Liberum Arbitrium: March 2006

Friday, March 31, 2006

god only knows what i'd be without you

I tend not to be an early adopter of television shows. Living in the Netherlands means new shows on channels like HBO or Showtime have a chance of coming here only if they do really well, like Sex in the City. I didn't find out about one of this year's best new shows, Prison Break, until last month.

So it was no surprise that I was a few weeks before I saw an episode of Big Love, HBO's new polygamy show. I have heard it hasn't the best of ratings, especially compared to the powerhouse Sopranos, but I heard the same thing, which kept me away from the Sopranos until Livia died and everyone was talking about it. Well I have to say, the subtle comparison of polygamy and homosexuality with the implicit question of which is really worse for individuals, is really well-done. In forum comments with real-life polygamists on TV w/o Pity, I noticed the balanced dramatic view tended to be disregarded by them because the authors are gay. Of course, the completely respectful and honest portrayal of not only polygamy within the context of Intermountain Mormon Fundamentalists but also how this differs from what most of the members of the CoJC&LDS believe, is a product of how gay lifestyles can be wildly misperceived.

Here is an authentically American lifestyle, one which seems incredibly persistent and has some pretty horrible consequences, all of which the series deals with: child marriages, exploitation of women and children including all variety of abuse justified by church doctrine, blood atonement for perceived sins against the community, and most horribly, the 'lost boys' abandoned on the streets of Salt Lake City without a cent or a skill after reaching an age where they might be thought of as competition by their vicious elders.

All of this is reflected in the show, from the detailed characterization to the sterling cast, each one bait for the Emmys from Bill Paxton's beleaguered Bill Hendrikson and his three wives (mother hen Barb, insecure Nikki, and immature Margene) to a supporting cast featuring everyone from the girl in the Ring as a child bride to Grace Zabriskie from Twin Peaks as Bill's mom. And the icing on the cake: Harry Dean Stanton as the hillbilly emperor. But a major character in the series is the state of Utah. Lots of purple mountains majesty, red rocks, mentions of the recent Olympics, and Utahn culture, like the Jello obsession, the creative epithets, and similiarly inventive first names.

I write this mostly because I cant get the title sequence out of my head: here is gorgeous, stylized encapsulation of Bill's life, as he sees it. We open on the Wasatch valley, as a shaft of light falls on Bill's face from the heavens. He is standing on skates upon a frozen Salt Lake in the middle of the desert, as Jeanne Tripplehorn skates over to take his hand, next he dips Chloe Sevigny as she gazes lovingly in his eyes, and then Ginnfer Goodwin pirouettes into his arms. Then, as they all skate together, a crack in the ice appears and split them apart. Next, we are in a room of following curtains, where Bill drifts, just missing his wives, until at last, they one by one meet him. Finally, we pan out from a candle flame, as we see the four of them saying a prayer before breaking bread, as they sit alone on a planet in the cosmic reaches of space.

I was baffled when I first saw it, then I read about the concept of pre-mortal, mortal and post-mortal existence and how plural marriages or polygamy is also considered 'celestial marriage' needed to enter the highest reaches of heaven. All the while, The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows' plays.

i second that emotion

John Aravosis, letting lose a tirade which is so desperately needed:

There is a core group of Democrats who simply don't like money and power. They distrust it on a such a visceral level that anything that even vaguely smells of either is immediately suspect and worthy of public ridicule. Thus they freak out over my attending the gala. It's the same freak out I get when I ask for donations for the blog. How dare you try to earn money, I'm asked always, every time, by numerous commenters. Why don't you go on a budget like other Americans, one person wrote, rather than asking us for donations (as if the income were coming from somewhere else other than ad sales and donations?) That person went on to add a familiar refrain I've heard before - how dare you expect me to pay for your trips abroad! When I pointed out that most of my trips abroad have been paid for by clients or third parties like the Dutch government, the person launched into some other excuse to criticize me (not to mention, I don't recall anyone ever asking one of their employees how much they spend on their family vacation so you can lower their paycheck accordingly). And let’s not even talk about the criticism I got for going to France last summer. Yes, I decided to cat-sit for friends in Paris – the horror, the horror - and somehow that meant I was living high on the hog. It apparently meant I had a lot of money (though how staying for free at a friend’s place in exchange for taking care of their pets was somehow lucrative still escapes me - then again, there were those who didn't think it was lucrative at all, they just figured I'd spent all of your donations on the trip and publicy said so) and, again, didn’t deserve donations, because apparently writing from Washington DC is good, but writing from Paris, not so much.

The criticism happens far too often, is far too nasty, and comes from far too many people, to be written off as a few trolls or crazies. They may not be the majority of the party, thank God, but they are far too many in number to be left unchallenged.

