This is just sickening...

Read this article and then ask yourself "what were they thinking?!".

I sincerely hope that this story is raised tonight in the debate as a preamble to a direct question to aWol along the lines of: Mr. President, you, your senior cabinet officers and your campaign spokespersons, as well as Iraqi PM Allawi during his visit here, have all been telling us that things are going just great in Iraq and that we are on-track to hold elections in January, that the insurgency is limited to a few isolated areas in only 3 provinces... Yet, the reality of the situation is belied by every report coming from Iraq including this tragic incident in which 35 children were killed and another 72 injured in a car bombing of the opening ceremony for a new sewage treatment plant. Sir, you have been either lying to the american public or you are seriously mis-informed. Which is it? If the latter, then why has no one been fired? If the former, then have you no remorse for the deaths that your mendacity has incurred?

The Iconoclast is Shrill

Even aWol's hometown paper is shrill. Read it.

fubar

Picture Dubya holding his hands over his ears and singing "lalalalalalalalala" and then him stumping before a hand-picked, loyalty-oath sworn audience telling them that life has never been better in Iraq... the Iraqi PM just told me so himself. Reminds me of the Bush Sr. campaign theme song "Don't worry, be happy".

Growing Pessimism on Iraq (washingtonpost.com):

"I'm not surprised if people in the administration were put on the defensive," said one CIA official, who like many others interviewed would speak only anonymously, either because they don't have official authorization to speak or because they worry about ramifications of criticizing top administration officials. "We weren't trying to make them look bad, we're just trying to give them information. Of course, we're telling them something they don't want to hear."

I'm glad this made the front page of the WaPo... it needs to be the lead story on EVERY TV news broadcast to reach the great unwashed masses and it damned well better be Kerry's repeated mantra during the debate tomorrow night.

Bushco have repeatedly and consistently ignored the "pessimistic" analysis and reporting coming from the CIA, State and Defense departments from the days leading up to the war in Iraq through today with the Green Zone under a near constant daily bombardment of mortar and RPG shells, weekly beheadings and kidnappings and widespread battles (not skirmishes) with a growing insurgency in towns and cities across Iraq and have instead been relying exclusively on the rosy optimism they've been blowing up their respective skirts. "We will be treated as liberators" my ass.

Why the increasing shrillness coming from the CIA, State and Defense departments? Is it because they favor Kerry? I doubt it. It is because they are completely and utterly frustrated that the refusal of the administration to admit that there is a problem, and to address it in the manner in which it needs to be addressed becasue it would politically damage the administration's re-election chances is making the problems with which they must deal worse by the day.

Let us not forget that the preznit was a cheerleader in college. Regardless of how far behind the home team is, the cheerleading squad is always as upbeat as if they were ahead by 30.

Well, the home team is down by 30 and there are only a couple minutes left in the 4th quarter. The coaching staff and the home crowd is screaming that we need to change the game plan and put in a new QB but the head coach is not listening to them, he's listening to the cheerleaders tell him that they are winning. You make the call on Nov 2nd.

The Sky is Falling!

Tim Bray's post on the Loyal WS-Opposition seems to have hit a nerve. The RESTafarian extreemists have become emboldened by such unpatriotic speech! They cackle with glee over the fact that some have realized that there is little semantic difference between the Get in WS-MEX and that in WS-Transfer. Such treasonous thoughts and mixed messaging are only giving aide and comfort to the enemy! Where is WS-Zell when you need him most?!

While I too lament the over-complexity of Web services, and have sympathy for those who are overwhelmed, I would only point out that the IETF has published 3913 RFCs to date, each of which started life as a series of obscure Internet Drafts, many if not most of which fell by the wayside before ever reaching the exalted status of Standards Track RFC. Just think about how many thousands of ID's have been published over the years.

Run for your lives! The Internet is drowning in a sea of complexity!

Granted, many of the RFCs obsolete others, but that still leaves us with roughly an order of magnitude more specs than have been produced thus far for Web services. And talk about your complexity... puhleeeze!

RFC2616 (HTTP1.1) cites no fewer that 49 references, 41 of which are other IETF RFCs. There are 25 IETF RFCs that have "HTTP" in their title which means that they either define the protocol or add extensions or provide clarifications. And here you thought that HTTP was such a simple protocol. Apparently, someone felt that the additional specs were needed.

And yet, my mother can send me email, though she has never read RFC821 or RFC822. She can surf the web, oblivious to RFC2616 or RFC2396. For that matter, how many developers have actually bothered to read RFC2616 or RFC2396?

