From yesterday's press briefing:

Q Does the President embrace the concept of the progressive taxation? Does he feel that a progressive system is somehow inherently unfair?

MR. FLEISCHER: No, he does. And, in fact, one of the things that is notable about the plan the President announced yesterday, or two days ago, is the President's tax proposal makes the tax code even more progressive.

Q How does it do that? It flattens the rates.

MR. FLEISCHER: Because the share of taxes paid by people at the top actually goes up. Because as you remove people from the bottom of the roles, thanks to the child credit, thanks to the acceleration of the income tax rate reductions and the expansion of the 10 percent tax bracket, you have fewer people actually paying any taxes at all at the bottom. Therefore, the burden that is left is shared increasingly with those who remain at the top.

So the statistics, the facts of the matter are -- and I don't think even the Democrats dispute this -- that the burden of those who pay taxes actually shifts so the upper-income groups pay a higher percentage of the taxes paid.

Uh, sure, Ari. That makes sense, because as we all know, poor people have tons of kids, so all those child tax credits will help them out. No one who's poor is single, or, god forbid, pays payroll taxes yet no federal income taxes. Those people simply don't exist, right?

Fun with Tracker will have to wait...I've spent the last three days in a somewhat aborted attempt to create a bridge-firewall on a debian linux box. After numerous kernel recompiles, several failures and one success (I did get the damn thing to be a proper bridge, at least!) I'm still banging my head against the wall on the firewall side. It's odd: I always want to learn a new thing (or several) each day...or I think my job is wasting my time. And I've been learning a bunch of new stuff this week, but at some point I just want the stupid thing to work. I'm not a code-monkey...I just follow the directions of people who know how to hack. Yet the process is maddeningly slow, given the compile time I have to wait, and the unexplained errors that keep cropping up. Oh, well. Back to the grind.

goal: to create a tracking system so that, given any set of coordinates (or streaming set of coordinates), a position can be tracked on top of a map and dynamically generated on a web page. uses? say...tracking metro cars on a metro system map, etc.

First Step: dynamically generate image using php.

Second Step: map target onto map using coordinates.

Third Step: map moving target using refreshed image or svg.

Time magazine's year-end double issue, on newsstands until Monday, is bursting with praise for the White House, and specifically Vice President Dick Cheney, who receives the red-carpet treatment from the newsweekly. In the loving hands of Time writers, the reclusive V.P. even manages to upstage Cynthia Cooper, Sherron Watkins, and Coleen Rowley, the trio of whistle-blowers who appear on the issue's cover.

The 9,700-word avalanche of Cheney puffery is composed of one long essay, another biographical profile, and a chat with his wife. (Despite the big-time rollout, Time writers didn't land any on-the-record face time with Cheney.) There's also a nifty photo essay at Time.com chronicling Cheney's all-American life: There he is as a Little Leaguer, attending his high school prom, etc.

The centerpiece of Time's package is an essay by Nancy Gibbs that trumpets the Bush-Cheney relationship as "Partnership of the Year." A gauzy, heroic painting of the two men takes up almost a full two-page spread: below it, the lead runs, "This war has two faces, one a promise, one a growl." You'd think the Time editors and writers had collectively stumbled into a time machine set for 1944. The theme of the package, put together by no fewer than 12 magazine writers and reporters, is that Cheney, with his hard work, discipline, smarts and loyalty ("steady and stalwart") has become "the most powerful deputy ever" -- and has transformed our president into a much more effective leader.

Here's the poll itself, which seems to contradict the puffery. The explanation wasn't revealed until today, when the Washington City Paper exposed it right here. From that work:

The distinction of being Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2002 fell to three persons who were unknowns in 2001: whistle-blowers Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom, Coleen Rowley of the FBI, and Sherron Watkins of Enron. "Who are these women?" the introduction to their profiles asked. "For starters, they aren't people looking to hog the limelight."

The same apparently can't be said of a more familiar figure who'd been a leading contender for a spot on the front of that issue: President George W. Bush.

According to four Time sources, the magazine had prepared a Person of the Year cover commemorating the partnership between Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. But it fell through after the White House balked at giving the magazine access for such a presentation. Bush aides reportedly preferred that their boss appear alone on the cover.