What's at the core of all of this? It think it’s something that someone noted in the comments to the gala post below. In the same way that conservatives don't respect anyone who doesn't have money and power, a core group of liberals don't trust anyone who HAS money or power. The problem is that we live in a society where money and power are part of the key to political success. So how exactly is it that we win if we insist on keeping our wealth and our power to a minimum?

How do we expect our blogs and bloggers to continue being the first and only left-wing-noise-machine we have (along with Air America, Keith Olberman and Jon Stewart), to keep pushing the Hill, to keep working on elections and advocacy, to keep the media honest, if we think actually paying them to do their full-time jobs is somehow immoral?

The answer is: We don't win.

Too many Democrats are afraid to pay people a wage they deserve. Sure, they’ll give millions to a big-name liberal advocacy group, but when it comes to individuals, to real people, having them earn even half the salary of the muckety mucks at the big organizations is somehow immoral. Rather than ask ourselves “how much is our freedom worth? How much would I pay to get my country back?”, we look at our lives and say "I can't afford to take my wife and daughters to Europe, so why should I donate to you when all you do is spend my donation on vacations" (true post). Suddenly, the worth of my work is linked to how well YOU have or have not provided for your family. Suddenly my success is an affront to you, and must be stopped, lest... what? And the result? We don't get the best people for the job because "good people shouldn't expect to be paid." Which is a fascinating concept I'll use next time my rent is due.

I’ve even had people criticize the fact that I grow orchids. It’s a rich-man’s hobby. How dare I try to earn a living running this blog when I grow orchids. How do you respond to that kind of crap?

And it's not just wages. I think that far too many liberals have no idea what it takes to win in politics. The mixture of intelligence, creativity and chutzpah it takes to win in Washington and beyond. God knows we see it on the Hill, in terms of members of Congress who refuse to do what it takes to win, even when the opportunity is handed to them. Far too many liberals - still a minority I think, but a far too loud and influential minority - don't understand that we need money, we need power, we need influence and connections and friends in the media and even, God forbid, some Republican friends if we want to win. You simply can't sit back, hug a tree and sing cumbaya in your Birkenstocks by the campfire and expect the crystal fairy to hand you your civil rights and your country back.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

people-powered photoshop

Glenn Reynolds and Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas all have new books out about, as Reynolds puts it 'people-powered politics'. Among the substantive criticisms of both books, chief for both is their dependence on broad themes and the consequent lacking of the mechanics of blogging or online political activism in either the individualist Army of Davids or the collectivist Crashing the Gate (to use the terminology from the Salon article). For each book, their are pointed individual criticisms on philosophical grounds, such as Majikthijse's criticism of CTG for being too-focused on criticizing consultants while sparing politicians, while taking them to task for their view of pro-choice lobbying groups. Or, this criticism of Reynolds by the authors of 'Who Controls the Internet':

This is what I would have liked to have seen more of in An Army of Davids: an assessment of how technologies also empower government and large firms. For every story about how a blogger beats big media or how "studio-on-a-shelf" threatens big labels, one could tell a story about how governments and corporations are growing larger and larger and are using the new technologies to collect and use information to control individuals.

But neither book serves as a suitable primer, especially with the ever-shifting technology. Clearly, the force of the internet for 'people-powered politics' will need more than hardbound manifestos, but perhaps actual hardware and software. Consider the power of VoIP to cheaply boost the power of the plain old telephone system, as we will show below. John Rogers is, among other things, a screenwriter who wrote an adaptation of Warren Miller's Global Frequency. In this series, of which only the acclaimed pilot was produced, a thousand people spread throughout the world have a super-powered satellite phone/tricorder. They are bound in a techno-social network which can be activated in order to solve crises around the globe. For instance, in the pilot a fugitive scientist is leaving a trail of mysteriously mutilated bodies in downtown San Francisco. The investigation and resolution require the services of various members of the network, including physicists, translators, neurologists, hackers and one badass former spy.
So I am tickled pink with Mr. Rogers' comments on the recent forged pictures of Bagdhad by Republican congressional candidate Howard Kaloogian:

"You are on the Global Photoshop ..."
I don't tend to get involved in local hoo-has but for my charity stuff, but this is interesting for its example of the hive-mind power.

Apparently down 'round San Diego, they're having a special election to replace Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham -- you know, the fellow with the bribe menu. So a return to integrity and honesty is kind of an issue down there right now.

One of the candidates is this Howard Kaloogian fellow. His "Moving America Forward" gang is one of thise lovely scrums where they take a couple reporters, get driven around the Green Zone in a Hummer, and then scream how it's all peaceful in Iraq. I am sure those 14 beheaded guys they found today are finding it very peaceful.

Even more reprehensibly, this is the sort of rhetoric he spews, as the caption to a photo of beautiful, peaceful downtown Iraq just a few months ago:

"We took this photo of dowtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism."

