lookin

Whaddya mean we're goin' to Mississippi?

I believe you may be thinking of another fowl fable.

Wouldn't surprise me to see the walk back begin in the next day or two. Losing Britain as a partner has got to change the calculus, and today there's a piece out from the Arms Control Association on the consequences of bombing a chemical weapons storage site or, for that matter, any site to which chemical weapons may have been moved without our knowledge (just-about-anywhere, for example). The article refers to a chemical weapons site we bombed in Iraq in 1991 that's still too dangerous to go near. If we do start backing away, I'd expect to see France become a bit less bellicose. I'm not up to speed on all the reasons why they want to bomb Syria, although they certainly have the ability to step in and do it themselves if they can't prod the U. S. into doing it. Speaking of prodding, Sheldon Adelson's Israel Hayom is chock full of advice on how important it is for the U. S. to bomb Syria and how quick we should be, along with all the reasons why Israel itself can't do it. Why do I get the feeling I've heard this story before?

Perhaps we could appoint them a new ambassador. The Honorable (Really! I am !!) Davey Wavey

I'm willing to believe there were chemical weapons used in Syria but, for the life of me, I can't figure out why Assad would be dumb enough to use them. Clearly he would have known that the likely harvest of such a boneheaded act would be major outside military intervention. What good would that do him? I read somewhere that chemicals were identified in one of the tunnels used by rebels. Not that I was there to see it with my own eyes, but it wouldn't surprise me if one or two of the rebel groups figured that the best way to finally drag the West into the fight would be to use chemicals against civilians and hope that Assad would take the rap. And they certainly have to be pretty pleased that things are unfolding the way they are. It was the French, if I recall, who were the ones who first said they had intelligence pinning it on Assad. Then the NSA's very own James "least untruthful" Clapper got on the bandwagon. I would sure like to know something about their sources before I'd want to start a new war in Syria. I recall too well the guy known as "Curveball" who told us all about Saddam Hussein's bioweapons trucks and then watched us invade Iraq looking for WMD. This sure feels like a reprise of the way we got dragged into Iraq. If we do let ourselves get sucked into another Mideast war, I hope at least this time we'll have the good sense to tax ourselves to pay for it.

Depends who's been on 'em. I'd go a couple of months after this one.

Before the word is even out of his mouth, Mr. Frobisher realizes he shouldn't have called it Frisco.

I love 'em!

Oh my.

It wouldn't keep me from voting. Neither would shorter voting hours. Nor would standing in a long line or traveling a few miles farther away to cast my ballot. But there are enough stories about folks who would be deterred by these things that I'm inclined to give them some credence. It also seems more than coincidental that it's Republicans, rather than Democrats, who seem to like putting these extra hurdles in place. Again, I have to believe there's some correlation between putting these barriers up and getting a lower turnout of Democratic voters. I couldn't prove it, but folks smarter than I am believe it to be true. Even then, it might make sense to make every voter have an ID, even if it means standing in a long line to get one, if it would cut down on voter fraud. But I've heard of so few instances of actual fraud that I have to wonder how such a shift in the law and increase in requirements can be justified on the basis of reducing fraud. Besides making the elderly and poor jump through such hoops, the other folks I feel bad for are college students who would be required to return home to cast a ballot, rather than vote where they go to school. My college was hundreds of miles from my home town, and grad school was thousands of miles away. So those rules would have kept me from voting. As the majority of college students vote Democratic, and since it's Republicans who want to make them go home to do it, it's not a stretch to see the motivation behind that particular rule change. In the absence of a demonstrable reason to do so, and with the widespread concern that such barriers would discourage Democratic turnout, I, for one, am not planning to lobby for requiring voters to show ID.

Ridiculous.

You mean he pissed you off so you dumped him?

You're a shoo-in - make that shoe-in!

Entirely my fault for not being likable earlier in the day.

A middle-aged couple had finally learned how to send and receive texts on their cell phones. The wife, being a romantic at heart, decided one day that she'd send her husband a text while she was out of the house having coffee with a friend. She texted: If you are sleeping, send me your dreams. If you are laughing, send me your smile. If you are eating, send me a bite. If you are drinking, send me a sip. If you are crying, send me your tears. I love you. The husband, being a no-nonsense sort of guy, texted back: I'm on the toilet. Please advise.

