perfidy

Things are more interesting for Dell, Inc. than perhaps the former and once again current CEO, Michael Dell would prefer. In today's Wall Street Journal, you could find a report that "Dell's Internal Accounting Probe Uncovers Evidence of Misconduct".

Dell Inc., after a lengthy internal probe of its accounting practices, said it had found evidence of misconduct but didn't specify what it was.

The computer maker said the investigation also found a number of accounting errors and deficiencies in the financial-control "environment." Dell stressed that its investigation isn't complete, however, and said it will delay filing its annual 10-K report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, originally due April 3, past an extension date of April 18.

In the wake of the options backdating feeding frenzy of the past year, additional news of corporate skullduggery large and small has started just bouncing off of me, leaving no meaningful impression, positive or negative. Such was the case with today's Dell news, particularly given that Dell hasn't filed a 10-Q with the SEC since June, 2006. They're now going to be late with their 10-K for the fiscal year ended February 2, 2007, as well.

All rather ho-hum, to be honest.

Until, on the way home Friday evening, I heard a story reported by Jeff Tyler on the always enjoyable Marketplace radio show. (audio available at the link, in RealPlayer format). Excerpt:

JEFF TYLER: Dell has not clarified what kind of "misconduct" has been uncovered. And that's left stock analysts guessing: How bad are the skeletons in Dell's closet?

Morningstar analyst Rick Hanna says the company is giving investors little to go on.

RICK HANNA: They haven't filed a quarterly report for over three quarters now. Think about an analogy. We're kind of driving in the fog and it's hard to see very far in front of you, because there's not a lot of light that's being shed on the situation.
Morningstar rates management practices at various companies. And Hanna says:

HANNA: They grade relatively poorly, quite frankly. On the Morningstar report card, Dell's management gets a "D."

In terms of consumer satisfaction, the company isn't looking so hot either. A new survey shows Dell is losing PC customers to other brands.

{...}

Taken together, Dell might not seem like a very attractive stock. But despite the dark clouds, Morningstar analyst Rick Hanna says the business model is solid and the stock is under-valued.

HANNA: As an example, they've probably got close to 5, $6 a share, just in cash, sitting on the books. They're still incredibly financially healthy. I mean, this is still a very, very solid, very strong company.

On a rating of 1 to 5 stars, Morningstar still gives Dell its strongest recommendation: 5 stars.

(ellipsis mine)

Since Dell's 10-K isn't actually due until Tuesday, they're not truly lacking quarterly reports for "over three quarters now", only two (Q2 2007 ended ≈7/2006 and Q3 2007 ended ≈10/2006). Nevertheless, the market has had earnings releases from the company, and so is not flying completely blind about reported performance. In other words, the analysts, such as Mr. Hanna, have the company's reported income statements and conference call information to use in providing ratings and advice. It's not quite like "driving in a fog", and all due respect to Mr. Hanna, it's not even like "it's hard to see very far in front of you". Perhaps a better analogy would be that it's hard to determine if the speed bump you just plowed over did any damage to your muffler.

As near as I can tell, what the market is missing are balance sheets and statements of cash flow for all periods after the 13 week period ending early in August, 2006, as well as any management discussion of results, aside from whatever occurred in company conference calls. Introductory accounting tells us that income statements represent what you did (or what you say you did), and balance sheets represent what you have. Clearly, one flows into the other, and without that last bit, attaching credibility to the income statement can be difficult.

Also, absent any reported balance sheet since August 4, 2006, Mr. Hanna's assertion that Dell's got $5 or $6 per share in cash is ill-founded. On that August balance sheet, there looks to be about $3.50/share of cash, and that's a number that's been trending down quite noticeably since January 2005. Receivables are growing, cash is shrinking, and the vaunted Dell model of years past, with days sales outstanding (DSO) measured in negative numbers seems long gone. They may have a solid business model, but it's not obviously the model that got them to number one in the industry. (To be completely fair, the old model had practical limits, of course).