As I always say -- name one. Name one journalist who says America shouldn't fight terrorism. But, at this point, just typical kind of boring, lazy crap ...

... until somebody noticed that there was no Arabic script on any of the signs. And the wardrobe was off. The taxi seems weird ... hey, wait, is that Lenny Kravitz?

Within three measly hours, the hive mind had figured out the pic is probably of somewhere in Turkey. How it happened is what fascinates me. People found addresses for the "2.Noter" sign (a quite specifically Turkish notary office). They found the Turkish ice cream company, Edo, and found Turkish speakers -- at 4:00 am in their time zone -- who could confirm what those fragment words meant. And pictures of Turkish taxis with their oddly placed gas-caps. One person went on Skype and hustled up some complete strangers in Turkey who spoke English, sent them the photo and dug up some opinions. When somebody pointed out that the location might be Kurdish, and simply mislabeled, a person who spoke both Kurmanci and Turkish pointed out the exclusionary differences making it unlikely.

Hell, one person even hunted up the local cement plant that made the street planters for municipalities in Turkey, and posted pics showing those distinctive planters and benches. Right now, the little bastards are tracking down all the local Turkish newspapers to see if they can ail down the actual intersection.

This reminds me of a time on this blog I posted a question based solely on an anecdote of an incident that occured in a recent foreign election. The answer was posted before I could even check to see if my post had gone through.

I preface this with a caveat -- I may be foolishly assuming that Mr. Kaloogian did not find the absolutely most Turkish section of Baghdad, Little Istanbul, so Turkish indeed that not only do they use mostly Roman letters but absolutely no Arabic -- well, if that's the case, then , all apologies, sir. As a matter of fact, I will donate $100 to your campaign if this is indeed Baghdad, for I will have wronged you.

But if not, then, well, your vicious mendacious criticism of people who disagree with you is somewhat lessened in righteousness if you have, indeed, prevaricated, in a particularly heinous manner.

This is why I can never run for public office. I was a stand-up. My shit will come out.

and this follow-up post:

Global Photoshop #2
Yep, we've got confirmation HERE. Scroll down, 6th picture of the poster named Faruk, pinned down by this person. It's a suburb of Istanbul.

So, first -- wow. I need to get those damn phones made up.

Second, the Republican candidate for CA-50, Howard Kaloogian, who is looking to replace a corrupt Republican official, who is screaming and moaning about the media lying about Iraq --

-- has posted a picture of Istanbul and telling you it's Baghdad in order to lie to you about Iraq. He lied to you and assumed you'd never find out.

He lied to you about pictures he took on a truth tour.

If he'd just posted the picture, or just posted the snarky comment, it would be unremarkable. But this, the combination of self-righteousness and then lying in order to justify the self-righteousness -- this is a sign of amorality so impressive it borders on sociopathy. I don't live in that district, but I gotta ask the Republicans who do: you really think we need more guys who are lying to the public and fooling themselves about the situation on the ground in Iraq in Congress? In power?

Party identification that important to you? Only by not voting for guys like this will you ever get your real Republicans back. You know that.

(NOTE: Apparently, Kaloonybin is blaming his webmaster for putting up the wrong photo. Ah, the rogue intern excuse, always good. But it I may, this can all be cleared up easily enough -- just post the photos of happy, bustling Baghdad you DID take. That's all.

Not. Going. To Happen.)

Ok, those phones are definitely possible and that would be a powerful people network...someone at Samsung or Nokia must know about this.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

why girls make better resistance fighters

The easy construction of a Molotov cocktail makes it a standard weapon of guerrilla warfare and violent rioters, but it can be challenging for an amateur to make an effective device. The most common failure is in over-filling the bottle, as a full bottle will not ignite quickly when it breaks on impact (although it has a longer burning potential). For a device to explode rapidly on impact, the bottle should be only one-half to two-thirds full. However, one must consider whether the additional power is worth the risk of a premature explosion.

Another common mistake is failing to wipe down the bottle, which removes flammable residue, prior to lighting the rag. Yet another error is to use the ignition rag directly to stopper the bottle. Other common difficulties include failing to make an airtight seal with the stopper to prevent escaping fumes, a too-long or too-loosely secured ignition rag, using an inappropriate bottle (e.g., short-necked, wide-mouthed, too fragile, or too tough), and above all, mishandling after the rag is ignited.

