text:
BEDMINSTER, N.J. — During more than five years as a housekeeper at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., Victorina Morales has made Donald J. Trump's bed, cleaned his toilet and dusted his crystal golf trophies. When he visited as president, she was directed to wear a pin in the shape of the American flag adorned with a Secret Service logo.
Because of the "outstanding" support she has provided during Mr. Trump's visits, Ms. Morales in July was given a certificate from the White House Communications Agency inscribed with her name.
Quite an achievement for an undocumented immigrant housekeeper.
Ms. Morales's journey from cultivating corn in rural Guatemala to fluffing pillows at an exclusive golf resort took her from the southwest border, where she said she crossed illegally in 1999, to the horse country of New Jersey, where she was hired at the Trump property in 2013 with documents she said were phony.
She said she was not the only worker at the club who was in the country illegally.
Sandra Diaz, 46, a native of Costa Rica who is now a legal resident of the United States, said she, too, was undocumented when she worked at Bedminster between 2010 and 2013. The two women said they worked for years as part of a group of housekeeping, maintenance and landscaping employees at the golf club that included a number of undocumented workers, though they could not say precisely how many. There is no evidence that Mr. Trump or Trump Organization executives knew of their immigration status. But at least two supervisors at the club were aware of it, the women said, and took steps to help workers evade detection and keep their jobs.
"There are many people without papers," said Ms. Diaz, who said she witnessed several people being hired whom she knew to be undocumented.
Mr. Trump has made border security and the fight to protect jobs for Americans a cornerstone of his presidency, from the border wall he has pledged to build to the workplace raids and payroll audits that his administration has carried out.
During the presidential campaign, when the Trump International Hotel opened for business in Washington, Mr. Trump boasted that he had used an electronic verification system, E-Verify, to ensure that only those legally entitled to work were hired.
"We didn't have one illegal immigrant on the job," Mr. Trump said then.
But throughout his campaign and his administration, Ms. Morales, 45, has been reporting for work at Mr. Trump's golf course in Bedminster, where she is still on the payroll. An employee of the golf course drives her and a group of others to work every day, she says, because it is known that they cannot legally obtain driver's licenses.
A diminutive woman with only two years of education who came to the United States speaking no English, Ms. Morales has had an unusual window into one of the president's favorite retreats: She has cleaned the president's villa while he watched television nearby; she stood on the sidelines when potential cabinet members were brought in for interviews and when the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, arrived to confer with the president.
"I never imagined, as an immigrant from the countryside in Guatemala, that I would see such important people close up," she said.
But Ms. Morales said she has been hurt by Mr. Trump's public comments since he became president, including equating Latin American immigrants with violent criminals. It was that, she said, along with abusive comments from a supervisor at work about her intelligence and immigration status, that made her feel that she could no longer keep silent.
"We are tired of the abuse, the insults, the way he talks about us when he knows that we are here helping him make money," she said. "We sweat it out to attend to his every need and have to put up with his humiliation."
Ms. Morales and Ms. Diaz approached The New York Times through their New Jersey lawyer, Anibal Romero, who is representing them on immigration matters. Ms. Morales said that she understood she could be fired or deported as a result of coming forward, though she has applied for protection under the asylum laws. She is also exploring a lawsuit claiming workplace abuse and discrimination.
In separate, hourslong interviews in Spanish, Ms. Morales and Ms. Diaz provided detailed accounts of their work at the club and their interactions with management, including Mr. Trump. Both women described the president as demanding but kind, sometimes offering hefty tips.
While they were often unclear on precise dates of when events occurred, they appeared to recollect key events and conversations with precision.
Ms. Morales has had dealings with Mr. Trump that go back years, and her husband has confirmed that she would on occasion come home jubilant because the club owner had paid her a compliment, or bestowed on her a $50 or sometimes a $100 tip.
To ascertain that she was in fact an employee of the club, The Times reviewed Ms. Morales's pay stubs and W-2 forms, which list the golf course as her employer. She also made available her Individual Taxpayer Identification, a nine-digit number that is issued by the Internal Revenue Service to foreigners to enable them to file taxes without being permanent residents of the United States. Having a number does not confer eligibility to work.
The Times also examined the documents Ms. Morales presented as proof that she was entitled to work — a permanent resident card, or green card, and a Social Security card, both of which she said she purchased from someone in New Jersey who produced counterfeit documents for immigrants.
The Times ran Ms. Morales's purported Social Security number through several public records databases and none produced a match, which is often an indication that the number is not valid. The number on the back of the green card that Ms. Morales has on file at the golf course does not correspond to the format of numbers used on most legitimate resident cards. For example, it includes initials that do not match those of any immigration service centers that issue the cards.
Ms. Diaz produced similar documents, though since she has gained legal residence she has been issued a genuine Social Security card and green card.
The Trump Organization, which owns the golf course, did not comment specifically on Ms. Morales or Ms. Diaz. "We have tens of thousands of employees across our properties and have very strict hiring practices," Amanda Miller, the company's senior vice president for marketing and corporate communications, said in a statement. "If an employee submitted false documentation in an attempt to circumvent the law, they will be terminated immediately."
The White House declined to comment.
That Ms. Morales appeared able to secure employment with what she said were fake documents is not surprising: An estimated eight million unauthorized immigrants are in the labor force, and it is an open secret that many businesses, especially in the service sector, hire them.
Mr. Trump has a long history of relying on immigrants at his golf and hotel properties. Though he signed a "Buy American, Hire American" executive order in 2017 tightening the conditions for visas for foreign workers, his companies have hired hundreds of foreigners on guest-worker visas.
In hiring workers who are already in the United States, employers are required to examine identity and work authorization documents and record them on an employment eligibility form. But companies are not required in most cases to take additional steps to verify the authenticity of documents. Because falsifying these documents is so easy, E-Verify, which is required in 22 states, goes the extra step of checking them against records kept by the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.
The federal list posted online of employers who use the E-Verify system includes Mr. Trump's golf club in North Carolina, a state that requires it, but the Bedminster club in New Jersey, where it is not required under state law, does not appear on the list.
During his campaign, Mr. Trump called for expanding the program to workplaces around the country. So far, that has not happened.
Mr. Trump opened his trophy club in the affluent horse country of Somerset County, N.J., in 2004. After buying the 504-acre property from a group of investors in 2002, Mr. Trump planted a sweeping colonnade of maple trees at the entrance and built two 18-hole golf courses, their design inspired by the gardens of Versailles. The membership initiation fee is more than $100,000.
The property has an estimated 40 to 80 employees, depending on the season; the bulk of the basic service workers are foreign-born. Immigrants keep the greens watered and manicured. They clean and maintain the cottages and suites that surround the junior Olympic-size heated pool.
The president has spent all or part of about 70 days at Bedminster since taking office. He has a two-story residence on the property; his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, were married at the club in 2009, and also have a cottage.
The job at Bedminster, at which Ms. Morales earns $13 an hour, is one of several she said she has held since arriving in the United States in 1999, crossing undetected into California after a journey of nearly six weeks by bus and on foot.
After she first arrived in Los Angeles, a contact provided her with a false Social Security number and an identification card that she was told would enable her to secure employment. She then flew to New Jersey, where she joined her husband, who had arrived months earlier.
In early 2013, a friend who worked at the Trump golf club told her that management was looking for housekeepers.
