Welcome to the Slapfest

Quote of the Day

2008-10-07T07:29:00.000-07:00

Taking a cue from some other blogs with quotes of the day, this was just delicious:

"That is my opinion—expert opinion—if you will," Mr. Martin said... "I don't pretend to be an exclusively fact-based reporter, though I try as hard as I can to get the facts."

We wouldn't want those pesky facts getting in the way of a good opinion, would we?

Devastating

2008-10-02T05:37:00.000-07:00

I know we're not supposed to care about how the "furriners" see us, but maybe we should be just a bit humiliated and embarrassed by this:

George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly... He failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting... There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN... [T]he ridicule was a new thing. It marked the end of respect.

There's more. Oh, there's more.

In the course of one Presidency, a mere eight years, the "last superpower" has plummeted back into the ranks of nations, with no real indicator that merely mingling in the ranks is the endpoint of Icarus's flight. Now there's "national greatness conservatism" for you.

Update: Here's another bit on how the administration just hasn't adapted to their changed circumstances and reduced influence, this time in the context of the financial crisis.

I never thought I'd agree with Jonah Goldberg on anything but...

2008-09-24T22:29:00.000-07:00

There's this:

I have concluded the best way to deal with the election roller coaster is to commit yourself to cocktail hour.

So that's OK.

Quick Courses in World Leadership

2008-09-17T07:17:00.000-07:00

How about these apples?

U.S. presidential candidate Sen. John McCain may take his running mate Sarah Palin to the United Nations next week, U.N. officials said on Tuesday, to give her the chance to meet a few world leaders... The Wall Street Journal cited an unnamed Republican strategist as saying a visit to the United Nations would boost the Alaska governor's foreign policy credentials.

Seriously? Is this really what they're reduced to? The deal is that she's never met a foreign leader. So going on a civics field trip with Grampa John is suddenly going to make her a foreign policy guru? It's good to know. Now I can fulfill my dream of being a zoologist by taking a trip to the San Diego Zoo. Hey, all the animals are there, what more do you need to know?

The woman from the Arizona delegation....

2008-09-03T21:05:00.001-07:00

When casting the delegation vote, she referred to John McCain as a "native son of Arizona". Well, I think to be a native son, you have to be a native. And John McCain's not a native son of Arizona:

McCain was born in 1936 at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone... His family... followed his father to various naval postings in the United States and the Pacific... In 1951, his family settled in Northern Virginia... McCain retired from the Navy on April 1, 1981 [and] moved to Arizona.

That's at the age of 44. Most definitions of native revolve around birth or origin. Just sayin'.

Trent Lott vs. Obama's guilt by association

2008-08-26T06:59:00.000-07:00

I can't really read the Corner without getting irritated and realizing that my perspective is almost alien when compared to that of "movement conservatives" (I also heartily despise their URL and post identifier format, but that's just crappy design and not limited to conservative group blogs).

So from this post on Andrew Sullivan's site, I found this post by Jonah Goldberg.

First, "lighten up"? From the guy who wrote Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning?

OK, but let me answer his question: "Why should we believe Obama is sincere in his after-the-fact denunciations of his longtime friend and colleague but not give Lott a similar benefit of the doubt?"

Because the basis for tarring Lott and Obama in each case is completely different.

Trent Lott got in trouble for essentially endorsing Thurmond's segregationist Presidential campaign, in support of which Thurmond once said:

I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.

To which Lott responded in the speech that got him run out of town on a rail (figuratively speaking):

When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either.

Lott didn't get in trouble because he was involved with Thurmond's segregationist movement at the time. Lott got in trouble because he explicitly endorsed that philosophy (there's no other way to construe those comments, given that the whole point of the Dixiecrat movement was to maintain segregation).

Obama never stood up in front of a bunch of people and positively affirmed the philosophy with which Bill Ayers was identified. In fact, Obama was never in any way associated with the philosophy or causes of Bill Ayers. Obama served on a neighborhood board with Ayers. Obama got a campaign donation from Ayers. I won't question simple dirty pool for-keepsies politics being played with that fact. But Goldberg's "analogy" fails in just about every respect.

What is that reporter DOING?

2008-08-20T07:05:00.001-07:00

Read this interview and compare and contrast with most interviews in the American press. The challenging and adversarial tone of the interview is rather astounding. The reporter is not just asking questions and transcribing the answers, but is also at least somewhat expert in the subject matter and challenges the statements and figures used by the interview subject. BBC reports are similar. I've been struck by the challenging nature of the interviewers in your standard BBC radio interview.

This contrasts even to American media that spends much of its time scolding the so-called "MSM" or "Village" for its uncritical acceptance of the statements of its interview subjects. I've read plenty of interviews with luminaries such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Noam Chomsky, or Michael Moore, where interviewers seem starstruck by the eminence grise that is their subject.

More of this kind of thing would be nice. I'm not saying it doesn't exist here, or that all non-American reporting is freaking awesome. But this sort of in-depth and unsycophantic interaction is exceedingly rare here.

Reducing new debt is NOT savings

2008-07-07T09:42:00.000-07:00

One thing that I haven't seen anyone comment on in regards to the McCain budget speech today is the fact that the so-called "savings" from victory in both current wars should be applied directly to deficit reduction. Here's the quote from the McCain policy paper:

The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.

OK, unwrap this for a second. The costs of the wars have been financed with deficit spending. In other words, every dollar of war spending that's currently in the budget (not really in the Big-B Budget, since all of the spending has been done through emergency appropriations measures, but budget writ large) is red ink. So once we stop having to pay those funds for the wars, we should apply those funds to reducing our red ink. Got that?

Look at it from the standpoint of your own personal finances. Suppose you make $1,000 a month and that's all spent already. Now suppose you incur another expense that you need to go to the credit card to the tune of $100 a month. Congratulations, you're deficit spending! Now further suppose that at some point down the line you manage to eliminate that expense? Should anyone really admire your spending restraint if you take that $100 "savings" and "apply it to deficit reduction"? That just means you didn't keep going into debt $100 every month!

Really all the McCain campaign is saying here is that they're not going to take the hundreds of billions of dollar in off-budget war expenses and start spending it on something else. Applying "their savings" to "deficit reduction" just means they stop borrowing the damned money in the first place. The whole document is hand-waving silliness, but this is the most particularly vapid statement in the whole thing.

Chili recipe

2008-06-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

This is one of the first time I've really tried to write down a recipe, so it's important to make the point that I'm roughly guessing at the seasoning amounts. I really just use these to taste. All measures are approximate but fairly close, so don’t take any of it too seriously, e.g. if you can only find a 16-oz can of tomato sauce, that’ll do fine!

1 lb ground beef (I used ground round, 12% fat, I wouldn’t go much over 15% fat, and ground sirloin at 7% or 8% is too low)
Medium yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 jalapeno, stemmed seeded and cored, then finely chopped
Two 28 oz. cans crushed tomatoes (if you like real chunky chili, you can substitute a can of whole tomatoes too)
1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
1 Tbsp kosher salt (about half that of regular salt, but adjust to taste, too much is the easiest way to screw it up)
1 Tbsp ground black pepper
1 Tbsp ground cumin (you can use ground cumin from a jar or take cumin seeds, roast and grind them, which is better but is a pain in the ass; I almost never do it except when cooking, e.g. lamb or pork chops with cumin)
1 Tbsp ground coriander (you can substitute finely chopped fresh cilantro also, but it’s at like a 5:1 ration, i.e. 5 Tbsp fresh; you can also start with ground coriander and finish in the last ½ hour with fresh cilantro for a fresh flavor, but that’s not what you want sometimes
1 Tbsp oregano, crumbled in your hands
½ tsp cayenne pepper
3 or 4 bay leaves
2 15 oz. cans kidney beans, drained but not washed

If you have a crock pot, that’s the best way to do the long part of the cooking. In that case you can do all of the meat and onion cooking in a big frying pan or chef’s pan. Otherwise, you can cook everything in a big pot.

Brown the ground beef in a pot. Once it’s done, drain the fat and liquid off.
Add the onions, garlic, and jalapeno, and cook on medium heat until onions are soft (this shouldn’t ever get dry, so the garlic shouldn’t burn; if it does go ahead and stop).
If you’re using a separate pan from the pot you’re cooking in, transfer to the cooking pot now.
Add all of the tomatoes and spices and give it a good stir.
Cover, put on low heat (if you’re using slow cooker, you can start on high to get it bubbling, then reduce to low), and walk away for a couple of hours. Check occasionally just to make sure it doesn’t burn.
Taste and adjust seasonings. I almost always end up adding a buttload more cumin and coriander cause it’s good. Those give it the savory aromatic flavors.
Now let it cook as long as you want, but at least another two hours. Stir occasionally.
Turn it off and let it sit and cool overnight. Taste again in the morning and adjust seasonings.
Cook on simmer again during the day. It’ll be ready for dinner.
Half an hour before you’re ready to serve, stir in the kidney beans and let heat.

A good variation is to finish with some lime juice and zest along with chopped fresh cilantro, to taste. Or you can just serve with lime slices and garnish on top with chopped cilantro and crumbled cotija or a glob of sour cream.

The campaigns' involvement in the subprime crisis

2008-06-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

So Politico has a story on Jim Johnson’s questionable contacts with Countrywide. It's interesting how the story reports on the McCain campaign's questions about Obama’s connection with someone so closely connected to the subprime mortgage crisis, but then doesn't see fit to mention Phil Gramm's role in McCain's campaign, a story Politico has already covered but not since the real general election campaign has started?

Interesting. Compare and contrast: Johnson is an ad hoc adviser for Obama's Vice-Presidential selection committee, while Gramm is McCain's chief economic advisor. Think there's any significant difference between their roles?

Please for the love of God shut the hell up!

2008-05-23T17:26:00.001-07:00

Can someone please tell people that it's just plain not alright to bring up assassination in a casual context when talking about a Presidential candidate. Especially when that candidate is put under Secret Service protection "the earliest a candidate has ever been provided protection". It's not as if we're talking about people who have a surfeit of sanity or reason (as that last one says, "Trust your Instincts," you sure wouldn't let facts or actual thinking get in the way).

Please Hillary, stop it, drop out. You're now so desperate that you're playing in the same fields as the right-wing dipshits who send my father-in-law e-mails about how Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim "Manchurian" candidate. You're embarrassing yourself and hurting America. Seriously: shut the hell up.

Update: Andrew Sullivan makes a good point: "I saw the apology as well - an apology to the Kennedy family, I might note, not to Senator Obama."

Keep it classy, Hill.

Their Priorities

2008-05-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

So after various incidents have indicated that maybe we should keep an eye on our food supply, how does the Bush Administration respond?

How many days of this bullshit is left now?

Prestige of the office, so why is Bush so child-ish

2008-05-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

Remember how one of the big things about Bush and the Republicans is that they were going to bring back respect for the office of the Presidency? There were going to be adults running things again? I know it's hard to remember that far back (considering it was all BS anyways), but really, does this kind of childish taunting indicate in any way that Republicans are adults:

The president noted that... the Giants vanquished... the Dallas Cowboys. Many Dallas fans pinned their team's surprise playoff loss not on the Giants, but on [Jessica] Simpson... Apparently, Bush bought in.

"I'm a good sport," Bush said at the South Lawn ceremony. "We're going to send Jessica Simpson to the Democrat National Convention."

The Democrat National Convention. If the intent is to show that you have contempt for your political opponents, I guess that works. For people that push that "United We Stand" front, though, using the equivalent of "nanny nanny boo boo" seems a little... disuniting.

263 days left...

John Yoo's Torture Memo

2008-04-02T09:06:00.000-07:00

Just for completeness's sake, here's a run-down on John Yoo's torture memo. Now, I'm not a legal scholar, hell, I don't even play one on TV, but even I can tell that a legal justification that essentially says, "We can break the law as long as we really really need to" is bullshit. So remind me again, why the hell is Yoo on the faculty at Cal?

What reforms are required?

2008-03-18T00:10:00.001-07:00

I agree with the points in this article, especially in regards to the feeling of this being a historical moment. In the position I'm currently in—forced by circumstances to sell my house at this time (it's nothing tragic, my wife got a job in St. Louis and we're moving there from southern California) and working for a public company neck deep in the subprime mortgage crisis—I'm feeling pretty exposed to the financial and economic winds blowing around.

I remember a few times like this before. The dot-com crash, which I was also exposed to in the software industry, although my dot-com era start-up had been bought out by a more established company prior to the crash. I did end up getting laid off, though. The various crises of the '90s like the peso crash and Asian currency crisis were also historical, although these didn't really stir the relatively provincial consciousness of the American public to a great extent. I think that the Clinton administration and international institutions managed the '90s crises pretty well and, all things considered, the recovery from the dot-com crash was well managed (although there's a convincing case that the crisis was merely pushed off through making money easily available and leading directly to today's credit crunch).

All of that said...

When I try to think about what sorts of reforms are required to prevent this sort of problem in the first place, I keep coming back to the most perplexing issue of this whole time. Why are those who have been the primary authors of this current disaster—the CEOs and chairmen, the high-flying executives with salaries and benefits that would make Midas blush, the "smartest guys in the room" who are concocting and institutionalizing these exotic financial instruments that would considered immoral and unethical if concocted in a virus laboratory—why do they seem to be the only ones who are assured of coming out unscathed in the end? Why are they the ones who must be rescued from the perdition of moral accountability, primarily because we need their superhuman analytical and leadership abilities to get us out of the mess that they made in the first place??

So my next obvious complaint is to blame those people, right? Well, to some extent, yes, they're morally and ethically culpable for their failures. Japanese feudal culture may have been messed up in a lot of ways, but a person took responsibility for his or her fuck-ups, you have to give them that. At the same time, it's simply human nature: get what you can and cover your ass along the way. Yeah, there's art and why are people altruistic and all of these questions, and I have a generally sunny assessment of most people's intentions. But I think that people try to work towards what motivates and inspires them. So it shouldn't be surprising that business people are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed at business and business is all about getting paid. And you can't deny that these people are gettin' paid.

That irritating parable about the frog and scorpion is now invoked.