A common modification is to use a sealed bottle of flammable liquid (still no more than two-thirds full), for example a liquor bottle with a screw-on lid, and tightly rubber-band a tampon (without applicator) soaked in flammable liquid to the neck. The feminine product holds a large quantity of liquid, does not degrade due to the corrosiveness of the petrol, and its lightweight aerodynamic shape causes less drag than would a rag. Using a sealed bottle prevents the thrower from dousing himself and those near him in flaming liquid when winding up to throw. In order to easily transport the device, the tampon can be wrapped in cellophane after being soaked in gasoline. A cigarette lighter can easily burn through the cellophane and ignite the tampon at the moment of use. It is thus possible for a woman carrying a bottle of liquor, tampons, a scarf, cigarettes and lighter to be in the possession of deadly ingredients that would ordinarily arouse little suspicion.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

in defense of DefenseTech

I'm a fairly pacifistic person in philosophy, if only because it tends to lead to a longer lifespan in greater harmony with your surroundings. Of the few violent acts I've consciously done, I can think of very few positive consequences. Which is not to say I believe violence is never justified, just rarely. I'm caught therefore by the fact that I enjoy the technical side of violence, such as with my fascination with the articles on DefenseTech.org. I guess I could make the rationalization that security itself is what is so fascinating, both in its ability to cloud your mind with fear and its apposite reaction of safety, both mediated by powerful chemicals like adrenaline and oxytocin. And, of course, there's the connection of security to politics which has become cemented post-9/11.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of my father coming home from his job as a security guard. I remember him installing an security system in the house in the early 80's, all the wires tucked behind the walls and threaded through cabinets and closets. My family were early emigres from the 'safest city in the US', (Newton, MA) to what would now be called exurbia.

Admittedly my best perception of what the center of America is like is based on some of the more rural aspects of this undervisited but not inaccesible area. My parents never really wondered how locking the door might make you insecure, since they could reach out and touch their respective neighbor's houses from their bedroom window.

So I guess since people in general, in the abstract can be more and more threatening. Still I appreciate defensetech not only for the cool gadget effect of reporting on DARPA projects* like the 100 ton superblimp codenamed 'Walrus', but also for trenchant and non-partisan analysis of strategy:

TR: In short, smart, precision-targeted weapons like cruise missiles are going to become increasingly cheap and available to any government or group that can afford them. The Falklands War between Britain and Argentina gave early indications of the vulnerability of big platforms, didn't it?

JA: I think so. The lessons there include: how many British submarines did it take to pen up the entire Argentine navy? Two. Simultaneously, the Exocet missile proved the slow-moving capital ship's vulnerability. Today, the Chinese aren't developing aircraft carrier battle groups, but brilliant sea-going mines that know how to maneuver, supersonic anti-ship missiles -- which means the Falklands War on steroids -- and super-cavitation torpedoes, which create a bubble of air in front of the torpedo, letting them move at hundreds of knots per hour. The Chinese have an explicit "swarming" doctrine that can best be characterized as sea power without a navy. In this new naval antagonism that's emerging, our potential enemies are not trying to emulate what we're doing. Instead, they're innovating in very thoughtful, effective ways…

Since we're spending so much on military affairs, maybe some of that should be directed towards technologies that will break our opponents' communications. In World War II, there was an investment in creating the first high-performance computers, for that very purpose. Today, it may be an investment in creating the most effective quantum computing or figuring out how to structure the vast ocean of data that masks the movements of al-Qaeda on the Net and the Web. We need a new Bletchley Park [the country house where the German WWII codes were broken], if we're going to win this war.

Whatever your opinion of the WOT, where else can you find the address for a UAV user's manual? There's the morbid curiosity factor: apart from some of the death-dealing gadgets dreamed up being 'cool', its hard to find mention of the new ways in which someone might try to kill you anywhere else. A recent article focused on weapons made from synthetic weapons, like diamond-hard credit-card-sized slivers of plastic or penknives. Then after duly noting John Malkovich's non-metallic gun from In the Line of Fire, the article mentions that the CIA has had for years a ceramic gun firing caseless ammo.

From Str8 Dope:
The article implied that the CIA made several prototype nonmetallic guns using "a super-hard ceramic material" originally developed for the exhaust valves in General Motors auto engines. The stuff "literally has the strength of steel," the article said. "The agency considered the material so important to national security that it reportedly had its formula classified, thereby preventing GM from marketing it."

The gun depicted was a small automatic pistol. A magazine of bullets loaded into the handle. When you pulled the trigger, a plastic spring drove the bolt/slide mechanism forward, pushing a bullet from the magazine into the chamber and firing it. The bullet had no case and apparently was the equivalent of a cannonball with a powder charge behind it. The propellant ignited in two stages to keep the chamber pressure low enough that the gun didn't blow up in your hand. The bullet itself could be ceramic or aluminum.

"The Glass Gun's asset--its innovative material--also created legal problems for the CIA," the article said. "The Geneva Accords forbid the use by a nation's armed forces of anything but full metal jacket ammunition, and except for the aluminum bullets, no part of the gun or its ammunition was metallic. To save the Glass Gun project, Agency advocates argued to a Pentagon oversight committee that the Agency was civilian, not military, and the gun would be used by civilians."

