In considering it, I think Cheney has one primary goal: Cheney wants the inevitable torture prosecutions to appear politically motivated. Right now, basically every day, Cheney is out in the press picking a fight with the Obama administration. He’s goading them into a fight. He’s kicking dirt on their shoes. Calling them ugly. Claiming the administration’s policies are hurting our security. He’s like a baseball manager coming up face to face with the umpire just begging to be thrown out of the game. He’s figuring the fans will interpret more anger and more hopping around angry as some sort of yardstick to help determine whether he’s right: they’ll believe that the more he argues the more likely the umpire is wrong.

And when the Cheney goes too far and the umpire has enough and tosses him out, perhaps people will only remember the comic display he’s putting on and not the fact that 3,000 Americans died on 9/11 on their watch. And thousands more died in their Iraq boondoggle. And Al-Qaeda is still a threat to the U.S. after all they did.

My personal belief is that given the evidence of the law being broken that has already been released, the Justice department must appoint a Special Prosecutor and be done with it. I think once those wheels are in motion, you’re not going to hear anything from the lawyered-up Cheney, Yoo, Bibey or the others in the Torture Cabal.

And Congress should pass on holding hearings as they can’t help themselves when they get in front of the camera. The idea of letting the idiots in Congress grandstand and pretend to police this issue after they basically rolled over for years is pathetic.

As you may have heard, Apple released newly designed Macbooks and Macbook Pros this week and they have eliminated all Firewire ports from the Macbook and left a single Firewire 800 port in the Macbook Pro. Every Mac since the advent of Firewire 1394a in 2000 has had at least one Firewire port. Hell, eMacs even came with two Firewire 400 ports.

According to an email that may or may not have come from Steve Jobs, Apple’s explanation for this nickle-and-dime elimination of the Firewire connection is because “all of the HD camcorders released in the last few years use USB 2.0.”

We get that you’re a visionary product guy, Steve. We understand that you can see the future and Firewire is nowhere in it according to you. However, in the real world present day us long time Apple fans have a shitload of Firewire products that need a way to get connected to our computers. We generally don’t toss out all of our existing electronic gizmos like hard drives, video cameras and iPods because Apple has decided it’s no longer appropriate for us to use.

And since the last time Steve had to deal with a technical problem on his computer was when he made Wozniak hack a problem with his Apple DOS boot loader floppy on his Apple II, he doesn’t see the inherent value of the brilliant, lifesaver Target Disk mode. I can tell you as someone who is constantly fixing people’s issues with their computers, it’s the Macbook users who need me to be able to mount their computer’s hard drive and deal with it… not Macbook Pro users. This feature is one that makes Macs better, different and more usable than your run-of-the-mill crap Dell laptop.

And all those folks who’d used and loved the earlier version of iMovie with their standard def video cameras (through Firewire), iMovie fans got the big F U from Apple when they completely dropped the familiar product (which I’m sure took people a long while to get comfortable with as they made awesome home movies of their kids) and replaced it with a completely new product lacking many of the features that made the tool so great.

Well, like it or not, Steve, Apple’s market share is growing and you’re extending your reach into the more common folks who are not as tech-savvy and not dripping with extra cash to replace their complete computer/video hardware portfolio every couple years. These folks go through a significant decision to spend $1,000+ on a Mac. Your decision is arrogant and puzzling, considering how little it would have cost to include a single Firewire port. And don’t you know that USB 2.0 is a crap standard?

Why is that? Here’s why (from Wikipedia):

Although high-speed USB 2.0 nominally runs at a higher signaling rate (480 Mbit/s) than FireWire 400, typical USB PC-hosts rarely exceed sustained transfers of 280 Mbit/s, with 240 Mbit/s being more typical. This is likely due to USB’s reliance on the host-processor to manage low-level USB protocol, whereas FireWire delegates the same tasks to the interface hardware. For example, the FireWire host interface supports memory-mapped devices, which allows high-level protocols to run without loading the host CPU with interrupts and buffer-copy operations.

FireWire 800 is substantially faster than Hi-Speed USB.

Hear that? USB 2.0 uses the processor of your computer to manage the protocol so it’s inherently slower. You can digitize video while you do something else on your computer. Good luck doing that with USB 2.0.

Why aren’t you leading the charge against promoting such a weak alternative? And if you’re really so gung-ho on USB, what steps are you taking to make sure USB supports the kind of cool things Macs should offer, like Target Disk mode.

Now if you take Apple’s logic on this forward, that Apple provides the ports we “should” be using and really need, how come my Macbook Pro doesn’t have the ports that I need? Why are you reducing the number of ports I have on my high-end laptop? Where’s SATA 3.0 port on any new of the new Macs? As a Pro user I have several SATA external drives and this standard is wicked fast, yet I don’t have it. Sure I can drop another $100 on a lunky ExpressCard to add the capability, but that still doesn’t feel right. How about an HDMI-in? An HDMI-out? How about something new and better than all of these that us forward-thinking Apple Pro users “should” be using?