But CEOs and chairmen of the board don't have the capacity to hire and fire themselves, nor do they have the capacity to negotiate their own contracts? So why do all of the contracts seem to read like that?

The composition of the boards of directors of publicly traded companies must be forced to be more open. I don't really know what this means. I know at the very least that shareholders must receive a lot more control over the composition of the board. There are huge questions today about the propriety of the deal selling Bear Stearns to JP Morgan, including the possibility that the executive staff at Bear Stearns were covering themselves from criminal or civil liability or trying to procure greater financial benefits for themselves at the expense of the shareholders. If the executive staff felt more at risk if the company failed, they would then be more likely to protect the interests of the shareholders precisely because those interests would parallel each other.

Anyways, I'm going to research this topic over the next few days. From what I know of the current structure, it incentivizes risks and completely defangs failure as an offsetting punishment. If there's only upside and no downside for the people running financial institutions, we're going to see more Bears Stearns, more S&L crises, more dot-com crashes, and so on. It's no way to run a railroad.

Hard feelings

2008-03-14T09:06:00.000-07:00

I hate to admit it, but I'm in this area myself. As I mentioned, there's a great deal of enthusiasm for Hillary here in Long Beach. There's a lesbian couple that lives a few doors down from us and they have Hillary signs up, Hillary bumper stickers, etc. Prior to the California primary, these didn't really prompt a reaction from me, since I figured everyone in my Zip code was voting for either Obama or Clinton, no big whoop. Now, every time I walk or drive by, I'm seized by an urge to tear the sign down, to knock on their door and ask them if they approve of Hillary being such a destructive bitch, and all kinds of insults and means of lashing out that I'm uncomfortable even thinking.

It comes down to this: I'm not angry and disillusioned with Hillary because she's an assertive woman participating in the rough and tumble of politics. I'm angry and disillusioned with her because she's playing exactly the same politics of destruction and deception that have poisoned the well of American democracy for the last twenty or more years. In spite of her partisan differences with the man, Hillary is the fruit of the Lee Atwater revolution in politics. As Andrew Sullivan has noted, this is to a large part still the same damned fight—culturally, politically, societally—that started with Vietnam and the civil rights movement. Most Americans under 50 are past that conflict and this election represents our first real chance to get past it. Hillary's tactics represent the establishment's struggles to keep us in it and her supporters are the enablers who keep that struggle going.

Is McCain screwed?

2008-03-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

His finance director is an active lobbyist for the firm that lobbied on behalf of the McDonnell-Douglas/Airbus consortium. Two of his other senior staff are on leave from the same firm.

I'm not arguing whether this contract was fairly won by MD/Airbus or not. The rule interpretations that were made in reaction to a number of points raised by MD/Airbus seemed reasonable to me. The fact that Airbus successfully made the case for their plane (their main advantage involved size, with the adapted Airbus planes carrying much more cargo per plane and having much longer range) is precisely what you're supposed to do. Most of the assembly will be done in the U.S., so you're not talking about a lot of jobs lost.

But on the merits of the sale, MD/Airbus being chosen seemed reasonable, with Boeing's indignation somewhat tempered by the lease agreement scandal from a few years ago. That company doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

ALL THAT SAID.

McCain's top advisors work for a company that actively lobbied on behalf of a company based in France over a good American company.

How about them apples? How do you think THAT is going to blunt McCain's recent attempts to start raising funds for the general election?

Maybe Ferraro has a point

2008-03-11T21:16:00.000-07:00

She says that Obama is only where he is in the polls because he's black. Well, that lucky ducky! Sure, I can see that. He's definitely benefited from the support of blacks in the Democratic primaries.

Now, as Josh Marshall points out, you have to counterbalance that with the fact that a lot of white people won't vote for him because he's black. Ferraro says, in the interview linked above, "Sexism is a bigger problem... It's OK to be sexist in some people's minds. It's not OK to be racist."

Granted, it's not OK to admit to being racist. But does she seriously believe that there are no racists left in the United States because it's just not OK?

But for the sake of discussion, I'm willing to grant her this point: Obama has benefited from both the support of black voters who support Obama at least in part because of the color of his skin and from the support of white voters for the same reason. The old liberal race guilt thing. I'm quite willing to admit that I think it's thrilling that a black man is so close to becoming President. Certainly part of the enthusiasm for his candidacy across the board is the history in the making, the sense that his election would in some way and in some small part correct one of the original founding sins of this country.

And this is a historic election. Because women did not get the vote in this country until even after black men, those who were mere property becoming (at least de jure) members of the body politic even before women. So we've got people who are supporting Obama at least in part because he's black and...

We've got people who are supporting Clinton at least in part because she's a woman.

And not just a woman. Let's turn Ferraro's assertion back at her preferred candidate. Hillary Clinton is in this race not just because she's a woman, but because of the fact that she's a woman married to a powerful man. She benefits twice over from these accidents of circumstance.

I live in a town with a pretty significant lesbian population and they overwhelmingly support Hillary. Do you think it's because they all happen to have exactly the same issues on health care reform and relations with countries perceived to be hostile to the U.S.? The positions on the status of NAFTA and future trade negotiations as well as environmental policies? I think they probably do support much of Hillary's platform. And I'm sure that they support much of Hillary's platform because it's Hillary's platform and she's a woman and they're voting for (or really have voted for; the primary's already happened here) the first serious woman candidate for the Presidency.

But Hillary benefits from that support because she's a woman. And she's a woman in that position because she's married to Bill Clinton.

So I score it this way:

Obama benefits from being black, but blacks comprise only 13% of the population. Clinton benefits from being a woman, and women comprise 52% of the population. Advantage: Clinton.

Hillary has accomplished little that doesn't rely on her position as Bill Clinton's wife. I'm not saying that if she wasn't married to Bill Clinton that she wouldn't now be a formidable person in her own right. But she was mentioned as a Presidential candidate (and got her Senate seat as a clear carpetbagger) even prior to Bill leaving office in 2001 in large part because she was his wife. Obama is no fortunate son, brother, friend, or husband. Advantage: Clinton.

So fair enough, Geraldine: Barack benefits because he's black. But in the benefits sweepstakes, Hillary takes the prize.

Update: Kevin Drum piles on.

Meet the fan

2008-02-27T10:34:00.001-08:00

Since Day One of the discussion about invading Iraq, I said the two biggest issues were going to eventually be 1) the distraction from what needed to be done to stabilize Afghanistan, and 2) the very real and dangerous possibility of bringing the conflict between the Kurds and the surrounding nations who are extremely invested in keeping Kurdish nationalism in check (read: crushed; this includes but is not limited to Turkey, Syria, and Iran).

So the last couple of months have made me very nervous, with the Turkish threats and now execution of incursions into Kurdish territory in Iraq. Now it looks like the shit is about THIS -><- far from the whirling fan blades.

For all the talk about a possible conflagration if the U.S. withdraws, if this continues, there will be a conflagration regardless of whether we withdraw or not.

Irony, Thy Name Is Dan Burton

2008-02-13T09:15:00.000-08:00

Listening to the Congressional steroids hearing this morning, I heard one of the best comic bits I've heard in quite some time. Dan Burton is a Republican Congressman from Indiana. If his name sounds familiar, well, Google Dan Burton Vince Foster melon and see what you come up with. Yeah, that guy.

So anyways, he gets his time to question Clemens and Mcnamee and, unlike in baseball, Clemens did not have to face any hardballs. Burton is—to put it mildly—pro-Clemens and decidedly anti-Mcnamee. So most of Burton's time is spent in this rather pointless harangue of Mcnamee that I suppose was meant to be a devastating shredding of Mcnamee's reputation, but really just made Burton look like a fanboy and not really an inquisitor with the slightest interest in a truthful outcome.

But the statement that really made me guffaw went something like this (and when I can get a transcript, I'll update the quote):

I don't believe it's the right thing to have these kinds of hearings, they're just a circus.

This from the man dubbed The Fool on the Hill for his over-the-top theatrics in Congressional hearing rooms, who issued over 1,000 subpoenas in an investigation that spanned years and cost millions of dollars. That guy, he doesn't like the circus.

Barring some dramatic change, I think the Burton investigation is going to be remembered as a case study in how not to do a congressional investigation and as a prime example of investigation as farce.

Probably a Clinton staffer, right? No, that's "Norman Ornstein, a congressional expert for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank."

Yeah, homie's such a spaz that the conservatives think he's a wing-nut.

Pimpin'

2008-02-11T12:11:00.000-08:00

I'm curious as to people's take on Hillary's grievance du jour regarding the "pimped out" comment by MSNBC's David Shuster. I think this take is pretty right on: I think there's a legit grounds for a bitch from Hillary's side, in that using the word "pimp" in any sense other than a pejorative one is not particularly common for the 60-and-over set. I also think that many people under 40 and definitely most under 30 are going to think that it illustrates the fact that Hillary's a member of the 60-and-over set. I certainly find it less offensive than many of the racially charged innuendos that came out of the Clinton camp in the wake of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Now, this matter of exactly what offense was given and what punishment is deserved in response is besides the point that Clinton has grabbed ahold of this relatively minor infraction by a relatively minor media personage like a shipwreck victim for a life preserver. They're not making a big deal out of it because of (or at least solely because of) their outrage at the offense, but because they're fucking fired up to have something to be outraged at.

But let's ignore that matter right now. What exactly is the level of offense in this comment, if any? I'm also curious as to what the generational and cultural differences would be in this perception.

Is Mike Huckabee the coolest Presidential candidate ever?

2008-01-02T10:36:00.000-08:00

I mean, I don't agree with him about anything politically. I'm pro-choice. I'm very in favor of the Establishment clause (as well as the traditional understanding of that clause and not the "what the Founding Fathers really meant is they hella loved Jebus and just wouldn't let the government determine which type of Protestant Christianity you were required to subscribe to" version). I think that if you don't believe in the theory of evolution that you're ideologically addled, blinded, or stupid, to the point that you are completely unqualified to be President.

But it's pretty sweet to be able to call in Walker Texas Ranger to go nuke on your opponents' collective ass. I like it.

And I've endured my fair share of Chuck Norris jokes.

Peggy Noonan slap-down

2007-12-28T08:30:00.000-08:00

To some extent, Peggy Noonan is responsible for the vacuity and empty flag waving and cross bearing of today's political rhetoric. Not that demagoguery are anything new or unique to our time, but today's Bush speeches and Thompson declarations owe as much to her speeches for Reagan as any other influence. Nowadays her posture as some sort of "reasonable" elder statesperson simply because she's not quite as rabid and reactionary as today's bunch of Republican neo-conservatives is incredibly irritating, since she's just as annoying as ever and only benefits by comparison to the likes of Tom Tancredo, Dick Cheney, Ann Coulter, and Michael Savage.

So it's nice to see Glenn Greenwald do a full-on takedown:

What a stupid and vapid woman this is, but respected and admired by our media class because she fits right in with them -- endlessly impressed by her own sophistication, maturity and insight while drooling out platitudes one never hears except in seventh-grade cafeterias and on our political talk shows. As always, this isn't worth noting because the adolescent stupidity on display here is unique to Noonan, but precisely because it isn't. This is how our national elections are decided: by people like her, spewing things like this.

Nice.

Scrambly Fox News Anchors

2007-12-18T08:38:00.000-08:00

First, I think it's very interesting in and of itself that a rising Republican is taking on Huckabee's absolutely shameful (sincere–I don't think he's pandering–but shameful) Christmas message. This is a direct slap at those who've elevated religion to a fetish while co-opting the modern Republican Party (who's co-opted who is certainly a matter for discussion).

But what I think is really interesting is what happens at 1:19 into the clip. The Fox talking head is absolutely compelled to interject and "clear up" Paul's fascism jab. Oh, Heaven's no, that's not what he's talking about! Fox, fair and balanced, absolutely no dogs in that fight. Excellent work.

Movies

2007-12-13T15:33:00.001-08:00

I have to say that I'm as excited about Walk Hard as I've been about any movie in a long time.

Also, in case you haven't seen it, Transformers sucks yak ass. It's so amazingly terrible that I was sort of stunned. It's complete and utter unmitigated garbage. If you haven't seen it, I beg of you to take that hour and a half of your life and do something constructive with it, like trying to beat a face-shaped indentation into a concrete wall somewhere.

What the hell?

2007-10-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm glad that he's OK, in as much as I don't wish anyone to be injured in a car accident, and a big "get well soon" to those who were injured.

But what the hell? Why is Orlando Bloom driving around in a frickin' Toyota Matrix? I think the Pirates franchise paid well enough to not have to scrimp up a ride that goes sub $20K fully loaded.

By extension, I've never understood why Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Kiefer Sutherland, and their ilk all go driving around all hammered and acting like dipshits and getting DUIs. Yes, they have substance abuse problems, I get that. So OK, just assume you're gonna end up shit-faced and GET. A. FUCKING. DRIVER. I can't afford a driver, so I take the train up to Hollywood and walk or take cabs around, because I'M NOT FUCKING STUPID.

Of course, some would say that the problem lies in the "acting like a dipshit" part of my question and that they're not acting at all and just plain 100% pure-D dipshits. Probably so.

I'm not saying Orlando Bloom was driving drunk or that he's a dipshit. I have no idea. But I still don't know why he's driving a Toyota Matrix.

Shark jumping

2007-10-12T10:07:00.000-07:00

I think the phrase "jump the shark" has probably now jumped the shark itself, but there's really no more appropriate way to describe this:

On the same wave as Geraghty and Hanson today, Rush Limbaugh just called on Al Gore to hand over this prize to "genuine agents of peace: General Petraus, the U.S. military, and its commander-in-chief."

OK, maybe a way to describe it that's just as appropriate is "stark bat-shit raving insane." Do these folks understand how much like Animal Farm they sound?

Childrens do learn

2007-09-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

Once again, we can see the lasting impact of early childhood education and how important it is. Also, it's important to not be stupid.

Missing the point on Ahmadinejad

2007-09-25T07:45:00.001-07:00

So Mitt Romney is outraged that Columbia allowed Ahmadinejad to speak at their World Leaders Forum.