Ms. Morales was keen: The pay would be $10 an hour, higher than the $8.25 that she was earning cleaning guest rooms at a hotel.
According to her account, when she arrived for her interview, the housekeeping supervisor showed her around and asked her to demonstrate how she cleaned. The supervisor asked her to report to work the next morning at 6 a.m. — with her documents.
Ms. Morales said she told her she had no legal working documents. "I told her I don't have good papers. She told me to bring what I used at the hotel," Ms. Morales recalled.
By the time Ms. Morales was hired, Ms. Diaz had been working at the club since 2010 and had the job of cleaning Mr. Trump's residence.
She said she washed and ironed Mr. Trump's white boxers, golf shirts and khaki trousers, as well as his sheets and towels. Everything belonging to Mr. Trump, his wife, Melania, and their son, Barron, was washed with special detergent in a smaller, separate washing machine, she said.
"He is extremely meticulous about everything. If he arrives suddenly, everyone runs around like crazy" because Mr. Trump inspects everything closely, Ms. Diaz said.
She recalled a nervous moment in 2012, when Mr. Trump approached her and asked her to follow him to the clubhouse, a renovated 1930s Georgian manor, where he proceeded to run his fingers around the edges of frames on the wall and over table surfaces to check for dust.
"You did a really great job," she said he told her, and handed her a $100 bill.
That same year, she said, Mr. Trump had an outburst over some orange stains on the collar of his white golf shirt, which Ms. Diaz described as stubborn remnants of his makeup, which she had difficulty removing.
When Ms. Morales joined the housekeeping team in 2013, Ms. Diaz was in charge of training her, and began to take her to tend to Mr. Trump's house. In November of that year, when Ms. Diaz quit, Ms. Morales and the housekeeping supervisor took on the job of cleaning Mr. Trump's house together.
Ms. Morales said she will never forget the day Mr. Trump pulled up to the pro shop in his cart as she was washing its large, arched windows. Noticing that Ms. Morales, who is shy of five feet tall, could not reach the top, he said, "Excuse me," grabbed her rag and wiped the upper portion of the glass.
Mr. Trump then asked Ms. Morales her name and where she was from, she recalled. "I said, 'I am from Guatemala.' He said, 'Guatemalans are hard-working people.'" The president then reached into his pocket and handed her a $50 bill.
"I told myself, 'God bless him.' I thought, he's a good person," Ms. Morales recalled.
Soon after Mr. Trump launched his campaign for the presidency, in June 2015, Ms. Morales recalled, one of the managers summoned her to tell her that she could no longer work inside Mr. Trump's house.
Around the same time, she said, several workers, who she said were also working illegally, had their work days shaved from five days to three days. "The workers panicked. A lot of people just left," she said.
Two months after Mr. Trump's inauguration, in March 2017, Ms. Morales said that she and other workers received a new employee handbook.
Under a section titled "Immigration Compliance," the handbook stated that employees were required to present documents specified by the federal government. "Those that are found to have falsified information will not be eligible for employment," the handbook stated.
Ms. Morales said she was given a new employment form to sign. She could not understand the form, she said, but her lawyer, Mr. Romero, said it was likely an updated I-9 employment eligibility document — a form that, like the previous one, referenced her falsified documents.
Sometime last year, she said, one of the managers told her she must get both a new green card and new Social Security card because there were problems with her current ones.
Ms. Morales provided a detailed account of what transpired, but it was not possible to independently confirm what happened. According to her recollection, she told the manager that she did not know how to obtain new forgeries.
"I don't know where to get them,' " she said she told him.
The manager, she said, suggested she speak with a maintenance employee who he said knew where to acquire new documents. When the maintenance employee told her that the new papers would cost $165, Ms. Morales told the manager that she did not have the money. "He said, 'don't worry. I will lend you the money,'" she said.
Ms. Morales said the maintenance worker drove her to a house in Plainfield, N.J., where she waited in his car while he met with someone inside. Ms. Morales said that she had no record or recollection of the address.
The next day, she said, the maintenance worker brought her a new Social Security card and a realistic-looking green card to replace the one that had "expired." She said the manager made copies of them for files kept at the club's administrative headquarters.
Now that Mr. Trump was president, there was more than the usual excitement whenever he arrived. Ms. Morales was still asked to clean Mr. Trump's residence on occasion, and had to wear a Secret Service pin whenever the president was on site, she said, most likely identifying her as an employee, though the pins did not mean employees had a security clearance.
As the months went on, she and other employees at the golf club became increasingly disturbed about Mr. Trump's comments, which they felt demeaned immigrants from Mexico and Central America. The president's tone seemed to embolden others to make negative comments, Ms. Morales said. The housekeeping supervisor frequently made remarks about the employees' vulnerable legal status when critiquing their work, she said, sometimes calling them "stupid illegal immigrants" with less intelligence than a dog.
Ms. Morales expects she will have to leave her job as soon as her name and work status are made public. She understands she could be deported. On Thursday, she spent the day with her lawyer, and as news of her disclosures spread, she did not answer a phone call from her supervisor at the golf course. She said she did not expect to return to work.
She said she is certain that her employers — perhaps even Mr. Trump — knew of her unlawful status all along.
"I ask myself, is it possible that this señor thinks we have papers? He knows we don't speak English," Ms. Morales said. "Why wouldn't he figure it out?"


text:
The European Commission wants to make it easier for lightweight drones to fly autonomously in European airspace -- with logistics, inspection services and agricultural businesses set to benefit.
Last Friday, the Commission unveiled a plan to improve the safety of drones flying at low altitude.
It wants to introduce a consistent set of rules across the EU for flying drones in "U-space," its name for regulated airspace under 150 meters in altitude.
Simpler regulations will be welcomed by multinational businesses such as gas giant Engie, which is developing drones for tasks such as pipeline or building inspection or for cleaning the insulators on high-voltage overhead power lines.
Other businesses, including some exhibiting at the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget this week, will see common rules as a way to simplify the development of drones and related services.
As part of a plan to automate air traffic control for drones, the Commission wants to build a register of drones and their operators by 2019, and to have drones identify themselves electronically. It also wants to introduce geo-fencing, building a database of sensitive areas that drones will be required to automatically avoid.
The rules for U-space will replace today's patchwork of national regulations affecting drones weighing less than 150 kilograms, in which the same drone is subject to different rules depending on which side of a border it flies, and whether it is flown for business or pleasure.
The U-space plan was developed at the Commission's request by the Single European Sky Air traffic management Research Joint Undertaking, and takes into account new aviation safety regulations being developed by the European Parliament and EU member states.
The 150-meter ceiling for autonomous flights will suit Drones'Guard, developed by Azur Drones for video surveillance. On show at Le Bourget, it's designed to watch over factories and other large industrial sites from an altitude of 100 meters. When tethered to a power source, it can hover for up to eight hours non-stop.
French energy company Engie showed off prototypes of tethered and untethered drones at its new Drones & Robots Laboratory to the north of Paris last week. While the drone air traffic control rules won't have much effect on its tethered drone, which is intended for inspecting the interiors of large industrial buildings, they could make life simpler for another drone it is developing to clean the insulators on overhead power lines.