It strikes me that this decision stems from the same type of arrogance that leads Apple to provide updated software for their computers who’s tech notes describe the update as only containing “bug fixes” rather than the actual specific fixes they have done.

If you watched the debate, it seems to me that the race is over. McCain has lost.

If you believe in equal rights and that all loving couples should have the right to marry and enjoy the benefits and challenges that such a union offers, please consider donating to the No On 8 campaign. The right-wing has chosen to make California a battleground for the nation on this issue and we cannot let such intolerance be advanced in the name of fear.

As the Santa Cruz Sentinal puts it in their editorial against Proposition 8:

It’s not about moral teaching. It’s about equal treatment for all people under the laws of our state.

Just to give you a sense of the scare tactics these folks are using, the subheading on their web site is:

Restoring Marriage and Protecting California Children

Oh, please… I hope that none of the children they’re supposedly protecting are actually gay or lesbian. Imagine having to have this conversation with your child:

“Sorry, Son, a long time ago I was scared of people who were gay so I voted to eliminate your rights so it would be impossible for you to live a life like the one your mother and I enjoy.

I believed that men and women chose to be gay so they could enjoy being beaten, mocked, marginalized and discriminated against. Your choice to get married would have no effect on me or our lives, but I was scared of people like you. Sorry about that.”

With the Presidential election only 3 weeks away, John McCain faces a stark choice: Will he go down in history as a principled conservative who lost an election standing on his convictions? Or will he go down as an opportunist who lost while bringing out the darkest elements in American politics?

John McCain is now at a crossroads. At this historical moment, he has virtually no path to win the Presidency. The question is whether he will lose with honor or lose with disgrace. Will his legacy be like that of his Arizona Senatorial predecessor Barry Goldwater, who ran a campaign of conservative principal in a liberal year and lost in a landslide, only to see his principals come to power 16 years in the form of Ronald Reagan? Or will his legacy be like some combination of Richard Nixon, Robert Dole and George Wallace, one of a man whom, in his overweening ambition for victory, took the low road and tapped the dark forces of American politics to his own everlasting shame and dishonor?

I highly recommend that you read Miles Mogalescu’s prescription for McCain’s ailing campaign. As someone who once respected McCain, I couldn’t agree more.

Finding Number One

For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides

“The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”

Given that the reports recommends that no criminal charges be pursued, the question is, “What should Alaska do now?”

It seems clear to me watching from the outside that there is only one course of action for the Alaska Legislature: the Alaska Legislature must impeach Sarah Palin.

Here is the rationale for pursuing this action, versus something more hand-slappy like a censure vote.

A clear finding of wrongdoing in Palin’s abuse of power and violation of the ethics act

The report clearly shows an effort by Sarah Palin, her husband Todd Palin, and nearly all senior members of her administration to force Walt Monegan to violate his own ethics and the laws of the State of Alaska. For someone who ran on a reformer ticket, she seems less like a reformer and more like a typical corrupt politician. Even more than that, does it seem extremely inappropriate to Alaskans that within one month of her being sworn in, Todd Palin was holding official meetings in the Governor’s office?

A clear lack of understanding of what she did wrong

Sarah Palin does not understand what the phrase “public trust” means when the laws of her state clearly charge her with defending it. If she did, why, only days after the reports’ release, would she be rallying against “abuse of power” despite being found guilty of it on Friday?

Beyond that, despite being told by Walt Monegan that the case was closed on the complaints against her brother-in-law, she had her staff and her husband continue to pursue getting her brother-in-law fired. As Governor, she has the power to introduce legislation that might make penalties stiffer for State Troopers to violate rules or laws. It appears that she did not do that: she simply wanted her brother-in-law to be fired and would stop at nothing.

A lack of repentance for her actions and those of her administration

Governor Palin now claims:

I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing… any hint of any kind of unethical activity there.

Alaska State Legislators should hear in that phrase, “Not can I disregard questions put to me by debate moderators, I can also completely disregard the findings of a lawfully constituted investigation AND whatever that investigation said I did, I will do it again.”

Sarah Palin’s efforts to discredit, distort and manipulate the results of a legal and non-partisan investigation

Rather than support the investigation, Governor Palin directed members of her staff not to participate in the investigation. Governor Palin allowed the McCain campaign to sully the reputation of Branchflower, the investigator, and Monegan, a widely respected Alaska law enforcement figure. Governor Palin refused to answer any questions from the investigator, despite repeated promises that she would cooperate fully.

All of these efforts were done to prevent Branchflower from getting full and fair access to the facts of the case.

While it is obviously a serious action to take, I can’t find any reason not to support impeachment of Governor Sarah Palin. If the Legislature fails to take that action, its legislators should abandon all hope of future executive elected official following the rules that they craft for the protection of Alaska’s public trust.