Here's the thing: Ahmadinejad is an asshole. He also happens to be a world leader, thus fitting into the world leader part of the forum. He isn't the leader I would choose to have and there's a good case to be made that he's not the leader the Iranian people would have chosen nor would currently choose, if given their druthers.

But what do we gain from stomping our feet and ignoring people like Ahmadinejad, or perhaps even worse, acting like our own little version of vitriol-spouting hateful anti-intellectual demagogues? Let's be smart, people: give the man a little rope and he'll make the most of it!

I entitled this post "Missing the point on Ahmadinejad." So what do I mean, what point am I saying that Romney and many others who protested Ahmadinejad's appearance are missing? Simply this: many people were protesting Columbia allowing Ahmadinejad to speak. Instead, protest against Ahmadinejad himself. We should be actively supporting Columbia for providing a clown like Ahmadinejad the platform and opportunity to expose to the world the stupidity and incoherence of his ideas and positions (please, if there are no homosexuals in Iran, who are those people you've been hanging for homosexuality?).

So go ahead and protest. Just protest the right thing, the repressive theocratic wanna-be dictator, and not the wrong thing, the organization that gives that repressive theocratic wanna-be dictator the opportunity to demonstrate his moral and intellectual bankruptcy for all the world to see.

Hooray for Hollywood!

2007-09-14T07:57:00.000-07:00

Here's one of the reasons why living in Los Angeles is great. Getting a view inside the magic of movie making is priceless.

Gruden deserves to be fired

2007-09-09T16:05:00.001-07:00

I say fire Gruden. He deserves it. In the 4th quarter, Jeremy Stevens coughs it up, only to be saved by a roughing the QB penalty against the Hawks. Then, what, three plays later someone else coughs it up? Penalties, crappy ball handling, a bullshit series of plays at the end of the first, the team out of time outs with over 2 minutes left in the game. That's crappy coaching. Gruden may be a good motivator and that's what we needed to get to and win the Super Bowl. He's terrible at preparing the team in fundamentals and discipline. Fire him.

He's going to have to do an awful lot to redeem himself over the rest of the season. I don't think he's going to be able to do it.

In the wake of Gonzo's final demise

2007-08-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

So you've probably heard that Alberto Gonzales has resigned. This is good news for many reasons. Of course, the immediate question comes up: why haven't I gotten a cup of coffee yet this morning? There is no good answer to this question and I'll resolve the issue shortly (it will also probably involve an English muffin or perhaps a bagel).

OK, I have coffee. I skipped the bread products because I didn't have time to run over to the cafeteria. I am a working man, after all.

So now. The second question that comes up right after that is that of who will replace Gonzales. Michael Chertoff has had his name bandied about even while Gonzales was swearing up and down that he couldn't leave because he had to stay and protect the children. This rumor was probably instigated by the administration to build up some momentum for his hearings and confirmation. This is a real stand-up moment for the Dems. I was super disappointed and infuriated by the passage of the recent surveillance laws. I mean, I've defended some Dem moves in the past for technical and political reasons, but there was no defense for that one. Likewise, if the Senate caves and approves yet another apparatchik, that's another huge strike against the Dem leadership.

This is an extraordinary opportunity to get in someone who will operate independently, not in the thrall of the administration. If they don't take that opportunity and fold on some political grounds, I'll be prepared to admit defeat and that the Dem leadership sucks. The fact is that getting someone in there with some backbone and independence would provide much greater political opportunity down the line, with ease of prosecution of administration misdeeds, more aggressive monitoring of administration programs, etc.

Even more importantly than that, it should begin to restore some of the faith and credibility in the legal system that has been defenestrated by Gonzo and his Gepetto.

American Soldier Held In Lockdown

2007-08-10T17:05:00.000-07:00

We love the troops... until they start saying things we don't like. Summary: the Army claims Beauchamp's article was false and he's admitted that to them. But the Army won't provide any proof that his article was false and the Army won't provide Beauchamp: he's been held incommunicado since the Army's "investigation" began.

What is really going on here? I mean, the article that Beauchamp wrote was mildly embarrassing to the Army, but not that bad. It certainly pales in comparison to the shame of Abu Ghraib and Haditha. So why risk so much more bad publicity by essentially imprisoning an active duty Iraq War veteran? This is what really puzzles me about this situation.

Best blog post ever

2007-08-10T15:05:00.001-07:00

No, not from me. From this guy. I love meat. I love processing meat. This is one of my end goals.

Scott Thomas Beauchamp blowback

2007-08-02T14:57:00.000-07:00

If you didn't hear about the whole Scott Thomas uproar last week, here's a good resource to catch up on the story. Suffice to say that right-wing bloggers and Web sites, including Michelle Malkin and the Free Republic, piled on the guy, accusing him of pretty much everything from treason to slander to fabrication.

Now TNR has released a further update on the matter after re-reporting many important aspects of the reportage. Suffice to say that there are no significant issues in the initial story. And a lot of progressive bloggers have noted this refutation of the conservative attacks against Beauchamp. But only one of those responses noted what I find to be the most disturbing part of this:

[L]ate last week, the Army began its own investigation, short-circuiting our efforts. Beauchamp had his cell-phone and computer taken away and is currently unable to speak to even his family. His fellow soldiers no longer feel comfortable communicating with reporters.

So... Beauchamp's been essentially disappeared by the military for talking about something that included no testimony of war crimes, contained no sensitive intelligence, gave away no operational secrets, or anything else. I know that's what we're dealing with nowadays and I also understand that the military is different from civilian life. But this still reeks of persecution and the right-wing slander machine tail wagging the military dog.

From the "War Is Peace" File

2007-07-31T10:49:00.000-07:00

Condoleeza Rice says that pouring more than $63 billion in arms into the Middle East will promote peace and stability there.

"This effort will help bolster forces of moderation and support a broader strategy to counter the negative influences of al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran," she said.

In what way? Where is the cause and effect there? So the Middle East is ravaged by war, threatened war, and terrorism, and the best course here is to send more arms.

Burns said the sales to Saudi Arabia are in the U.S. interest because they serve to keep stability in the region.

Yes, and that is obviously Saudi Arabia's primary motivation:

The Saudi monarchy has methodically focused its military on pomp and equipment and spiffy uniforms, ensuring that it not acquire any real offensive capacity or the ability to operate as a coherent force. It does not want a competent, independent military contemplating a coup. These toys are really for the battalions of princes to play with.

I... really just can't stand it.

Again with the Executive Privilege

2007-07-26T10:56:00.001-07:00

Just a funny note on something Tony snow said yesterday when talking about Congress's attempts to get members of the administration to testify about the U.S. Attorneys firings:

And so now we have a situation where there is an attempt to do something that's never been done in American history, which is to assail the concept of executive privilege, which hails back to the administration of George Washington...

Regarding Washington, that's true as far as it goes, but I don't think that particular case is really helpful for the administration, since Washington actually gave the information to the Senate because of their role in formulating treaties, which would seem to indicate that the administration should give the Senate the information for which they are asking because of the role of the Senate in confirming U.S. Attorneys.

But that's not really what I wanted to talk about.

Instead, it's the mind-bogglingly retarded statement that "assail[ing] the concept of executive privilege" has "never been done before in American history." As Steve Benen notes, Nixon's claims of executive privilege were pretty well "assailed". But more than that, we don't even have to go back as far as Watergate, nor back to Democrats (who clearly don't understand how our leaders are trying to protect open discourse within the administration) trying to bring down Republicans (protectors of the right to free speech in service of this great nation). No sir, assailing executive privilege was all the rage amongst the current "sanctity of internal administration debate" crowd.

It's funny how perspective changes over time, even for the "strict constructionist" crowd.

John Yoo on Executive Privilege

2007-07-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

I think I've made it pretty clear in the past that I'm not a big fan of John Yoo, to put it mildly.

Glenn Greenwald has a nice piece today on Yoo's take on executive privilege... then and now. The Reader's Digest version (without the right-wing slant, of course) is: against it for Clinton, for it for Bush.

This has always been my argument with supporters of the various statist and powerful executive powers claimed for Bush nowadays: change the name of the President to Clinton and tell me how much you support these powers then. It's pretty simple.

Good for the NFL

2007-07-23T19:07:00.000-07:00

Mike Vick has been barred by the NFL from attending training camp. Strictly logistically this had to be done, but morally I think it was required too. No, Vick hasn't been proven guilty in a court of law, but you don't have to be proven guilty of a crime to be fired from your job, just found to be unsuitable for your employment. Mike Vick is now unsuitable for his job as the face of the Atlanta Falcons and one of the ambassadors of the NFL.

Let's clarify what we mean by "nature"

2007-07-19T08:15:00.000-07:00

OK, first some background. There were a couple of coyotes in Golden Gate Park who attacked some dogs and stalked a dog walker. The Department of Fish and Game eventually opted to kill the coyotes. In response, the citizens of the city of St. Francis played their duly appointed role and wept and gnashed their teeth over the barbarity perpetrated on these noble canines.

I hang out most days on a private IRC channel with a number of friends of mine, most of whom I know from my days in the Bay Area, with a number of them ex-roommates from one period or another in San Francisco, the heady days of the dot-com period. I commented on this IRC channel that this very reaction is exactly why many people think that people in the Bay Area generally but San Francisco specifically are, for lack of a better word, dipshits. They're not stupid, by a long sight. But as Paul Kantner never tires of saying (although I do get tired of hearing him say it), "San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality."

So my friend John has replied to my assertion that many people in San Francisco are dipshits. I'm not going to respond in the comments section, because it requires you to register with tribe.net and I'd just as soon gnaw my own leg off (get it? It's an "animal in a trap" reference, plays off the whole coyote thing!). So I'll just do it here. Let's fisk the fucker.

I felt bad for the coyotes.

Considering that the meat of this post is about John's desire to blast raccoons into visceral mist in spite of city firearms laws and the overwhelming population of raccoons in the area as well as his various experiments in drowning and other extinguishing the life force of various rodents, I have to wonder as to the genesis of his sudden affection towards and respect for the life of some varmint species. My guess? Its sheer exoticness. In San Francisco at least, coyotes aren't rats or raccoons or gophers, NO! They are a symbol of the free and wide open Wild West, a noble totem of the Native Americans whose appearance in Golden Gate Park heralds the return of the spirit of Gaia to displace the emptiness of our modern world.

Of course, if you live or have ever lived anywhere where there actually is a coyote population, you'll know that they're just as fucking annoying as raccoons and rats and any other vermin. They're considered a pest to be controlled. They are not threatened or endangered.

A friend of mine, Rick, from LA was on IRC and posted the article where San Franciscans were pissed that who ever the fuck just killed those two coyotes in Golden Gate Park and he said, "This is why people make fun of San Francisco."

First, I'm not "from LA". I've only visited Louisiana a couple of times. But I'm assuming he actually means "L.A." or Los Angeles. I do own a home in Long Beach, which is in Los Angeles County, but I'm not from there, as he well knows. This comes up again later, which is why I mention it.

Hmmm, well, first off, they didn't need to kill the coyotes, they could have trapped them and relocated them.

Why? To what end? To save the dwindling populations of coyotes in the American West? As noted, there is no dwindling population of coyotes. They're doing fine. Why doesn't John support the trapping and relocation of his raccoons and gophers? If he's so squeamish about killing animals nowadays, why doesn't he divest himself of his sizeable collection of animal skins and body parts, become a vegetarian, and working on living alongside of as opposed to instead of his rodentine and ursine neighbors? Because raccoons and gophers piss him off. He hasn't been bitten on the ass by a coyote yet, which would change his tune, I betcha.

The issue with trapping is that it's not particularly easy to trap a particular animal. Reggie the Alligator lived in a lake in Harbor City (right across the ports from Long Beach). It took two years to catch him and then he basically had to walk into their arms. This is an alligator. In a lake. And it's not a big lake (compare that to Golden Gate Park at the same zoom level).

So it'll take a while to trap the coyotes and in the meantime they're still loose in the park. According to the spokesperson for DFG, "animal officials had been receiving calls reporting the aggressive pair for about a week." So for a week these animals have been reported, they have physically attacked dogs in the park, and DFG and the city are just supposed to let them wander around, saying, "Hey, we set some traps, we're doing what we can do, wouldn't wanna hurt 'em, y'know."

Secondly, those coyotes were probably protecting some pups who are now long dead.

Nope: "Experts had theorized Sunday that the pair may have been acting so aggressive because they had a litter of pups. But today, [the DFG spokesperson] said no pups had been found and the female coyote was not lactating." So that wasn't it. And even if it was, what's that matter? We have a problem with two coyotes in the park, so we want to make sure that they can have some more? That's stupid.

Oh, and there was a line, "God Forbid, they'd have attacked a child..." well, that's the breaks people. A Dingo ate my baby. Watch your kids. How DARE nature come back to some place where it was millions of years before we built our artificial society and where it will return once we've killed ourselves off.

OK, now here's where John descends into pure dipshittery. Our "artificial" society? This from a guy who works QA for an Internet search company and lives in the Sunset? I have to say that it's hard to take this kind of back-to-nature bullshit from someone who lives in one of the densest urban environments in the country and just wrote an entire post about snuffing small animals. Give me a fucking break, my friend.

Furthermore, coyotes wouldn't be returning to nature in Golden Gate Park. Golden Gate Park itself is an artificial environment, a faux sylvan woodland erected by human ingenuity and enterprise in a place where only sand and seagrass once flourished. There were no lakes. There were no waterfalls. There were no trees. There was dick-all, and that's about it.

This is not nature, red in tooth and claw. Golden Gate Park is a park, the third most visited city park in the country. I have little sympathy for someone who wanders around in Yosemite or any truly wild area and has a run-in with a wild animal that ends badly: that's the damned deal with "wild". Golden Gate Park, though, is not wild: it's a park and it's generally accepted that parks are exempt from the "baby dragged into the bushes" part of the wild animal equation. That's not the breaks and, if you don't believe me, speculate on what sort of jury award would have resulted if the city had known about threats from these animals, had equivocated and tried to trap them in the name of humane treatment of animals, and then the animals had injured or killed a pet or kid (or, if the animals had been or become rabid, infected an adult). Can the city really afford to pay out in a case like that?