Given the unreported, and unknown, basis of the concerns about accounting errors, deficiencies in the financial-control environment, and the possibility of employee misconduct, a cautious analyst would treat the last-reported numbers with, well, caution, and in no event would that analyst inflate (inadvertently, I'm absolutely certain) the reported numbers such as cash to provide a basis for retaining a high rating on the stock.

Particularly with a company whose management rates a "D", from that same analyst.

Morningstar's rating of Dell seems based more on "iconography"; on what it used to be rather than what it demonstrably is right now or will be in the reasonably predictable future - a company whose finances, customer service, and market dominance are all a bit sketchy for the time being. Dell's in no danger of disappearing, and isn't, to my mind, a bad company to deal with - I've bought more products from them than I can count, I consider myself a happy customer, and I will in all likelihood buy from them in the future. There are good companies with dubiously valued stocks, bad companies with rightly valued stocks, and two other permutations that don't support my thesis and which I'll let you calculate on your own. Dell arguably looks to be in that first category for now.

The stock would need to have performed twice as well as it has in the past several years just to rise to the mediocre level of "dead money". It's been a stone loser, in other words. And unless Morningstar has just recently raised its rating to "5 Star" (a hypothesis I doubt, but which doubt I can't support, since I don't subscribe to Morningstar), then Morningstar's ratings are based something far more ethereal than anything I'd be able to use to make an informed decision about a company's equity.

If it's at a bottom now, of course it could go up. It could also, based on the results of its financial review and competition from a rejuvenated HP, start digging from the bottom it's allegedly reached, acquiring a new bottom. And even if that doesn't happen, there's still no way to tell when or if Michael Dell will be able to bring the operations and market position back to their former luster.

Moral of the story? I still don't know what constitutes a Morningstar "5 Star" rated stock, and I'm understandably (I hope) skeptical of such a rating on Dell, and by extension on all other similarly rated stocks.

(also posted at a issuesblog.com)

[wik] In the weekend version of the WSJ, (subscription, but will be on Marketwatch site next week) curmudgeonly columnist Herb Greenberg, who's never a shortseller but seems to respect shortsellers more than he does stock-boosters, published a piece on Dell. With Seattle money manager Bill Fleckenstein as his source, he wrote:

In an August 2004 column on his Fleckensteincapital.com Web site, he reminded readers that it was the balance sheet, not the income statement, "that provided the tip-off that disaster loomed" for Dell rival Gateway, which rapidly became one of the PC industry's fastest financial fiascoes.

{...}

Mr. Fleckenstein was also uncomfortable with the size of the "long-term investments and long-term receivables" and "long-term liabilities" line items. It was a balance sheet, Mr. Fleckenstein wrote at the time, that "looks more like that of a financial institution than the box maker that it is." He continued: "If there turns out to be a problem with 'other current assets,' or any of these long-term investments or long-term receivables, you can see that when you match off these assets and liabilities, there could potentially be a lot less left than what people now think."

Therein lies the quandary for investors banking on a return to the powerful Dell model of the past: If Dell has to rearrange its balance sheet to show that it wasn't as profitable as analysts once believed, it may not be as profitable in the future as they are expecting.

(ellipsis mine)

I can't explain my tendency to rail about small, irksome things that are just part of the landscape, but since it's a tendency without obvious downside, I also can't muster the will to stop doing so, either.

Among my pet peeves is the marketing practice of sending email messages highlighting white papers supposed to be of truly crucial importance to me, the reader. I've ceased trying to determine why it is that many of the marketers think so highly of the motivational power of their email missives. In trying to answer that question in the past, I used to quickly have a look at their web pages, PDFs, or webcasts, not because the topic lit a fire under me, but solely because I was trying to figure out why they thought it would.

And, of course, by simply taking the time to look at the sometimes-maundering presentations, I made their "lists" of hot prospects, targeted for incessant future follow-up and cultivation. Take one of the other evening's four such entries from my inbox:

A thorough understanding of what’s going on in your IT environment is no longer optional.