At the same time, I'm a bit wary of the argument for developing more concealable weapons for government agents, the hopelessly dated War on Drugs.

throwing out a bad card

From those Yahoos over at their eponymous News:

Card will forever be remembered for one thing: Wandering into camera range and then whispering into the ear of President Bush that that terrorists had attacked the United States -- and for not, apparently, imparting the information with sufficient force to get the most powerful man in the world to respond with anything more than a quizzical look for the seven agonizing minutes portrayed in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11.

As Bill Maher has suggested: "Watergate was outrageous but it still did not carry the possibility of utter devastation, like a President's freezing at the very moment we needed his immediate focus on an attack on the United States."

Well, Card was the senior aide, who had been placed at the president's side by none other than Father-in-Chief George Herbert Walker Bush, in order to make sure that George II did not freeze at moments such as this. And he failed, miserably. Not only did Bush fail to respond to the whispered news that "America's under attack" for the seven minutes seen on screen, he then spent another twenty minutes posing for "photo-op" pictures afterward.

Bush has taken his share of criticism for fumbling the moment, and then for flying off around the country on a wild goose chase that took him to air bases further and further from where VP Cheney was actually running things. But Card, as the man the Bush family had positioned to assure that the president didn't fall apart in just these circumstances, was the real fumbler. He did not get the president refocused, he did not rise to the challenge.

Monday, March 27, 2006

from last night's Take My Wife, Please

VERITY: charles, I'm leaving you.
(Selma appears in doorway next to Verity)
SELMA: You snooze, you lose.

CHARLES: You're leaving me for him? (shocked)

HOMER: So it would appear, however Cousin It there was born a woman

SELMA(to Homer): What brought us together was how much we hate you

HOMER: Yeah, well I'm gonna vote no on 38, so you can't adopt.
(Patty twists Homer's arm behind his back)
Ah!..Ah!...kidding...kidding...I don't vote! The polling place is up a hill and I never make it.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

half a million people protest HR4437 in LA

Wonderful for the Democrats, who now have a wedge issue to peel pro-business fiscal conservatives and Latinos away from Republican coalitions. As the demographic of America becomes ever browner, more Southern and younger, they will remember how an arrogant Red State (even though WI voted blue and is home to Russ Feingold) congressman tried to, as Hilary Clinton brilliantly framed it (observe and note this is why Hilary never has to worry about her base): 'they want to criminalize the Good Samaritan and Jesus'.
Please note, all of you who want a giant wall constructed across the Southwest, all of you who think that vigilante border patrols are the best short-term solution and throwing undocumented workers into lockup is the long-term solution: in a week maybe, the organizers of this march have gathered half a million people to action. Anti-immigration monomaniacs like Tom Tancredo, huff that police should check IDs; another brilliant idea to poke this hornet's nest. How about some realistic policy solutions, cause that wall you all fantasize and froth about is never gonna happen: it's a diplomatic nightmare to have such a security barrier in the modern democratic age aganst a country who you are not only friendly to but also one of the biggest trading partners of; its a financial lose-lose, costing outrageous money to build cuz after all, you can't use immigrant or slave labor as with the Great Wall, AND losing a significant portion of the revenue stream; if the motivation is a comfortable life in America, history has demonstrated that people's thirst for such happiness has driven them to do all sorts of amazing feats to come and live in the USA...what makes you think this wall will ultimately be any more successful than the Berlin Wall? or any less contrary to the American ideal of liberty?

Saturday, March 25, 2006

red, white and ruckus

On behalf of RedState
By: krempasky
Putting aside the charge for which Ben has been pilloried and you're left with is a particular group of critics. Unlike Ben, there is far less hope for their redemption. You see - before they settled on the attacks on his writing - they spent three days proving that they are the lowest of the low. Charges of racism were born of poor reading comprehension. Threats of violence. Obscene commentary about his mother, his sister, his father. Loathesome, vile, and disgusting - their contempt for civil behavior surpassed only by the emptiness of their own souls. These are a people that see a man who gives up drinking in the middle of his life for the sake of his family, and respond by creating rumors of cocaine addiction. These are ignoramuses that think portraying an African-American politician as Sambo is appropriate, as long as the critics are liberal and the target is a Republican.

Steve Gilliard responds (after answering the charge of poor comprehension with an extensive parsing of just wher exactly the racism is):

Now, Mike, see the problem here? It's a pattern. He misreads a poorly thought out anti-abortion column and posts it without comment, he called Coretta Scott King a communist on the day of her funeral and gives a lame refutation of it under pressure. And toss on Jeff Davis, and you have someone who has a problem with race. Specifically, the equal and full rights of African-American citizens of the United States

But that's hardy unknown at that little sewer you run. Mr. Erickson's little voter suppression program, Blanton's unvarnished racism. It seems you've got quite the Klavern over there. Box Turtle Ben's just brought it all to light in the worst way possible.