Fuck LA, Fuck Michael Vick and fuck Fish and Game for killing the Golden Gate Coyotes instead of trapping them. Fuck LA mostly for the traffic, their shallow reality broadcast across the universe, the smog, and most of all the Dodgers.

I'm not really certain how L.A. is to blame for this. I agree with the traffic part, which is one of the reasons I'm ready to abandon southern California. The smog sucks, but I've seen plenty of brown days in the Bay Area too. And absolutely fuck the Dodgers. They are the most hated franchise in sports to me.

But the complaint about the "shallow reality broadcast across the universe" rings pretty hollow coming from a guy that watches American Idol and Project Runway. Give me a fucking break. This is one of those little short-hand things that everyone "knows" about L.A.: "Oh, everyone's so shallow." No, you're shallow because you mistake the idiocy that you see broadcast about celebutards for the entire depth of a region of 24 million people.

So anyway, I've got Gophers and fuck them.

So here we see the truth: it's all relative. If it's goring John's ox, well, fuck it. If John doesn't have an issue with it, well you shouldn't either, so fuck you. Sure, fuck Mike Vick. But there's a huge distance between getting entertainment value out of the suffering and death of animals and exterminating animals that have exhibited threatening behavior in the middle of a densely populated city.

Tony Soprano's Outro

2007-07-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

Have you seen this? I had heard a few references to this post (or at least one similar, but I'd guess it was this one) in the immediate aftermath of the Sopranos finale, but I just dug it up and read it myself today. I have to say that I find it pretty convincing. When the various references and allusions are dug out and presented, it's hard to argue with the point.

Whither now for Mike Vick and the NFL?

2007-07-18T05:56:00.000-07:00

So in case you hadn't heard, Michael Vick of the Atlanta Falcons was indicted on charges (PDF) of being involved with a dog-fighting operation run out of his house in Virginia.

Oopsie.

Now, as a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan, I will admit to being what is known as a Michael Vick "hatah," in the parlance of our times. I hate the Falcons, maybe not with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns as I do the Dodgers, but like about 999 suns or something. 998 suns. A lot of suns, a lot of heat. They are my most hated team in the NFL. OK? Just so that's clear.

And Michael Vick has irritated and annoyed me his entire career because he sucks. Oh, he's a great athlete: he's just a shite quarterback. So I love every game between the Bucs and the Falcons where we're told that this is the game where Vick's speed and developing passing acumen will tear up the Bucs' defense and... then he gets bitchslapped. And before bringing up the fact that the Falcons did much better last year, it's worth noting that the offense in the September 16 was primarily run yardage. Vick passed 10/15 for 92 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT. That's a passer rating of 77.6. Not exactly evidence of becoming a feared passer. He fared worse in his next game against Tampa, with a rating of 62.7 on 14/23 passing for 155 yards, no TDs, and an INT.

And before any accusations of racism arise against me... that's not the issue. There are a number of black quarterbacks I really like. McNabb, Culpepper (whether he'll be able to come back from the knee injury remains to be seen), Leftwich (ditto on his injuries), Cunningham, Moon, Steve McNair, guys that are good athletes and smart quarterbacks, whether they fit the "athletic" mold or not (Mcnabb did, but doesn't any more, Leftwich never did, etc.). There are also black quarterbacks that suck: Aaron Brooks, Quincy Carter, Kordell Stewart (the latter of which I blame for the momentary fascination with quarterbacks that double as running backs and consequently the immediate fascination with Vick when he was drafted). Black quarterbacks are, in other words, much like quarterbacks in general: some are great, many are good, and some suck.

So now that my complete lack of impartiality is completely established...

The NFL should suspend Michael Vick. Now. Yes, he's only been indicted, not convicted. But it's worth noting that Pacman Jones was suspended before being indicted, meaning that Vick was vulnerable even before yesterday. The league doesn't really have a leg to stand on to not suspend Vick other than they'd rather not have to suspend one of their superstar players. But then they'd rather one of their superstar players was not associated with this disaster in the first place. To remove the onus from the league, Roger Goodell needs to suspend Michael Vick now.

Len Pasquarelli provides a potential rationale for not suspending Vick right away:

It should be pointed out, however, that, unlike the players suspended by Goodell to this point, Vick is not a repeat offender in the eyes of the NFL. His actions at times have been offensive, but have never earned him a demerit under Goodell's stewardship. So the Tuesday indictments, in and of themselves, may not be grounds for action by the commissioner.

It's a fair point, although even Pacman Jones wasn't a "repeat offender" since he'd never officially legally offended, because, again, he had not been convicted or even indicted at the point at which he was suspended. But let's remember that Vick's had a few episodes (Ron Mexico, the airport water bottle incident, and I believe a few other minor fracases.

But to me, that's not the most compelling reason to suspend Vick. Instead, the fact is simple: even the best case scenario for Michael Vick shows negligence and a lack of personal responsibility on Vick's part. Even if his culpability is limited to owning the property on which these dogs were raised and trained (because at the very least he's guilty of that), he has to take responsibility for that. This should be an object lesson to every player in the NFL: what you own, what you enable your posse to do, your property is your responsibility.

There is no dispute: Michael Vick owned that property. An on-going criminal enterprise used that property. You can't just have a place and let your crew run roughshod over it, then just proclaim ignorance. And that's the least worst possibility in this scenario for Vick.

And from what I've seen thus far, there's little reason to think that the least worst possibility is the actual truth. My guess at this point, my belief, is that Vick was in this stuff up to his eyeballs. He trained and sold fighting dogs, hosted fights on his property, and gambled big money on dogfights. It's absolutely reprehensible activity, he was fully involved, and any support given by the league or team to this guy now that these activities have come to light can only be considered complicity or implicit acceptance of his activities. Neither is acceptable.

I'd suggest contacting the Falcons and the NFL until they've taken action against this guy (and no, it's not just to keep him from playing against the Bucs; if I had my druthers, we'd get to play against him and knock the slobber out of him).

To contact the Falcons, you can write:

Atlanta Falcons
4400 Falcon Parkway
Flowery Branch, GA 30542

You can also contact them through their Web site.

To contact the NFL, you can write to:

National Football League
280 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017

And again, you can also contact them through their Web site.

Wulingyuan

2007-07-17T06:49:00.000-07:00

Speaking of travel (which I wasn't, but writing about Paris always makes me want to travel there or wherever), one of my big travel porn fantasies is to go to Wulingyuan. The Times had a nice write-up on it the other day. The name of the place may not be familiar, but the images of stone towers floating above the top of misty clouds certainly should be.

Just a nice thought as I hunker down for another hot humid day in St. Louis...

La ville des bicyclettes, redux

2007-07-16T09:26:00.001-07:00

As per this post, it's begun. Pretty sweet. If anyone tries these out and cares to report on the experience, please drop me a line!

Executive privilege end game

2007-07-14T09:01:00.001-07:00

John Dean has written an article that I think would be very interesting to anyone who's wondering about what will happen in the current struggle over executive privilege between the administration and Congress. I confess to not having a clear picture about what Congress's recourse may be if the administration continues to stonewall and ignore subpoenas, etc. The fact that this may fall into the hands of the current Supreme Court frightens the hell out of me.

In 2000, when I argued with people who claimed there wasn't a jot of difference between Gore and Bush and they were both in the thrall of their corporate paymasters, blah blah blah, I emphasized repeatedly that the biggest difference between the two was the justices that they would appoint both to SCOTUS and other federal courts. Now, I think that many other legs on which the "not a jot of difference" angle stood have fallen to the wayside (does anyone really believe that Al Gore would have been so massively incompetent or such a whore to corporate interests? Or really Bush isn't even a whore to corporate interests, he simply embodies them to his core...). But the justices angle has proven, on many occasions in the thus-far short tenure of the Roberts court, to be a disaster and will continue to be a disaster for literally decades.

And it is that federal judicial level of authoritarians who will rule on these issues of executive privilege in the light of the "theory of the unitary executive". I mean, does it make anyone else queasy that this decision essentially rests in the hands of Justice Anthony Kennedy and that the votes of Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas are pretty much already written in stone? Scary.

Nowhere in the Anals of History... Or uh... Annals...

2007-07-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

OK, I understand that there are some engineering reasons for this design, but come on, they can not seriously think that this thing should be built.

I thought the proposed design for San Diego was bad, but wow. I'm quite open minded, but that thing is obscene.

Semi-related: Have you ever seen the original cover art for the Little Mermaid video? Regardless of any of the explanations given by Snopes as to why this particular "urban legend" is false, those things are cocks. I had never heard of that "urban legend" when I was at a friend's house and saw the cover. I don't go looking for dicks in things, but I was shocked, handed her the cover of the video, and just pointed. She looked and did a double take, seeing what I was pointing at as soon as she looked at the details.

Is It Possible... (DSL Question)

2007-07-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

I currently have Charter cable internet access. I'm thinking about switching to DSL of some sort. Verizon is an evil demon from hell, so I don't want to use their DSL. In fact, I'm trying to become un-Verizoned, cell phone and home phone-wise, so I want to get DSL from someone and get Vonage.*

So is there a DSL provider where:

I don't have to have a home phone that's NOT VOIP
Good broadband speeds and high reliability
Decent customer service and tech support

If not DSL, is there some other broadband access means I'm missing? We're restricted to Charter cable in our area, so much for free market competition...

* Or some other VOIP? What's the Vonage's status? Note that the problems with Vonage are all caused by Verizon, witness again Verizon being evil demon from hell.

Did Bush Commit A Felony?

2007-07-11T20:29:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine poses the question. To me, the short answer is, yeah, duh. But he raises some good points:

Did Bush Commit A Felony?

18 U.S.C. Sec. 1505: ... Whoever corruptly ... influences, obstructs, or impedes ... the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress ... [s]hall be fined under this title, [or] imprisoned not more than 5 years ... or both.

18 U.S.C. Sec. 1515(b): As used in section 1505, the term "corruptly" means acting with an improper purpose, personally or by influencing another, including ... withholding, [or] concealing ... information.

Well, I think so, but...

As a legal matter, of course, the argument of executive privilege is that they're not influencing anything, just keeping the world safe for democracy, literally, in that if the executive branch can't have frank discussions then they won't be able to adequately discuss all policy options, blah blah blah. They are not obstructing, they're merely preserving their right to have open policy debates without fear of penalty or judgment in hindsight (some call "judgment in hindsight" learning from your mistakes, but this is another matter). And of course they would argue the application of the adverb "corruptly" in that they debated in good faith and are protecting themselves in good faith.

Is it bullshit? Of course. Just like the commutation of Libby's sentence is bullshit (the man who executed a record number of people getting all a-twitter at the injustice of some poor undeserving soul spending a whole 30 months in the hoosegaw...). The issue is getting that charge of bullshit to do anything worth a goddamned while. Bullshit is like hearsay: you may trust the charge, but that doesn't make it admissible in a court of law (and impeachment proceedings are basically a court of law).

There was recently an impeachment kerfuffle between me and a group of friends (which includes the person who asked the felony question here) and I don't think I made this clear enough when I argued against impeachment in that discussion (or not really against, but lectured as to the infeasibility and impracticality of that procedure at this point in time): I yearn for impeachment. I long for Bush and Cheney to be paraded down the National Mall on rails, tarred and feathered. I especially long for Cheney to suffer some kind of justice for the wrongs, for the evils, that he's wrought upon the world.

The only problem is that the practical part of doing this is not yet there. It's getting close, God knows. Even after our e-mail uproar over this, there was yet more shit to come out about the horrific dishonesties, dissembling, disgusting mess of practices that these fuckers have brought about.

And it's not as if I didn't always think that the Bush Administration was doing this type of thing anyways. But it's like junkies in the Mission: I always knew they were there, but that doesn't mean I didn't come close to puking when I stumbled across some dudes shooting up in an alley and saw the needles and the blood streaking their arms and one guy digging at his crotch because his veins were so collapsed elsewhere that the only place he could shoot up was behind his scrotum.

And every day and week that passes, the hope of achieving justice, or at least throwing these fuckers out before they can do something desperate and terrible (more so than already, e.g. war with Iran), becomes slimmer because their time in office becomes slimmer. Remember, Clinton was impeached in '97, with well over three years left in office. The only gilding on this sow of an administration is that it's thankfully close to being writ in history as the worst administration in the history of the United States of America.

File under "Duh..."

2007-07-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

So apparently another former Bush Administration official has claimed that the administration maybe wasn't quite as concerned with facts as it was with political considerations:

Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

I mean, I'm not sure what to say. The guy did come into office in 2002 and describes himself as "politically naïve," so I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. But for those who have followed the administration's course on such matters, this is not a surprise. It's just discouraging because this is the lead health official in this country. If someone can't let a damned doctor operate with concern only towards the truth, that shows the regard (or disregard) they have for the people of this country. It's not about us: it's all about them.

Satellite Internet Service: What's Up?

2007-07-11T05:25:00.000-07:00

Speaking of broadband access in rural areas, I ran into an interesting issue out at my folks' place this summer. I was staying with them during Bonnaroo and stayed on afterwards to work from their house for the next week. Well, as mentioned, they live out in the boondocks, so they can't get DSL or cable internet. After a nightmarish ordeal with Verizon's wireless broadband service (basically the Verizon EV-DO card ate their Mac... twice), they finally went with Hughes Net. It's a little expensive, $60 per month as compared to about $30 to $40 for most cable and DSL services. But if it's all you got, it's not too bad a deal.

And, wow, smoking speed! I did a speed test to see how fast the connection was. I got 1,000 kbps downstream and 640 kbps upstream. That's great!

But when I connected to my work VPN, it just got miserable. Top downstream speeds of 124 kbps, down to as low as 14 kbps. Like, almost dial-up modem speeds.

So what's the deal with this? Partly there was a geographical thing going on: I was in Tennessee, but my link point to the rest of the world was not. Since it's satellite, of course, my gateway to the Internet so somewhere else. I got a little bump up when I switched from the Northridge (Southern California) VPN gateway to the Seattle gateway. But even then it was still miserable (that's the gateway on which I got the scorching 124 kbps).