There are a grand total of 50 WS-* specs listed here, although the list needs to be updated to reflect the recently publish MSFT specs. As has been pointed out by some, there are competing initiatives vying for the brass ring of broad, interoperable adoption for the same functional domain. Eventually, some will fade away into obscurity. Some may only be relevant in a few edge use cases, but that does not make them any less valid.

Should the Web services community be striving towards simplicity? Damn straight.

Should Web services be better leveraging the Web as it exists? Darn tootin'!

Is it true that HTTP solves all of the world's problems? Hardly. ("When I accept POST", said Humpty Dumpty, "it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.").

Is the sky falling? No.

Should we throw in the towel? No.

Should average developers be concerned with every new WS-* spec as soon as it is first published? Not unless they are masochists.

Do average developers worry about every new ID published? Hardly. Most have probably never even heard of the IETF.

Should average developers and IT managers be concerned with the WS-I Profiles? You bet, because the Profiles define the set of broadly adopted and widely implemented specifications, and that is what matters to developers.

Why then is it that every time a new WS-* spec is published, the blogosphere blows another gasket?

Get a grip.

Another QOTD

via Altercation:

Quote of the Day: James Carville: “Back in 2000 a Republican friend warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we'd lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what? I did vote for Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned if all those things didn't come true!"

By this account, if we follow Dick (sequestered in an undisclosed bunker) Vader's admonitions ...

Irony

The WaPo's White House Briefing reports on Dubya's speech to the UN the other day:

If the whole speech was a litmus test, this one sentence was the clincher:

'We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace,'

Bush said.

Some people see irony there. Others don't.

Anyone who doesn't see the irony in this quote needs to be deprogrammed.

How conveeeenient...

Jeb Bushleague, citing an act of God, trumps court decision.

I think it is pretty ugly that the Democrats are challenging Nader in every legal way possible across the country to thwart the illegal assistance that Nader is receiving from the Republican party, but they are at least playing by the rules, no matter how arcane. This decision though goes a little too far and demonstrates just how screwed up our electoral system is.

An ethical man would recess him/herself from a decision that directly benefited his/her sibling or family member, but apparently aWol's brother isn't one. Of course, it only goes to demonstrate how desperate the Smirk campaign is that they have to resort to this sort of political chicanery.

Maybe Jeb should be asking himself why his state has been the target of three hurricanes this season?

As they say in Chicago...

Vote early, and vote often. This NYT article highlights yet another troubling aspect of our democracy at work.

This year, because of a scheduled business trip, I will be voting absentee for the first time. I am somewhat troubled by the sorry state of affairs that is our election process. Granted, Smirk trails Kerry by a margin of 26% according to the latest statewide polls in Massachusetts, but every vote counts and there's no way that I would miss the opportunity to send aWol back to Crawford.

Still, between the absentee balloting fraud and the significant role that electronic voting will play in this years elections, I am quite concerned that we are headed for a crisis, and worse yet, one which neither party seems interested in fixing.

WS-I page on IBM's developerWorks

We've started a WS-I page on IBM's developerWorks. We'll try to keep it current with information about IBM's commitment and involvement in WS-I, IBM product and services offerings relevant to WS-I deliverables, and other relevant resources.

Oh shoot...

Rummy admits he confused Saddam for UBL.

Or, did he? I mean Cheney is still insisting that Saddam and UBL are so interconnected they might as well be siamese twins despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary presented by the 9/11 commission and the Senate investigation which both concluded that there were no ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.

Cheney lives in a paranoid bizarro world of his own dark imagination... this is quite clear. Probably due to his extended stay in his underground bunker at an undisclosed location.

Unfortunately, we are all living his nightmare.

What's good for the goose...

The rightwingers are all in a tizzy over the Nicholas Kristof's coverage of Bob Mintz's claims in the NYT: JustOneMinute: Is Nick Kristof Lying, Or Was He Duped?.

The outrage! Imagine, the media not doing its job and merely objectively reporting something before it has been vetted. Amazing. Must be some evil liberal media conspiracy. They must be in league with the "terrorists"!

I have two things to say to this:
1. Where was all this outrage on the part of the conservatives when the(ir) Swift Boat Liars were getting free (and over blown) press coverage of their widely and thoroughly refuted claims?
2. Since when does the Republican party have exclusive rights to exploit the media's incompetence?

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Of course, there's no mention of the fact that while the Swift Boat Liars' claims have been proven to be... well... lies, or that the Texans for Truth ad's claims are increasingly being borne out by evidence that has been withheld by the White House despite their repeated claims that they have released everything.