Without it, you’re leaving your enterprise vulnerable to security, litigation and vendor-compliance risks. And, because the cost of maintaining IT assets represents such a significant portion of the budget, you could be throwing money away.

So it clearly behooves us all to achieve best practices in software and hardware asset management. This paper offers practical guidance that will put you in the know through best practices in asset management – steps that can help you better manage enterprise risks, save money and more. You simply can’t afford to pass this paper by.

Lucky for me, these days I'm much better at finding enough reason in the email itself to disqualify the whitepaper from ever passing before my eyes. For instance:

A thorough understanding of what’s going on in your IT environment is no longer optional.

Wow. I had no idea that it was ever optional, so that would be a fun fact to suddenly know, if the implied predicate for the assertion were actually true.

And, because the cost of maintaining IT assets represents such a significant portion of the budget, you could be throwing money away.

Irrelevant - without regard to the proportion of budget dedicated to maintaining IT assets, there's no guarantee I'm not throwing money way. Such as by wasting time reviewing the ten or more whitepaper notifications in my daily inbox contents.

So it clearly behooves us all to achieve best practices in software and hardware asset management.

Almost like standard practice in university calculus classes (and elsewhere), the "hand wave", a/k/a "and therefore, it follows". "It clearly" does nothing, let alone behoove me, not least because I am not a member of Genus Equine.

You simply can’t afford to pass this paper by.

Just watch me, Sparky. Just watch me.

The whitepaper referenced above may contain the secrets of the universe, for all I know. Regardless, I didn't read it, and won't be doing so in the future. The email solicitation was lame, it moved me only to the point of ridiculing it in a blog post, and I have enough respect for the sales people at ManageSoft not to send them on a goose chase of calling me or pestering me with further email messages I'd just ignore, as I'm not at all interested in their offerings.

Not that I know the sales people at ManageSoft - I don't. And it's possible that the sales people at ManageSoft are those directly responsible for the email message I've just finished making fun of, rather than some separate, largely incompetent, marketing department. No matter - enterprise software and services sales is a hard slog, filled with wasted salesperson time, and I think, regardless of their solicitation skills or the quality of their offering, that sales people are human, too; people whose time is as valuable as my own, even when I have no intention of doing business with them.

Perhaps I was just well brought up, but more likely, my recently-found reticence to even respond to solicitations that interest me for no reason other than to find out why they were supposed to is that I've tagged along on such sales calls with colleagues before, and I respect the craft, when done right.

I just wish that the sales craftsmen spent a bit more time trying to envision how their solicitations are actually processed by their intended, though sometimes poorly targeted, recipients.

(also posted at a issuesblog.com)

From the Economist's political cartoonist, KAL (a/k/a Kevin Kallaugher).

Like all Kallaugher's work, well done, and that's even before he gets his character to say "big honking ears".

[wik] Message from the Ministry of Future Perfidy: sadly, Flash hasn't been a thing for over a decade.

How else to describe a court battle between the two titans of enterprise software, Oracle and SAP? Heavyweights, both.

On March 22, 2007, Oracle filed suit against SAP alleging corporate theft. Per Oracle's filing:

"This case is about corporate theft on a grand scale, committed by the largest German software company—a conglomerate known as SAP," the lawsuit says. "From that Web site, SAP has copied and swept thousands of Oracle software products and other proprietary and confidential material onto its own servers."

My initial reaction to the news was "Whoa. SAP just made a big mistake". In the fullness of the news cycle, however, further details arrived, via a story in one of last week's issues of the WSJ (subscription req'd) entitled "SAP Unit Denies Oracle's Claims":

According to the complaint, TomorrowNow in some cases accessed information using log-in information for Oracle customers with expired support contracts. In other cases, TomorrowNow accessed information beyond what customers were entitled to access, according to the suit.

My reaction after reading this bit of news, in a story focused on SAP's proclamation of innocence, was that Oracle's position isn't quite as iron-clad as it had first appeared to be. 

