Power

Assuming you can get past the all-JonBenet, all-the-time coverage this past week, you may have read that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor struck down the Bush Administration's warrantless, illegal, and unconstitutional wiretap program. The administration and their right-wing lackeys have predictably fired back with both personal (Taylor is a "Democrat-appointed judge," she's an activist judge, she's an appointee of that weak and evil Jimmy Carter) and generally jingoistic (supporters of this decision are supporting the terrorists, they're anti-American, they're traitors) responses. This decision, they say, weakens the country in its ongoing war on terror; it prevents us from wiretapping the terrorists.

But this decision has nothing to do about wiretapping the terrorists. Hell, I'm all for wiretapping terrorists; most people are. In spite of the hue and cry from the right-wingnuts, this decision doesn't prevent the government from doing that.

The administration claims that this decision would stop us from finding out about and stopping terrorist plots, like the one recently defused in England. That's a blatant lie. Here's the truth:

• The U.K. plot was foiled by the British, not by Americans; our ability to wiretap (or not) was irrelevant in that case.
• The CIA can wiretap any communications it wants to outside the U.S.; this decision has nothing to do with that.
• The government can wiretap communications within the U.S. by simply asking for permission and receiving a warrant from a special FISA (Foreign International Surveillance Act) court. The FISA court almost always says yes; it's pretty much a blank check (much to the chagrin of civil libertarians).

The fact that the government has to go through warrant-friendly channels to do a wiretap is no great restraint; it doesn't hinder our anti-terrorist efforts in any way, shape, or form. The Bush Administration saying otherwise is simply untrue.

So what's the deal, then? If it's not about stopping the terrorists, what's all the fuss about?

It's about power.

You see, Bush and Cheney and their cohorts want no limits whatsoever on presidential power. Forget the Constitution, forget the two other branches of government, forget checks and balances. The executive branch must have the power to do whatever it wants, with no oversight from either Congress or the courts. It's the Imperial Presidency, one short step from dictatorship, that Bush and Cheney want.

And why do they want this? It's the unholy alliance between Bush, the rich fratboy who's used to always getting what he wants, and Cheney, the evil spawn of the Nixon Administration who wants to recoup the powers that Congress unjustly (in his view) stripped from the presidency after the Watergate scandal. It's about having no one to answer to; it's about unfettered, uncontrolled, unheard-of power.

The thing is, the current administration should be careful of what they ask for. If they succeed in creating an Imperial Presidency, what's to stop the next Democratic president from using those same powers against them? Short of a coup, this administration ends in two years, and the next guy gets to use all the power that these guys have massed -- and the next guy could use that power in ways unimagined. It won't always be you in charge; think of the future, guys.

And the future is just what Judge Taylor, the ACLU, and all other responsible Americans are thinking of. The country and the Constitution must endure, despite the efforts of the current despots.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

Conspiracy theories

It is, perhaps, human nature that conspiracy theories abound. Simple explanations for earth-shattering events never seem quite enough; there has to be something bigger behind the scenes to give the big events their proper weight.

I'm reminded of the story that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor before the Japanese attacked and did nothing to stop it, calculating that America needed a shock like that to push the then-isolationist country into the war. (Read more here.) Or the various theories that claim the Bush administration was either aware of or behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks. (Read more here.)

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, journalist Seymour Hersh reports a story that some will no doubt include in these same ranks of conspiracy theories. But Hersh isn't a wild-eyed whack-job; he has a long and respected history of publishing truths that other reporters are either incapable of or unwilling to report. It's unlikely that this alleged conspiracy is fictional.

What Hersh reports is astonishing. According to his sources, the Israeli government plotted with higher-ups at the White House and the U.S. State Department to invade Lebanon and make war on Hezbollah, months before the recent military action. With these plans in hand, the Israelis only had to wait for the right pretext to go to war. It's FDR and Pearl Harbor all over again, except this really happened.

What did the U.S. get out of this? For Condi Rice and the State Department, the pending attack was "a way to strengthen the Lebanese government." For the White House (re: VP Cheney and his neocon cohorts; the President is apparently a non-factor when it comes to most international business), this was a test for their planned upcoming attack on Iran -- "the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran," as stated in the article.