No, there's something else going on there. My mom had run into an issue where her access had slowed to a crawl. The customer service person tried to tell my mom that there was an FCC regulation that each user has a 300 MB or 400 MB download quota before their access is throttled. This is bollocks, as far as I can tell: the FCC does have jurisdiction over Internet access pricing of sorts, but I know they don't control the amount that I can download or upload.

But maybe there's something about the traffic being on satellite? In that milieu, limiting the amount of traffic per user might make sense. Or maybe it's just some jabber to limit Hughes's costs. The problem is not limited to my mom, as these posts show, editorial and grammatical flaws notwithstanding (and obvious bias towards complaints as opposed to kudos).

Or, as opposed to limit costs, maybe it's to drum up some more money from subscribers' pockets? Because look at this:

Stated speeds are not guaranteed. Actual upload speed will likely be lower than speed indicated during peak hours. Click here for more info on typical speeds. Download speeds may also be temporarily slowed in cases when patterns of system usage exceed the download threshold for an extended period of time. See the HughesNet Fair Access Policy for more information. If you choose to run VPN over satellite, your data speeds may be reduced by as much as 50–75%. Despite the high speeds, time-sensitive applications, such as multi-player “twitch” games, are also not recommended over HughesNet.

Now here's their "Fair Access Policy". Note the "it's not us!" exception: all high-speed Internet Service Providers utilize “Shared Bandwidth Technology." This is that old chestnut about the web geek or teen-aged porn freak sucking up all the cable access in your neighborhood. Said chestnut has never affected me in all my years of cable internet access, which includes various stints with AT&T, Comcast, Cox, and now Charter (which has been the weakest of them, limited mainly by crap upstream speeds, although for a while my router was actually the most limiting factor in my upload capabilities).

Also, I like that VPN qualifier on there: why is VPN access in particular slowed down? There's a constant data heartbeat, yes, and the traffic is encrypted, where the rule of thumb is that that adds 20% to the size. But why? And it's high-speed access, but not high speed in the sense that... it's fast?

Are there any other satellite providers (Hughes was DirecTV, so that's the only other provider I've heard about)? Do or would they have these same restrictions? Is Hughes just predatory or are there good reasons for this crap-tastic "Fair Access Policy," even with the 50% premium over cable or DSL for basic broadband access?

Wi-Fi Mobile Phone from T-Mobile

2007-07-11T05:23:00.000-07:00

This was lost in the iPhone rush, but is pretty neat, I think. My parents live in a rural area and have Verizon because that is the only provider that has service out there. This would make that omission inoperative.

It's been a long long time, but...

2007-07-11T05:14:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try to pick up posting again. Yay, my mom rejoices. Maybe. If she ever reads this. Oh well.

It's been a busy summer thus far. My wife has a summer associate position with a law firm in St. Louis, so I've been splitting my time between there, Long Beach, and Tennessee. My daughter's been splitting time between Long Beach, Phoenix, Tennessee, and St. Louis. My wife's been, y'know, working, so that keeps her busy. We've done a lot and it's kept me from having any time to write, play music (although I've been fitting in more mandolin play than usual), or much else!

But once again, I try to rededicate myself. Look for upcoming posts on music, baseball, football, politics, and technical issues. Like, right now, I have to figure out my .Net web application isn't properly loading a class instance from an external assembly. Grrr...

WOW!!!

2007-05-05T18:59:00.000-07:00

That's the only thing I have to say to Doug Feith's observations on George Tenet (found on The Corner):

Anyone can make an honest mistake. But the problem with George Tenet is that he doesn't seem to care to get his facts straight. He is not meticulous. He is willing to make up stories that suit his purposes and to suppress information that does not.

Look, I'm not carrying water for Tenet here, but let's keep in mind that this is Doug Feith—Douglas J. Feith, he of "alternative intelligence assessments" and surreptitious White House briefings outside any review process—with the audacity to accuse someone of being "willing to make up stories that suit his purposes and to suppress information that does not."

The stones, the stones...

Media Complicity in the White House's Image Building Machinery

2007-05-05T09:43:00.000-07:00

In today's N.Y. Times, there's an article entitled For Queen and First Lady, Bush Will Try White Tie. This is notable because of the picture it paints of the "aw shucks" hayseed salt of the Earth George W. and his encounter with the oh-so-particular Queen and the fusty niceties of high society:

How does George W. Bush, a towel-snapping Texan who puts his feet on the coffee table, drinks water straight from the bottle and was once caught on tape talking with food in his mouth prepare for a state dinner with the queen?

It will be closely watched by the social elite for its collision of cultures — Texas swagger meets British prim. Dinner attire is white tie and tails, the first and, perhaps, only white-tie affair of the Bush administration. The president was said to be none too keen on that, but bowed to a higher power, his wife.

The meat of the article goes on to paint the President, the First Lady, and entire administration machinery being as giddy as schoolgirls getting ready for the prom. Bush is being prepped ("Don't drink water straight from the bottle! The Queen is Your Majesty and the prince is Your Royal Highness! Don't chew with your mouth open!"), flowers are being arranged, and ever so nervously the country bumpkins in D.C. will put their best foot forward to not offend the company.

But this is, quite deliberately, bullshit. Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jim Rutenberg are basically carrying water for the administration here. In fact, Bush is no stranger to this environment in the slightest. Let's keep in mind that his roots are not those of some Dust Bowl Okie or oil-wrangling roughneck, but instead Bush has shown himself to be more than comfortable in the upper crust Yankee milieu from which he actually comes.

In fact (and this point is finally disclosed in one of the last paragraphs of the article), Bush 43 and his wife were guests at the last state dinner for Queen Elizabeth. The fact is that the Bushes are old hands at this type of thing. What type of thing? Well, at moving in the elite of monied society, pretending that they're not the elite of monied society, and getting the compliant media to spin the image that they want to project.

Fred Thompson as Tabula Rasa

2007-05-03T09:36:00.000-07:00

Fred Thompson is the savior of the Republican Party! Favored by 934% of the Republican base! He's the guy who can bring... whatever it is that he's got to whatever it is that your favorite GOP activist desires!

Right?

Thompson has surged ahead in the GOP polls recently, greatly aided by John McCain's slow motion autodefenestration, Rudy Guiliani's overall weirdness, and Mitt Romney's Mormonism and hair. Why is this? Which of Thompson's many attributes has led to this sudden burst of popularity for a guy who's not even an actual Presidential candidate at this point?

It's probably his positions on... something. Or something. Right? What are his positions?

He's actually not particularly religious and was a bit of a whore in his wilder days. His policy positions may indeed jibe with yours, but I can only say that because no one knows what his policy positions are, leaving open the possibility that they do indeed jibe with yours. So will he meet the strict standards of the Club for Growth? Does he love war enough to sit well with the solons at AEI? Who knows?

The fact is that the GOP is desperately scrambling for someone salable to both the base and the general electorate. McCain and Guiliani are both non-starters with the base and at this point might have a pretty hard time with everyone else too. Romney is just not setting anyone on fire. Thompson sounds great and everyone knows he's a competent and fair manager, capable of being tough yet sensitive when necessary, conservative but not dogmatic, able to kick ass when required but sympathetic to the personal impact of abstract legalisms and political positions.

Wait, that's Arthur Branch, his character on Law and Order. So I don't know. But maybe it's too much to expect a decent second-tier character to explode magically into reality fully formed.

Americans' "Can-Do" Attitude

2007-05-01T12:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a story about Americans' "can-do" attitude that involves actual cans.

Way to keep it classy, Alabama.

Lucie Videos

2007-04-28T13:23:00.000-07:00

So I've got a channel set up at YouTube with some really cute videos of Lucie. Drop by and check 'em out. Here's one to start you off:

Fair warning: make sure the volume's not cranked!

Deer, meet headlights

2007-04-24T23:48:00.000-07:00

This is the political equivalent of going quail hunting with Dick Cheney.

Newt Gingrich is an asshat

2007-04-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

You can do a whole round-up of the stuff that people have blamed the killings at Virginia Tech on:

video games, of course, but also

lax gun control (just to note, Cho didn't use an assault weapon)

too much gun control

the sissification of men in a world where women have the audacity to, like, not sleep with psychopaths

And even terrorists and jihadist imagery

But Newt Gingrich is a leader. He's a trailblazer. He's willing to speak the hard truths. Also, he's an asshat.

By way of comparison

2007-04-18T12:34:00.000-07:00

While the U.S. is mourning the deaths of 32 students and faculty members at Virginia Tech, what are they doing in Baghdad? I say this not to belittle the tragedy in Blacksburg, but conversely to illustrate just how horrible it is to be an Iraqi: just today, almost five times as many people were killed in this Baghdad attack as died at Seung Cho's hand. And this happens every day in every city across Iraq.

Flags are half-staff across America. Think there's any chance people in Iraq might be a bit upset too?

Glenn Greenwald on the "unconservative conservatism"

2007-04-18T11:15:00.000-07:00

I was unaware that there was a federal database containing records of citizens' pharmaceutical consumption. I'm extremely interested in that. But anyways, Glenn's recall of the infamous "jackbooted thugs/black U.N. helicopters" hysteria from the right in the late '90s is exactly what I was thinking of, also. How do you go from that to "more surveillance, please"? I think it's a matter of who holds the power. Once it wasn't Clinton, then an all-powerful omniscient federal government could be trusted, it would be right, if only the solons of America had the correct letter to the right of their names (George W. Bush, R), then we could make sure that everyone followed the straight and narrow.

Let's just make sure that we don't hear a bunch of bullshit from the GOP about individual rights and freedom from government interference again when their brief and tawdry moment in the sun is over...

This is what conservatism has come to

2007-04-18T07:13:00.000-07:00

Better more surveillance than another 9/11. Man. I'm not an absolutist when it comes to privacy rights, but I find it amazing that the pro-surveillance group comes from two active contributors to the National Review and that an active (if relatively conservative) contributor to the New Republic is the anti-surveillance group. Can we now agree that the Bush Administration has stood the old concepts of conservative and liberal on their head?

Bob Barr, at least, remains consistent.

Democrats to hold fast on Iraq benchmarks in new spending bill

2007-04-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

How do I know? Check this out:

Cheney... predicted that Democrats will be forced to cave... [saying that] Congress will end up passing a "clean" bill that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without any troop withdrawal timetables. "They will not leave the troops in the field without the resources they need," Cheney said of the Democrats... "I'm willing to bet the other way -- that, in fact, they will."

So Dick Cheney is making a prediction. This is the guy who predicted that our troops would be greeted as liberators. That there were multiple significant connections between the 9/11 plotters and Iraq. That the Iraqi insurgency was in its last throes. And who can't even manage to shoot caged quails without occasionally catching his buddies in the face with a wad of buckshot.

You know your loser friends who fail at everything and you joke that you would go to them for advice if only so you'd know what not to do? Cheney's that guy and if he's predicting the Democrats will fold, I feel much more comfortable now that the Democrats will stand fast on the benchmarks in the new spending bill.

La ville des bicyclettes

2007-03-24T19:22:00.000-07:00

Now this is cool. The interesting thing about living in Paris (especially for an American from somewhere other than New York City or maybe Boston) is just how small the city is. It's a long walk to go from my old haunts down in the Marais out to my apartment in the hinterlands of the dix-septième arrondissement, but it was walkable and I did it occasionally. Of course, generally I would take the Metro and at night I would take a taxi, costing about 60 to 70 FF (around $10).

But that's because the streets were insane and especially at night it would have been quite dangerous to ride a bicycle around the city. Thinking back on it, I can't remember seeing a bicycle on the streets of the city outside of the final circuit race stage of the Tour de France. But that's because there is no space allocated for bikes on the streets. Reducing the population of cars and giving over space to bikes (not to mention raising the visibility of bikes and making the enforcement of motor safety laws aimed at protecting bicycle traffic) would do a lot to eliminate that problem.

I think that this is a really interesting statement: "A recent study analyzed different trips in the city 'with a car, bike, taxi and walking, and the bikes were always the fastest.'" It makes sense: in a dense urban environment, the ability of a bicycle to react to changing conditions and integrate more easily with the city, as well as the lower density of vehicles on the road, should lead to a much greater efficiency in traffic flow.

I think that this will be a really great addition to the city, a transforming addition. Assuming that it takes (and I think it will: it will let the French both be cheap and have something else to lord over fat lazy Americans, so what's not to like?), then 10 years from today, the city will be pretty profoundly transformed: much less traffic congestion, much less pollution, especially in the hot summer months when the Seine valley can become quite still and impacted, and quieter. It should be lovely. A very good move.

Now to convince my wife that we need to move back to Paris.

lol roflwtfbbqPWND

2007-03-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

Pat Leahy gets in touch with his inner bad ass:

"[Karl Rove] can appear voluntarily if he wants," [Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont,] said... "If he doesn't, I will subpoena him."

Leahy added, "The attorney general said, 'Well, there are some staff people or lower level people -- I am not sure whether I want to allow them to testify or not.' I said, 'Frankly, Mr. attorney general, it's not your decision, it's mine and the committee's.' We will have some subpoenas."

As the kids say: lolz3rs, in ur constitution invoking ur separation of powers.

Which is it, young feller?

2007-03-13T11:36:00.000-07:00

So Gonzales just said in his press conference that he didn't know about the USA firings and that there were issues with communications. But his chief of staff sure did know and seemed to communicate just fine. So that brings up a question that seems to surface a lot with regards to this administration...

Are you incompetent or lying? That's really the only choices. You are either total crap at your job with no control over what should be your most trusted direct report or you are lying through your teeth.

So which is it? I know what I think, but in the end it doesn't really matter, does it? In either case, you are unqualified for your position and should resign.

Questions on the conservative petition against Ann Coulter

2007-03-05T10:47:00.000-08:00

On one level, at least I can applaud these guys for taking a stand against Ann Coulter's invective. But I also have to take issue with a couple of points in their petition:

Coulter... [referred] to John Edwards... as a “faggot.” Such offensive language... may be tolerated on liberal websites but not at the nation’s premier conservative gathering...

Within a day of Coulter’s remark John Edwards sent out a fundraising email that used Coulter’s words to raise money for his faltering campaign.

