What you see above is the front page of the “Gazeta Wyborcza,” one of Poland’s largest papers, precisely as it ran last Wednesday. The look is intentional: “Gazeta,” along with Poland’s “Rzeczpospolita,” participated in an Amnesty International campaign to highlight repression in Belarus. Both papers ran an obscured version of their front page with an Amnesty tagline at bottom: “This is what freedom of speech looks like in Belarus.”

I love this concept. It’s refreshing to see the press take such a clear, stark stand against oppression. Though I am certainly sympathetic to commenters on NewsDesigner.com (from which I learned of the story, and borrowed the above image) about the importance of objectivity and perceived neutrality, in this case I think the editors made a brilliant choice.

So I’m on one of my Googling sorties, as you do. And I come across some committee documentation from a 1998 meeting of the House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Financial Services (Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy.)

I know, I know: could there be something more boring? Well, yes, and your first hint this isn’t your run-of-the-mill meeting is the topic: “Will Jumbo Euro Notes Threaten the Greenback?” And then, barely two paragraphs into his opening statement, Chair Michael Castle throws out this nugget:

Regarding the United States $500 and $1,000 bills already in existence, current estimates of outstanding $500 bills in circulation are about 286,000 notes, or $143,889,500 worth. For $1,000 bills, there are 167,101 notes, or obviously $167,101,000. It is well known that these high value notes were mostly issued to Brett Maverick in the 1880’s for his high stakes poker games.

Obviously, thousand-dollar bills — rare thousand-dollar bills — are cool to begin with, but can you imagine a time when the U.S. Treasury issued notes specifically for one man? For gambling?

Damn, I hope it’s true.

I’m worried about Eric J. Sinrod.

Sinrod, a San Francisco lawyer, just posted a News.com Perspectives piece entitled “iPod porn pains parents, employers.” Seriously. The guy is worried about iPod porn.

With a 5G iPod, Sinrod argues, children could escape the watchful eyes of their parents — and the limitations of the too-public family-room PC:

However, the ability of parents to monitor is seriously undermined if their children quickly can download adult content onto their iPods and then take it away from the home for easy viewing elsewhere.

Very true — though of course the same could be said for PSPs, DVDs/videotapes (your children don’t have a TV in their room, do they?!), and of course the choice of adolescents since time immemorial: good ol’-fashioned magazines. So what’s new?

Not much. But Sinrod has a scare for the workers of the world lined up:

Yet, iPods are becoming so ubiquitous and are so small, they are an easy vehicle for bringing pornography into the workplace. Employees discreetly could [sic] try to view pornography away from the watch of others. By engaging in such behavior, they often could be distracted from their true work functions, and problematically, they might contribute to an inappropriate and potentially hostile work environment to the extent the iPod porn is seen by others.

Here Sinrod tries to have it both ways, arguing both for hidden porn and that seen by co—wait, why I am engaging this argument? I should be asking: where does this guy work? Do his co-workers tend to disappear for long stretches, unable to spend 4 hours (assuming they get lunch) without a porn fix? Where does he expect them to escape “the watch of others”? The bathroom? The supplies closet?

Perhaps at Duane Morris, Sinrod’s law firm, no-one suffers the indignity of toiling away at an open cubicle, so they can partake right in their offices. By… holding an iPod under their desks? Whilst wearing the trademark white headphones? Yes that sounds quite subtle — and certainly something that was impossible before, especially in an age of PDAs, laptops, and yes, even mobile phones.

Truth is, kids who want to see porn don’t need a $300 iPod to get the job done, and adults who want to sneak it into the workplace could just use a thumb-sized USB drive (and not have to transcode their stash.) Sinrod and other nimrods want to pretend this is a new “problem”, one that can be solved with yet more policies and restrictions. He’s wrong.

Really, if we could just find a way to avoid hiring — or siring — podpeople like Sinrod, we could all enjoy our iPods in peace.

