May 20, 2004
5:40 PM
Well, "Bill's List" is finally up on the Web. In a sense, this is only a beginning...as I find time, I'll fill in any gaps in the list of names and add sub-lists of past projects. The ultimate goal is create a one-stop information source for any aspiring writer that will show them who might be interested in publishing or representing a work like theirs. Okay, so I'm out to draw more traffic to my pair of websites, but the best way to keep surfers coming back is to give them something to come back for. And "Bill's List" should do just that.Gotta a lotta work ahead of me. Better take the rest of the evening off...
May 19, 2004
1:56 PM
Finally updated the "running" page with the Skaggs-Walsh info. Yep, not my best effort, but I've already got six out of the requisite nine NYC qualifiers under my belt, and it's only May. Hey, you always gotta look for the good in everything...Speaking of NYC, nice to see that we made the 2012 Olympics cut. The odds are long (last I checked, eight-to-one, according to the London bookies) but hey, you never know. New York is the only major city on the new list that has yet to host an Olympics (aside from Madrid, which is in the same country as Barcelona of '92 fame). Paris and London have each hosted the Games twice, but they seem to be benefitting from the fact that they're not only relatively spread out, but they're also not in America (or North America, for that matter). At least we've got better odds that Moscow (20-to-1).
May 17, 2004
5:00 PM
Wrapping up another Monday here. Bonked at the Skaggs-Walsh 5K on Saturday...still trying to get down the exact routine that will keep my gut from cramping up. Next race: only one can of V8 (instead of two), and two cups of water ten minutes before the race, not to mention a lot more water the night before.One race at a time...
May 12, 2004
5:00 PM
Nice little article I came across while checking out the old Clark04 site for the latest gossip about Clark's Veep chances (which appear to be better than fair). A Clark pick by Kerry would certainly boost interest in Unity, seeing as how we started off as a Clark grassroots org and, presciently perhaps, chose the new moniker of "Unity Runners" (okay, okay, not prescient by any means--I thought it sounded good, a heck of a lot better than "Runners for Change," which was the only real competition).It's a good thing no one went with one person's suggestion of forming "Runners for Kerry"...my lack of fire-in-the-belly enthusiasm for the Dem nominee aside, such a title would have been very limiting and would have placed us in a somewhat awkward position if the ticket ever became "Kerry/Clark."
Off to a cozy evening at the bachelor pad...I think it best for my physical safety to avoid the track during this thunderstorm, and my body certainly wouldn't mind a day's rest.
May 10, 2004
12:09 PM
It is time for Donald Rumsfeld to resign. President Bush should take ultimate responsibility for what has happened at Abu Ghraib (he is, after all, the one who appointed Secretary Rumsfeld), but the prospect of the "Anywhere But Here" President actually doing so is remote.Bush need not resign; he will simply have to answer to the voters for this fiasco come November. America will have to answer to the world, however, for the actions of Lynndie England and others, and the best answer possible is a national call for the "SecDef" to resign. It is Rumsfeld, after all, who set the stage for abuse by stretching the military too thin in Iraq and elsewhere, and not watching closely over those soldiers who were deployed.
The draft, which will most likely be reinstated this summer, should have been reinstated in November of 2002, as soon as the passing of the last Congressional elections gave Rumsfeld and the rest of the administration some political breathing room to properly prepare for the invasion of Iraq. As in Afghanistan in late 2001, this administration squandered an opportunity to do what was both politically and militarily practical, namely to make the sacrifices necessary to win a long, drawn- out conflict.
Secretary Rumsfeld seems more enamored of the "shock and awe" aspects of pursuing "deadenders" than what is more urgently required in the war on extemism: the dull and protracted "nation-building" that will ultimately win the hearts and minds of the rest of the world and drain the sea of misery in which extremism swims. Rumsfeld seems to have lost interest in Iraq once the statue of Saddam fell in Firdos Square: the same man who reviewed requests for horse feed from the Afghanistan campaign delegated all of "post-war" Iraq to Doug Feith, his Number Three, and delegated interrogation methods to Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq.
Yet it was precisely when major combat operations ended in Iraq that the real work should have begun. Large numbers of American troops should have been kept in Iraq to not only keep the country sufficiently peaceful for the rebuilding phase, but also to show Iraq's neighbors of Iran and Syria that America meant business about waging a global war on terrorism. And a more peaceful Iraq would have meant less pressure for interrogators to use questionable methods to glean "actionable intelligence" from their charges.
It is probably true that "Rummy," being the astute politician that he is, most likely did not want to know too much about what was going on at Abu Ghraib and other prisons, and it is probably true that many of the interrogations that took place at Abu Ghraib saved American lives. Yet, in the age of the Internet, everyone will eventually know everything, and it was naive to think that word of Americans torturing Iraqis in one of Saddam's old prisons would not get out. Whatever American lives were saved by the interrogators at Abu Ghraib will most likely be far outnumbered by the Americans who will die at the hands of those seeking revenge.
May 5, 2004
5:00 PM
Whew! Slogged away at "Bill's List" during down time today (betchya can't wait to see what it is, can you? ;-)). I'm a firm believer in doing something right the first time...hopefully it'll be ready by Memorial Day.And added that photo of myself at my writing desk to the top of my "Fiction" page...now I have a photo at the top of each page of my personal site. And before I forget, I should add this link to the archive of my old commentary (basically a forerunner of this blog).
May 3, 2004
12:39 PM
Another day, another week, another month. Speaking of month, nice to hear that, according to one insider via Newsweek, Kerry might make his Veep pick as early as the end of this month. And that pick just might be General Clark.Enjoy the new story posted on my fiction page, "s.t.u.d." Now back to the
mines for yours truly (sigh)...