First, where do they get the idea that calling someone a "faggot" is tolerated on liberal web sites? Isn't the standard conservative stereotype of liberals that of trembling P.C. thought police, afraid to apply almost any unqualified terminology for fear of offending people? I'm guessing that the reference is to "liberal hate speech" and our supposed tendency to insult people who don't agree with us, but, even if that were the case and it's not, Coulter's latest broadside is nothing more than schoolyard taunting. I don't recall anyone calling another person "faggot" since high school and even then it was dwindling from the frequency in junior high.

Also, is the Edwards campaign really faltering? Not by any measure that I've seen. He may not be the front-runner, but it's also early yet. Would they refer to the faltering McCain campaign? I dunno, maybe so, but I think it's an inaccurate characterization of Edwards's campaign. Of course he exploited the visibility and anger generated by Coulter's comments (or his fundraisers did). But you'd have to be an idiot to not try to take advantage of that. That doesn't in and of itself indicate that his campaign is struggling.

This is scary

2007-03-04T00:38:00.000-08:00

I don't really know what this means.

News from Afghanistan

2007-03-04T00:29:00.000-08:00

My primary opposition to the war in Iraq was not based on my certainty about the weakness (or downright fallaciousness) of the evidence against Iraq. I doubted it, but I didn't know and I saw where a rationale case could be made for war against Iraq. But even given the possibility that that war could be justified, I saw no reason it had to be done when it was done. The "smoking gun and mushroom cloud" scenario was obviously overwrought and there was no reason that, given the position of weapons inspectors in Iraq, we couldn't wait at least another year to invade, or two or three... (OK, no reason but the political and psychological reasons that in the end drove the decision for the administration in the first place).

Well, after Iraq, Afghanistan became the new Forgotten War. That's started to change again as Afghanistan has become scarier. So hearing something at least somewhat heartening is a good thing.

A personal question about Ann Coulter

2007-03-03T20:23:00.000-08:00

This question has bugged me for a while. Let's think about Ann Coulter's position. She's the hero of the right-wing Christian conservative faction of the Republican Party. Now, I've never heard her talk about the role of Jesus and religion in her life, other than to declare that they do indeed play a part in her life. She claims that, "I'm a Christian first and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it."¹

Well, I guess I'm guilty of forgetting that, but I blame her a little bit for not reminding me. Because she never writes about it. At all. Check out her archives. No mention of Jesus or God in any title (other than when she's positing that liberals are godless, mainly in service of promoting her book of the same name). In fact, her site brings up only a few relatively tangential hits talking about Jesus at all and certainly nothing describing Ann's devotion to her faith.

OK, but I would be the first to say that your religious or spiritual life is your business and is not a fair target for political discussion. For example, I have many issues with Mitt Romney as a candidate, but the fact that he's LDS is of little or no consequence to me. I would certainly feel the same about a public person's particular Protestant denomination or Catholicism or Judaism or Muslim...ism or whatever the hell the correct word would be in that grammatical context.

But I have a question that, again, I would never ask about almost anyone unless they made people's personal lives an issue. If Ann didn't condemn people for their sexual habits, then her personal and sexual life would be, outside of criminal conduct, absolutely inappropriate for public discussion. But Ann does. Let's leave aside her involvement in the Paula Jones and Bill Clinton brou-ha-ha. This can be explained away (rather disingenuously, I think, but never mind that) as being about the exploitation of power by Clinton and the subsequent perjury Clinton committed when trying to avoid accountability for his malfeasance. So let's just not deal with that.

But Ann doesn't like homosexuality. Against Christianity and against the Bible. And premarital sex is obviously right out the door. All programs run by the government that deal even tangentially with sex should focus, not just primarily, but exclusively on abstinence. This is Godly and any intimation otherwise just encourages promiscuity, homosexuality, and all the other "ity"s that irritate James Dobson and his compatriots.

So Ann's a virgin, right?

I mean, she's 45 years old and has never been married. Never been married, although she's had a few boyfriends. Her official bio is pretty much all professional stuff, which would be fair for people who don't make the point of their professional career spearheading a movement that demands a high level of intrusiveness into people's lives in order to pass judgment on the morality and acceptability of their personal practices.

So I have to know, Ann, are you a virgin? In the years since you have accepted Christ into your life, have you had sex (obviously out of wedlock, since you're not married)? If you are on solid enough moral ground to call a married man a faggot, it's only fair of us to demand of you: are you practicing what you preach? Which is it, Ann: virgin spinster or hypocritical Jezebel?

1. Not linked to actual source because it's subscription only.

Blogging Hiatus

2007-03-03T19:58:00.000-08:00

Yes, I have been on one. Basically. I just haven't blogged. Busy busy. My audience of one and a half is crushed. I'm going to try to get back in the swing of it.

I've also been thinking about exactly what I'm trying to do with this Slapfest. Most of my posts are political rants, but I'd like to branch into some other types of writing. I'm not normally a particularly confessional sort of person, so discourses on my breakfast and how it made me feel are probably out. But there's lots of other topics I'd like to cover:

Sports, especially football and baseball
Music
Writing
Code

But I already have my next post in the queue and it's political, so let's see how this idea of changing (or at least enhancing) what I'm writing works out.

The other thing is that I'm not so good at "blogging" as such. Many of my posts, like many of my e-mails and phone calls and so on, tend to be long. I write dissertations as opposed to nice succinct little bits. I'm really going to also try to put up thoughts and observations in addition to dissertations on why John Yoo should be strung up by his goddamned toe-nails.

So... we'll see how that goes.

A couple of must sees...

2007-01-26T23:42:00.000-08:00

This leads to a news segment by CBS News that was never broadcast, although it is, for now, available on their Web site. It's very hard to reconcile the noises that anyone makes on the pro-escalation side of the argument, especially at its far end with Cheney's recent comments about how swell things are going, with the bleak picture painted by this piece. To even think that we're talking about our inability to control a majority traffic artery less than two miles from the seat of the Iraqi government and the nexus of American interests and that government...

To even have to consider that we can accomplish that seemingly simple task should make anyone wonder how we can trust any judgment that this administration and its ideological backers and justifiers have in regard to how we should carry out and terminate this conflict.

For another interesting perspective on Iraq, here’s a video of a Humvee driving thru Baghdad traffic. It’s of surprisingly good quality.

This confirms my suspicion that nothing could be more depressing and terrifying than being a soldier in Iraq. I mean, I think for the most part American soldiers in Vietnam had it better. At least there were colors besides, whatever that is, sand color, I guess, in Vietnam.

Some people I know have been shocked at the brusqueness and aggressiveness of the driving of the American soldiers in the Humvee. "They won a lot of hearts and minds," someone said. And I’m sure it pisses people off in the general Baghdad population, too, it can’t but piss you off.

But I was actually surprised at how casually people took it. Yes, it would suck if you lived in that neighborhood, but if the general perception of the Baghdadi population were abject fear and panic at the approach of the American menace, then I really would not have expected those guys walking along the median as the Humvee shot by to be so damned casual. There were guys right next to the truck in the median as it went by, not panicking at all, maybe smoking a cigarette or something. To me, that indicates that they feel that the behavior of the Humvee is adequately predictable and assimilable into their regular view of the world. It sucks and causes resentment, sure, but it’s also not the semi-random careening violence that it appears to someone not familiar with it. It is, instead, sadly routine. People there pull to the side of the road just as they do here when an ambulance screams by.

I'm not sure which is more damning, overall. Is it that our soldiers are regularly so aggressive as they drive through the civilian population (and in spite of the inarguable insurgent danger there, most of the people on the city streets are innocents)? Or is it that everyone simply accepts that aggressiveness as the required mode in which everyone has to live because the overall situation is so savage and dehumanizing?

In the end, I can't help but sympathize with the guys driving the Humvee, doubly damned. Once in their immediate environment by those who seethe against and hate them for their role in bringing such death and chaos down upon the Iraqi people. And twice for being in the position that they're in, to have to cause such chaos simply as the price of making it out of there alive. Not accomplishing their mission, where sometimes an unfortunate but unavoidable sacrifice has to be made. But just making it out alive, with no idea of what their mission is and no clear connection between what they do each day and how what they do will somehow contribute to making the tragedy end. It may be OK to take part in tragedy to avoid a greater tragedy. I think even amongst the warriors in Iraq that it's becoming clear that we're veering into the greater tragedy now.

Who lost Iraq? David Frum's a bit unclear on history...

2007-01-10T23:39:00.000-08:00

So I'm listening to Hugh Hewitt today, because every once in a while I need to remind myself that there are people as doctrinaire and oblivious as... well, Hugh Hewitt. So today promised to be an extra crispy bowl of right-wing nuts, because David Frum was on. This whole David-Hugh lovefest was basically paving the way for the President's speech tonight, sort of setting the scene of all the unanticipated obstacles and challenges, as well as illustrating how the American people needed to have the spine for the inevitable challenges that everyone should have known we would face in Iraq in spite of the Administration and the right-wing press, talk radio, and bloggers' insistence that it wouldn't be a challenge.

OK, never mind all that. I expect that, it's par for the course. The thing that really took me aback was a fairly simple statement by Frum that was so amazingly transparently untruthful and dishonest. It really illustrated the utter lack of respect for their audience that Hewitt and Frum have.

Frum said something to the effect that one of the big obstacles we faced in Iraq was the lack of a continuous government in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein (note that I've tried to find a transcript of this interview, but haven't been able to yet, so this is all paraphrased from memory; if I can find a transcript, I'll post a link to it). This was compared to the fact that, after the fall of Imperial Japan in WWII, the government continued to function, which is what helped Japan on its transition to a parliamentary democracy.

That's true enough, I'll grant him that. But then he went on to wax poetic (again, paraphrased):

Iraq was like a picture from a satellite, where we could see all of the power lines in the picture and we thought everything was fine, we could just show up and everything would continue working. But we didn't realize that Saddam's rule had really destroyed all of that and when we showed up it all just crumbled. That's what the government was like. We thought there was a functioning government, but when we showed up it just fell apart.

Which is a really interesting take on it. It just fell apart like the desiccated pages of an old book as we tried to open it to read. Or, you know, we figured out which pages we didn't like and ripped them all out then got pissed at the lack of continuity:

L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, issued two sweeping orders in May 2003: one outlawed the Baath Party and dismissed all senior members from their government posts; the other dissolved Iraq's 500,000-member military and intelligence services... Bremer's first order led to the firing of about 30,000 ex-Baathists from various ministries.

Huh. I wonder if that had any effect. Now, it's fair to ask, how would Bremer know anything about this? In a Stalinist state like Iraq, it must be very difficult to determine how deep the tendrils of control delve into the functioning of society, government, and all of the other machinery of state. I mean, it would take someone brilliant, like an Atlantic Monthly reporter back in 1979, to figure this out:

The [Ba'ath] party still retains much of the secret compartmentalized structure and the clandestine methods by which, like many revolutionary parties, it has ensured its survival... They function everywhere-in the workplace, in the neighborhoods, and in all ranks of the military forces... Since its emergence from the underground, and following a decade of experience in power, the Baath leadership had been able to train a second elite group to operate at all levels of the bureaucracy and the military forces.

This is of course a hallmark of totalitarian control. In fact, the Japanese bureaucracy and ministries were jam packed with people who loved the dickens out of the Emperor. And the reason that Japan didn't have the same continuity problems as Iraq is that we didn't summarily bounce them all out of the government! In fact, it's worth noting we didn't even depose the Emperor himself!

And Frum has to know this. He's not an idiot. Hewitt has to know this. And yet they sat there and discussed it as if, well shucks, who could have anticipated such a thing? Well, all the people who warned that we shouldn't rush into Iraq because of the consequences that were difficult to foresee, the ones who were dismissed by the likes of Frum and Hewitt as insufficiently bold to grab the gold ring that lay before us with world utopia and the downfall of the terrorist threat lying tantalizingly on the other side. Those guys, obviously, but who else, was there anyone that could be trusted?

I'm willing to have an honest discussion about Iraq. Maybe with a large enough force, we really could pacify Iraq and give the fledgling government time to consolidate as a truly representative government of all the Iraqi people. I doubted it could be done before the war and I really doubt it could be done now, but we can discuss it. But not if those who already strong-armed the debate in the beginning through lies, manipulations, and untruths insist on continuing to try to construct their own reality that ignores such mundance concerns as cause and effect, culpability, and the recognition that simply stating something does not make it so.

Next under the bus is....

2007-01-02T08:26:00.000-08:00

Congratulations, General George Casey, you're the next to go under the wheels!

Over the past 12 months, as optimism collided with reality, Mr. Bush increasingly found himself uneasy with General Casey’s strategy. And now... Mr. Bush seems all but certain not only to reverse the strategy that General Casey championed, but also to accelerate the general’s departure from Iraq, according to senior military officials.

See? Stay the course, but Bush, as it turns out, was uneasy with that course. Not his fault. It was Casey's fault. The problem, really, is that Casey is just a shirker:

But as Baghdad spun further out of control, some of the president’s advisers now say, Mr. Bush grew concerned that General Casey, among others, had become more fixated on withdrawal than victory... Mr. Bush came to worry that it was not just his critics and Democrats in Congress who were looking for what he dismissed last month as a strategy of “graceful exit...” Mr. Bush made it clear that he was not interested in any ideas that would simply allow American forces to stabilize the violence.

Plenty more tasty incompetence and serial stupidity in there. Check out the whole article.

File under "Well, duh..."

2007-01-02T08:22:00.000-08:00

The headline screams: "Teens binge drink!"

In other earth-shattering news, the sky is blue. Please don't panic at these startling revelations.

Lay down your burdens!

2006-12-26T18:22:00.000-08:00

Ezra Klein has a great article in today's L.A. Times about upcoming political pressure on the health care system. There are a number of good points here, including the basic point that I think that the American voting public is probably not going to get suckered by Harry and Louise this time around. That crap flew back when the first flush of Republican triumphalism and claims of being the party of ideas was surging through the body politic (ideas are fine; implementing them successfully seems to be the challenge for Republicans) . I think most people now are clear about the whole insurance industry/GOP shuck and jive con job on that.

