Cakewalkmongering.
Via DefenseTech, a great coffee-break blog, this chunk of perspective on the Cakewalk in Iraq:
With $166 billion spent or requested, Bush’s war spending in 2003 and 2004 already exceeds the inflation-adjusted costs of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish American War and the Persian Gulf War combined, according to a study by Yale University economist William D. Nordhaus. The Iraq war approaches the $191 billion inflation-adjusted cost of World War I.
Or perhaps this number will resonate a little more?
To put it in perspective, Bush hopes to spend more in Iraq and Afghanistan than all 50 states say they need—$78 billion—to finance the budget shortfalls they anticipate for 2004.
He thinks he’s won.
This is what Grover Norquist, an American for Tax Reform, had to say about Governor Riley’s attempt to shift the tax burden from folks making $4,600 a year to out-of-state timber companies:
No one’s life is a complete waste. Some of us serve as bad examples. And Governor Riley is going to serve as a bad example. Years from now, little baby Republican governors will be told scary stories late at night, around the campfire, about the sad fate of governors like Riley who steal a billion dollars from their people.
The referendum was voted down by droves of lower-income voters who stood to gain from it. And Norquist is thrilled:
This is a shot across the bow for next year’s decision-making. Every Republican governor who thinks of raising taxes next year will walk past Traitor’s Gate and see Bob Riley’s head on a pike. The voters of Alabama have saved taxpayers from California to Maine billions of dollars.
He thinks he’s won. Let him. He thinks we’re on our way back to the grand old days of William McKinley. We may very well be. We may have forgotten how bad they were, and hard the world can be without the safety nets we fought so hard to put in place so many years ago. Well, we’re going to start remembering, make no mistake: that’s the only “waste” to cut out of state budgets from California to Maine; from Oregon to Alabama.
But we fought our way up and out of those dark days once already, and if we never managed to make it to that shining city on the hill where no one gets left behind, not even the least of us, still. We came up with a pretty good nation, for the most part. We can do it again.
And this time, it won’t be so easy to forget. No one’s life is a complete waste, after all; some of us serve as bad examples. We will tell our children about Grover Norquist, and his disdain for public service, his loathing of the commonweal, his grotesque and brutal selfishness. We will tell them about how he laughed at the idea of seizing the government that makes so much of this pretty good nation possible for us and drowning it in the bathtub. And they will be better people for it, and we will have a better world. We’ll get a little closer to the shining city, and we won’t be so quick to turn our backs on ourselves again.
Gosh, Mr. Norquist. Thanks.
Sweet Home Alabama.
Today’s the referendum on Governor Riley’s ambitious plan to restructure Alabama’s state tax plan. Here’s how the New York Times summed up the situation a few months ago:
Alabama’s tax system has long been brutally weighted against the least fortunate. The state income tax kicks in for families that earn as little a $4,600, when even Mississippi starts at over $19,000. Alabama also relies heavily on its sales tax, which runs as high as 11 percent and applies even to groceries and infant formula. The upshot is wildly regressive: Alabamians with incomes under $13,000 pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes, while those who make over $229,000 pay just 4.1 percent.
A main reason Alabama’s poor pay so much is that large timber companies and megafarms pay so little. The state allows big landowners to value their land using “current use” rules, which significantly lowball its worth. Individuals are allowed to fully deduct the federal income taxes they pay from their state taxes, something few states allow, a boon for those in the top brackets.
Governor Riley’s plan, which would bring in $1.2 billion in desperately needed revenue, takes aim at these inequalities. It would raise the income threshold at which families of four start paying taxes to more than $17,000. It would scrap the federal income tax deduction and increase exemptions for dependent children. And it would sharply roll back the current-use exemption, a change that could cost companies like Weyerhaeuser and Boise Cascade, which own hundreds of thousands of acres, millions in taxes. Governor Riley says that money is too tight to lift the sales tax on groceries this time, but that he intends to work for that later.