I'm not the only one who thinks so. Wired Magazine, in an interesting article, also from last week, entitled "Is Oracle Using Computer Crime Law to Squelch Competition?" questions how different the case would be had the Oracle customers simply provided written manuals in their possession to the SAP subsidiary. Further, Jennifer Granick, the author of the Wired article, doesn't pick a likely winner in the case, but seems dismayed at the prospect of Oracle's succeeding in their suit, but doing so simply because the access was electronic rather than physical.

There's a larger issue that occurred to me in this matter, however. I'm no Oracle maven, but I remember quite vividly the marketing campaign Oracle ran earlier this decade touting "Unbreakable: Oracle's Commitment to Security". Ever since the 2002 debut of that campaign, naysayers have been a dime a dozen. In fact, Oracle itself, by its actions if not its advertising rhetoric, has admitted as much. No less a luminary than Bruce Schneier, founder & CTO of BT Counterpane was quoted thusly:

When they say their software is unbreakable, they're lying.

Ouch. That could have left a mark, directed anywhere other than at Oracle's marketing department, I'd guess.

But unless Oracle has dispensed with the fiction that they, alone in the technology world, are capable of providing a secure database, application, or portal, it would seem as though they're begging for further ridicule when complaining that SAP (via its TomorrowNow subsidiary) was able not only to get into Oracle's systems with expired passwords, but that SAP was also able, as if by magic, to access areas to which those same customer passwords were not authorized.

Friends of mine with cooler heads have pointed out that, if Oracle were attempting to get a customer to sign a new maintenance agreement, they might well have avoided disabling access for those expired accounts. My rejoinder? That still doesn't explain or excuse the fact that their security over this information must be marginal, at best, if they allowed access to items for which the customers weren't authorized.

And one logical conclusion a court could, but wouldn't be forced to, draw, is that Oracle didn't think highly enough of the supposed "corporate secrets" to even put a lock on the door.

Advantage, SAP?

(also posted at a issuesblog.com)

Symptoms to look out for:

• You're a cab driver
• You work in Beverly Hills, CA
• You get a fare to Chapel Hill, NC
• You decide to take it

Witness:

Cabbie says he was stiffed on $8,200

Fri Mar 30, 9:19 PM ET

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - A taxi driver told police he was stiffed on an $8,200 cross-country fare by a female passenger he shuttled from Beverly Hills, Calif. to North Carolina.

The meter in Levon Mikayelyan's taxi cab hit the staggering fare after a 2,600-mile journey that ended at a Holiday Inn in Chapel Hill. Mikayelyan said the rider's family paid him only $800, Chapel Hill police spokeswoman Jane Cousins said Friday.

"We do get reports of people who are not able to pay cab drivers, but certainly not with this amount," Cousins said.
{...}

So Cousins is saying not all cabbies are this stupid? Good - it's been my general experience that they're not, though they can be a thieving lot, depending on the city you're in.

They're often apparent refugees of Austin Powers' least favorite group:

Carnies. Circus folk. Nomads, you know. Smell like cabbage. Small hands.

But they're not often this stupid.

Minnesota has already had its turn in the barrel, and it's far enough in the past (Aug 2006) that simply appending this item to it would consign the appendage to obscurity, and spare the Gopher State the additional ridicule that it so richly deserves.

So, Minnesota gets to be our first multi-part state smackdown recipient, all for a single news story from today:

Minn. lawmaker lobbies for Tilt-A-Whirl

Fri Mar 30, 5:38 AM ET

ST. PAUL - State Rep. Patti Fritz, DFL-Faribault, has introduced a bill designating the Tilt-A-Whirl the official amusement ride in Minnesota.

Fritz said she's taking up the cause of 52 kindergarten students from her district who say it deserves special attention because it was invented in their town.

"I represent children too," Fritz said, adding, "Minnesotans like to have fun, and it's a fun thing to do."

The Tilt-A-Whirl is a platform-type ride consisting of seven freely spinning cars holding up to four riders apiece.