And here's the thing. Despite the cries and uproar from the right-wing media, Hersh isn't a conspiracy theorist. He's a solid, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, responsible for exposing the My Lai massacre, the Abu Ghraib scandal, and other important stories. If Hersh says something is true, it probably is.

The fact that you probably haven't heard much about Hersh's report says something about the timidity of our country's mainstream media. This is an important story, global manipulation on a grand scale, and it deserves to be heard. Why isn't The New York Times reporting this story? Why do you have to go overseas (to the BBC and similar media) to find out about this? Our media ignoring this story is a conspiracy in and of itself.

Let's also not gloss over the most important part of this story: Cheney's White House is already planning an attack on Iran -- just as they planned an attack on Iraq long before 9/11 and the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. The 9/11 attacks were just the pretext that Cheney and his pals needed to give the green light to their Iraq invasion plans, just as the Israelis used the pretext of the kidnapping of two soldiers as justification to invade Lebanon. It's probably just a matter of time before some minor event serves as the trigger for the Bush administration's next war.

Makes you wonder about all those other conspiracy theories, doesn't it?

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

And things break again

The saga of my sweet little Audi S4 convertible continues. I took it into the dealer today for the trunk shelf and antenna problems. The trunk shelf was broken, they need to order a new one. The antenna problem is actually a shorted cable harness -- the one that runs all the way from the radio up front to the antenna in the trunk lid. They have to order one of those, too. I asked if these two trunk-related problems were in any way caused by them disassembling the convertible top storage compartment in the trunk, and they said no. Of course not. Just a coincidence. Maybe I hit something, they suggested -- or snagged something in the trunk. Sure.

So I drove the car home, sans on-order parts, with the top up. That's the way they handed it to me, and it was too hot today to take the top down. Until this evening, that is, when I pressed the "top down" switch and -- lo and behold -- the top wouldn't go down. Again. It just unlatched and stayed there, no motor running. Had to do the manual operated top secure thing. Again. Just like a few weeks ago. Probably another bad microswitch. Related to the other problems? One wonders.

In any case, at least I'm not missing any prime top-down days. It's too damned hot around here to bake in an open-air cockpit. I am, for once, enjoying the cool comfort of an air conditioned sedan.

And I want my car fixed.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

Things get fixed -- and break again

With all the strife around us today, the problems of one little man don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. But still, they're my problems, so they matter to me.

Last time out, I wrote about the rash of technical problems I'd been experiencing. Well, what goes down must float up, so here's an update on how things worked themselves out.

First, my cable box problems, which amounted to a firmware update breaking the HDMI connection. No fix from the cable company (nor did I expect one, those technical morons), so my workaround was to switch from HDMI to component video. No big deal, aside from having to reprogram my remote to a different input on my TV.

Next, my Audi, which had a bum convertible top. The dealership fixed it right up, although it took two days, since they had to order the part (a bad microswitch). However, here's where things keep happening. I'm not sure whether it's related to the top fix or not (although it probably is, since they had the whole trunk assembly taken apart), but now the little shelf in my trunk that raises and lowers to accommodate the convertible top is broken; it won't raise to give me the extra trunk space when the top is up. Then, a day or so after I noticed that problem, the antenna on my car audio system (which is located in the trunk assembly) went bad. The AM/FM is completely unlistenable, and while XM satellite radio still has reception, I get an "ANTENNA" error message on the display. The Audi goes back to the dealership on Monday for additional repairs.

The dishwasher repairman made it out to repair my Bosch dishwasher. I thought a bad control panel was the culprit, but apparently a stuck latch was causing all the problems. A little jiggling with his screwdriver and everything was back to normal. And it only cost me $85. (Hell, I could have jiggled the damned screwdriver myself for a lot less than that.)

The folks at Niveus took good care of me concerning my broken Media Center PC. I had to pay to ship the hog back to California for repairs, but they took care of everything else. The problem was a bad power supply, which apparently fritzed the BIOS as it was going out. I got the monster back on Friday, but then more problems ensued -- no component video after boot up. Taking the advice of my contact at Niveus (who happened to be working over the weekend), I connected a second VGA monitor, set the video card for dual-monitor "clone" operation, and reset all the video settings for the big-screen TV's component connection. Not sure why it got bumfoozled, or how exactly I fixed it, but it's now working. I had an additional scare when the whole system started moving at a snail's pace, but that eventually worked itself out; it was almost like it had to take an hour or so to settle back into its old routine. (Actually, I think it had more to do with performing all the background maintenance -- spyware and antivirus updates, and so on -- that it hadn't had a chance to do over the past two weeks.) Anyway, it's back up and running, and I can't tell you how much I missed having my music. Kudos to the folks at Niveus for the exemplary service.

