Like moths to a Plame?

On September 30, 2003, the President said:

If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of ... I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business.

On October 7, 2003, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked about the roles of Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Elliott Abrams with regard to leaking Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA agent. McClellan's response:

There are unsubstantiated accusations that are made. And that's exactly what happened in the case of these three individuals. They are good individuals. They are important members of our White House team. And that's why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved. I had no doubt with that in the beginning, but I like to check my information to make sure it's accurate before I report back to you, and that's exactly what I did.

On October 10, 2003, McClellan was again asked about the involvement of Rove, Libby, and Abrams. His response:

They assured me that they were not involved in this.

On June 10, 2004, President Bush was asked if he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked Valerie Plame's name. His response was:

Yes. And that's up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts.

Today, when asked if he would fire anyone in his administration shown to have leaked information that exposed Plame's identity, his response was:

It's best people wait until the investigation is complete before you jump to conclusions. I don't know all the facts. I want to know all the facts. I would like this to end as quickly as possible. If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

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Note the overwhelming lack of an attempt to back his trusted advisor. Loyalty is supposed to be so prized in this White House, yet there seems to be a disturbing lack of it on this one. Lots of stonewalling and denials, but nothing horribly overt in the way of loyalty. That's a good sign, if you ask me. Not that I think the White House will do the right thing, but a boy can dream...

Developers are a special breed

Last night I testified at the Montgomery County Council hearing on the Woodmont Triangle Amendment. As you might recall from my previous entry, there is a very real possibility that my apartment building will be demolished within a year in order to put up high-rise apartments.

I'm not horribly activist by nature, but I think that after watching last night's proceedings I might end up that way. There were five sets of witnesses, and I was in the last set. The developers and their assorted minions/attorneys were in the first two sets. After hearing how wonderful it will be to redevelop the Woodmont Triangle area, it was time for the people directly affected to give their views. Go figure, but most of the developers and their hangers-on all left the hearing once it was our turn to speak. Bastards.

My neighbors and I all spoke our pieces. The Council was very gracious, and let many of the speakers go past their allotted 3 minutes. I was finished speaking with another 45 seconds or so left on the clock. (Hopefully I will be appreciated because of my brevity, but I doubt it.) I was not impressed with my own performance, quite honestly. I found that I started rushing through my remarks and stumbling over my words periodically. Not exactly award-winning. However, I was direct and expressed my concerns. Whether it did any good remains to be seen. My neighbors did a much better job expressing themselves, really. A reporter from the Washington Post was there, and he asked three of my neighbors for copies of their remarks. Perhaps a little bit of sunshine on the situation will be beneficial to our cause.

Objectively, it was fascinating to watch the process. Emotionally, though, it was quite daunting to see all of the suits testifying before we did, throwing around lots of jargon and bantering with the council members. Because we're only renters, I suppose we don't count for a hell of a lot in the big picture. In my testimony, I did make mention of that fact that despite being renters we're still stakeholders. Time will tell if we did any good last night, but we have only begun to fight.

Quick question

The crack security team at my building has the occasional fire drill and shelter-in-place (read: die in a group rather than alone in your office) drill. Today they had an intercom test. Part of the intercom test included "If this message is inaudible, please contact the Security Operations Center." If it were inaudible, how would you know to contact them?

Life just got really, really interesting

I found out on Saturday that my apartment building is slated for demolition so the owners can put up high-rise apartment buildings. It's not just my building, either. It's the buildings on either side of mine, too. Although I just found out about it on Saturday, this process has been in the works since 2003.

At the moment, the zoning for our buildings only allows for construction up to 50' tall. Our management company wants to have the zoning changed to allow buildings up to 175' tall. Actually, part of their area is already zoned for the 175' (see red block in the diagram below).




The proposed change is below:

There would also be two roads added, one of which pretty much cuts through my living room. As if the infrastructure of Montgomery County can handle more traffic...

There are elderly and lower-income residents in all of our buildings, too. Where are they supposed to go? The County Council talks a good game re affordable housing, but their actions indicate slightly different priorities. So tomorrow night I head off to the Montgomery County Council meeting, where I am Speaker #25 on the docket for the public hearing (the last one before the issue goes into committee). Six of the nine council members took about $1.7 million in campaign contributions from developers. Do your own math. Wish me luck—I don't want my home (or any of my neighbors') destroyed in the name of greed.

Better late than never

From the Online Sun. I know it's sappy. Too bad.

Hero s-mitten with guilt

By JOHN COLES

A WAR hero who nicked a young girl’s mittens to keep his trigger finger warm has said sorry—64 years later.

Former sniper Charles Stacey, 84, grabbed the gloves from a Christmas tree as he hid from the Nazis in a family’s home.

The Commando used them throughout the war but has always been wracked with guilt at denying three-year-old Anne Osmundsvaag her present.

When he was invited back to Norway to commemorate the battle he decided to make amends by buying a new pair of mittens. And he was stunned to find Anne, now 67, still living at the same house.

Charles said: “It was an incredible moment. I didn’t even have to explain. When she opened the door she said, ‘I’ve been expecting you. I knew you were going to come’.

“We had a big hug and it was so nice, so warm and natural despite all those years. I gave her the gloves and she put them on. It made me so happy to return them to her. I have completed the circle.”

Charles was just 20 when he hid in Anne’s family home as his unit hammered the Nazis on the snow-swept island of Våsgøy.

During a six-hour strike his unit killed 100 of the enemy and reclaimed the occupied fishing port.

Charles, now a grandad of 11 in Clifton, Bristol, said: “It was bitterly cold with heavy snow and I had problems keeping my fingers warm.