These stacks of glass discs, used to suspend power lines from pylons, gradually lose their ability to insulate as they accumulate dirt. This can come from a number of sources: Among the worst is metal dust from neighboring industrial sites -- aluminum smelters, for instance, need a sturdy and reliable electricity supply -- but almost as bad is moss, which can grow on the glass and retain moisture.
The usual way of cleaning off moss is to send someone up in a cherry-picker, but this is costly, time-consuming and potentially dangerous. With the drone, it's just a matter of flying close to the insulator and spraying a moss remove agent onto the glass discs. Within a few days, the moss will dry up and drop off -- or so the theory goes. Engie's prototype uses standard industrial valves and actuators to orient the nozzle and turn on the spray. A pressurized steel canister holds the cleaning fluid -- which is nothing special, according to Engie research engineer Patrick Subreville: It's the same stuff he used to remove moss from the roof of his house last summer.
To comply with local laws, Engie's moss-removal test flights must take place inside a net enclosure, one pilot guiding the drone and another directing the spray.
The EU's proposed safe space for drone flights could open up commercial opportunities for this and many other applications.

subset: commoncrawl


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This article originally appeared on TomDispatch.
Let others deal with the details of President Obama's Afghan speech, with the on-ramps and off-ramps, those 30,000 US troops going in and just where they will be deployed, the benchmarks for what's called "good governance" in Afghanistan, the corruption of the Karzai regime, the viability of counterinsurgency warfare, the reliability of NATO allies and so on. Let's just skip to the most essential point which, in a nutshell, is this: Victory at Last!
It's been a long time coming, but finally American war commanders have effectively marshaled their forces, netcentrically outmaneuvering and outflanking the enemy. They have shocked-and-awed their opponents, won the necessary hearts and minds, and so, for the first time in at least two decades, stand at the heights of success, triumphant at last.
And no, I'm not talking about post-surge Iraq and certainly not about devolving Afghanistan. I'm talking about what's happening in Washington.
A Symbolic Surrender of Civilian Authority
You may not think so, but on Tuesday night from the US Military Academy at West Point, in his first prime-time presidential address to the nation, Barack Obama surrendered. It may not have looked like that: there were no surrender documents; he wasn't on the deck of the USS Missouri; he never bowed his head. Still, from today on, think of him not as the commander-in-chief but as the commanded-in-chief.
And give credit to the victors. Their campaign was nothing short of brilliant. Like the policy brigands they were, they ambushed the president, held him up with their threats, brought to bear key media players and Republican honchos and in the end made off with the loot. The campaign began in late September with a strategic leak of Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal's grim review of the situation in that country, including demands for sizeable troop escalations and a commitment to a counterinsurgency war. It came to include rumors of potential retirements in protest if the president didn't deliver, as well as clearly insubordinate policy remarks by General McChrystal, not to speak of an impressive citizen-mobilization of inside-the-Beltway former neocon or fighting liberal think-tank experts, and a helping hand from an admiring media. In the process, the US military succeeded in boxing in a president who had already locked himself into a conflict he had termed both "the right war" and a "necessary" one. After more than two months of painfully over-reported deliberations, President Obama has now ended up essentially where General McChrystal began.
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Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine was dusted off from the moldy Vietnam archives and made spanking new by General David Petraeus in 2006, applied in Iraq (and Washington) in 2007 and put forward for Afghanistan in late 2008. It has now been largely endorsed, and a major escalation of the war–a new kind of military-led nation building (or, as they like to say, "good governance") is to be cranked up and set in motion. COIN is being billed as a "population-centric," not "enemy-centric" approach in which US troops are distinctly to be "nation-builders as well as warriors."
And as for those 30,000 troops, most expected to arrive in the Afghan combat zone within the next six months, the numbers are even more impressive when you realize that, as late as the summer of 2008, the United States only had about 28,000 troops in Afghanistan. In other words, in less than two years, US troop strength in that country will have more than tripled to approximately 100,000 troops. So we're talking near-Vietnam-level escalation rates. If you include the 38,000 NATO forces also there (and a possible 5,000 more to come), total allied troop strength will be significantly above what the Soviets deployed during their devastating Afghan War of the 1980s, in which they fought some of the same insurgents now arrayed against us.
Think of this as Barack Obama's anti-MacArthur moment. In April 1951, in the midst of the Korean War, President Harry Truman relieved Douglas MacArthur of command of American forces. He did so because the general, a far grander public figure than either McChrystal or Centcom commander Petraeus (and with dreams of his own about a possible presidential run), had publicly disagreed with, and interfered with, Truman's plans to "limit" the war after the Chinese intervened.
Obama, too, has faced what Robert Dreyfuss in Rolling Stone calls a "generals' revolt"–amid fears that his Republican opposition would line up behind the insubordinate field commanders and make hay in the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns. Obama, too, has faced a general, Petraeus, who might well have presidential ambitions, and who has played a far subtler game than MacArthur ever did. After more than two months of what right-wing critics termed "dithering" and supporters called "thorough deliberations," Obama dealt with the problem quite differently. He essentially agreed to subordinate himself to the publicly stated wishes of his field commanders. (Not that his Republican critics will give him much credit for doing so, of course.) This is called "politics" in our country and, for a Democratic president in our era, Tuesday night's end result was remarkably predictable.
When Obama bowed to the Japanese emperor on his recent Asian tour, there was a media uproar in this country. Even though the speech Tuesday night should be thought of as bowing to the American military, there is likely to be little complaint on that score. Similarly, despite the significance of symbolism in Washington, there has been surprisingly little discussion about the president's decision to address the American people not from the Oval Office but from the US Military Academy at West Point.
It was there that, in 2002, George W. Bush gave a speech before the assembled cadets in which he laid out his aggressive strategy of preventive war, which would become the cornerstone of "the Bush Doctrine." ("If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long…. Our security will require transforming the military you will lead–a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.") But keep in mind that this was still a graduation speech and presidents have traditionally addressed one of the military academies at graduation time.
Obama is not a man who appears in prop military jackets with "commander-in-chief" hand-stitched across his heart before hoo-aahing crowds of soldiers, as our last president loved to do, and yet in his first months in office he has increasingly appeared at military events and associated himself with things military. This speech represents another step in that direction. Has a president ever, in fact, given a non-graduation speech at West Point, no less a major address to the American people? Certainly, the choice of venue, and so the decision to address a military audience first and other Americans second, not only emphasized the escalatory military path chosen in Afghanistan but represented a kind of symbolic surrender of civilian authority.
For his American audience, and undoubtedly his skittish NATO allies as well, the president did put a significant emphasis on an exit strategy from the war. That off-ramp strategy was, however, placed in the context of the training of the woeful Afghan security forces to take control of the struggle themselves and the woeful government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to turn over a new nation-building leaf. Like the choice of West Point, this, too, seemed to resonate with eerie echoes of the years in which George W. Bush regularly intoned the mantra: "As Iraqis stand-up, we will stand down."
In his address, Obama offered July 2011 as the date to begin a withdrawing the first US troops from Afghanistan. ("After eighteen months, our troops will begin to come home.") However, according to the Washington-insider Nelson Report, a White House "on background" press briefing Tuesday afternoon made it far clearer that the president was talking about a "conditions- based withdrawal." It would, in other words, depend "on objective conditions on the ground," on whether the Afghans had met the necessary "benchmarks." When asked about the "scaling back" of the American war effort, General McChrystal recently suggested a more conservative timeline–"sometime before 2013"–seconded hazily by Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to Washington. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates refers to this as a "thinning out" of US forces.
