SharedThought

Yesterday, the Washington Post did a review of the latest crop of music downloading software and rewarded Apple’s iTunes the best in show ribbon over Napster and Musicmatch. I downloaded and installed iTunes for Windows last week and have been using it regularly since then. I’ve purchased music and been able to move files back and forth between machines. The interface is elegant and easy to use. It brings together in one place everything you need — from playing, ripping and recording CDs to purchasing and downloading music.

The only complaint I have is that the program wouldn’t recognize my old Windows Media files (not too surprising there, however), and wouldn’t allow access to its CDDB feature to pull down any track information on my old .mp3 files. It clearly prefers you to re-import or purchase your music using the iTunes frontend. There also appears to be a bug in the way the software displays track time for music ripped using a variable rate codec.

Despite the few glitches, I’m so impressed by the program that I’m going to willingly re-import my existing CDs into the iTunes library. I’ll also be looking to pick up an iPod for the upcoming holidays! I encourage you to check it out!

Proving again why President Bush should not be allowed to leave America, the administration is bungling its trip to the APEC summit in Bangkok, Thailand. First he insulted the Japanese by referring to his stop there as a “layover,” then he incensed others in the region by referring to Australian Prime Minister John Howard as the “Sheriff” of the region. Memo to the President: you are not John Wayne, and the world is not a John Ford western.

openDemocracy has an interesting article highlighting the influence of Leo Strauss on the Bush administration neo-conservatives. You can check it out here. Here’s an excerpt:

The effect of Strauss’s teaching is to convince his acolytes that they are the natural ruling elite and the persecuted few. . . . So, they come to the conclusion that they have a moral justification to lie in order to avoid persecution. Strauss goes so far as to say that dissembling and deception — in effect, a culture of lies — is the peculiar justice of the wise.

The Energy Task Force document imbroglio, the justification for the pre-emptive war against Iraq, the justifications for the President’s tax cuts are all examples of the “noble lie” that Strauss championed for the ruling elite. Now it’s time for the “vulgar many” (Strauss’s term for the non-elite) to take note, and take action.

If you weren’t a little worried about President Bush calling his war on terrorism a crusade, then maybe this story will (registration required). Here’s a little blurb from the General tasked with tracking down Osama Bin Laden:

Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, Boykin told another audience, “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”

Gannett News Service is reporting on a rash of identical letters to the editor “written” by soldiers in Iraq. The letters detail how well things are going, and all the great work being done. This seems like one of those great productions worked up by Dustin Hoffman in Wag the Dog. Check out the story here.

If there is any hope to keep the State of California out of the hands of an inexperienced puppet administrator with stars in his eyes and no plan in his pocket, a man without respect for women, please send this article, or the link to it, to all your California friends today. Hopefully they will see the light.
I am copying a couple quotes just to illustrate a point.

“Am I sorry? Of course. If I did the things that they said I did. Am I sorry, do I apologize? Yes. But it is time to get on and not look back,” he said on the CBS news show.

“I will say most of it is not true,” he said during a school tour as children waited in droves to see him. “Other things may be true, and in case it’s true, I apologize.”

Sound familiar? The first is not a quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger, however. That was former Senator Robert Packwood of Oregon, in 1995, commenting at the time of his resignation from the US Senate after a vote for his expulsion on sexual harassment allegations by the Ethics Committee. The link:

http://www.texasonline.net/langley/columns/packwood.htm

The second was Mr. Schwarzenegger this past week, commenting on allegations of similar behavior, to which he admitted committing, that have surfaced in the closing days of the recall election campaign. (See link below)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/10/03/MN246826.DTL

If Mr. Packwood’s actions were sufficient for him to be expelled from the US Senate, what would qualify a man with the same character and no experience in politics to be our elected governor? I heard it expressed succinctly this morning on the radio, comparing Mr. Schwarzenegger’s exploits to a game of cat and mouse.
The cat and mouse have quite different perspectives on the game.
Have we sunk so low as to prefer a sexual batterer in office? If you doubt the allegations, I ask you this: What is truly in it for women who come out with their accounts? (Rhetorical question)
Different is not always better. Let us not go from bad to worse. Arnold the Governator is a sequel the State of California does not need.