Miraculously, the administration "found" and published new documents just after they were disclosed on 60 minutes last night, . Gee, I wonder where they found them? Dan Bartlett has admitted that "he must have misspoken" when he claimed that aWol served in a National Guard unit in Massachusetts after the Boston Globe called him on the discrepancy between his words and the documentation that they have uncovered. (note that "misspoke" is a euphemism for "lied through my teeth").

Now the only talking point that they are left with is "because aWol received an Honorable Discharge, that he must have fulfilled his service obligations". On the one hand, they expect us to believe that aWol's claim that he fulfilled his obligations should be based on his military discharge papers and on the other hand that Kerry's 5 medals, awarded by the U.S. Navy, are to be disbelieved? What tortured reasoning!

True to form, they placed the blame for the previously missing documents squarely on someone else (the Pentagon). Isn't it amazing how quickly that darned incompetent Pentagon "found" them.

Does any of this matter? I think it does. It goes to the moral character of the candidates. One may have confused the dates he was in Cambodia 30 years ago or was possibly trying to punch up the retelling of what went down by using a nearby holiday, the other has repeatedly (smirk) insisted (smirk) that he fulfilled his service obligations (smirk) and that 41 had nothing to do with the special treatment he received to get into the National Guard so he could avoid having to serve in Vietnam like all the little people.

Smirk claims that "when he was young and irresponsible, he was young and irresponsible". Well, now he's demonstrated quite undeniably that he is now simply middle-aged and irresponsible.

Not only that, but Smirk and co have wrapped themselves in the flag, and through sheer repetition of, now debunked, lies and cherry-picked intelligence, led us into believing that a pre-emptive war against Iraq was an integral part of the WOT. They repeated this lie during the recent RNC despite the fact that the 9/11 commission and the Senate investigation debunked the claims of any association of al-Qaeda and Iraq. I guess "the bigger and more often repeated the lie, the more likely people will believe it" is their motto.

We have Hiding-in-an-undisclosed-location-Cheney threatening us that if we vote for Kerry, we're all gonna die! Only he and Dubya can save us from those terrible terrorists. This from the crowd that felt it more important to clear brush in Crawford than to worry about how to deal with a PDB that screamed we're all gonna die?! The administration and the DHS have done more to terrorize us since 9/11 than the terrorists have, and notably with a pattern that suggests that Dean was pretty close to the mark in his comments that the terror alerts are politically motivated (did you notice that Ridge made yet another terror announcement that "the terrorists" want to disrupt the elections the same day as the 1,000th soldier died in Iraq?)

They would have us believe that "the economy is wonderful and improving daily thanks to the tax-cuts for his "base" (as in the have's and the have more's) despite the fact that theirs is the first administration since Hoover to lose jobs?

They would have us believe that all is wonderful in Afghanistan despite the fact that the Taliban is resurgent and threatening the elections scheduled for October and the poppy trade is back in full swing funding... the same terrorists that the administration claims it is fighting and winning against?

That we are winning in Iraq while the Pentagon admits that we have ceded huge sections of the country to the insurrection?

That the horror of Abu Ghraib was the acts of a few rogue enlisted personel despite the fact that the commision chartered by Rummy himself basically said that the responsibility ran right up the chain of command to the top?

Do they really think we are THAT stupid?!

Now, the Rove smear machine is beginning to spew out its invective against Kitty Kelly to impeach her credibility in advance of the release of her new book. Why? Because they have nothing else with which to counter. They are doing the same with Senator Graham (now he's a whacko conspiracy theorist and disgruntled and failed presidential candidate) as they did with O'Neill and Clarke and the others before them who have had anything even remotely negative to say about aWol or his administration.

Sadly, some people will believe the administration talking points fed to the rabid right-wingnuts like Hannity and Limbaugh.

Bush and Cheney have no moral character regardless of how tightly they align themselves with the bible thumpers and the right-to-lifers. They have done more to damage our economy, our environment, our standing in the world community, and our trust than any administration in history and very nearly more so than al Qaeda itself.

They need to go, and the conservative community should take a step back and think about exactly what 4 more years of a Dubya dictatorship would mean for our country.

The Complete Bushisms

The Complete Bushisms - Updated frequently. By Jacob Weisberg

Yet another disgruntled conspiracy theorist

The Miami Herald reports that the aWol administration and the RNC are labeling Senator Graham's new book, Intelligence Matters as ''bizarre conspiracy theories'' that they are deriding his credibility.

Yet again, they have no means to counter the claims than to destroy someone's credibility through smear and innuendo.

Gee, that Graham is a nutcase, isn't he.

They make me ill.

I can only hope that this will backfire on them. Graham is immensely popular in Florida. If the administration persists in its campaign to cast the Senator as a whacko conspiracy-theorist, Floridians may just lash back.