Things don’t look good. Despite the desperately needed restructuring of the inhumane tax burden on the poor, and despite the dire straits of Alabama’s public school system, and despite the heroic efforts of conservative Christians compelled to do what Jesus would do, the plan is being sold as nothing more than a tax increase—and that just won’t do in Grover Norquist’s bathtub. And lower-income voters, black and white, reeling and punch-drunk from decades of broken promises and fire-sale government, just don’t trust the state when it genuinely tries to hold out a helping hand: polls show 38% of Alabamians making $80,000 or more favor the restruction, but only 21% of those making less than $20,000 a year. (Remember: in Alabama, you pay income tax on an annual income as low as $4,600.) —Alabama’s new polling regulations will doubtless add to the anxiety and consternation.
The Right Christians will be covering the vote all day today. (A Minority of One, sadly, closed its doors.) In the meanwhile, read this American Prospect piece (thanks, Making Light); management humbly offers up these previous posts, with some links that are worth your while.
Where the hammer meets the nail.
Atrios is a minor god. I mean, you knew that, right? But when he kicks out the jams with one of his all-too-rare longer pieces, the jams stay bloody well kicked. Read his definitive statement on identity politics, then wake the neighbors and tell the kids.
Under pressure.
Got an email alert this morning letting me know that over 100,000 people had sent faxes to their congressional delegations in the past 48 hours, demanding a vote in favor of the Harkin amendment—the one that will block the Bush administration’s attempt to destroy overtime compensation for millions of workers.
So much for the 40-hour week; so much for the weekend. Onward, jobless recovery!
Anyway. I sent mine. Have you sent yours?
Moral equivalency.
I’ve never really linked to Instapundit. Never really read him much, despite his outsized impact in the Islets of Bloggerhans; you’ll encounter his spoor pretty much wherever you roam—though, admittedly, not so much on the sinistral side of the archipelago, these days. It’s become something of a trope, in fact, almost a cherished tradition: the blog entry from someone on the center-left that begins, “I used to link to Instapundit, but with increasing trepidation as he’s gotten more and more strident and reactionary. But today he crossed a line…”
Which is not to say Professor Reynolds hasn’t crossed something I’d consider a line many, many times before. Merely that I decided to open with this rhetorical trick, because the particular line crossed here is a doozy:
Reynolds approvingly cites an equivalency between Cruz Bustamante’s membership in a rambunctious Chicano advocacy group in college in the 1960s with everything Trent Lott ever did to support segregation, white supremacy, Strom Thurmond, and the pro-secessionist South.
As usual, when it comes to race and the Wurlitzer’s attempts to twist and distort the facts, David Neiwert has the detailed, point-by-point rebuttal. I also highly recommend this blistering smackdown from Ted Barlow at Crooked Timber. —These two posts are required reading on the subject; any attempt to continue the ridiculous meme of “MEChA is a racist organization that Bustamante must repudiate” that does not specifically reference them and address their points is intellectually dishonest, and not worth the pixels it’s printed on.
The kicker, from Barlow’s can of whupass: there’s the Voz de Aztlán, a genuinely racist organization whose stances all-too-conveniently get mixed up with MEChA’s; they are, in fact, the very thing principled conservatives who haven’t bothered to do their homework—or who think cough syrup is an acceptable excuse for slander—think they’re condemning with this nonsense. They are anti-Semitic; they are homophobic. And they are supporting Arnold Schwarzenegger in the California recall.
No on the recall. Yes on Bustamante. And Instapundit Reynolds is hereby consigned to the killfile of history.
President Firebug?
Here’s how this four-day-old article begins:
An emerging whodunit in Central Oregon hovers amid the smoke draping the east side of the Cascade Range.
Can it be pure coincidence, locals are asking, that two wildfires sprang up in view of the spot where President Bush planned to promote his plan to thin forests for wildfire prevention?
Here’s how it ends (after noting that lightning’s been ruled out):
The coincidences multiply considering the two fires erupted about 10 miles apart at almost the same time, although winds that whipped through the region might explain that. The Booth fire started near Round Lake, a camping spot next to the Mount Jefferson Wilderness, while the Bear Butte fire began in the wilderness, away from roads.
The Central Oregon Arson Task Force will investigate the blazes, but flames have kept officers from beginning their inquiry.
Lightning starts about 15 percent of wildfires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
People start the rest.
What do you think? (Via Fred at the Oregon Blog.)
