Watchdogs on Capitol Hill

There was nothing funny about the 2010 General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas that featured a clown, a mind reader and an overall taxpayer price tag of $820,000.

— Rep. Mike Coffman and Rep. Jackie Speier, March 18, 2013

Opinions may differ on that statement; in fact, more than one 'segment' of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart has made comedic capital out of the GSA's spree. But it is undeniable that the United States has an enormous public debt* and that wasteful spending within the federal government only makes things worse.

* Over $9 trillion according to the 2011 CIA World Factbook, under the definition of public debt as 'the total of all government borrowings less repayments that are denominated in a country's home currency." [Wikipedia]

***

THIS MONDAY, Reps. Jackie Speier and Mike Coffman wrote an op-ed for Politico to announce a Congressional Watchdog Caucus, which hopes to ease matters for federal employees and others who want to report misuses of funds and other problems within government.

For anyone who wants to report, the route is complex. There is more than one office (or, watchdog) which undertakes investigations and passes on preexisting records to those who request them.

A Verse on Squash for Nowruz

Cucumis sativus
Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé: Flora von Deutschland,
Österreich und der Schweiz (1885)
Via Wikimedia Commons

IN HONOUR of Nowruz, the Zoroastrian feast day which celebrates the beginning of spring, here is an Iranian poem.

It echoes the Aesopian fable which is known in French as "Le chêne et le roseau," in English as "The Oak and the Reed."

But Nasir Khusraw, the 11th-century Iranian poet who was of course not Zoroastrian considering that Islam had replaced that faith, wrote it in qasida verse. It was collected in his Divan.

HAVE you heard? A squash vine grew beneath a towering tree.

In only twenty days it grew and spread and put forth fruit.

Of the tree it asked: 'How old are you? How many years?'

Replied the tree: 'Two hundred it would be, and surely more.'

The squash laughed and said: 'Look, in twenty days, I've done more than you; tell me, why are you so slow?'

The tree responded: 'O little squash, today is not the day of reckoning between the two of us.'

'Tomorrow, when winds of autumn howl down on you and me, then shall it be known for sure which one of us is the real man!'

(Divan, 256)

نشنیده‌ای که زیر چناری کدو بنی بر رست و بردوید برو بر به روز بیست؟

پرسید از آن چنار که تو چند ساله‌ای؟ --- گفتا دویست باشد و اکنون زیادتی است

خندید ازو کدو که من از تو به بیست روز --- بر تر شدم بگو تو که این کاهلی ز چیست

او را چنار گفت که امروز ای کدو --- با تو مرا هنوز نه هنگام داوری است

فردا که بر من و تو وزد باد مهرگان ---

N.B.: The diction of the translation drives me a bit nuts, but de gustibus.

"Squash" is a noisome word in this context because it often refers to species which were imported to the 'Old World' from the Americas during the western Renaissance period; in fact the very word is derived from Narragansett according to the ITP Nelson Canadian Dictionary on the table beside me. A German translation I came across has کدو = kadú = pumpkin, but 'gourd' might be accurate, too.

***

"Nasir Khusraw: A Portrait of the Persian Poet, Traveller and Philosopher" [Institute of Ismaili Studies], by Dr Alice C Hunsberger
"Nasir Khusraw" [Wikipedia]

[Edited for brevity and style, August 2023]

Misanalysis

IT is ten years yesterday since the US under the Bush administration invaded Iraq. To celebrate the anniversary, Wired published a column on its website by Nada Bakos, a CIA analyst at the outset of the Iraq War. Under pressure from Vice-President Dick Cheney and his associate "Scooter" Libby to make the case that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was linked to al Qaeda, she writes that she and her colleagues even rehearsed with her superior how to reply to the questions of the administration.

Photo: A September 2002 antiwar demonstration in London.
By William M. Connolley, (CC BY-SA 3.0) Licence. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Pope-Watching on Twitter

AFTER black smoke poured from the Vatican chimney last evening, and again this morning, the sun reached its apex above clouded skies amidst continuing uncertainty far beneath it over the identity of the new Pope.

Father Federico Lombardi passed the time describing to journalists the cartridges which are used to create the smoke. When "asked if the smoke harmed the Michelangelo frescoes on the walls of the Sistine Chapel, or the cardinals' lungs," he could reassure them with a negative.

Even outside of the press briefing, journalists were still assembled, thronging around St. Peter's Basilica like worker bees around their queen:

Source: @DianeSawyer

THE Guardian's liveblog helpfully noted that Barça (Barcelona FC) has played three games during papal conclaves, and that they've won each of them 4-0. Yesterday it was AC Milan which bit the dust. Other Catholics and non-Catholics were also celebrating the conclave and preparing for the final decision in their own particular, if untraditional ways: e.g. displays of irreverent wit on Twitter, and this:

Source: @thepioneerwoman

Then came the grand moment in which the tide of smoke turned:

White smoke!

proclaimed the Huffington Post at 6:06 p.m. UTC. The cry amplified through different newspaper websites, television broadcasts, and blogs, in Italian and Portuguese and Greek and Spanish and all sorts of other languages.


THEN came the seemingly interminable wait until the name of the pope would be given.