Mine comes and goes depending on whether I wear shorts or pants. My calves are pretty big and, back in my tight-pants days, they were almost always bald. But it's been coming back, especially now that I'm dressing for summer.

A local eatery that's been in the news lately is Bacon Bacon. Their former neighbors shut them down until they got a new exhaust system with a more effective filter, but they've recently reopened in a more porcine-friendly area. This being San Francisco, one of their big sellers is the LGBT. Little Gem Lettuce, Five Strips of Bacon and Organic Tomato with Herbed Goat Cheese Spread on Pullman Toast

Who ever heard of a wedding without liquor? . .. . . . Look closer. The groom's got a flask.

I've got my holiday shopping done!

Sounds like he hasn't told his partner what he's up to, so you already know there are potential trust issues here. You also know that he thinks the boundaries of friendship haven't been crossed, and you're inclined to think they have. Unless it's just sex you're both after, with no emotional ties beyond your existing friendship, those kinds of warning signs after three months sound like swamp territory to me. Although it may just be that you're a bigger bayou fan than I am.

Hito, I trust Obama too, pretty much, as I think it's foolhardy to put a hundred percent trust in any government official. Even with that trust, though, Obama will be President for another three-and-a-half years. Then it will be someone else. You and I may trust that person. Or we may not. But trust in an individual should not be the determining factor in whether or not our government keeps secrets from us, or spies on us, or abridges our rights as citizens. That's why we set up our government as one of laws, and not of men. I know that you and I know this, but it can't hurt to remind ourselves once in a while. When Edward Snowden exposed the fact that some men in our government were 'interpreting' the law, and keeping those interpretations hidden from ordinary citizens and from their elected officials and, perhaps, from the President himself, it became time for this whole process to see the light of day and to enter the public debate for the first time ever. As I hope it will now do. The 'interpretations' as they now exist, in my opinion, stink. And who knows how they might be 'interpreted' in the future? From AdamSmith's cited article: Secret minimization procedures dating from 2009, published in June by the Guardian, revealed that the NSA could make use of any "inadvertently acquired" information on US persons under a defined range of circumstances, including if they held usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity. Suppose, for example, that Rick Santorum becomes our next President. He was, if one can believe it, the Republican front-runner at a time when Obama's popularity was on the descent. And suppose he gets on his moral high horse and decides to go after prostitution. And suppose you and I show up in a call log one or two rings away from a 'person of interest'. Will you still be so trusting when you get your subpoena to testify in court? It's my natural temptation to think that things are going to keep going in a positive direction as far as civil rights are concerned. And I feel that way today, as I think you do too. But I'd be nuts to think that it's OK to start discarding the laws that got us here, and to count on trust in all future elected officials to keep us moving forward. We need these laws, and we need our Constitution, and we need to hold our government officials accountable for following them. As an old Russian (pre-Putin) proverb reminds us, Доверяй, но проверяй.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

A while back I signed up for one of those dating web sites where you fill out a questionnaire and they match up your profile with hundreds of others. Nearly every call I got was from a mental hospital. That and a guy working his way through college.

Now that sounds like a nice trip!

German companies to automatically encrypt emails Friday, August 9, 2013 BERLIN (AP) — Two of Germany's biggest Internet service providers say they will encrypt customers' emails by default following reports that the U.S. National Security Agency monitors international electronic communications. Deutsche Telekom AG and United Internet AGsay emails sent by their customers will be automatically encrypted starting Friday. Initially the encryption will only be secure between customers of Deutsche Telekom's T-Onlineservice and United Internet's GMX and WEB.DE services. The companies claim these three providers account for two-thirds of primary email addresses in Germany. Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann says the initiative came because "Germans are deeply unsettled by the latest reports on the potential interception of communication data" revealed by NSA leaker Edward Snowden. It wasn't immediately clear if German security services would have a key to decrypt the emails. Well, it would be nice to know who can decrypt the encryptions. Still, I continue to believe there's a market opportunity for an ISP, somewhere in the world, to offer a reliable promise of privacy to its customers without jumping through extra hoops to sign up and use the service. And it seems this would be the time to start marketing it to potential U. S. customers. It would be nice if a U. S. company would take it on, but I'm not holding my breath.