In fact, there's no reason to put faith in any of these hazy deadlines. After all, this is the administration that came into office announcing a firm one-year closing date for the US prison in Guantanamo (now officially missed), a firm sunshine policy for an end-of-2009 release of millions of pages of historical documents from the archives of the CIA and other intelligence and military services (now officially delayed, possibly for years), and of course a firm date for the withdrawal of US combat troops, followed by all US forces from Iraq (now possibly slipping).
Finish the job in Afghanistan? Based on the plans of the field commanders to whom the president has bowed, on the administration's record of escalation in the war so far, and on the quiet reassurances to the Pakistanis that we aren't leaving Afghanistan in any imaginable future, this war looks to be all job and no finish. Whatever the flourishes, that was the essence of Tuesday night's surrender speech.
Monty Python in Afghanistan
Honestly, if it weren't so grim, despite all the upbeat benchmarks and encouraging words in the president's speech, this would certainly qualify as Monty Python in Afghanistan. After all, three cabinet ministers and twelve former ministers are under investigation in Afghanistan itself on corruption charges. And that barely scratches the surface of the problems in a country that one Russian expert recently referred to as an "international drug firm," where at least one-third of the gross national product comes from the drug trade. In addition, as Juan Cole wrote at his Informed Comment blog:
Months after the controversial presidential election that many Afghans consider stolen, there is no cabinet, and parliament is threatening to go on recess before confirming a new one because the president is unconstitutionally late in presenting the names. There are grave suspicions that some past and present cabinet members have engaged in the embezzlement of substantial sums of money. There is little parliamentary oversight. Almost no one bothers to attend the parliamentary sessions. The cabinet ministries are unable to spend the money allocated to them on things like education and rural development, and actually spent less in absolute terms last year than they did in the previous two years.
In addition, the Taliban now reportedly take a cut of the billions of dollars in US development aid flowing into the country, much of which is otherwise squandered, and of the American money that goes into "protecting" the convoys that bring supplies to US troops throughout the country. One out of every four Afghan soldiers has quit or deserted the Afghan National Army in the last year, while the ill-paid, largely illiterate, hapless Afghan police with their "well-deserved reputation for stealing and extorting bribes," not to speak of a drug abuse rate estimated at 15 percent, are, as its politely put, "years away from functioning independently"; and the insurgency is spreading to new areas of the country and reviving in others.
Good governance? Good grief!
Not that Washington, which obviously feels that it has much to impart to the Afghan people about good governance and how to deal with corruption, has particularly firm ground to stand on. After all, the United States has just completed its first billion-dollar presidential election in a $5 billion election season, and two administrations just propped up some of the worst financial scofflaws in the history of the world and got nothing back in return.
Meanwhile, the money flowing into Washington political coffers from Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, real estate, legal firms and the like might be thought of as a kind of drug in itself. At the same time, according to USA Today, at least 158 retired generals and admirals, many already pulling in military pensions in the range of $100,000-$200,000, have been hired as "senior mentors" by the Pentagon "to offer advice under an unusual arrangement": they also work for companies seeking Defense Department contracts.
In Congress, a Senate maneuver that only a few years ago was so rare that the response to it was nicknamed "the nuclear option"–needing a sixty-vote majority to pass anything of significance–has, almost without comment, become a commonplace for the passage of just about anything. This means Congress is eternally in a state of gridlock. And that's just for starters when it comes to ways in which the US government, so ready to surge its military and its civilian employees into Afghanistan in the name of good governance, is in need of repair, if not nation-building itself.
Airless in Washington
It's nonetheless the wisdom of this Washington and of this military that Obama has not found wanting, at least when it comes to Afghanistan.
So here's a question: Why did he listen to them? And under such circumstances, why should we take the results seriously?
Stop for a moment and consider the cast of characters who offered the president the full range of advice available in Washington–all of which, as far as we can tell, from Joe Biden's "counterterrorism-plus" strategy to McChrystal's COIN and beyond, was escalatory in nature. These are, of course, the wise men (and woman) of our era. But just a cursory glance at their collective record should at least make you wonder:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now said to be the official with the best ties to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and so the one in charge of "coaxing" him into a round of reasonable nation-building, of making "a new compact" with the Afghan people by "improving governance and cracking down on corruption"; and yet, in the early 1990s, in her single significant nation-building experience at home, she botched the possibility of getting a universal healthcare bill through Congress. She also had the "wisdom" to vote in 2003 to authorize the invasion of Iraq.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, reputedly deeply trusted by the president and in charge of planning out our military future in Afghanistan, was in the 1980s a supposed expert on the Soviet Union as well as deputy CIA director and later deputy to National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. Yet, in those years, he couldn't bring himself to believe that the Soviets were done for, even as that empire was disappearing from the face of the earth. In the words of former National Security Council official Roger Morris, Gates "waged a final battle against the Soviets, denying at every turn that the old enemy was actually dying." As former CIA official Melvin Goodman has put the matter: "Gates was wrong about every key intelligence question of the 1980s…. A Kremlinologist by training, Gates was one of the last American hardliners to comprehend the changes taking place in the Soviet Union. He was wrong about Mikhail Gorbachev, wrong about the importance of reform, wrong about Moscow's pursuit of arms control and détente with the United States. He was wrong about the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan…"
Vice President Joe Biden, recently described as potentially "the second-most-powerful vice president in history" as well as "the president's all-purpose adviser and sage" on foreign policy, was during the Bush years a believer in nation-building in Afghanistan, voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, and later promoted the idea–like Caesar re Gaul–of dividing that country into three parts (without, of course, bothering to ask the Iraqis), while leaving 25,000-30,000 American troops based there in perpetuity, while "these regions build up their state police forces."
General Stanley McChrystal, our war commander in Afghanistan and now the poster boy for counterinsurgency warfare, had his skills honed purely in the field of counterterrorism. He was a Special Ops guy. The man who is now to "protect" the Afghan people previously won his spurs as the head of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in Iraq and Afghanistan. He ran the "manhunters"–essentially, that is, he was the leader of a team of assassins and evidently part of what reporter Seymour Hersh has termed an "executive assassination wing" of that command, possibly taking orders directly from Vice President Dick Cheney. His skills involved guns to the head, not protective boots on the ground.
General David Petraeus, the general leading everything, who has been practically deified in the US media, is perhaps the savviest and most accomplished of this crew. He surged into Iraq in 2007 and, with the help of fortuitous indigenous developments, staunched the worst of the bleeding, leaving behind a big question mark. His greatest skill, however, has been in fostering the career of David Petraeus. He is undoubtedly an adviser with an agenda, and in his wake come a whole crew of military and think-tank experts, with almost unblemished records of being wrong in the Bush years, whom the surge in Iraq recredentialized.
Karl Eikenberry, our ambassador to Kabul, in his previous career in the US military served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, and as the commander of Combined Forces Command Afghanistan was the general responsible for building up the Afghan army and "reforming" that country's police force. On both counts, we know how effective that attempt proved.
And when it comes to key figures with well-padded Washington CVs like Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or James Jones, present national security adviser and former commandant of the Marine Corps, as well as the supreme allied commander in Europe, a close friend of Senator John McCain, and a former revolving-door board member of Chevron and Boeing, remind me just what sticks in your mind about their accomplishments?