Ubu Roy.
In accordance with a couple of the various versions of the Second Commandment, a graven image, before which a small but ferocious number of Confederate-flag–waving Southerners (apparently quite telegenic) had bowed down themselves to, and served (with various proclamations and lamentations, that they might be seen of men; they have their reward), has been removed.
(Do I mock? Very well, then, I mock. A group of hotheads and disgruntled malcontents so eager to trample the Fourteenth Amendment that they willingly cast themselves as cartoon extras in the stage-managed aggrandizement of a third-rate political hack’s bid to become governor of a bargain-basement state too punch-drunk to drag its tax code into the 20th century—that’s eminently mock-worthy. That the media would poke and stoke the “story” for the sake of a few ratings points in the dog days of August is deplorable. That anyone takes Judge Roy Moore seriously—or thinks anyone else might, outside the Kleig-lit pucker of rabble and rouser—is self-evidently ludicrous. —If not, well: you’re free to consult the Google oracle for a sense of the actual role the Ten Commandments play in this great multicultural, secular nation of ours.
(Seriously. The whole God damned thing is a barrel-bottom Hollywood rip of Alfred Jarry.)
Early morning doubletake.
Ha ha. Read this, from Atrios’s coments section, citing a New York Times Letter from Europe:
This summer’s biggest scandal—the invasion and occupation of Iraq—has spawned endless speculation about who really wields power under President George W. Bush.
Everybody has a theory, but no one outside the White House really knows, and no one inside will say.
In the old days, observers of the White House—the press, they were called then—were granted access to various officials and important documents, with frequent news conferences from the President. Independent investigations led by Congress added to the scrutiny.
With all the setbacks the United States has suffered since 2000—disputed elections, stock market declines, a timid, Republican-friendly press and the curtailment of personal liberties—the exercise has changed. Whitehousology is here…
Then follow the link at the bottom to read more. (Courtesy of the Cunctator. —Which means now for some reason I’m reminded of the time that Art Buchwald took a chauffer-driven Cadillac into the then-Soviet Union to show them all what a capitalist looked like and proceeded to get drunk in [among other places] a Moscow dive where he bellowed, “My KGB guy can lick anybody else’s KGB guy in the house!”)
No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.
That’s from the second letter Paul wrote to Timothy: 2 Timothy, chapter 2, verse 4. Nice to know that First Command, purveyor of life insurance to our men and women in uniform since 1958, and now (thanks to deregulation) a full-service bank that understands the challenges of the military lifestyle, has taken Scripture to heart. Check out the terms of a basic checking account where a private could stash her paycheck:
First Checking Account
- A basic transaction account with no minimum balance requirement.
- Non-interest bearing.
- Avoid the service charge by having their full pay direct deposited into their First Account.
- May write an unlimited number of checks; however, only the first 10 per statement cycle are free. Subsequent checks are $0.50 each.
- First 3 ATM withdrawals per statement cycle incur no charge from First Command Bank; subsequent withdrawals are $1.50 each. (May be subject to additional charge by ATM owner.)
- ATM Rebates limited to 3 transactions. See ATM card details for more information.
- Overdraft protection of $250 is automatically assigned.
- Opening deposit—$25.00
- Monthly service charge—$3.00 any month full pay is not direct deposited.
That’d be all of her paycheck, mind. Directly deposited. But hey: that’s pretty much standard issue for a cheap-ass, ground-level, screw the plebes who aren’t paying attention checking account; college students get to sign up for them every day. Nah, skimble has the goods on First Command’s real money-maker:
If you know anything about mutual funds, you may be familiar with the load, or sales charge, that you must pay for investing in the fund. Two to eight-and-a-half percent is a range of fairly common initial “front-end” loads. But military personnel are being slapped with loads of fifty percent on their savings for retirement…
Well, hey. It’s a variation on cheap-labor conservativism: if you find you can’t cut the rate you pay for labor when all is said and done, you can at least let a crony skim some of the fat. Right?
Credit where credit is due: when a veteran gets soaked by one of those publish-your-own-book deals, First Command will let him place a a Bedside Reading notice. To help move some units.
Live from Little Beirut.