Herbert Sellner invented it in 1926 and the first one debuted at the Minnesota State Fair a year later. Sellner Manufacturing in Faribault still makes it.

Minnesota already has a state muffin (blueberry), a state gemstone (the Lake Superior agate), a state drink (milk), a state butterfly (monarch) and seven other official symbols.

Sorry - it's short, so I just included it all. Well, that, plus it's a Yahoo story, so it'll eventually disappear from the web on its own if I don't snatch it. Can't have the Ministry archives filled with dead links, now can we? Of course, the story itself is a bit short on important details, such as surprise vomiting attacks suffered by tilt-a-whirlers and indirectly by those to their left and right.

Another thought occurs to me, now that I've gone to all the trouble to lift that entire news story - we could just start another semi-regular series here at the Ministry, one devoted to ridiculing individual legislators also richly in need of such ridicule. The potential downside, of course, is that given the size of the list of valid editorial targets, we're woefully understaffed for such an enterprise.

Dateline: Detroit "Police Say Gay Man Not Fatally Beaten"

Odd headline, I think you'll agree. Several interpretations seemed possible.

He was beaten, but not fatally.
He was beaten, but was somehow happy about it, and not dead.
He died, but not of a beating.

I had to read the story to find that it was the third. There's fifteen minutes of my life (1 minute reading, 14 minutes pontificating) I'll never see again.

DETROIT (AP) - An elderly man whose death became a cause for gay rights advocates died of natural causes, not from being beaten, authorities said Wednesday.

According to family members, before his death, Andrew Anthos told them a story about how he'd been injured, and the story, as told by the family, included indications it was a hate crime. Serious charges, well worthy of investigation and punishment, if true. But it turns out the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office looked into matters, found that Anthos fell, determined how & why he fell, and in any event couldn't find evidence that anything about the story as related by the family was true.

Regardless of the circumstances, it's a shame he died - 72's not very old, really, and becomes less old to me in concept the longer I live.

The closing portion of the story, however, was even harder to parse than the obtuse headline:

Fedenis [his cousin] said she was shocked.

"I won't let this rest," Fedenis said. "I can't let this tarnish him. I don't want anyone to think it wasn't a hate crime."

"I won't let this rest"? What is she going to do, go hire a different medical examiner? Refuse to allow burial until she gets the outcome she seems to want? Stage a sit-in at the county morgue until they agree with her strangely-preferred explanation?

"I can't let this tarnish him"? What? He's dead - not only don't dead men wear plaid, they don't tarnish. And in what alternate universe is it better, from a dead person's perspective mind you, to have died from criminal actions rather than an accident? Is she concerned that all the other dead people won't respect him, once they find out he just fell down, instead of being beaten down? That because of concerns about his coordination, he'll always be one of the last guys picked for the dead-person basketball leagues we all hear so much about?

"I don't want anyone to think it wasn't a hate crime"? Not even if it wasn't? And what possible benefit is there, to Anthos or his family, for this to have been deemed a hate crime? None, near as I can tell.

Having already wasted a minute reading the story, I figured what the hell? and went back to read it again. Is it possible that the only benefit from this man's unfortunate death being classified as a hate crime would be the ability of "gay rights causes" to use his corpse as a cudgel? Shamefully, it seems the answer is yes.

The 20 Worst Lyrics Ever

Unfortunately, the only way to prove it's beneath me is to let you, the reader, see how easily my "embarrassed laugh" can be triggered:

Anna Nicole Smith Finally Reaches Target Weight

NASSAU, BAHAMAS—Some weight-loss experts do not find Smith's achievement inspirational, claiming that such drastic dieting can lead to a dangerous loss of muscle mass.

Regarding Tom Delay:

"I just think we need to break loose from what was happening with the Republican Party in the post-Reagan era," said Pauken, citing a number of concerns including the scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The money quote, for my money, in an article from Saturday's version of my hometown paper, the Houston Barnacle. A complete piece of crap reactionary lefty rag, from an opinion perspective, but one which provides occasionally readable editorial content.