Election day today, and of course I went to the polls. I cast my ballot for mayor and council members feeling confident in my choices, but I must confess that in one contest I didn’t have a feel for either candidate. Now, normally I would advise anyone who doesn’t feel informed to just skip that race altogether. In this case, however, I used a non-scientific approach.

See, there’s this house just up the street that had “Bush/Cheney” signs plastered all over its fences last year. This year, the spots were taken up with the name of one of the candidates. So I voted for his opponent.

Yes, thinking “anyone who Bush fans like is bad” is more than a little simplistic, but I’m not alone there. I guess Virginians weren’t impressed by Bush’s “Virginia Victory Rally” speech, which included such highlights as “I like a guy who loves his wife.”

[Bush, t]he sunny optimist who loved to think big is now facing polls in which for the first time a majority of Americans say they do not trust him. “It’s like it’s twilight in America,” says one frustrated conservative.
–“A White House Without Rove?“

Two thoughts about today’s closed-door session in the Senate.

One, doesn’t the idea that the full Senate can meet in secret seem odd? I find any session of Congress that’s closed off from the public it (supposedly) serves to be troubling, save perhaps for the Intelligence Committee. Yet Rule 21 says that any Senator can move for a closed session and all it takes is a second. Strange.

Two, check out this photo:

This Getty Images shot (by Mark Wilson, taken from an MSNBC article) of Harry Reid fascinates me. First, check out the lighting. That’s not a fill flash, it’s probably television camera lighting. Notice how it feathers nicely on the edges, making Reid almost glow. Next look at the angle. Wilson must have crouched down and shot upwards, which would make it all the more unlikely that he could get eye contact with the Senator — but he nailed that too. The touch that really makes it, though, is the ceiling. We’re looking up at a glowing senator who has… a halo.

I wonder if Reid will save us.

Fun trivia bit: in the 1980s, when then-A.G. Edwin Meese released a report on pornography, photographers at the event immediately dove to the ground, eager to get the bared breast of the famous Lady Justice statue in the frame.

A couple weeks ago, one of the newsletters I follow carried this interesting tidbit:

The One-Topic Reporter
Wow. Journalism sure has changed. Case in point: Toronto Globe and Mail reporter Shawna Richer has been given the go-ahead to spend the entire 2004-05 hockey season covering the Pittsburgh Penguins’ hot rookie, Sidney Crosby, who hails from Canada and is considered the next Wayne Gretzky. That’s right, it’s all Crosby all the time.

According to this column at SI.com by Richard Deitsch, Richer has acquired a work visa, rented a one-bedroom apartment in Pittsburgh, and she’ll be writing stories that appear not only in the sports section but also on the newspaper’s front page (two to three times a week). And she’ll be blogging about Crosby daily (or near daily). …

So that’s one subject, one reporter — for an entire season.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I can see why following young Sidney might have some appeal. But it seems to me that if we’re going to start dedicating reporters to a single person, we could set our sights a little higher. Perhaps, say, Congress?

How many of the 535 members of the U.S. Congress have their own dedicated reporter? I’ll wager the answer is zero, which is quite a shame. Because there’s another group that’s lavishing them with attention: lobbyists.

Oh, sure, we all know they’re out there, but do we really know how many? According to WaPo, there are 34,785 registered lobbyists at the federal level — or roughly 65 per member, a 53% increase from even 5 years ago.

Billions are being spent in this effort, and the article notes that “big-bucks lobbying is luring nearly half of all lawmakers who return to the private sector when they leave Congress, according to a forthcoming study by Public Citizen’s Congress Watch.” More ex-Members, more effective lobbying.

So I’m sure Sidney’s a good kid, and who knows, the Canadians might have very little to worry in their government. Me, I’d prefer that American dedicated reporters start up The Hill.

Q. What country, a constitutional democratic republic, allows all of its citizens over 18 to vote — except for those in a certain profession? And what’s the profession?

A. Guatemala has universal suffrage for adults over 18, except “active duty members of the armed forces may not vote and are restricted to their barracks on election day.”

Is that fascinating or what? G-d, I love The World Factbook.

