nothing-but-a-blowjob Whitewater investigation.

You should be so mad you can spit. Atrios sure is.

Moment of silence for Johnny Cash and John Ritter.

I said it once already. And now I'm here to say "I told you so."

Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, said Clark would have a "major impact" on the race. He said Dean and Clark have spoken several times, most recently last weekend in California, and Dean has sought Clark's support if he does not get in the race.

But a report that Dean tried to line up Clark as a possible vice presidential candidate is likely to only increase speculation that Clark is maneuvering for a No. 2 slot with the ultimate winner.

Source

Happy Patriot Day.

And speaking of airplanes, did you hear about the unfair bidding and procurement of refueling tankers from Boeing by a Pentagon official who is now a Boeing executive that has tons of criticism but will probably still be approved anyway even though the plan leases the planes when buying them would cost $5.7-billion dollars less?

And speaking of unfair procurement, my father was telling me that the no-bid Halliburton thing that many Democrats are angry about is not true. I found this article from a few weeks ago suggested that Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, bid and won contingency contract, and their work is part of that contract. The issue, DAD, is that the no-bid contract for putting out oil fires and rehabilitiating oil fields -- something that never needed to be classified (You mean Iraq has oil?!?!) -- has nothing to do with the logistical contract Brown and Root already has. I'm glad we got that straight.

There's a moment of silence going on right now in my office for Patriot Day. No one seems to have shut up.

I find it quite interesting that Fox News hosted last night's Democratic Debate and is sponsoring the next one -- not that Fox News would do it but that the Democrats would let them. To think that the debate, which was run fairly by Brit Hume, the butt-ugliest man in news, would be immediately followed by purposefully demeaning Fox News analysis seems like a misstep on the Democrats part. Why would they want their debate to be immediately followed -- on the same channel -- by analysis by Fred Barnes?

Perhaps the Democrats will invite evil Bill O'Reilly or MSNBC's far-more-evil Joe Scarborough to moderate the next debate.

But seriously. Two things stuck out for me from last nights debate.

Firstly, the much-talked about spat between Dean and Lieberman over Israel. Lieberman attacked Dean for wanting to eschew 50 years of domestic policy. Well, Senator, perhaps you've noticed that things aren't getting better in Israel? Perhaps we do need some new thinking. Dipshit.

Secondly, the favorite songs:

• Former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (search) -- "You Gotta Be," Des'ree.

• Al Sharpton (search) -- "Talking Loud, Saying Nothing," James Brown.

• Sen. John Edwards (search) -- "Small Town," John Mellencamp.

• Sen. John Kerry -- "No Surrender," Bruce Springsteen.

• Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean -- "Jaspora," Wyclef Jean.

• Sen. Joe Lieberman --"Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," Fleetwood Mac; "My Way," Frank Sinatra.

• Rep. Dennis Kucinich -- "Imagine," John Lennon.

• Rep. Dick Gephardt -- "Born in the USA," Bruce Springsteen.

• Sen. Bob Graham -- "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes," Jimmy Buffett.

Every candidate picked songs to try and connect somehow with their campaign, to make a pithy statement. Gephardt's answer made me groan (he's such a pussy).

Dean's answer proves that he's going to connect with voters. While everyone else picked songs that were obviously pithy and, with the exception of the two black candidates, decidedly white, Dean mentions an obscure-ish song by Wyclef Jean that's sung in Creole (translation) about growing up as a minority. Considering he was in front of a historically African American university and at a debate sponsored by the Black Caucus, he made a deft, interesting, and clever choice.

And hell, he probably really does like the song. Can you picture Bob Graham pouring a drink, sparking a doobie, listening to Jimmy Buffett?

Howard Dean's choice of song shows he's hip, not to mention one clever mofo.

Watch out, Bush. And to Lieberman -- those LaRouche protesters are the least of your worries.

To wit:

The White House "convinced the EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones," [Environmental Protection Agency Inspector General Nikki Tinsley] said. Among the information withheld was the potential health hazards of breathing asbestos, lead, concrete and pulverized glass, the report said.

Could it be a chemical plant with ties to the Bushes and Cheneys?

Worse. It's the Twin Towers collapse.

Have a happy Patriot Day tomorrow.

Is US winning its war on terror?

It's becoming increasingly true that the War in Iraq had nothing to do with rounding up terrorists. Nothing has been found there. The regime of Saddam Hussein was a secular one, unlike Osama bin Laden's reign of terror which is driven by religious fervor. They had very little, most likely nothing, to do with each other.

The real War on Terror is one we simply can't win. Like the War on Drugs, the War on Terror is inherently faulty because the grounds on which it is based is faulty. Just as drug abuse is a symptom of social problems, terrorism is a symptom of political and ideological struggles. If you don't cure the disease, you'll always have symptoms.

If the US government wants to eradicate terrorism (which is impossible), they would stop blindly supporting Israel, and they would let the UN take charge of rebuilding Iraq. UN is no good at picking or breaking fights, but they can clean up after one.

It's two years after 9/11. With all of the hemming and hawing, the loss of rights, the obfuscating wars, the color codes, and the increased surveillance, I still don't feel safe. After an event like 9/11, I'll never feel safe. I still think we could do better.

Ann Coulter will tell you that I'm anti-America. She's wrong. I'm very pro-America. I'm all for free enterprise, but we have to make sure we support the "free" part of that, not the "enterprise" part of that. I'm all for liberating oppressed peoples, but we need to liberate the ones in our backyard and in our overseas employ first in order to gain the trust of those who have been brainwashed by evil dictators. I'm all for stopping terrorists, but let's capture them and not spread our armies and resources thin all over the world (nor cut the pay of the soldiers risking their lives).

I appreciate this point made by the article:

Now that [al-Qaeda] has been scattered across the world it has been likened to a hornet's nest hit with a stick. The hornets are everywhere and harder to catch.

I'll take this apt metaphor one step further. What was once a hive could easily become a swarm. And everyone knows that once you start swatting in all directions, that's when you get stung.

Further proof that there is no liberal media. ESPN hires Rush Limbaugh for NFL Coundown.

After my girlfriend, a diabetic, spent six days in the hospital and didn't see an endocrinologist for the first four days, I knew that access to specialists is not easy. And thanks to our president, who will go out of his way to make things easier for business and rich people and harder for the middle class on down, access to specialists is about to get even harder.

"The new rule gives hospitals greater discretion in arranging such coverage. A hospital can legally exempt senior members of the medical staff from on-call duty, it says. Moreover, the new rule says federal law does not require all hospitals to have doctors on call 24 hours a day seven days a week.

In addition, the rule says, doctors can have simultaneous on-call duties at two or more hospitals and can schedule elective surgery or other medical procedures when they are on call."