Aaron, the Demented Lawyer, fights the good fight. Here’s his play-by-play of the President’s recent visit to Little Beirut: who got arrested, and how, and why. (Upshot? Precious few. Downside? Still brutal, still needless, still overly confrontational. Keep those feet on the sidewalk, citizen!) Emma Goldman has more, plus photos, and a link to the blog maintained by Shut Up O’Reilly’s old stomping grounds; she also tells you why it’s so cheesy to breeze into town for a $25K-a-plate fundraiser and stiff the 8% unemployed city with a $200,000 bill. (Do note the Democrat has paid up; the Republican has yet to return the city’s calls.) —The nut graf of it all, as it were:
I guess I don’t really know what to make of all this, except to say that—again—two thirds of the media told a story that didn’t happen to sell fear and anger for profit. This is a city in which something like 75% of the population voted for Gore (that stat comes from memory from The Emerging Democratic Majority). The folks at the protest were exercising their right to tell their president—their president—what they thought of his policies. They were overwhelmingly telling him his priorities were wrong and that he’d better serve the people better. But what do the local media show? The chilling tale of radicals barely kept in check while defiling the good name of the republic. Too bad we can’t vote them out of office.
If you wanted to put some money where it would do some good, you might think nationally, and consider MoveOn.org’s million dollars for democracy; you might think locally. Or you might decide to moon the people’s White House. Act accordingly.
Democracy in action.
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word “doublethink” involved the use of doublethink.
—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four
In that light, then, marvel at the audacious beauty, the effrontery, the sheer, clueless chutzpah of the Quick Vote poll question on display as of 20.55 Pacific time, 19 August 2003, at The Official Re-election Site for President George W. Bush:
How many working families are benefiting from President Bush’s Jobs and Growth Act?
- 12 million
- 23 million
- 34 million
- 18 million
But! Take heart!
That’s why they can never hope to win. Chaos sneaks in every time. They can cover the world with cameras, but they can’t stop the guys in the monitor rooms from jerking off or playing the fifteenth sequel to Doom for the hundredth time. Total bloody chaos. Christ.
—Grant Morrison, The Invisibles
Because, at 20.56 Pacific Time, 19 August 2003, when you tried to vote (for 12 million) just to see what would happen, this is what you got.
(Holy crap! They’ve got W Stuff! And a GeorgeWBushStore.com! With Interstate W’04 stuff! All put together by The Spalding Group! Which is part of English Emprise! Who’ve been at this for a while! Who also supported our troops, all grass-roots like! Only I guess they don’t support him so much anymore! Chaos!)
PROM-1 (AP bounding fragmentation mine, steel casing, former Yugoslavia).
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE MINE
The PROM-1 is a circular AP bounding fragmentation mine with a body made of forged steel. There is a threaded fuze well in the centre on the top of the mine, in which the UPROM-1 external fuze is screwed into. The base of the mine is secured to the bottom of the mine body with five screws. The mine body is pre-fragmented inside. The main explosive charge is made of cast Trotil in earlier models and Hexolite in later models. The propelling charge is made of 3 g. of black powder and is filled into a metal tube located through the centre of the main charge. An internal fuze is located offset inside the mine body. It is initiated by a wire which is attached to the lower side of the fuze and secured to the base of the mine. The fuze is built into the mine at the factory and is not to be removed. The external UPROM-1 fuze is similar to the UPMR-3. The difference is that the UPMR-3 doesn’t have a built in initiation capsule while the UPROM-1 has. The PROM-1 is delivered with two rolls of trip wire, which are 16 m long and covered with polyvinyl-chloride plastic. A hook is fastened in each end of the trip wires for attachment to the fuze and anchor. Although the PROM-1 only comes with two trip wires, it can be set up with up to six trip wires. On the upper side of the UPROM-1 is a carrier on which the pressure star is located. On the top of the carrier is a split ring for connection to trip wires. Under the pressure star is a fuze carrier on which the safety clip is attached by means of a puller. When the puller is down the safety clip is locked and cannot be removed. When the puller is in the horizontal position the safety clip is free to be pulled out. The pressure star carrier is shaped like a rod and has a hole through the end to attach the trip wire split ring. The pressure star has four arms which are directed upwards. In the middle is a hole to insert the pressure star carrier. The mine is normally buried with only the pressure star and the star carrier exposed above the ground.