Bonus Trivia: why is Switzerland’s Internet extension (and ISO 3166 abbreviation) “CH”? Because it’s Latin for Confoederatio Helvetica, or Swiss Confederation. The Latin designation was apparently chosen so as not to show preference amongst the official languages of German, French, Italian, Romansh. I did not know that!

Ahhh, the joys of being an Iowan. By dint of our early caucus, we’re given the chance to be bombarded with political messages that other states may never see.

Obviously, this tends to take place before major elections, which is why my jaw dropped tonight when our ABC affiliate aired an ad to “draft” a 2008 presidential candidate. Yes, more than three years in advance of the election, a 527 is airing ads to drum up support for… Condoleeza Rice.

That’s right, a group called Americans for Rice has purchased airtime in New Hampshire and Iowa for their cheesy ad with a couple discussing Condi over lemonade.

I just don’t have the words.

In a time when national politicians are so staged-managed that some are analyzing the President’s fidgeting and teeth-grinding for meaning, it can be refreshing to return to local leader for a bit of color.

Take our mayoral race, which featured a primary yesterday. Out of four candidates, three of whom had been involved in local politics in the past, the electorate chose the fresh face by an astonishing margin: the winner collected more votes than the other three players combined.

But blah blah, democracy at work. The part that I enjoy is when the paper asked our mayor, a distanct second in votes, how he felt about the race. Rather than subject us all to some generic babble about a tough contest, the democratic process, and all that, our mayor tipped his hat to the front-runner with just three words: “He smoked me.”

That he did, mayor. That he did.

I’ll tell you something I despise (don’t I always?): when people call, you answer, and then they say “Who’s this?”, often in a demanding tone. I always say, in a slightly chilly fashion, “Who wants to know?”

I should have done the same the other day. The phone rang and it was “Neesha” with two questions about the upcoming mayoral election. The two questions were, naturally, about whom I planned to vote for in the primary and general. I told Neesha that, honestly, I had no idea. Of the 4 candidates, I believe all have been mayor at least once before, and really it’s hard to tell the difference between most of them.

Yet what I should have said was: “Who’s funding this poll?”

I’ve now seen several sites reference this Reuters photo of President Bush scribbling a note to Condoleeza Rice. The original photo is sort of a generic, almost stock “busy at work” shot. Yahoo!’s version, though, crops tight on the content of the note itself:

(They made the bizarre choice to caption it as “U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting…”)

Now let’s get something straight. I am obviously no Bush fan, and I never have been. But I also don’t think it’s fair to sneer at the very idea that the president is passing a note to the Secretary of State regarding, eh, personal matters. I see this as entirely plausible: after all, the Secretary of State is the lead diplomat, and should have not only an excellent grasp of the scheduling and timing, but also a good sense of when would be the most discreet time to make a brief exit. So 1) choosing to write a note and 2) jotting “I think I may need a bathroom break” seems perfectly fine by me.

But what’s with the question mark? What’s with the “is this possible”? For all the pomp, circumstance and snazzy headphones present at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York, it’s still a room filled with people, with the same needs.

Suddenly, though, I’m curious about the restrooms at the U.N. I wonder, do the men’s rooms have multiple stalls, or is it one at a time? Do they bother with urinals? With or without privacy screens, do you think? Does everybody try to check each other out? (“Oh ho, Mr. ‘Eight Palaces’ is compensating, eh?”) Does Bush bring in Secret Service?

Now that I think about it, maybe there is specific bathroom protocol. Maybe there is an elaborate series of hand signals for messages like “Abort, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inside”. Perhaps the Egpytian Ambassador stands guard while the Saudis scrawl anti-Israeli graffiti on the hand dryer…

Hmmm. So how did a fairly high-minded post questioning a Reuters photographer’s choice devolve into bathroom jokes? Oh, that’s right: the call of (human) nature.

Update [Fri 4:07a]: Mi hermana thought the photo might be fake. It’s not.