What really gets me is the resistance of pro-business types. I understand ideological conservatives' resistance to state-run health care: they're OK with the casualties caused by the vagaries of the market, believing that there are fewer casualties in the long run through the magic of the marketplace. Although they may not like the characterization, the law of the jungle is fine with them. I think that this perspective is simpled minded and idiotic and clearly contradicted by the evidence. But at least they're clear on the ramifications in the short term.

But business types, what's the downside? Rid yourself of the Sisyphean task of paying your employees' health care costs. How many times in the last few years have people publicly griped about the cost to business of skyrocketing insurance premiums? I have a good professional job and my insurance coverage has gotten notably crappier from year to year in the last ten years. So lay down your burdens. The health insurance system now is desperately anti-entrepreneurial. With a wife in school and a 3-year-old, I can not start my own business no matter how badly I want to. Can government-run health care really do any worse than what we've got now?

Gary Miller is a scumbag

2006-12-24T11:12:00.000-08:00

Gary Miller's a scumbag, that's pretty clear. But his newest trick (or, actually, read the article: this is the second time he's pulled this particular ploy) is so magnificently despicable that I simply have a hard time believing that this guy can even stand to look at his thieving face in the mirror:

Residents who live nearby say that Miller is trying to force the city to buy his land by raising the specter of a development that would make the hillside unsafe and unsightly... Miller's game plan, [critics say], is similar to one he successfully used four years ago in Monrovia, about 25 miles west on the 210 Freeway, where a plan for hillside development met with fierce local opposition. Ultimately, Monrovia citizens voted to tax themselves to buy the property from Miller and preserve it as open space.

Miller told [the people from whom he had bought the land] that he would build a $1-million bridge spanning a drainage ditch on the property and name it after their brother, Barnard Carrari, who had just died, if they would lower their price by $1 million. Still grieving... they agreed and sold him the land for about $2 million.

Five months later, Miller reported on his congressional financial disclosure statement that the land was worth at least $5 million.

Miller initially told the Carraris he was only going to make modest adjustments to the land and build about 30 homes, Fernandez said. When the family saw his plans for 110 homes — and no bridge named after Barnard Carrari — they were distraught, she said.

"That farm was a family tradition where people went up there and made a day of it," Fernandez said. "And when he broke his word and didn't do all the things he said he would, it just broke our hearts."

You got that? He conned people to sell the land with various promises, immediately turned around and evaluated the land at 150% more than he paid for it, then betrayed his promises to blackmail the city into buying the land off of him. And he's supposedly a libertarian-leaning conservative. More like a true welfare queen, if you ask me.

Censorship in America

2006-12-22T07:33:00.000-08:00

Have you heard of Flynt Leverett? You should have.

Ho-ho-HELP!

2006-12-20T13:18:00.000-08:00

A bit of Christmas cheer:

Last year, the centre's Father Christmas was set upon by youths calling a him a "fraud and a fake."

Is it any surprise that the father of the dismal science was Scottish?

Back to Yoo

2006-12-12T23:25:00.000-08:00

I just found a great article from a couple of months ago, thru a post on Andrew Sullivan's blog. Now, I've gone off on in the past, but, seriously, I'm a dope-smoking homo-hugging lefty (I'm pro-gun-rights for the most part, but I doubt that'll convince anyone that I'm a loyal neocon unitary executive booster). So who's going to take my criticisms seriously?

Well, no one can accuse The American Conservative of being some squishy soft human-rights-devoted liberal rag. And what do they have to say about our Johnny? Well, it's good stuff:

Yoo’s new book, War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account of the War on Terror, reads like a slippery lawyer’s brief submitted to a dim judge who gets all his information from Fox News...

A particular juicy quote goes: "Yoo suggested that 'an American attack in South America or Southeast Asia might be a surprise to the terrorists,' since they were expecting the U.S. to target Afghanistan." Yeah, an attack on Iceland also would have been a surprise and for pretty much the same damned reason: South American, Southeast Asia, and Iceland all share the distinction of being in no way related to the attacks of 9/11 nor any of the other terror attacks that have occurred before, on, or since 9/11.

Let's be clear: in the wake of 9/11, there was going to be a war. I was cool with that, seriously I was. I thought the war in Afghanistan was justified and necessary. You can't just allow someone to harbor and support an attack like that and then allow them to say, nah we really don't feel like coughing up the guys that did it. It's like getting malaria from mosquito bites but not dumping out the water puddles because your buddy keeps his goldfish in there. The goldfish gotta go.

And creative thinking is awesome! It's given us Starry Night, the light bulb, and Pop Rocks. But there's creative thinking and then there's plain old making shit up. The idea of attacking South America or Southeast because they would be surprised sails way past the mark of even making shit up: it's just profoundly stupid. Explain to me, please, how this at best dishonest and disingenuous and at worst stupid and evil person merits a professorship at Boalt Hall?

Mac and PC ads

2006-12-12T11:20:00.000-08:00

So have you seen the Apple commercial where PC gives Mac a C++ GUI Programming Guide, which is funny because no Mac person would ever want to know something geeky like GUI Programming?

Now, hear me out on this one. It may not really be so, but I think this thought...

This particular series of commercials actually works more to the advantage of the PC than the Mac.

Why so?

Well, everyone already knows PCs are stuffy, staid, and boring. They're for, as one of the commercials alludes to, balancing your checkbook. Or, as this particular commercial refers to, writing C++ GUIs (never mind that of course the same thing happens on Macs or... no Mac GUIs; but let's just accept the point). We already know this divide: Macs are for creative free spirits, PCs are for stick-up-your-ass fuddy duddies who wear bad sweaters.

But the flaw in these commercials is that "Mac" makes being a creative free spirit seem dull and boring. He's a generic "hip" guy, young with a little scruff, about as alternative and out of the box as back tattoos and belly rings. If you walked past him on the street, you wouldn't think, hey, there goes a creative free spirit, you'd think hey, there goes half the under-30 population of Seattle (he writes from the 39th floor of a tall office building in downtown Seattle on a cold but relatively clear Puget Sound morning). And yes, I'm referring to, basically, the entire male half of the population.

Now look at PC. Yes, he's portly, pasty, with a bad haircut. He's also subversively funny. He's not self-assured and hip, but people can react to the glib and facile superiority of the Mac fellow by feeling more, not less, sympathetic to the PC character. Yes, he's a dork. But he's kind of a fun dork. And putting a sympathetic human face on the PC makes it seem less daunting and less... well, faceless than it otherwise might. Add in the fact that the PC is played by John Hodgman who is quite funny and able to make being a geek seem, if not attractive, at least not quite as bleak a fate as these commercials would want to make it, then I wonder about the actual effect of these commercials on viewers.

And add ironic? I think that iTunes is mildly passable software and QuickTime is utter dreck. As if to prove my point, when I went to the Apple site to check the URL for the ads, QuickTime crashed my browser and I had to start this post over again. As Borat would say: nice.

Update: There's an article on Slate by Seth Stevenson making pretty much the same point.

The single most outrageous thing I've read in a long time

2006-12-05T12:37:00.000-08:00

This is truly jaw dropping. This bespeaks a lack of morality, humanity, and conscience on a level I have a really hard time comprehending. Read through this. If you're not shocked and outraged, then I really don't think you can be shocked and outraged.

That darned happenstance

2006-12-04T22:22:00.000-08:00

You know, we've had such bad luck. Bad bad luck. The best laid plans of mice and men and all that bollocks.

What am I talking about? Well, did you know that the U.S. had an airtight plan in Iraq? Oh yeah, it's true! See, when we went in, "we had hoped to have 150,000 to 200,000 Iraqi army forces to help in the security proposition, and those forces melted away at the close of the war." They just melted away!

Or we, uh... fired them. Or something. Guess that took us by surprise, eh?

Really, truly, if you can read this transcript (or better, watch the video) of the interview between Russert and Hadley, you'll be amazed. Russert's normally a total kiss-ass with top-level members of the administration, but he goes all bulldog on the meat wagon on Hadley. And Hadley had... nothing, he's got nothing. Not because Russert was so devious. But because there's nothing for Hadley to have. It has a real last stand kind of feel to it. After this, the administration's protestations to the contrary become a lot like a drunk covered in vomit with the smoking heap of his car wrapped around a pole declaiming his sobriety and ability to drive.

John Fucking Cougar Can Kiss My Ass

2006-12-03T17:19:00.000-08:00

Listening to endless repetitions of this crap ass John Cougar dreck using faux populist patriotic horseshit to peddle bullshit GM trucks is far too high a price to pay for being a football fan (all apologies to Quentin Crisp). The song sucks and it's been played no less than 50 times during every fucking NFL game this season. It's driving me fucking insane. John Cougar deserves at the very least merciless mocking, but preferably a beating that leaves him unconscious and on the edge of death.

Not really. I don't condone beating people to within an inch of their life. But he's really pushing me.

And yes, I know he changed his fucking name. Stop releasing crap-ass sell-out corporate whore songs like that and maybe I'll pay attention. 'Til then, he's little Johnny Cougar, the corporate fellatist whose small moment of near-significance has long since passed and who now exists only to torment us.

Quelle tragédie

2006-11-08T00:24:00.000-08:00

From the infamous K-Lo at the Corner, the National Review blog:

[I]n many ways this wasn’t about individuals — certainly not in these instances. This was a throw-the-bums (re “Republican”) -out election — even if the guy I am voting for is not a bum... An injustice, but here we are.

O, cry me a river, sister. What a whiner. An injustice? Being blamed for the cookie your brother stole is an injustice. Finding yourself accused of leaving a dog turd that your dog didn't actually leave is an injustice. Getting beaten in a democratic (small d) election because people were tired of your bullshit and complicity in unpopular government policies is not an injustice, it's getting fired. You dipshit.

w00t!

2006-11-08T00:21:00.000-08:00

Nothing much to say, but it's great to be looking at a brand new day.

Where was this guy...

2006-10-31T12:10:00.000-08:00

During the campaign? We coulda used more of this.

"We've taken the pissed-off studly John Kerry and replaced him with a total pussy. Let's see if they notice."

Is the terrorist trial bill really law now?

2006-10-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

Or did Bush bungle it by trying to hold on to it and use for grandstanding purposes?

Here's a quick chronology:

The terror detainee bill was passed and sent to the White House on September 29.
Congress officially adjourned on that same day.
The President signed the bill on October 17.

That's 15 days (not counting Sundays or the day on which the bill was passed) from when the bill was passed until when it was signed.

So what's the problem? Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, which states:

If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.

That's inconvenient.

Update: The problem is in the bit about presented to him. I thought that passing the bill and sending it out of the committee counted as that. Instead, there's a formal parliamentary action for presenting the bill and this bill was presented to the President on October 10. Crap.

More John Yoo

2006-10-04T16:34:00.000-07:00

Look at the face of the Prince of Darkness and hear his voice. The man's a cold-blooded, evil sociopathic freak.

18?

2006-10-01T01:32:00.000-07:00

I just saw an interesting series of commercials, late night on some disaster show on a bsaic-cable type network. One was the "Dotster Dots," a weird Spice Girl-like group of women and some cheeseball "technical guy" explaining whatever the hell their service was. The basic gist is that they're a domain hosting and Web design thing. And their Web site is www.18.dotsterdots.com (and they're giving away a Corvette).

Then after that is some work-at-home scam. I didn't really see what they were selling. But their site is www.18work.com.

These are both fairly nonsensical URLs. In fact, it's fair to say that they're obfuscated, deliberately chosen to be cryptic and incomprehensible to non-technical audiences. Go Daddy is kinda incomprehensible (what does it have to do with domain hosting?), but it's simple and it's godaddy.com. If you tell someone to go to gogdaddy.com, they're probably not going to screw it up. www.18.dotsterdots.com is an OK URL for an internal corporate address, to support a particular technical structure, or whatever. But as a consumer site?

Basically only someone who sees the commercial would know what the URL is. No word of mouth, basically. 18work.com is just strange.

But they both have "18" in the URL and fairly conspicuously in the Dots URL. I've seen some other late-night commercials with just Web site addresses. So.. is it just obfuscation to prevent people from being able to tell the address where they were scammed? I don't really have any theories besides that, but it doesn't take a total rocket scientist to know that it would be extremely simple to figure that part of the mystery out.

It's late. I wonder about such things.

Update: The Dotster Dots are named Cool Dot, Smooth Dot, Sweet Dot, Sassy Dot, and Mini Dot. The guy is John. All for less than a dollar a day.

Republicans are pederasts

2006-09-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

Well, at least this guy is. But I figure if Bush can tar all Democrats with the "cut and run" sobriquet in spite of the varieties of perspectives within the party, then I can go ahead and say that the Republicans are the party of closeted homosexuals, pedophiles, and mule fuckers. All's fair, eh?

Here's the GOP Strategy on Torture and Detention

2006-09-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

Here's what just happened with the habeus corpus and torture bills that just went through Congress. The Democrats had an opportunity (or at least a possible opportunity) to filibuster these bills and prevent their passage before Congress recessed to go back their states and districts to campaign. Their failure to do so has outraged a number of different commentators, including myself. And I'm sure this is going to cost the Democrats votes.

What it comes down to is that Karl Rove or whoever came up with this is a clever bastard. They put the Democrats in a lose-lose situation. The Democrats' choice came down to this:

Don't filibuster and/or throw obstacles in the way of these legal debacles. Make a pro forma show of resistance by voting against it. This will lose you votes on the left
Filibuster and lose votes in the center and even on the right from those who are pissed about the myriad Republican failings in many areas (economy, Iraq, Katrina, general incompetence, etc.) but would still rally back to the GOP if scared with the "weak on terror" shibboleth.

Given that the final Senate vote on the measure was 65-34 on the detainee bill (and the vote in the House equally lopsided), it's quite likely that even attempting a filibuster was a quixotic idea, meaning that votes lost by playing into that hand would have even been in vain. But the larger strategic picture is that, of the many Congressional races that are in play in the '06 election season, many of them are in relatively "red" areas—think Montana, Tennessee, Colorado, Florida. Losing swing votes in those areas is probably more threatening to the Democrats' chances of taking one or both houses of Congress in this election than are losing left-of-center votes in California or Massachusetts.