METHOD OF OPERATION
Required pull of the trip or pressure on the pressure star, pushes an internal cylinder in the fuze down until the retaining balls fall out, releasing the spring loaded striker which strikes the ignition capsule which in turn fires the propelling charge. This creates a pressure between the base and the mine body. The screws on the bottom of the mine breaks and the mine body is thrown upwards until it reaches the end of the anchor wire. The length of the anchor wire is 0,7-0,8 m on older versions and 0,2-0,3 m on newer versions. When the anchor wire becomes tight the spring loaded striker is released and fires the detonator which in turn fires the booster and the main charge.
NEUTRALISING
Trace both ends of the trip wire. Remove the trip wire clip from the mine or cut the wire. Insert safety clip with the puller in the horizontal position into the bed of the fuze. Lock it by lowing the puller down. If a safety clip is not available, a 2 mm wire or nail can be inserted into the hole of the safety clip carrier.
DISARMING
Neutralise the mine. Remove fuze from the mine body.
REMARKS
Lethal radius is 40 m and hazardous radius is 50 m.
Just in case, you know, you ever came across a dark steel cylinder 26 cm tall with some sharp spines on one end, attached to a couple of trip wires, and you were wondering how to keep it from killing you. You’re most likely to run into one in Angola (“the greatest concentration of landmines in the world,” says the BBC, citing some 15 million mines; other sources say anywhere from 6 million to 20 million; 145 of them went off last year, down from 339 in 2001. “Previous attempts at peace did not last, and crime is still widespread,” warns Lonely Planet Angola. “Kidnapping, car-jacking and robbery continue to put foreign travelers at risk. The UK, US and Australian governments are still warning against travel to this hopeful but volatile nation. Stay tuned”)—but the PROM-1’s a popular little number: they’re also found in Mozambique, Iraq, and of course throughout the former Yugoslavia, their country of origin. —The Landmines Database was found via Futurismic, whose permalinks aren’t working for the day in question; “If not for the subject matter, you’d think they were assembly instructions for a Target bookshelf,” says poster Jeremy Lyon. And what blog post on landmines from a Yank still peaceably sipping his morning coffee would be complete without the requisite list of our compatriots and fellow travellers?
The fight my dog is in.
So I commented on the whole gay Episcopalian bishop thing the other day by saying that I didn’t really have a dog in that fight, but, and Kevin came along and (gently, gently) remonstrated me by pointing out I had the same dog in the fight as any other decent human being would, and I kinda nodded my head and went along with it even though it didn’t feel quite right. And some of that has to do with the fact that I wasn’t raised Episcopalian—we bounced back and forth between Methodists and Presbyterians growing up—and some of that has to do with the fact that my religion as it stands (which would be, what? my beliefs? my cosmology? my moral grounding? my ethical code? my ritualistic practices? my celebrations?) is best described as “other”: lapsed neo-pagan doesn’t quite cut it, and spiritualist atheist and a-anthropic deist are too cheeky to do much good. To say nothing of the fact that, whatever queerness bends the sexual proclivities of the Spouse and myself, we’re rather comfortably ensconced in the lap of heterosexual privilege. So: yeah, gay bishop confirmed, bigots routed for the nonce, good show, but.
Then up came Roz Kaveny, who articulated precisely which fight I’d rather were kicking up dust right now:
The question is not—should the Christian churches split over the question of allowing a few LGBT people to be clergy? The question is, when are the churches going to humble themselves in abject shame for their endless crimes against gay people?
Added bonus: gummitch, in comments, links to a couple of kick-ass Real Live Preacher posts on this subject, which are required reading: the second is a shredding exegesis of the Scripture cited by homophobic bigots, but the first—oh, my Lord, the first—
There, do you see the iron furnace door, gaping open? Do you see the roaring flames? Do you see the huge man with glistening muscles, covered with soot? Do you see him feeding the fire as fast as can with his massive, scooped shovel?