Just discovered a piece from 10 years ago in “Washington Monthly” called The FEMA Phoenix. Amazing parallels as it mentions the bumbling, ineffective response to a devastating hurricane (in that case, Andrew) as compared to the lightning-fast, universally-praised response to Oklahoma City and also flooding in Iowa.

The difference, of course, was directors — and the presidents who appointed them. George H.W. Bush chose “Wallace Stickney, head of New Hampshire’s Department of Transportation, to lead FEMA. Stickney’s only apparent qualification for the post was that he was a close friend and former next door neighbor of Bush Chief of Staff John Sununu.” (Shades of Michael Brown, who became FEMA’s chief counsel, and then director, on the basis of being somebody’s college roommate.) Clinton, of course, chose James Lee Witt, who was the first FEMA director who actually had emergency management experience (a truly depressing thought.)

Many people have heard this story by now, of course. But here’s the part that blows me away: George W. Bush specifically complimented Witt in his first presidential debate.

You know, as governor, one of the things you have to deal with is catastrophe. I can remember the fires that swept Parker County, Texas. I remember the floods that swept our state. I remember going down to Del Rio, Texas. I have to pay the administration a compliment. James Lee Witt of FEMA has done a really good job of working with governors during times of crisis. [qtd. in Miracle Worker: Bush longs for James Lee Witt, the Clinton man he should have kept, by Bruce Reed]

Imagine the excellence required to inspire a presidential candidate to praise his opponent’s administration. Then ask yourself why the “CEO President” felt the need “to switch horses midstream.”

And seriously, read the “Washington Monthly” article. Everything old is new again.

“Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack? That’s a very important question and it’s in the national interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond,” the president said. [qtd. in Facility Owners Charged As Deaths Hit 423, Associated Press]

It’s amazing how much — and how little — Mr. Bush packed into these two sentences. In some ways, it’s like a PR master class.

Consider:

• The first rule of PR is “answer the question you wish you were asked.” Bush goes one better by punting the question altogether, basically just agreeing it’s “a very important question” but not answering it.
• Note the use of what “went on“, as opposed to what “went wrong“. PR types never like to admit that anything went awry, ever. This goes double for most Republicans, as I’ve said before.
• The word “better” is another marketing favorite — because it allows for sentences such as “What was great is now even better!” It’s also marvelously vague: rather than giving any concrete, measurable metrics, or even specific verbs like promising to “fix” the problems or “speed” the aid, we get an empty promise.

Bush is hardly inventing these techniques, though. This is merely corpo-speak writ large. But in this time of national tragedy, of war and calamity, don’t we deserve more? Don’t we deserve…this:

But if the president really wants to turn around the perception that he’s failed, he has a better option than belated hyperactivity and spin: Bush should put his own prestige on the line by appearing in an unscripted public forum to answer questions about the government’s response to the disaster. He should schedule a press conference, or, better yet, a town hall meeting with residents. The directors of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security can join him onstage, if they’d like, but this president who likes bold action should promise that he will be the one doing the talking. [from “Political Hurricane” by John Dickerson]

You bet we do. But I’m not holding my breath.

The U.S. military continues its effort to streamline operations, with panels evaluating the closing and consolidation of bases and other facilities.

Apparently, there’s plenty to cut. I wouldn’t know. I can’t claim to know too much about military effectiveness, having gleaned most of my knowledge from reading Tom Clancy and Jane’s as a teen.

I do know a little something about English, and that’s what has me worried. Consider this:

Endorsing the Pentagon’s vision of streamlining support services across the armed forces, the commission also signed off on most recommendations to merge several education, medical and training programs. The Defense Department calls this “jointness” — the services combining their strengths, rather than working separately, to save money and promote efficiency.

Jointness? Somebody needs to get these people a copy of the bullfighter’s guide. What exactly is wrong with “merger”, “cooperation”, “coordination”, “consolidation”, “teamwork”, etc. that inspires the creation of new bullshit words? Answer: everybody wants to maintain their branches and fiefdoms. Which is human nature, to a degree. I just hope they all can spend more time fighting real wars, as opposed to turf wars.