So when you think about Barack Obama's Afghan decisions, imagine first that the man considered the smartest, most thoughtful president of our era chose to surround himself with these people. He chose, that is, not fresh air, or fresh thought in the field of foreign and war policy, but the airless precincts where the combined wisdom of Washington and the Pentagon now exists, and the remarkable lack of accomplishment that goes with it. In short, these are people whose credentials largely consist of not having been right about much over the years.
Admittedly, this administration has called in practically every Afghan expert in sight. Everyone involved could now undoubtedly expound on relatively abstruse questions of Afghan tribal politics, locate Paktia Province on a map in a flash and tell you just which of Hamid Karzai's ministers are under investigation for corruption.
Unfortunately, the most essential problem isn't in Afghanistan; it's here in the United States, in Washington, where knowledge is slim, egos large and national security wisdom deeply imprinted on a system bleeding money and breaking down. The president campaigned on the slogan, "Change we can believe in." He then chose as advisers–in the economic sphere as well, where a similar record of gross error, narrow and unimaginative thinking, and over-identification with the powerful could easily be compiled–a crew who had never seen a significant change, or an out-of-the-ordinary thought it could live with, and still can't.
As a result, the Iraq War has yet to begin to go away, the Afghan War is being escalated in a major way, the Middle East is in some turmoil, Guantánamo remains open, black sites are still operating in Afghanistan, the Pentagon's budget has grown yet larger and supplemental demands on Congress for yet more money to pay for George W. Bush's wars will, despite promises otherwise, soon enough be made.
A stale crew breathing stale air has ensured that Afghanistan, the first of Bush's disastrous wars, is now truly Obama's War; and the news came directly from West Point, where the president surrendered to his militarized fate.


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Topic: Old and New: SNs
Ok, I'm very slow about this sorta thing, back at the sw.com boards when you could change your SN I never knew who I was talking to, even if it was someone I knew well. So... what was your SN on the old boards, so I know who you guys all are? So far I've only been able to guess at a few, and that's cause they were obvious.
Mine was Obi-Wan_Fett. And yours was?
[url]http://www.townparkradio.com[/url] - Video Game Remix Music


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Presents around 50 tables of information on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians for Northern Territory based on the 2006 Census. These electronic tables complement the information presented in the national publication Population Characteristics of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians (cat. no. 4713.0). Topics covered in the national report and sets of tables for Australia and each State/Territory include: the demographic and geographic distribution of the population and its growth in recent years; mobility; household composition; language and religion; education; work; income; housing and transport; and need for assistance.
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Street Address:
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November's presidential election clarified a need for bipartisan immigration reform; Republican intransigence on this issue melted away as they watched about 71 percent of Latinos vote in favor of the Democratic candidate.
Most Americans rejected the Republican immigration platform, which essentially invited the undocumented to "self-deport,", and now the work begins to create meaningful immigration reform that is bipartisan, featuring a clear pathway toward citizenship for those who are here illegally.
Reform could positively affect our society and economy – in the nation at large and in our own Memphis community.
While not all undocumented immigrants are from Latin America, an estimated 54 percent were born in Mexico or Central/South America. Despite the lopsided support for President Obama by Latinos in the election and the powerfully symbolic importance of Justice Sonia Sotomayor administering the oath of office to Vice President Biden, Latino support for the president prior to the summer of 2012 was far from assured.
Obama did not prioritize immigration reform during his first term of office, and instead focused solely on border control and enforcement. In fact, Obama deported more people from the U.S. in four years than did the previous administration in eight years.
As a result of these policies, coupled with an anemic U.S. economy, for the first time in 20 years, undocumented immigration (from Mexico) to the U.S. is decreasing, according to an April study by the Pew Hispanic Trust.
In June, however, Obama instructed his Justice Department – through executive order – to support the ambitions of "Dreamers;" the dreamers are young people who were born elsewhere but have lived here and attended school in the United States; dreamers with a clean police record who plan to continue their education or serve in our military for two years, can now apply for permanent residency and citizenship.
But executive orders are temporary and only an act of Congress can make this enlightened decision of the president permanent law.
Republicans realized in November that they will never win the White House without competing in Florida, California – mega states with huge immigrant populations – and other states, including New Mexico, New Jersey and Nevada – states with significant Latino populations. Republican representatives like Phil Gingrey of Georgia, who insist that any pathway for citizenship for the undocumented is nothing more than "amnesty" for lawbreakers, are out of step with the national mood.
"Amnesty" is a legal term that means complete forgiveness of past infractions: The forthcoming immigration reform that we hope to see would require those seeking citizenship to first pay any and all back taxes, pay a fine and admit to their guilt before consideration for citizenship.
As diverse and divergent American social and political organizations line up behind comprehensive immigration reform, including labor and business organizations and key religious organizations such as the National Catholic Bishops Conference and the Southern Baptist Convention, it is clear that immigration reform will become a legislative priority early in the second Obama administration.
The benefits of passing comprehensive immigration reform are numerous and would positively influence our political process by offering people "ownership," in the form of potential citizenship, in U.S. society.
There are certain financial benefits to creating a comprehensive immigration reform.
First, the national treasury would receive tax revenues from people who are working on, rather than off, the books. The undocumented already pay billions in taxes each year – they pay sales tax on items they buy, they indirectly pay real estate taxes by paying rents to landowners, but a comprehensive reform would offer them the opportunity to pay taxes in a more uniform, systematic fashion.
Also, by regularizing employment of those now called "the undocumented" the social security system will be strengthened as more people pay in. Comprehensive immigration reform would help pull workers out from the shadows, allowing us to improve working conditions for all wage earners and minimize unscrupulous labor practices, as currently practiced, by companies that benefit from paying unfair, illegal wages to the undocumented.
Locally, immigration reform could help ameliorate a long-standing social problem in Memphis: a dwindling population and tax base.
With a Latino population in the Mid-South that is most likely double the official 2012 census estimate of 52,000, Memphis stands to benefit substantially from legislation that allows these residents to more fully engage in the economy and community without fear of deportation. Memphis should follow the lead of Baltimore and Dayton, Ohio, – communities that have led by welcoming immigrants through innovative city programs offering social, health and education to residents of the city. No questions asked.
A real opportunity to move forward on comprehensive immigration reform exits. Such reform is in the interest of all citizens, Democrats and Republican alike.
Supporting the undocumented in their aspiration to work, build families here and contribute to our society is good for our democracy, for our city, and it would be beneficial for the economy and would help to remind all of us of the unlimited opportunities represented by this nation.
Bryce W. Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board member at Latino Memphis Inc. Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.
Copyright 1995 -
by The Daily News Publishing Co. Inc. - All Rights Reserved


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Is Your Pack-a-Day Habit a Vice, or an Opportunity?
Vices. We've all got them, or at least been tempted by them from time to time.
Whether your poison is a pack of smokes, a six-pack of Bud, a cup of coffee, or an ice-cold Coca-Cola, succumbing to your vices -- or succumbing to the temptation to start one -- can cost you.
How much? That's the question that a new micro-site that recently popped up on the eBay (EBAY) Deals Blog proposes to answer.
Titled simply costofyourvices.com, it poses visitors a series of six questions:
How many cigarettes do you smoke?
How much coffee do you drink?
How often do you drink alcohol?