This story? Simple proof that not all conservatives toe the line (or tow the line, depending on your metaphoric preferences) of the former supposed face of the Republican Party, it's defenestrated House Majority Leader. Further, simple proof that not all conservatives are prima facie stupid. However, an argument could be made that since only 4 of the 33 board members of the American Conservative Union resigned rather than sit on a board with the porkmeister from Sugar Land, TX, 88% of conservatives are still in need of a clue.

I blame the small sample size for overstating the remaining stupidity of conservatives, and hope that some of the remaining 29 adherents reassess Delay's significant negative impact on policy, conservative and general, as well as his cheesy and embarrassing complicity in the descent of the former Republican majority into petty graft and corruption. I remain convinced that he's been wrongly indicted in Texas, but that's just a technicality, really. He should have been indicted instead for sheer arrogance, and his apparently solid belief that those who voted for him and his party are naive morons.

At least 12% are not, or so projections might indicate.

[wik] Oh, Christ. From this morning's email, an easily-ignored solicitation to get me to buy a copy of the shit-witted Delay's new book, "No Retreat, No Surrender".

I really don't consider this a book about Tom DeLay.

...says Tom Delay, referring to himself in the third person.

And of course I talk about the so-called "scandal" that led to my indictment by a politically-motivated prosecutor. The sad truth is that
the Democrats plotted to destroy me personally because they couldn't beat me any other way.

...says Tom Delay, back to referring to himself in the first person, and providing a hint that he doesn't know what "about" is about.

Rush Limbaugh was kind enough to contribute the book's foreword, and Sean Hannity graciously wrote a preface.

Sad, really - Limbaugh is a fine radio entertainer, and on those rare occasions when I listen to him, it's for the entertainment, not the politics. Hannity? Loud-mouthed professor of indignation, and not even a good entertainer.

Please, Mr. Delay - Retreat. Surrender. Get the fuck off the stage. Please.

[alsø wik] Embarrassingly, I find myself being agreed with by the Houston Barnacle's opinion page.

And the other:

Punchline:

"Because he's a liar. He never did any of that shit."

Joke:

---

A guy is driving around the back woods of Tennessee and he sees a sign in front of a broken down shanty-style house:

"Talking Dog For Sale."

He rings the bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard.

The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador retriever sitting there.

"You talk?" he asks.

"Yep," the Lab replies.

After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says "So, what's your story?"

The Lab looks up and says, "Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA. In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies for
eight years running."

"But the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in."

"I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals. I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired."

The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog. "Ten dollars," the man says.

"Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?"

"Because he's a liar. He never did any of that shit."

From today's email, an oldie whose punchline snuck up on me.

Punchline:

The boy turns, and whispers back, "I had no idea your father was a pharmacist."

Joke:

---

A girl asks her boyfriend to come over Friday night to meet, and have dinner with her parents. Since this is such a big event, the girl announces to her boyfriend that after dinner, she would like to go out and make love for the first time.

The boy is ecstatic, but he has never had sex before, so he takes a trip to the pharmacist to get some condoms. He tells the pharmacist it's his first time and the pharmacist helps the boy for about an hour. He tells the boy everything there is to know about condoms and sex. At the register, the pharmacist asks the boy how many condoms he'd like to buy, a 3-pack, 10-pack, or family pack. The boy insists on the family pack because he thinks he will be rather busy, it being his first time and all.

That night, the boy shows up at the girl's parents house and meets his girlfriend at the door. "Oh, I'm so excited for you to meet my parents, come on in!"

The boy goes inside and is taken to the dinner table where the girl's parents are seated The boy quickly offers to say grace and
bows his head. A minute passes, and the boy is still deep in prayer, with his head down. 10 minutes pass, and still no movement from the boy.
Finally, after 20 minutes with his head down, the girlfriend leans over and whispers to the boyfriend, "I had no idea you were this religious."

The boy turns, and whispers back, "I had no idea your father was a pharmacist."

---

I blame my slow uptake of the joke on the absurdity of a pharmacist even knowing "all there is to know about sex", let alone spending an hour briefing a kid on it.