So, aside from my car radio and trunk thingie, I'm back in business. (And my Windows Vista installation continues to stay up and running, which is another plus.) All I want is my stuff to work. Is that too much to ask?

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

Things break

I've had a streak of bad luck this past week regarding the reliability of some of my most cherished possessions. And these aren't cheap and shoddy possessions. Cheap and shoddy was okay when I was younger and less well-to-do, but now that I have a bit more disposable income I try to buy nice things. Things that look good and perform well and are supposed to last. Supposed to, that's the operative phrase. Let me elaborate.

It all started about a week and a half ago. My cable company pushed a firmware upgrade down to my SA8300HD cable box/DVR, which promptly broke the HDMI connection between the box and my Sony big-screen TV. (Every time I switch inputs on my TV, the cable box video goes blank; it gets confused.) I promptly called my local cable company (after switching boxes on my own; this -- and some Internet research -- is how I determined it was a firmware problem), who sent a friendly enough guy out to take a look. He didn't know any more than I did (and, in fact, knew a little less -- thank you, Internet research), and pretty much said that I'd have to downgrade from HDMI to a component video connection, which I did. It now works okay, but it's not the way I'd like it to be -- nor is it the kind of performance I expect when I'm paying a hundred bucks or so a month to Big Cable.

Then, a few days later, I was up in Minnesota, visiting my girlfriend. The weather was nice, so I pushed the button in my high-performance, overpriced Audi S4 convertible to put the top down. Except it didn't go. The top unlatched, but the motor didn't activate, which left me with a half-up/half-down top that we had to manually put back in place -- something that wasn't intuitive, wasn't easy, and in fact was the exact opposite of how the instruction manual described it. Not cool. A few days later I drove back to Indianapolis, visited my friendly neighborhood Audi dealer, they ordered the proper part (a malfunctioning microswitch), and now everything is back in working order. Still, not something you expect to happen on a $60,000 automobile; I'm just glad I had the spare 15 minutes it took to get things manually latched down, instead of being stuck at a stoplight trying to get the top back up.

Back home again in Indiana, I came home last night and found my expensive and totally silent Bosch dishwasher acting funny. The front panel wouldn't function properly, the door wouldn't latch, and it appears that the electronics are all goobered up. So I put in a call to my friendly neighborhood Bosch repairman, who'll be out in five days to charge me $85 just to walk in the door and say hello. Again, not something you expect to happen with at top-of-the-line $1,000 dishwasher.

And it got worse. Over the past few days my extremely expensive (see a trend?) Niveus Media Center PC had been throwing off odd error messages about a missing CPU fan. (It doesn't have a CPU fan; it's a totally silent design.) I powered it down when I left the house yesterday morning, and when I tried to power it back up last night, nothing happened. Nada. Zilch. Dead dead dead. So I called my friendly not-so-local Niveus technical support line, left my message on their answering machine, and promptly got a call from their VP of Marketing. (That's one of the perks of being a technology writer; personal service when something breaks.) I described my problem, and the current thinking is that while I might just have a bad power supply, it's more likely the motherboard that's gone south. In any case, I'll have to pack up the monster and send it off to California for (free) repairs. Once again, not something you expect to happen with a uber-high-end $5,000 PC.

Like I said, it hasn't been a good week. About the only thing going my way is that I finally got the Windows Vista beta working on my desktop PC so it doesn't crash every 10 minutes. (It took a combination of upgrading to a new video driver, disabling User Account Control, disabling the automatic background hard disk search, and uninstalling the Vista version of Computer Associates' anti-virus program; now it works just fine, thank you.) I guess it goes to show that just because you spend a lot of money to buy nice things, those nice things can still be pieces of crap that break down when it's least convenient. Almost makes me wish for the days when I drove a cheap and shoddy AMC Gremlin; yeah, it broke down all the time, but at least I didn't pay an arm and a leg for it.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.