How often do you eat fast food?
Do you buy Lotto tickets?
How many sodas do you drink in a week?
Tallying up the answers, and assuming the reader isn't fibbing, COYV then proceeds to crunch some numbers and break the bad news to the respondent.
"The true cost of your vices is ... X." (In the case of yours truly, for example, it's $4,521 annually, with the dread coffee bean bearing most of the blame.)
But that's really just the beginning of the story.
Beware the 'Secondhand Smoke' of Vice
COYV doesn't simply calculate your vice-oriented checkout receipt. At the bottom of each page of COYV's online questionnaire you'll also find a small infographic explaining the cost of that vice on society at large.
Sponsored Links
For example, according to COYV (and varying, one presumes, with state and local taxes), smoking a pack of cigarettes a day is likely to cost you $511 a year. But the cost of smoking to the nation as a whole approaches $196 billion annually in unnecessary health-related expenditures. And believe it or not, the effect of alcohol consumption on the economy is even higher, with COYV postulating total costs of $223 billion annually.
To put those numbers in perspective, COYV calculates that college students in America spend only $22 billion annually on tuition, room, and board. The implication being that if we, collectively and as a nation, suddenly all quit drinking and smoking, we'd save enough money to put about 470,000 students through college.
We'd also finally know the answer to the question Adam Ant posed: "Don't drink, don't smoke -- what do you do?" Apparently, you pay to educate every young person in America.
There's Money to Be Made in Vices
Of course, there's another way you could spend all that loot saved from quitting your vices: You could invest the money in companies that sell to folks who don't quit. What could that get you? Here are a few possibilities:
Quitting a $511-a-year tobacco habit could buy you almost 14 shares of Altria (MO) -- every year.
$503 saved from switching from coffee to water could get you eight shares of Starbucks (SBUX).
More partial to burgers than java? Trading in a twice-a-week McDonald's habit could save $860 -- more than enough to buy eight shares of McDonalds (MCD) common stock.
Going cold turkey on even an occasional Coke habit ($165 a year) could pay for nearly four shares of Coca-Cola (KO).
Putting the brakes on your weekly beer run ($234 annually) could buy a couple of shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD).
And should you decide to stop throwing away money on a daily $1 lottery habit, you could save $365 annually.
On that last one, you should just hold on to that cash you save. I can't countenance investing that in lottery companies -- some vices are just too heinous to endorse.
Though he's afflicted by many of the vices covered in the COYV poll, there's at least one evil Fool contributor Rich Smith does not succumb to: the lottery. The Motley Fool recommends Coca-Cola, eBay, McDonald's, and Starbucks. The Motley Fool owns shares of eBay, McDonald's, and Starbucks.


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Paul's usually the one who writes our "where in the world" posts (here's his category link) but after a few folks specifically came up to us at SQLConnections and SQLPass and told us how much they enjoyed our shots, I thought I'd put together a summary post with a few of my favorites and a few tips I've learned a lot the way.
(NOTE: this is now part 1 of I don't know how many… but, I do hope to get the other parts done this weekend! Sorry, we had WAYYY too much fun on these trips!)
First, Paul and I took an amazing trip in August/September where we first went to Alaska and then we flew over to Anadyr, Russia to board the Spirit of Enderby (Professor Khromov) for a 14 day expedition in the Russian Far East and up into the Siberian Arctic and Wrangel Island. Our entire trip was absolutely perfect. We started in Alaska for 10 days with the girls (8 and 10 – at the time). We rented a nice big car and the four of us set out for a bunch of driving. We stayed in Anchorage our first night and we chose the Captain Cook hotel (which we'd all recommend!). It was only one night and it was solely because our first day of driving was going to be long. And, we didn't want to start the drive late in the day. So, we had a nice dinner and went to bed relatively early so that we could venture out the next day and drive up to Denali National Park. We had been told that the drive can be incredibly long – depending on traffic – and we were pleasantly surprised when the drive wasn't too bad. We stopped in Talkeetna for a late lunch and if we had more time (and if it hadn't been raining), I would recommend a scenic flight from Talkeetna. If you're planning a trip, you might even want to spend one night in Talkeetna. There are some trapper cabins there and quite a few little shops and restaurants. There's also a train that goes in/out from there so you might decide to take the train up to Denali from here?
We arrived up at Denali National Park around 5pm after a leisurely day of driving from Anchorage. One of the highlights was the moose that walked out onto the road right in front of us as we were leaving the grocery store in Anchorage. Wow, they are BIG!
But, at this pace I'll be writing about every hour of the entire trip… so, I'm going to cut to a few of the highlights and a few of the things that we'd recommend the most.
We loved Denali National Park but your options to access it are very limited. You can drive all the way in to the entrance at 15 miles in and I'd recommend that for sure. There's even a parking area by the entrance and you can wander around the river area that's there. If the lot is full they'll let you park in the lot that's just beyond the entrance area so if it's full, drive over to the guard and ask to park there. If it's not full then you're good! There are some bathrooms there as well and the river doesn't run too deep so you can wander around the river area and explore! If you want to explore any further then you have to book a tour or use the park buses. There are some special options for professional photographers and there are also 4 "free days" in September that you can sign up for (I think it's by lottery) but outside of that – you're taking a bus. We did the epic 96 mile drive into Kantishna on a bus that was not all that much better than a typical school bus and it did not have a bathroom onboard. There were frequent [enough] stops but it's definitely not the most exciting drive. We stopped for a lot of animals and because it was overcast and rainy – many animals came out. That was the best part of it. We would not have seen any of this if it hadn't been for the weather so we really can't complain. But, the bus picked us up at 6am and dropped us off just after 7pm. It was a VERY long day. Probably my favorite thing to see – wolves:
This first picture is of two juveniles (probably Spring 2010 pups) playing with two adolescents (probably Spring 2009 pups). These are pups from the pack where the second shot shows the Alpha female. Apparently, only the Alpha male/female breed within a pack and the park collar's the alpha pair (you can see the collar in the pic.. however, I did have to laugh when a couple of people on the bus said – wow, look there's a dog in the park, see, it has a collar… er, they weren't listening to the driver at all!!). Anyway, these were wonderful to see. The driver also mentioned that he doesn't see wolves every day – probably only 10-12 times a season. Cool!
And here's Momma:
And, I can't forget the Dall Sheep. Here's one of my favorite shots:
Our trip in Denali National Park was fantastic and I'd highly recommend the Kantishna tour (Denali Backcountry Adventure: http://www.denalilodges.com/denali_backcountry_adventure.html). Ideally, you should even try to stay overnight for a day or two in Kantishna but it all depends on how much time you have. You can also bus in and flight out. There are lots of possible options and you should really do your homework if you want to create some of these combinations as many have limits on luggage, etc. But, if you plan it right and have to the time to leave stuff with another hotel then you might be in good shape to do this. Staying in Kantishna would be especially good for those of you who want to hike/wander in DNP. But, weather is hit/miss and the bugs can be horrible during certain times of year. We got lucky as it wasn't a bad season (in general) and we were relatively late getting there as we didn't get to DNP until mid-August.