Now about Michael Steele

Michael Steele was called Sambo because he refused to condemn Bob Erlich attending an all-white country club. He defended this by saying "it's not a big deal" . Well, it was and it is.
Then, in a bid to garner white sympathy, he made up an incident about being bombarded with Oreos at Morgan State. The audience didn't see any flying Oreos, the janitor didn't clean any up, but this fiction was repeated as fact by the GOP.

You may not like it, but black people hold a dim view of those who grovel for white acceptance at any price. Upon reflection, I would not have used the term Sambo. Because it wasn't nasty enough. I will now refer to him as Uncle Ruckus, the white-worshiping, self-hating character from the Boondocks. See the show, and you'll wish I'd stuck to calling him Sambo, Mike.

below par performance

A masseuse at St. Andrews historic golf course has accused an unnamed Hollywood celebrity of sexual harassment. now papers wont report who it is exactly, but the good old blogosphere has now found out that it is most likely hack Kevin Costner, now several decades after his last good movie, who is close personal friends with Herb Kohler of the Kohler faucet empire who Costner put in for a bit role in the tired Open Range. (updated from an earlier post)

V for Vendetta, and I got one

Ok, while I think it was a fine looking movie with more than a little relevance to the current day, the movie does differ substantially from the graphic novel in characterization and plotting. Yes, Alan Moore has proved notoriously difficult to adapt the work of, as well as work with, such that Sin City was thought to be a miraclous feat by Robert Rodriguez. Sin City aside, Hollywood hasn't treated his work well either, which is chock-full of transgressive acts unlikely to be marketable in a big-budget blockbuster. Witness the critical and commercial failures of From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Constantine or the now never-to-be adaptation of Moore's greatest work, Watchmen. To say, as some have, that this is the most faithful and literal adapation to date is setting the bar rather low.

What's missing from the movie version of V: moral ambiguity. While Fascism provides us with one pole, V takes Moore's own viewpoint of anarchism as the appropriate response, including the idea of The Land of Do-As-You-Please, enfolded within a larger argument addressing the challenges and contradictions of anarchism as a political philosophy. Now you could argue that this is unrealistic in a movie, but I saw no lack of speechifying otherwise in the movie, but not about anarchism. Similar banal dialogue ruined the Wachowski's Matrix sequels. V also becomes non-violent in the film, tying together shoelaces at one point. The only people he kills are uniformed agents of the state. While in the book, he fights hand-to-hand in the Evey is a 16yo sex worker, not a 25ish journalist, as in the book. The lead investigator Finch makes a key investigative discovery while tripping on LSD.

Little details, like 'Sutler' being orginally 'Susan'. the novel suggested V's crime may have been homosexuality, but the movie inserts a ridiculous declaration of love. The novel ends with a bang, as the train car carrying V's body (shot by Finch, not Creedy) exploded under the city, and Evey doins the mask to become V. None of that is in the movie, and it even changes the scene where a crowd dons Guy Fawkes masks to be in confrontation with the police, rather than the appropriate final scene. Most infuriatingly, they added all of this 'no coincidence' conspriacy theory prattling without ever once mentioning how V got all of his omniscient predictions: by hacking into the government computer. Sorry, I guess this is just one case where it is better to see the movie before reading the book. I'm not saying don't see it, only its been done better.

Wingnut and Moonbat

In the aftermath of the firing of Ben Domenech from the Washington Post, many people have been wondering how this relates to the role of partisanship in the current media environment.
As Glenn Greenwald put it:

It is a base, tribal mentality where group allegiance cleanses any and all wrongdoing and immunizes the individual from any accusations of wrongdoing. We have seen this play out over and over with every Bush scandal, where no conduct is too extreme and too facially wrong to be beyond their willingness to defend it away and justify it. If you support George Bush, you can do anything -- including stealing, like Domenech did repeatedly and extensively -- and still be defended, because your allegiance to the Leader means that anything you do is good, right and justifiable. That is the mentality that has been governing our country for five years now, and it is vividly apparent with this tawdry debacle.

Both sides are quick to discount the arguments of others, but I find that at DailyKos and on the liberal side, reasonable and non-inflammatory counters to opinions posted generally get addressed, whereas at RedState (which is a 527, gee that would be a nice thing for any blogger to have, right?):

Face the facts gentlemen By: synykyl
It was Ben's own behavior that brought him down, not the supposed incivility of his critics.

You are not welcome here. By: Erick
Bye.

Just look at the two most partisan code words in current political dialogue: wingnut and moonbat. Always thought that would make a good name for a political cartoon(*hint*), but really the popularization of each of these terms among their respective political speech communities is indicative of the ways in which both groups have become polarized as to the epistemic value of other people's opinion.