He feeds these flames with the bible, with every book, chapter, and verse that American Christians must burn to support our bloated lifestyles, our selfishness, our materialism, our love of power, our neglect of the poor, our support of injustice, our nationalism, and our pride.
See how frantically he works? Time is short, and he has much to burn. The prophets, the Shema, whole sections of Matthew, most of Luke, the entire book of James. Your blessed 10 commandments? Why would you want to post them on courtroom walls when you’ve burned them in your own cellar?
Do you see? DO YOU SEE? Do you see how we rip, tear, and burn scripture to justify our lives?
The heat from this cursed furnace rises up and warms the complacent worshippers in the pews above. The soot from the fire blackens our stained glass so that we may not see out and no one wants to see in.
Do you smell the reek of this injustice? It is a stink in the nostrils of the very living God. We are dressed in beautiful clothes and we wear pretty smiles, but we stink of this blasphemous holocaust.
Every church in America has a cellar like this. We must shovel 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, because every chapter and book we ignore must be burned to warm our comfy pews.
And you come to me with two little scraps of scripture to justify your persecution of God’s children?
Sit down Christian. Sit down and be you silent.
My hat’s off to you, Preacher. (And that image of the soot-covered shoveler does rather wonderful things, cognitively speaking, to the image of conservative Episcopalians smearing their foreheads with ashes in their grief. Doesn’t it?)
—In the interests of fair play, and to change the topic abruptly, I’ll point to this alarmingly good piece of news from Alabama:
The Christian Coalition of America endorsed Riley’s tax plan Wednesday, saying it represents social and economic justice for Alabama. Coalition President Roberta Combs called the plan “visionary and courageous.”
“I think this is a good plan and I think people of faith need to know about the plan,” Combs said.
This doing the right thing stuff could get to be an epidemic.
In your face, Fred Barnes.
Um. I mean. Not that I’m Episcopalian or anything, so it’s not like I actually had much of a dog in this fight—but how can decent folk not feel a surge of triumph when such transparent smear tactics are repudiated, and the good guy ends up winning?
And yet, I’m still not thrilled at the idea of President Dean.
From this week’s Doonesbury FAQ—
What’s up with Trudeau running a big Howard Dean campaign the last few weeks. Is Trudeau in the tank? —M. Mahoney, Sacramento, CA
Damn near. Here’s the skinny for full-disclosure buffs: GBT and Dr. Dean were childhood buddies, having first met at summer camp. During a camp wrestling tournament, the puny Trudeau pinned the athletic Dean twice, an humiliation (attention, biographers) that has haunted Dean ever since. After attending Yale together, the two lost track of one another until Dean became governor of Vermont and told a reporter that he’d developed his sense of humor hanging out with Trudeau. Trudeau wrote him to protest, because during his teenage years, GBT didn’t actually have a sense of humor. This may explain why reporters don’t think Dean has one, either. Actually he does, at least around Trudeau, so GBT gave him $2000 (maxing out early) on the promise of relief from daily Dean-For-America fundraising spam, a promise that his friend has yet to make good on. Dean has also refused to soften his position on gun control, drug reform, or any other issue of importance to GBT, so a lot of good it’s done.
Which is apparently the second source NewsMax relied on when it proclaimed that Howard Dean is the media-elite darling:
Dean is “the media’s favorite long shot for president” and enjoys an “adoring national press,” confirms Editor & Publisher magazine. Why? Because he loathes President Bush even more than his rivals do and attacks him on everything possible: Operation Iraqi Freedom, tax relief, education reform, national defense…
He has more in common with the Bush administration than he’d like to admit, however, notably the secrecy he so hypocritically attacks. The frequently out-of-state guv refused to reveal his campaign trips on his schedule. It took a lawsuit filed by local yokel newspapers and an order by the Vermont Supreme Court to force him to make public his trips campaigning for the White House.
By the way, here’s the inside story of why Bush-hating cartoonist Garry Trudeau gave Dean extra publicity in “Doonesbury”: The two are longtime friends who met at summer camp when they were 13, a fact Trudeau fails to disclose in his free plugs.
Of course, Dean and Trudeau attended Yale at the same time as President Bush. Small network, ain’t it?