The day prior we also took an amazing trip via helicopter out to a glacier and we landed and wandered about for 20 mins or so. It was incredible! I'd HIGHLY recommend ERA Helicopter Tours and specifically their Denali Glacier Landing Expedition: http://www.flightseeingtours.com/content/e3/e15/e20/. One of my favorite shots is of Paul and our pilot in the distance with a large ice stream between us (the helicopter is even futher behind them off to the back far left). The colors were stunning and the flow was fast and powerful (and I suspect – VERY cold).
We also went to a sled dog display put on by the DNP Rangers (here's their link). We went with our good friend Don Kiely who lives up in Fairbanks and drives down to the DNP area to paddle the Nenana River. He also runs the Second Chance League (a sled-dog rescue program) in Fairbanks. I know things are tight for everyone right now but if you're a sucker for animals (I am!) and you have a few extra dollars this holiday – consider a donation to help feed and/or care for some of these very neglected sled dogs (it's a pretty harsh sport and dogs that don't perform can lead a miserable life). You can read more about the program here: http://members.petfinder.org/~AK17/index.php.
We stayed down at Denali Cabins (about 5 miles from the main entrance) and there are a bunch of hotels closer up to the entrance of DNP. Most of the hotels are in Glitter Gulch (if you look) and one that we thought had a good restaurant/bar/view was the Grande Denali Lodge. We ate at the Alpenglow restaurant a couple of times because we really liked the view. However, they did do some major landscaping to a beautiful mountain to get their view and as a few locals say it's a bit of an abomination of the view coming around the river. So… you can make the call. Now that it's there though – we took advantage of the view!
We only had 2 full days in DNP and we made the most of them by booking EVERYTHING in advance. Depending on the time of the year – you might want to do the same as some of these tours can fill up.
Then, we drove down from DNP to Seward. This was the longest drive of the trip and it took us a full day to do it! We did stop for lunch and we stopped many times for photos. So, if you give yourself about 10 hours then you can do it pretty leisurely. I think the total mileage is about 360 miles (with lots of hills/mountains, etc.) and after 2 days of rain on/off and not a single viewing of Denali (Mt McKinley) we thought our chances of seeing her were over. However, on the drive down to Seward, the sun came out and so did Denali. That's part of what took us so long. We probably stopped at 10 different viewing areas to see Denali. It was great. What a BEAUTIFUL mountain. Here's a picture of the monkey's standing in front of Denali.
We didn't have every moment planned in Seward but I was dying to setup a Kenai Fjords Tour. Paul was hesitant because he and the girls can get seasick. To be honest, I get seasick as well (almost always on the first day but then I get much better but the difference is that I don't care and will go on the water almost no matter what… I LOVE being on or in or near the water!!!). So, when the weather cleared and the seas looked like they were going to be calm, I was excited. Still, we decided to wait to book our tickets until morning. And, sure enough, at 8am I called straight away. If I had waited any longer we might not have gotten on the tour and in the height of summer I bet we wouldn't have. But, if you have any question of getting seasick then you might want to wait and see. Apparently the weather can be anywhere from "horrible and nasty" to "sunny and gorgeous" and anything in between. We got lucky and got "sunny and gorgeous" but it was cold! And, these Kenai Fjords Tour boats can go FAST! Paul used his GPS to clock our boat at 31mph just outside of the no wake zone. Wow!
We HIGHLY recommend this tour company: http://www.kenaifjords.com/ and our captain/guide was absolutely fantastic. I'm embarassed that I don't remember his name. He was alone in the bridge with the door open when I wandered in and he was only happy to chat. Paul joined me and we learned a bit about his cat. What an impressive boat: http://www.allamericanmarine.com/cats/P120_OrcaVoyager.html. We did the 11:30 am departure for the 6.5 hour tour: http://www.kenaifjords.com/kenai-nationalpark.html#1130am. As for a favorite from this trip – wow, that's hard! We saw Orca, eagles, sea otters, mountain goats, puffins (horned and tufted), all sorts of other sea/marine birds including kittiwakes and comorants) and a lot more! We saw the landlocked Bear Glacier (and the lake in front of it) and we went within a quarter mile of the Aialik Glacier (you can't get closer because of the potential for glacier calving). Here's a list of glaciers in Alaska: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_glaciers_in_the_United_States#Glaciers_of_Alaska.
Here's a picture of the Aialik Glacier:
And, another one of Aialik Glacier up close!
Finally, here's one of the land-locked Bear Glacier from afar. The trees are blocking the lake that's in front of the glacier:
As for animals, we saw lots. The Orca's are one of my favorites and I'm really looking forward to more whale watching with the family now that we've all figured out how to do it without getting sick (wrist-bands and dramamine seem to work wonders for everyone!).
And, we fell in love with Ray's Waterfront restaurant for dinner: http://rayswaterfrontak.com/ and the Marina Restaurant (for breakfast!). Both of which were recommended by our friend Pat Wright. Thanks Pat!!
Our other full day in Seward we visited the Seward Sealife Center (definitely recommended!) and Exit Glacier (also HIGHLY recommended). One of the cool things that they do at the center is a lot of rehabilitation and minotoring of the local sealife. They even have a live monitor at Chiswell Island. You can see the sea lions there LIVE: http://www.alaskasealife.org/New/research/index.php?page=NewChiswell.php. Their site is a bit hard to navigate (IMO) but there's TONS of information there. Definitely worth a read and possibly a donation (again, if you're a sucker for animals – which I am!!).
My favorite picture from the Exit Glacier hike is one where an idiot went way up next to the ice. The reason I like the picture is for perspective. Check out how small this guy looks (bottom left). Originally we thought it might be someone who didn't speak English but alas, no, it was an idiot who claimed he didn't see the MANY signs posted that said do not cross. And, if it had been an actual Ranger who had caught him (instead of a VERY nice volunteer) he could have been fined as much as 5K for going where he did…
OK, so, at this point we're 7 days in to our holiday and we're loving every minute of it. The next part of the trip is where we drove from Seward to Homer and stayed on the Homer Spit. This is probably the highlight of the trip for me as we went to view bears at Katmai National Park (yes, we were touring SQL Server code-names on this trip!). Since this post has already turned out to be WAYYYY longer than I had hoped, I'm going to stop here and leave the bears for tomorrow. My plan – to get all of my "where in the world" posts done this weekend!
I'm wishing you all well over this holiday weekend and I hope you're able to stay awake long enough to read this (turkey coma's are hard to overcome – I know!!!).
Thanks for reading,
PS – If you want any additional information about Alaska and/or the places we stayed, feel free to email me!


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I have two thiiiiick envelopes of Booooooom stickers with your names on 'em. If you want to win an envelope, here's what you have to do:
1. Join our Fan Page.
2. Photoshop the Booooooom icon over your face and use it as your Facebook profile photo until Friday 6pm (Pacific). If you don't have Photoshop, you may simply replace your profile photo with the icon.
3. Leave the message "Can we be best friends?" on the Fan Page wall. The wall message must be posted before Thursday 6pm (Pacific) to be eligible!
The winner will be announced Friday evening!
Yes, this is a scraggly haired photo of myself during production of my gradfilm (and it will be my profile photo during the contest). Good luck!!!


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No variation of the Contract or these Terms, (which includes a request for additional or extra work), shall be valid unless it is in writing and signed by or on behalf of the Client and the Agency. Any variation of the terms may be subject to the payment of an additional fee. The Artist retains the right to charge for any variation in the Artwork.
The Contract constitutes the whole agreement between the parties and supersedes all previous agreements between the parties relating to its subject matter.