Dubya is a wimp

The WaPo has an editorial today entitled Don't Duck the Debates. If you've been following this, apparently the administration is considering participation in only two of the three proposed debates. Kerry has offered to debate the president every week until the election... possibly overkill.

However, we shouldn't let Dubya get away with this. If, as they say, this is the most important election of our time, then the American voter deserves to hear from both candidates.

It has been widely reported, most notably by Maureen Dowd, that the neocons effectively put aWol in a position where he had no choice but invade Iraq by building up troop levels and then telling him that if he didn't invade, he would look like a wimp. Ms Dowd then said that that is one label that a Bush fears most, being labeled a wimp.

I think that Kerry or his surrogates should use this tactic by challenging aWol to all three debates, and follow that up with "if he doesn't, then that only proves that he is a coward and a wimp".

Body count (update)

Earlier today, I suggested that we might reach 1,000 U.S. casualties today. Indeed, we did pass that unfortunate mark at roughly noon today Iraq time.

Of course, as some have been pointing out, today's shameful news doesn't mark the 1,000th American to die in Iraq. There have been about 46 contractors killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war. There have also been a few deaths amongst the press.

However, let us not forget who started this unnecessary, pre-emptive war, and let us not forget that the supposed rationale for war was an ever morphing set of lies based on cooked and cherry-picked intellegence.

Finally, let's not forget that the Iraqi people have suffered an order of magnitude worse than have we.

We deserve better, so do they.

Texans for Truth

Texans for Truth... aWol can't find anyone in the Alabama National Guard unit who recalls him ever serving there.

Body count

Iraq Coalition Casualties puts the number of U.S. casualties at 998... two more to 1,000. At the current rate, it may even be in excess of 1,000 by the time you read this post (2.86/day).

aWol and his chicken hawks keep telling us that "we are winning".

Bullsh*t!

What Am I Like?

Apparently, I am a Strategist too.

(via Paul)

Ouch!

This article in Slate is a scathing fact-check analysis of last nights RNC hate-fest. The Bushies have raised the bar on mendacity in a presidential campaign to its highest heights. Why you ask? Because they have nothing positive of their own to run on, they must paint their opponent as un-electable.

Last night was supposed to be focused on the economy. I can't recall much in the way of discussion of that topic. Given today's news... probably a wise choice.

Tonight we'll here, once again, that the economy is improving... that they've added 1.5 million jobs this year. Too bad they are still 1.8 million in the hole and that the goal they had promised us was in fact 6 million new jobs in 4 years. 1.5 million sounds like a good thing, but it is actually back-pedalling... it isn't keeping pace with population growth.

Anyway, read the article...

This is frightening!

blackboxvoting.org reports that the Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole.

Anyone care to bet who will win?

I can assure you who will lose, if this is true... we do!

If at first you don't succeed...

lie, lie  again

Russell Beattie - Republicans Suck 2004

Russell Beattie tells it like it is (mostly).

I am continually amazed at the flim-flam job the GOP is conducting with the help of the "liberal" (NOT!) media. They and their surrogates spew outright lies which are carried on page one above the fold, and which are subsequently, almost quietly, refuted on page 23 a few days later when someone finally gets around to doing their job. Then they have the audacity to simply continue to repeat the lies, over and over and over ad nauseum and NO ONE CALLS THEM ON IT!

Russ is right. e-mail or write to the media spoutlets he lists in his post and demand that they do some real reporting and un-biased analysis.

America deserves better.

Sean McGrath -- WS-Yikes

Sean McGrath weighs in on a post by Gregor in which he states that this quote:

Therefore, I propose to many of my clients to use the WS-* standards as a checklist for their designs. I generally do not recommend they use WS-Addressing or WS-ReliableMessaging (or at least not right out of the gate). I do, however, challenge them by asking, "What is your strategy to track messages in case of error?" or "How do you intend to support asynchronous messaging?" The answer has sometimes little to do with Web Services. For example, the answer to reliable asynchronous messaging might be to use JMS or MQ or another middleware that ensures guaranteed delivery of asynchronous messages. And that's OK. ...

"resonates strongly" with his approach.

Indeed, I whole-heartedly agree to a point. It is all well and good to leverage JMS or WebSphere MQ to effect reliable, asynchronous messaging within the enterprise, but to achieve the necessary levels of interoperability between enterprises, you need an interoperability protocol(s) such as provided by WS-Addressing and WS-Reliable Messaging. I wrote a paper last year describing the role these protocols will likely have in the context of existing and widely deployed messaging infrastructures.

Where I do agree is that the way forward for customers implementing SOA now is to begin by leveraging a JMS provider or WebSphere MQ as has been suggested, especially in the case of EAI projects.