I'm not saying I could have been Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi and stomached not doing everything I could have to stop these betrayals of American principles and morals. Those of us who believe we just had a Reichstag fire moment—with the detainee and torture bills our very own Enabling Act—find it impossible to view such a batch of horribly cynical and damaging provisions through a strictly tactical lens. The unfortunate problem is that the current administration has no such moral foibles. The only defense I can offer the Democratic leadership is that it's hard to wrestle pigs without getting muddy.

Now, I'm not at all confident that Democratic control of Congress will mean that they'll do what's required to stop these measures. After all, even if they take both houses, Bush is still the President and the Democrats will hardly have a veto-proof minority. But, for those of us who oppose the administration, these measures that sell out the very meaning of American tradition, and our on-rushing dictatorship, let's be clear that the blame rests squarely on the GOP. So, on Election Day, drag your heavy heart out of the house and vote Democratic anyways, if not for the Democrats, then against the Republicans.

More on the torture thing

2006-09-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

This post by Jack M. Balkin (is that his real name?) says pretty much the same thing I said, but with some special sauce on top. I like special sauce, especially the spread at In-N-Out Burger, so this is highly recommended. I found that post in a post on Glenn Greenwald's blog, which I just started following and find really interesting, although I don't agree with him all the time.

I also got a nice e-mail from Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report. Apparently, he put a link to my original post in the Daou Report on Salon.com, which is quite nice. My main concern in this instance isn't really driving traffic here, but getting people to make the calls to the so-called leadership of the Democratic Party to try to get them to make a stand on this issue. But however that works is OK with me!

I'm going to write up my experiences on the phones later on...

Couldn't They Do It To Make Me Proud?

2006-09-26T07:59:00.000-07:00

Or at least not so damned ashamed to be American? Apparently, Democrats are not going to block the torture and spying bills currently in Congress:

“We’re going to do what we can to limit the amount of daylight between us and them on national security issues in order to neutralize this as a political issue,” a senior Democratic aide said.

Why the hell don't the Democrats make it a political issue? Why don't we scream from the highest rooftops, Republicans support torture? I understand not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, tactics and all that, but this is allowing torture to be legalized.

The Democrats should be ashamed of themselves. Who do we call? Who do we get to change this wrong-headed notion that allowing torture to be legalized is not an acceptable strategy? If the Democrats' slogan is A New Direction For America, couldn't that new direction include not legalizing torture?!

I strongly urge everyone to contact House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,² Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Howard Dean at the Democratic National Committee, and Rahm Emanuel of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.¹ Also, be sure to contact your own representative and senators!! Tell all of them that this is unacceptable.³ They are our last hope to prevent this cynical and horribly un-American legislation from becoming law.

If Democrats don't stand for no torture and no ex post facto legalization of the abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the CIA black prison, and extraordinary renditions, then what the hell do they stand for?

Please contact these "leaders" of the Democratic Party and let them know that not opposing these bills is unacceptable. I also plan to contact each of these "leaders" by phone today to press them to action. I urge, beg, plead with you to do the same. Let's flood their offices with protests! Here's the letter that I'm sending to these people, edited for each person of course (this is for Rahm Emanuel; his contact form has an "issue" drop-down list that doesn't include "Torture" as an issue). You're more than welcome to grab this, add your own thoughts to it, and send it on.

Really the issue is TORTURE, not Iraq. But I have noticed that neither you, Howard Dean, Harry Reid, nor Nancy Pelosi has TORTURE listed as an issue on your contact forms.

I am writing in regards to the story in tpmmuckraker.com (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001601.php) regarding the Democrats' decision to not block the torture and spying legislation. I am absolutely OUTRAGED by this decision. As a loyal Democrat, I have defended instances where the party did not let the perfect be the enemy of the good and made tactical decisions to not press on particular issues with the understanding that this would enable the party to eventually implement more of our agenda.

But if we do not stand against TORTURE, what do we stand against? If we do not stand against the absolute derogation of Americans' 4th Amendment rights, what do we stand against? If the Democrats do not stand up against these bills and stop them in the short amount of time left, then the Democratic Party stands for NOTHING. If this party sells its soul in the cravenly cowardly way on this, the most important moral, ethical, and legal issue in front of Congress, then I have no part in this party. I will cancel the donations I was preparing to make in the run-up to the election. I will cancel my partipication in GOTV efforts (how will answer someone who asks me why they should vote for the Democrats when the party didn't even have enough of a backbone to oppose TORTURE?). I will stay home from the polls this election day. Not taking action on this issue is simply unacceptable, immoral, and despicable.

Please let me know about your contacts and what responses you get in the comments here! Thanks!

Update 1: Rahm Emanuel's site doesn't accept e-mails from people outside his district, so you have to go to the contact page of the DCCC. Note that there are no such restrictions on the phone for his D.C. and district office phones (202-225-4061 and 773-267-5926, respectively).

Update 2: Nancy Pelosi's site has the sam restriction as Emanuel's. Her's refers you to the Minority Leader's site, but there's no contact information there. So you can send her e-mail with the express disclaimer that her site says they'll ignore e-mail that doesn't have proof that you're a constituent (for those in S.F., this isn't an issue of course). That means resorting to phones then! Oh, well, not a problem. S.F. is (415) 556-4862 and D.C. is (202) 225-4965. Have at 'em.

Update 3: OK, this is the last update like this. All of the Congresscritters have restrictions on their e-mail forms, so nuts to that. Just call.

Time to start up a riot, y'all!

2006-09-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

Free Willie!!! WTF is wrong with people? Don't the cops in Lafayette, LA, have something, anything, more important to do than hassling Willie over weed?

Being President means never having to say you're sorry...

2006-09-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

I've talked about John Yoo before, but the guy is seriously the gift that keeps on giving. Although that puts a bit more positive spin on the guy than I really care to, but my God the guy won't shut up and everything that spews out of his yap pretty much convinces me that 1) this guy is simply f---ing crazy and 2) that he is... I dunno, stupid's not the right word, because he's clearly an intelligent guy in the sense of grey matter horsepower, and obtuse is sort of in the neighborhood but doesn't seem to capture the willful and malevolent disregard of the dangers of unlimited executive power.

In short, in How the Presidency Regained Its Balance is a stunning tour de force of double-talk and scare tactics in the service of the argument of President as dictator. Yoo conflates the conjectured powers of a war-time President with the antediluvian potentate that supposedly existed before the stranglehold of post-Watergate reforms.

[T]he president... has long intended to make reinvigorating the presidency a priority... But the inescapable fact is that war shifts power to the branch most responsible for its waging: the executive...

Yoo basically blows his cover here: oh, we were planning on this anyways; the war just came along and gave us an initial justification. Because note well that the rationale appeals to the President's war efforts, but that the overall motive is a peace-time one. The root of this problem lies in the complacency of a torpid and secure body politic:

The changes of the 1970’s occurred largely because we had no serious national security threats to United States soil, but plenty of paranoia in the wake of Richard Nixon’s use of national security agencies to spy on political opponents.

Let's think about that: no serious national security threats. Not like now, where someone might be able to kill 3,000 people! Back then, all you had was the Soviet Union, which we were assured repeatedly by the conservative ancestors of today's was the Evil Empire with thousands of nuclear-armed ICBMs pointed at us. Not to mention burgeoning Red insurgencies in this hemisphere, Castro still peeking through the keyhole, and so on.

But that dang ol' paranoia just got the best of us. Let's not mention the adage that says, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you," which was certainly true back then. No less than Barry Goldwater, no weak quisling in search of a Prime Minister instead of a (real-man) President, believed that Nixon's actions were beyond the bounds of legality and propriety. So let's be clear: there was real cause to place limits on the office of the President. Harkening back to the halcyon days of LBJ and Nixon is hardly likely to rally a groundswell of support for the powers Yoo wants to invest in the President.

These statutes have produced little but dysfunction...

Yeah, and allowing open-ended "interpretation" of Congressional statutes through the use of signing statements, where interpretation has ventured so far afield as to result in the statute actually being implemented in almost precisely the opposite manner intended by Congress, that has resulted in smooth functioning and coherency.

Later, I'll have a bit more to say on two topics related to this:

Proponents of unitary executive always try to date the supposed neutering of the Presidency back to the post-Watergate reforms. In fact, this is bollocks: the unitary executive concept of the President is strictly modern, expressly defined out of the picture in the U.S. Constitution, and is a profoundly un-American and ahistorical concept.
The appeals to the post-Watergate reforms really create a coded message that refers back to the cultural divide of the '60s and '70s, with support for the unitary executive equating to support for God, country, and all of the other nationalist symbols of the pro-war anti-left conservative movement.

I think both of these are very important to understand and to clarify in this debate. Allowing these concepts to go unquestioned allows them to filter in as the accepted basis for considering the question: if we're just talking about rolling back a few decades in terms of Presidential power, then it's not so bad, right? And the hippies made a mess of things, so we don't want to be on their side!

In fact, if the concept of the unitary executive becomes established, we've in effect become a-Constitutional, entering territory that was voided by George Washington when he declined to become king. The checks of laws and courts on the desires and programs of the executive branch are not just inconvenient restrictions placed to test the mettle of our President. Instead, they're part and parcel of our system, these limits on absolute power part of the very woof and weave of our nation's fabric. The actions, justifications, and rationalizations of bomb throwers like John Yoo threatens to tear and sunder this fabric, with consequences that will destroy everything that it truly means to be American.

Let me be direct: John Yoo is a horrible detestable person. He is no way qualified to teach law. His book is entitled, War By Other Means. I agree that he's found a way to conduct civil war and insurrection against the U.S. Constitution by means other than war. He has provided a rationalization for a horrible cabal of incompetent, evil men to begin the project of destroying our democracy. For all of the crimes and moral depravity he has caused and aided and abetted, John Yoo should be deeply ashamed of himself.

He looks a little uncomfortable

2006-09-11T12:42:00.001-07:00

A couple of my friends think that Bush looks a little unnatural here, sort of like he had to go out of his way to step on the flag like that. I'm guessing that he's still getting comfortable with the whole oppressive dictator thing, but if that was Cheney, he'd look just fine, especially if you also wedged a puppy or baby or kittens under his foot also.

This also speaks to something that just bugs the crap out of me. I was in the military and was in the Drum and Bugle Corps in boot camp and tech school, had friends in the Honor Guard, did plenty of ceremonies and all that. I have a pretty decent amount of respect for the flag and would never burn it or desecrate and so on. I'm not in favor of a flag-burning amendment, because that sort of expression is exactly what the flag is supposed to stand for. So why are the assholes who are supposedly so in love with the God-damned flag always so completely and totally violating the protocol that defines what it means to respect the flag?

You can't wear the flag.
You can't just slap it anywhere on your car.
When it gets tattered or abused, you can't just keep driving around with the pathetic last few threads streaming from your radio antenna, there are rules
And you sure the fuck can't step on it!

Seriously, how did this asshat ever become President? Is it really such an amazing application of the Peter Principle? I don't think so, because let's keep in mind that this idiot failed at just about everything he attemped prior to becoming President also (college, military career, Arbusto, etc.) until someone pulled him in to be the primo glad hander in Texas politics (the Texas Rangers ballpark, Texas governor).

Please

2006-08-28T23:02:00.000-07:00

Well, obviously we were wrong, those of us who opposed the war or opposed the way the war was executed or what not. Because it's all turning around! No, really, it's turning around! There are "glimmers of hope"! (not my words). And why are there glimmers? Well, in Rich Lowry's words, because of more troops. Hmmm... haven't some people saying that for a long time?

Not that it really matters. Not that the glimmers are anything more than passing mirages. If there ever was a chance of "winning" this thing, with a united relatively peaceful relatively free Iraq (and I don't think there was, but for the sake of argument...) that train has long left the station.

No, seriously, neocons. We're sorry we kicked your pencil-necked asses in high school. You really are macho. Please don't invade another country.

Hubris and Self-Deception

2006-07-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

I have a hard time understanding people who can fail again and again and still be convinced of their invincibility, infallibility, still feel that honey flows from their lips as they dispense wisdom and instruction upon their inferiors. I have a hard time understanding someone like Richard Perle.

Can we discuss this man? Has there ever been a person who more clearly illustrates the principle of failing upwards better than him? From his trashing of arms control treaties to his fevered insistence on ignoring international treaties and laws to his knee-jerk resort to military solutions to pretty much any problem that might arise, from Soviet expansionism to Korean missiles to Iranian nukes to Middle Eastern dictators, Perle has never met a situation that couldn't be resolved by shit talking and threats. He fancies himself a foreign policy intellectual, but he's really just an internationalist thug. I'm not one to scream accusations of imperialism willy-nilly like the staff of KPFA on an organic masala chai binge, but Richard Perle is a driven imperialist who just coincidentally happens to be a war profiteer.

So what's my point, besides the fact that I think Richard Perle is a reprehensible and loathsome human being? Well, given all that we know about Perle and especially the outcome of his preferred solution to the "Iraq Question," I find it particularly galling that he can still summon the audacity to accuse Condi Rice of incompetence and a lack of understanding of the Middle East.

Now, frankly, I wouldn't argue in favor of Rice's competence. But I argue against her competence primarily because she allied herself with Perle and his minions in the run-up to the war in Iraq. That is, I believe that she is incompetent mainly because she took advice in the first place from the guy who's now accusing her of being incompetent.

The fact that the architect of the biggest failure of foreign policy in American history—and let's not be shy, it's a failure in every regard—still feels free to open his arrogant yap and spout this idiocy demonstrates that the concept of shame in this country is dead. It also illustrates that the ability to deceive yourself into believing what you want to believe is uncurtailed by the repeated failure of reality to match those beliefs. Lastly, it's apparent that the staggering personal, societal, and national costs of Richard Perle's incompetence has failed to even dent his thick-headed solipsistic perceptions of the world.

In the end, I can accept that Richard Perle lives in a world of his own making and imagining. What I really don't understand is why anyone outside of that world bothers to listen to anything he says any more.