The Client shall not, without the prior written consent of the Agency, assign or deal in any other manner with all or any of its rights or obligations under the Contract.
If any dispute arises in connection with this Contract, the parties will attempt to settle it by referring the matter to The Pro-Action Committee and, if that is not successful, by mediation in accordance with the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) Model Mediation Procedure. The parties will jointly agree on the appointment of a mediator. If no agreement is reached with 28 days, the mediator will be nominated by CEDR.
This Contract, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with it or its subject matter, shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with, the law of England and Wales.


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FREE STANDARD SHIPPING ON QUALIFYING ORDERS OVER $85.00 - Offer valid at kitterytradingpost.com. Tax and shipping not include in qualifying amount. Offer is for standard ground shipping only to United States excluding Alaska and Hawaii. Offer valid on Alpine Skis, all other additional/oversized freight charges still apply. Offer not valid on ammunition or firearm purchases. Offer not valid on retail store purchases, previous purchases or special orders. Offer limited to stock on hand, and is not redeemable for cash. KTP reserves the right to exclude certain products from this promotion. Offer subject to change without notice.
Hareline Strung Guinea Feathers Fly Tying Material
Product Info Item# 50189
Great for:
- Collars
- Tailing
- Wingcases
- Cheeks
* Image represents product - colors may vary.
The company was founded in 1981 by Bob and Nelda Borden. It has grown from the kitchen stove top with 12 colors of Hareline Dubbin to a 15,000 square foot facility with thousands of fly tying products ready to deliver.
Hareline has had over 30 years experience delivering fly tying materials throughout the world, and the staff has over 100 years of combined fly tying knowledge. They're constantly working to develop new tying products for their customers and for themselves.


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Wednesday, November 30, 2011
An interesting post
Interesting post if you are interested in dynamic languages. Thanks Michael for sharing.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Squeak Smalltalk from the start videos
Lawson English has some videos to share for Squeak beginners.
Fuel also for Squeak
The Fuel serialization framework is (beside Pharo) now also available for Squeak. Mariano knows more.
Pier Admin
Nick shares an "Pier-admin" extension - an admin UI extension for the Pier CMS (which is based on Seaside).
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Seaside and SqueakSSL on Windows
Want to use Seaside SSL on Windows. Andreas shows you how to do it!
Cool - and thanks a lot (since I was the one asking about the state of this)
Cool - and thanks a lot (since I was the one asking about the state of this)
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
SmalltalkHub demo online
The demo for SmalltalkHub is online now. Take care - it is a preview currently.
Monday, November 14, 2011
RTalk - Smalltalk on the JVM
Found the presentation video from the JVM Language Summit about RTalk to run Smalltalk on the JVM.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Seaside Form Validation with Mold
There is a nice framework from Ken Treis for form validation in Seaside. The project is called "Mold" and available on Squeaksource and the Cincom Public Repo. Read this blog post with a detailed description.
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
New CogVMs
Eliot has a new update.
Smalltalk Hub news
Nicolas talks about SmalltalkHub news
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Squeak Beginners Screencasts
HPI provides a new screencast page for Squeak beginners.
JQuery Mobile for Seaside video
Interesting video from Nick on how to build an app with Seaside and the jQuery Mobile wrapper.
Friday, November 04, 2011
Boot Smalltalk
Need a bootable Smalltalk image? Then try this ISO from Pavel.
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text:
User talk:Tapril
From Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki
Dear Stephen,
I just couldn't find your e-mail address anywhere, but your profile looks so interesting, I just had to see if I could contact you this way. Please write to me on nenelabeet at gmail dot com.
I'm writing a paper about barriers of participation to web 2.0 among librarians. I'm using www.libsuccess.org as an example and I found you there. I'm wondering if you'd share your thoughts on the matter with me or alternatively have already written about it/given talks on the subject and would like to share it with me?
My questions would be
1) What are the reasons librarians give for not wanting to use/participate in web 2.0? 2) What could be done to overcome these barriers? (What have you done, if you have had colleagues like that?)
Thanks in advance, Néné [[1]]


text:
Maya Angelou radio special celebrates black history with Oprah, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson
WASHINGTON - In the midst of talking black history with Grammy-winning singer Alicia Keys, Maya Angelou breaks out singing a hymn a cappella.
The acclaimed poet and author wants to show Keys, a New Yorker, what "lining out," call-and-response singing that is popular in black churches in the American South, sounds like.
That teaching moment is one of many during Angelou's third annual Black History Month program, "Telling Our Stories," airing on more than 175 public radio stations nationwide. The U.S. designates February as a month to remember people and events important in black American history.
Angelou says she is obligated to share her knowledge and experience with younger people like Keys, in a way that is not "preaching" but gives context to the "human truth."
"We owe the truth, not just the facts," she said recently in a phone interview from her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "I'm celebrating my 84th year on this planet. I've seen many things, I've learned many things. I've certainly been exposed to many things and I've learned something: I owe it to you, to tell you."
Angelou said she is sharing black history in "a way that you get it and don't even know you got it," with songs, poems, jokes and short stories woven throughout interviews with five guests, including Keys, media mogul Oprah Winfrey, singer and actress Jennifer Hudson, diplomat Kofi Annan and actress and playwright Regina Taylor.
Keys talks about growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen and how the diverse city influenced her sound. The performer, who began studying European classical music at the age of 7, said her influences range from the greats like Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane and Nina Simone to chart-topping peers like rappers Nas and Jay-Z.
Winfrey chats with Angelou during the special about their close friendship spanning over two decades, starting the Oprah Winfrey Network and her return to acting in the Lee Daniel's film "The Butler."
"One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping," Angelou said. "She had the most powerful and popular program for 25 years and she stepped down and took on a bigger task, starting OWN."
Angelou added, "She teaches the young people: Keep on going, continue and continue with some pizazz, some laughter and some style."
Angelou interviews Hudson, an Oscar and Grammy winner, about her journey from singing in her Chicago church choir to performing at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Norway last year; and Taylor, a Golden Globe-winning actress and playwright who was the first black woman to play Juliet in William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" on Broadway.
This year's special mostly focuses on women in media and entertainment, and heavily uses music to convey history.
"I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence," Angelou said, noting that black history has been preserved through music, via songs on slave ships to Negro hymns passed down in Baptist churches.
The single man spotlighted as a guest on the radio program is Annan, the former secretary-general of the United Nations and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He talks about climbing the ranks in diplomacy and his mission of public service.
"Mr. Kofi Annan has behaved too fabulously as secretary-general of the United Nations and he's had more than one stint at the job and he has earned a Nobel," she said. "Sometimes we don't know about any African except Nelson Mandela and oft times, we don't know any Afro-American man."
Angelou jokes that next year she will feature all men for the annual special, with rapper Common already in mind.
"Or mostly men, because there are men of such quality — African-American men — such riches, such dignity and humour," she said. "They just run through my mind now."
Another man who brings Angelou great pride is Richard Blanco, the youngest, the first Hispanic and the first gay person to recite a poem at a presidential inauguration — last month at President Barack Obama's second swearing-in. Angelou was the first black woman to recite a poem at an inauguration, President Bill Clinton's in 1993.
"He showed great courage," she said of Blanco, "and it's courage (that) is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently. So I was very pleased with that."