As groups become more polarized towards certain ideas, in a sense, statements over time become more extreme in defense of those ideas. Moonbat and wingnut serve as shorthand terms for dismissing another's argument based purely on an encapsulation of their political philosophy. In short, they are the ad hominem kernel of the lexicon of partisanship. Have come to exclusively partisan denotation over time, they connotations of either word could be ascribed to people of varying political beliefs, as each remarks more about what each side thinks is the worst group condemnation of character that can be used to silence critics.

Moonbat, especially as originally used in the context of 'barking', implies through connotation that the speaker is a nocturnal flying rodent, connected to the moon, a classically feminine symbol of irrationality (lunacy) for its deceptive light (it just reflects the Sun, not producing light of its own) and capricious face. People who are eccentric (and thus more easily cast as the Other) are described as batty, or we say they have bats in the belfry. Thus people become creepy subhuman mammals, incapable of rational thought, forming vast lunar-worshipping swarms. The incoherence of 'barking' only adds to the perception that all of the arguments coming from a speaker with this label are inherently ill-formed. Thus their actions are likened to some primal reflex, like barking at the moon.

Wingnut has a polar set of connotations, but a parallel objective, the instant discrediting of a thought based upon an opinion of its source. A wingnut is a small metallic fastener designed to be capable of holding a bolt in place after being installed by hand, rather than by a tool. Unlike a bat, a wingnut is incapable of any thought, being a cold metallic inanimate object. It also serves as a contraction of "(right-)wing nut", nut being another word for a crazy person, however one with a more masculine (as in the allusion to the slang for testicles) implication. There is another, possibly related denotation for this term in the economic community, namely for someone predicting an immediate and catastrophic financial collapse.

Friday, March 24, 2006

ooooh, snap!

General: 'Mr. Arkin, do you consider yourself a journalist or an American.'
I took a drink of water as my blood boiled.
Me: 'Well General, because I am an American, I cherish the fact that I can call you a f***ing idiot for asking the question.'

bare rights

From William Saletan at Slate, demolishing the recent reductio ad absurdem against same-sex marriage (namely, that it is somehow inconsistent to support SSM but not polygamy; totalling ignoring arguments of inherent stability of pair bonding over group bonding):

Gays who seek to marry want the same thing. They're not looking for the right to sleep around. They already have that. It's called dating. A friend once explained to me why gay men have sex on the first date: Nobody says no. Your partner, being of the same sex, is as eager as you are to get it on. But he's also as eager as you are to get it on with somebody else. And if you really like him, you don't want that. You want him all to yourself. That's why marriage, not polygamy, is in your nature, and in our future.

where's mencken when you need him?

In an age where liberal media bias is conventional wisdom, causing corporatist missteps like hiring an immature partisan plagiarist to provide balance, thankfully someone is standing up to this covert attempt at recent gleichschaltung attempts by the Administration:

JACK CAFFERTY: You know, I just have a question. I mean, the coverage -- they don't like the coverage, maybe, because we were sold a different ending to this story three years ago. We were told we'd be embraced as conquering heroes, flower petals strewn in the soldiers' paths, unity government would be formed, everything would be rosy. This, three years after the fact, the troops would be home. Well, it's not turning out that way. And if somebody came into New York City and blew up St. Patrick's Cathedral and in the resulting days they were finding 50 and 60 dead bodies on the streets in New York, do you suppose the news media would cover it? You're damn right they would. This is nonsense: "It's the media's fault the news isn't good in Iraq." The news isn't good in Iraq. There's violence in Iraq. People are found dead every day in the streets of Baghdad. This didn't turn out the way the politicians told us it would. And it's our fault? I beg to differ...

Thursday, March 23, 2006

impersonal policy and one woman's bold solution

C'mon Senator, until you grow a uterus or get a medical degree, please don't argue for exceptions to your ill-conceived and unenforceable strictures:

Bill Napoli

BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

A lot of adult women, more than just the one-third of whom in the US female population have had an abortion, find you treating their private medical issues so condescendingly as being more then a little aggravating. A have seen the most impassioned and logical arguments, including a just-in-case DIY abortion guide. But this response

by Cecelia Fire Thunder of the Ogala Sioux blew me away:"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty." President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, says

"I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."

Now there's a (unfortunately necessary) left-libertarian solution. But how longer before howling masses are bussed onto the reservation from Colorado Springs to attempt to protest?

a coalition of the rational

Straight Rights Update (Dan Savage) Earlier this month Republicans in South Dakota successfully banned abortion in that state. Last week the GOP-controlled state house of representatives in Missouri voted to ban state-funded family-planning clinics from dispensing birth control. "If you hand out contraception to single women," one Republican state rep told The Kansas City Star, "we're saying promiscuity is OK." On the federal level, Republicans are blocking the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception and keeping a 100 percent effective HPV vaccine—a vaccine that will save the lives of thousands of women every year—from being made available.
The GOP's message to straight Americans: If you have sex, we want it to fuck up your lives as much as possible. No birth control, no emergency contraception, no abortion services, no life-saving vaccines. If you get pregnant, tough shit. You're having those babies, ladies, and you're making those child-support payments, gentlemen. If you get HPV and it leads to cervical cancer, well, that's too bad. Have a nice funeral, slut.
What's it going to take to get a straight rights movement off the ground? The GOP in Kansas wants to criminalize hetero heavy petting, for God's sake! Wake up and smell the freaking holy war, breeders! The religious right hates heterosexuality just as much as it hates homosexuality. Fight back!