“I spotted the mittens on the Christmas tree and slipped them into my pocket. But I always felt guilty. My conscious is now clear.”

Anne’s brother Andreas said: “We are deeply honoured that Charles has returned to us the little gift he took for all the right reasons.”

You can learn more about Operation Archery here.

Kneel before Zod

People of Planet Houston:

Some of you will appreciate this. Other won't. See for yourself and decide. Zod does not care.

One in ten

No, it's not what you think.

Apparently, every tenth human being is left-handed, according to a story in Pravda, that bastion of journalistic excellence. Left-handers' IQs are higher than those of their right-handed neighbors. Also, the article claims that people who can boast of "extraordinary abilities" (meaning ESP, remote viewing, etc.) are left-handed, too.

The article claims that a left-handed human race will change the world for the beter—humanity will become "more intellectual and extrasensorial." We might end up more intellectual, but the extrasensorial bit is complete crap unless you can demonstrate it empirically under controlled laboratory conditions. Just thought I'd throw that in.

There's some rambling about handedness being determined in the womb via the right half of the brain taking advantage of the left one. Suffice to say that if you don't commit to one hand or the other, you end up incomplete. My interpretation is that if one side doesn't dominate completely, you end up ambidextrous, or at least possibly extremely confused. My sister's left-handed, but she throws and golfs like a right-hander. It's interesting to watch, but not as much fun as watching her write...

Because it's a Russian newspaper, the article profiles President Putin. He's a "right-left-hander." Although ostensibly he's right-handed, he wears his watch on his right wrist. Also—and this is supposedly significant—he "often uses his left hand to take notes out of his right pocket." Gosh, if that isn't hard evidence, I don't know what is.

Lefties have "remarkable abilities to perceive sounds and intonations absolutely clearly and distinguish super-fine color shades." They also have "picturesque memory." I have no idea what that means, but it sounds cool.

The best part, though, is the list of left-handed luminaries: Leonardo da Vinci, Leo Tolstoy, Charlie Chaplin, and, of course, Nicole Kidman.

If you're left-handed, let me in on your secret. I can always use more picturesque memory.

Cardboard regatta, anyone?

Last week I went on a retreat with my division from work. There were the usual "here's what our team does and here's what we intend to do next fiscal year" presentations, as well as better-than-average hotel food. But the best thing about the retreat was the team-building exercise. We were asked to build a boat that would hold two people, but the boat was to be constructed out of four 4'x8' sheets of single-ply corrugated cardboard, twine, and two rolls of duct tape. We would then use our boats to paddle to the middle of a nearby lake to retrieve as many tennis balls as possible.

At first glance, we all thought "You people are out of your collective tree." To make matter worse (or more interesting, depending upon your perspective), we had to figure out a way to procure the materials that weren't cardboard via a complex system involving rope, gravity, and an upside-down blindfolded guy. Don't ask.

I was assigned to procurement detail. While I was off procuring, my teammates were hard at work designing something that had to be lakeworthy for at least 5-7 minutes. Rather than go for something particularly innovative or radical, we decided on the old standby: two largish boxes linked together. The thinking was that the more surface area there was, the more stable the boat would be. Other teams went for the "cardboard taco approach," as I called it, where they simply folded up the sides of the sheets and the taped the ends together. One team even produced what I nicknamed "the Huck and Jim Special," which consisted of rolling the ends of the sheets into crude pontoons and making a raft-like thing.

We were given an hour to complete our task. At the end of the hour, all of the teams presented their boats and the reasoning behind their design. Our team sang the theme from "Titanic" while one of my colleagues leaned forward while I held her by the arms. I then christened our craft using an empty Diet Coke bottle. (It was actually pretty funny, but I suppose the humor was location-based: you had to be there. Sorry.)

We portaged our boats to the lake in a grand procession. The crews took their positions. The Huck and Jim Special sank immediately. Our team ended up getting 12 out of 15 tennis balls, partly because of our boat design, but more likely because our crew included someone who'd actually been canoeing before, so she knew how to paddle and steer. Stupid as it sounds, our team really got into the competition. If you knew my colleagues, seeing them jump up and down while shouting "Tennis ball! To your left! Gaaahhh!!!" in a wide variety of accents would seem way, way out of character. It was really pretty exciting, though, but that may be due to the initial stages of heat exhaustion. I was nominated to give the debriefing for our team. I rambled on a bit about "best practices versus innovation," and "developing trust between colleagues," etc. My ultimate conclusion: You can never have enough duct tape.

My colleagues are really, really young...

Velkommen!

Just a quick shout-out to all my Norwegian visitors!


Vi har lutefisk!

A most excellent Fourth

For July 4, Merujo and I went out to Fairfax, Virginia, home of streets named after failed Confederate generals. A friend of hers hosts a huge annual party that culminates in a great fireworks display courtesy of the taxpayers of Fairfax County. There was a band (the Cactus Liquors) that ended up being shut down for noise violations. There were lots of little kids running around, squirtguns at the ready, and a white wolf-dog the size of Montana that basically ignored everyone.

After an excellent repast of pulled pork BBQ sandwiches and Merujo's evil, habit-forming, weight-encouraging brownie bits, we retired to the street in our collapsible chairs to watch the fireworks. (There's nothing like blocking off a city street without a permit.) I know everyone says you should see the DC fireworks at least once (I haven't in 12 years), but the Fairfax fireworks are really quite something to behold. We were far enough away that the launches sounded like tympani and the reports got to us just as the bursts were peaking, but it was still exciting. Lots of kids had sparklers, and the smells made me think of happy times at a friend's cabin back home in Nebraska.

My little recap isn't really doing the entire scene much justice. Sorry about that. We had an excellent time, though. You would have enjoyed it.