You must have long range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short range failures.

-Charles C. Noble

via Long or Short Capital, from its ongoing series "Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing"

Old story - ancient, in fact. Didn't this come out last week some time? The week before? Whatever.

What makes it new again, at least for me, is the commentary in today's hometown Houston Chronicle by the Miami Herald's Leonard Pitts, Jr.:

Somewhere, the gods are amused.

Sharpton is not. He has pronounced himself torn by conflicting emotion: humiliation, anger, pride and, above all, shock.

The reaction from Thurmond's family, meanwhile, has been characterized by that curious shrug of shoulders, that ambivalence and eagerness to change the subject, one often finds in white people when slavery gets personal.

"I don't feel one way or the other," Thurmond's 74-year-old niece, Doris Strom Costner, told the Washington Post.

"I have no comment," Paul Thurmond, the senator's youngest son, told the New York Daily News.

Somewhere, all the other the race-baiters like Al "Tawana Brawley" Sharpton are also amused.

---

Note: Strangely missing from the Wikipedia entry linked above is the Sharpton Jew-baiting incident which resulted in riots and dead Hasidim in Crown Heights during 1991. Also missing, the incitement to burn Freddie's Fashion Mart in Harlem during 1995, resulting in yet more deaths. So much for Wikipedia's previously impeccable reputation for completeness. Oh, it also omits his 1983 brush with the FBI, reported in 2002 along with his apparently still-unsuccessful $1 billion lawsuit against HBO for having aired the tape of the event, after which he allegedly turned into an FBI informer to avoid investigation for involvement in drug transactions on behalf of Don King and the NY Mob. A complete and total piece of shit work, this guy.

---

Anyway, Pitts seems surprised to find that Thurmond's descendants don't feel personally responsible, or even embarrassed, by the actions of people whose lives predate their own by 100 years or more. Imagine that! What the hell's wrong with those people?

Sharpton feels humiliation (as though Thurmond had owned him?), anger (for what, I don't know), pride, and shock. Those last two, I can understand - it's not often that a demagogue of his stature is handed an issue, on a silver platter, that his mouth-breathing fellow travelers in the "professional outrage for shake-downs, fun, and profit" community, if nobody else, can take seriously and run with. So he's equally shocked and proud.

Normally, you see, such agitators have to incite or invent their own, well, agita.

Pitts continues:

Of course, by this point, maybe he has stopped listening. Maybe you have, too. Mention of that 350 years tends to have that effect.

Hence the ambivalence — "nervous chuckles," reported the Orlando Sentinel of a visit to Thurmond's hometown — that greeted last week's news in some quarters. Small wonder. It removed the shield of abstract. It put a face on the thing. And the danger is that if we can imagine that face, we can imagine others.

Condoleezza Rice purchased as breeding stock.

Oprah Winfrey raped on a nightly basis.

Will Smith, his back split open by a whip.

Sen. Barack Obama living with the same rights under the law, the same expectation of dignity, as a horse or a chair.

We spend a lot of time running from this. But we never escape.

Lost on Pitts is the utter absurdity, in today's world or any world that's existed in the past 50 years, for ANY of the things he lists as bogeymen to actually occur. So we're "running from" putative, but completely imaginary, future shit that would never, ever occur anywhere but in the fevered brains of those who can't bear to see the racial divide bridged.

And if Pitts, Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the myriad others who make all or part of their livings being the agents for the perpetually aggrieved have their way, damned straight, we'll never escape.

I guess it might be in certain areas, but it's instantaneous, when compared to something like that reported in this UK Telegraph story:

Two female students had heard Mr Safronov's body land and reported that he was still alive. They rang emergency services and were told to ring back in 30 minutes if the journalist was still moving. By that time he was dead.

[wik] Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

[alsø wik] Unrelated memo to myself: Don't even think of pissing off Vladimir Putin.

All these years, I've never really given much thought to them, and have remained uneducated about wolverines.