That's right: the reason the piece exists was that Bush & Cheney were supposed to be on the cover until the administration balked in highlighting their relationship instead of just highlighting Bush himself, resulting in a ready-to-go softball article with no hard hits inserted into the magazine. The poll? Probably TIME was miffed over their treatment, and some staffer said "Hey, why don't we stick this little poll end at the end which invalidates our entire article?" Or, perhaps, TIME commissioned the poll and then realized that it would be inappropriate to put the dynamic duo on the cover when a whopping 51% of Americans don't trust Dick Cheney. Or that 48% don't trust the President. The most telling explanation would be that somehow the White House saw the piece before it was finished, including the poll which indicates that 55% of people believe Bush's success is mainly due to his advisors. Nothing like an article highlighting the Bush/Cheney relationship to push that number even higher, right?

First, I just posted a review of Joe Millionaire on the site. I thought it was mildly enjoyable, if only because of the absurd premise. One thing I'm always confused about is the amount of time and energy spent decrying shows of this nature, when they seem less egregious than their reality-school cousins. I can't stand the premise of shows like the Bachelor, mainly because they tend to gloss over the competition laden premise with a whole bunch of nonsense like "we were meant for each other". At least FOX has the good grace to frame such a tawdy show as the slop it so richly is.

In other news, we're now locatable via GeoURL. It's fairly cool...test out looking for our physical neighbors with this link Neat, eh?

werkz advice: worth watching, though not every week.

Imagine a character who's desperate to keep his personal wealth a secret in the interest of finding true love. In order to achieve this (somewhat laudable) goal, he engages in a fairly large lie. No, I'm not talking about Joe Fox from the Nora Ephron chick-flick You've Got Mail. I'm referring to FOX's newest reality show: Joe Millionaire. The premise is simple: an average Joe is taken from his low-paying construction job, given a crash-course in how the top .001% live, and told to lie to 20 women about a supposed inheritance of $50 million. Oh, and to weed out the women, Survivor-style, until only one remains, at which point he'll have to expose the lie.

Sound perverse? You bet! Although I'm not a big fan of reality tv shows, I have always admired FOX's ability to showcase these programs for what they are: cheap sensationalism. What is running under the surface of 'The Bachelor' simply gets aired in the open in 'Joe Millionaire', which makes me glad because no one can pretend that true love is anywhere near this sordid idea. Joe's faux butler, who organizes almost everything on the show, gets to delight in telling women they've been rejected, or in showing Joe how to behave as a uber-wealthy person.

But by far, the show is best because it is so ordinary. Joe can't ride a horse well. The women manage to break an expensive lamp as soon as they arrive at the chateau. Joe almost loses his cool when a woman asks him his last name. The women (most, not all!) show up to the house dressed as inappropriately as possible, as if they could seduce him in the first five minutes. Joe agonizes about the lie. Oh, the humanity! All of these are traits which regular people exhibit, not those on television. The contestants, and Joe himself, are simply regular people, which makes their humiliation somewhat bearable.

The major flaw, of course, is that the entire appeal of the show rests on a small lie. Episodes in which Joe acts rich and the women buy it wholeheartedly are sure to be boring. Episodes (like the opener with Joe almost falling off his horse) where Joe flubs or the women suspect, will be great. With that caveat, I'm sure the entire run will provide plenty of fodder for both sides. Unlike those 'nice' shows, Joe will deliver what it promises: tawdry entertainment.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm an interventionist. That means dealing with problems the world over before they turn into huge problems that have no easy solution in sight. Being an interventionist means avoiding the ostrich in the sand/pure isolationism scenario, but it doesn't mean renouncing diplomacy, as the current administration would have you believe. The moment that the tiny equation of "negotiation = appeasement" became ingrained in White House heads, something good was lost. It's like the slashdot hitler effect: the longer a conversation continues, the more likely that someone will compare another person to Hitler or the Nazis in a pathetic attempt to reduce their argument to moral clarity. Say it with me, conservative kids: President Clinton's State Department did not give the Sudetenland to Germany, er...nuclear weapons to North Korea. And the current administration, not the last one, sought to portray diplomatic measures with failure. Hence the current situation, which is spiraling out of control.

Oh, and there's a new movie review up. Check it out!

werkz advice: go see it!

One of those rare movies that manages to isolate audiences into those who "get it" and those who "don't get it", Adaptation is a great flick. The story is simple: it follows the path a book takes to become a screenplay, if the book in question can't be adapted normally. Think, Being John Malkovich meets Last Action Hero: all of the traditional Hollywood screenplay cliches are stomped on by this film, something that should have been done long ago. So go see it today!