What, to my wondering eyes, should appear the other week but an article insert in the Economist of Feb 15th (really, just a sidebar), including a picture of a wolverine. Who knew they looked so much like beavers? Or would that be better stated as "fat-assed ferrets"? Silly me - I've always assumed it was just a small wolf. Not being from Michigan, I guess it's OK for me to have had such a gap in my knowledge. It's a shame that the online article omits the picture of the wolverine, as it was truly a nasty looking bugger. None of the first couple hundred wolverine pictures available in a Google Image search, after omitting those 90% which seemed to be related to the X-Men movies, came even close to capturing the bugger's nasty buggerishness.

Oh, and that article? (sorry - subscription only, near as I can tell, though how it classifies as "premium content" is a bit beyond me). It's about the proposed rebranding of Canada, and is entitled "Tenacious, smelly—and uncool". No, they weren't talking about Canada in the title, they were talking about what a poor choice a wolver-rat would be for a national symbol.

Close your eyes and think of Canada. Perhaps the picture that comes to mind is one of a country of cold winters and civilised prosperity. But Stephen Harper, the country's Conservative prime minister, has another idea. This month he suggested that the national image was best captured by the wolverine, a sort of weasel.

That seems odd. Wolverines have some unpleasant habits. They emit a foul-smelling musk and eat carrion. They are close relatives of skunks and their name translates as “glutton” in French. But Mr Harper was thinking of their reputation for aggression and tenacity in the face of much larger predators. Canada is no mouse beside the American elephant, but a wolverine next to a grizzly bear, he said. “We may be smaller but we're no less fierce about protecting our territory.”

The Economist goes on to remind readers that it's already suggested new symbology for Canada, back in 2003 - a moose wearing shades. So yeah, that's rather cool - a lot better than a nasty smelling sharp-clawed mole-like creature that eats carrion.

[wik] What? Ohio State fan? Moi?

Crazy Person or Bluetooth Headset? The Home Game.

Bad intelligence + bad logistics = International incident.

As they say in Texas, anyway.

From Saturday's UK Telegraph: Israel seeks all clear for Iran air strike

Israel is negotiating with the United States for permission to fly over Iraq as part of a plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

I know that such things as war-games, scenario planning, and clearing access to intervening airspace are required, even in a case where the likelihood of an actual bombing run is 0.01%. Left unclear in the news story linked above, of course, is any indication of said likelihood, let alone the chances of such a mission meeting its objective.

I prefer to think it's just posturing, for several reasons.

First, while sanctions are generally slow in achieving their aims, and cannot be counted on, in any event, to do so, they're initially more efficient, in lives and other costs, than popping a cap in a sovereign country's metaphorical ass. Outright war should be a final resort, and when it occurs, should be conducted in a fairly ruthless manner, designed to position the end of the war as close to the start as possible. Iran's nuke program should be halted, for a host of good reasons, but in a rational world, it's not yet clear that anyone should lose their life in order to effect that halt.

Second, if there's any contentiousness in the negotiations, and the poo hits the propellers, I'd hate to see a new sub-genre created, wherein there's a conspiracy theory on a level with the approximately 273,000 Google hits available for the "USS Liberty".

"We are planning for every eventuality, and sorting out issues such as these are crucially important," said the official, who asked not to be named.

"The only way to do this is to fly through US-controlled air space. If we don't sort these issues out now we could have a situation where American and Israeli war planes start shooting at each other."

Blue-on-blue action is among the last of the things needed, presently, or ever. I'm sure that some who remember the Liberty would, rightly or not, be tweaked by the possible recurrence of such a scenario.

Finally, and contrary to the claims from many quarters, in and out of Iraq, the US is not the colonial master of Iraq. Israel had better-damned-certain be negotiating with the Iraqi government at least in addition to, if not rather than the US. I'm thinking that's a trickier negotiation, however.

[wik] Rut roh!

[alsø wik] No, really? Thanks for the newsflash, Sy.

"As Anna Nicole decomposes, James Brown looking good"