where you are is what you do

The social politics of geography and class:

Generally speaking, expensively-educated professionals tend to bounce around with an American urban “network” – a archipelago of mostly coastal cities including NYC, DC, SF, LA, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, and Seattle. Even though people bounce around a lot from place to place, they remain within the network. And if you went to undergrad in one city and grad school in another, chances are you have friends in every one of these cities. On an aside, I think this is why some of my fellow urban travelers don’t “get” (dramatic chord) Red America. They have no contact with it – they live in a wholly different “network.” For instance, the urban network above had little contact with, say, the Little Rock regional network, which might consist of people moving around within a three-hour radius of the city.

Anwyay, here’s my point. If you spend your time bouncing from city to city, you become completely rootless. Your family is probably far away, as are your high school friends. The closest thing you have to a family is whatever subset of college or grad school friends happen to be in that city. You don’t go to church, you don’t really participate in your local community. You have no stable micro-social structures of any kind.

So people's jobs become central to their lives and also, their is the need for individual success in the form of outdoing your peers with your relative accomplishments. Jealousy at undeserved success is also such an under-exposed and over-exploited part of the political psyche. At the same time, witness the disparity in covering the relative achievements of Al Gore, Vietnam vet, Senator and VP, and George W Bush, who has a spotty record of service to the Texas National Guard, and whose fortituous sell-off of Harken Energy stock immediate to its collapse (replete with a quashed SEC investigation of insider trading) led, as Clinton put it, 'to buy the baseball team which got him the governorship which got him the presidency.' So, when conservative pundits claim that contempt and digust for Bush personally is somehow incomprehensible and mean-spirited, I find this completely oblivious to the pattern of inequity in GWB's record that the faded promises of compassionate conservatism can no longer cover. When conservative scholars betray lifelong legal principles to endorse an expansive view of Federal power over local voting regulations out of fealty to someone's father, then the idea of American society being fundamentally a meritocracy seems hopelessly naive.

cruelty-free bacon

Researchers working in my favorite science-fiction-made-real field of technology, tissue engineering, recently dined upon cloned filets of frog meat which they had grown in vitro. Although the initial gustatory reaction was mediocre blandness, the mere fact that they were edible signals an endlessly fascinating food item to come: meat without murder. Safe enough for your most righteous Buddhist, no hormones or antibiotics, no fat or bone, no foreign microorganisms or prions (BSE) and the technology itself could provide cheap and tasty protein to the future Zone-dieting masses. While work still needs to be done with lowering the time and cost of production, as well as developing more textured and flavorful products, I am looking forward to when even the most humble mini-mart can have a rack of fresh-grown meat products no animal was harmed in the making of. And those who dont feel guilty about killing the cow might be swayed by the products this opens to marketing: dolphin jerky, eagle wings, whale steaks, even a harmless human flesh. I wonder how Catholics would feel about a more authentic but still slaughter-free Host.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

skyscraping

I know Ayn Rand is today, either derided as the author of pulp fiction or the proto-wingnut, but she had some great non-obvious viewpoints which at the very least, challenge assumptions. I remember reading one essay dedicated to exulting industrial progress in which she talks about how she gets teary-eyed when seeing a smokestack pumping out smog, not because of the eco-damage to the skies, but because she is a humanist and such a monumental edifice is evidence to her of man's progress that she weeps. While smokestacks (and billboards i think was the other example) don't really do it for me in the same way, I get the biggest thrill hearing about new buildings being built. Sure, its a less objectionable use of space then Rand's big old chimney, but some people will no doubt be unhappy that we are building new structures at all, just like the pampered Westerners who sniff at the environmental waste and upheaval involved in providing developing nations with usable roads and public utilities, no longer capable themselves of imagining life in America before the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system made continental travel an inalienable right.
I am especially fond of the 'vertical city' concept, underground superstructures, robot garages, capsule hotels coming to Europe, as well as a more harmonious integration of local environment and culture within the tradition of modern architecture, like how the Islamic motifs of the native Malay culture is expressed in the Petronas Towers of Kuala Lumpur. So I got very excited this mornign when I saw that the architect Lord Foster (who created London's first truly iconic building of the 21st century, 'The Gherkin' aka the Swiss Re building; sorry Millenium Dome) is creating a 600 meter tower in Moscow, slated to be the tallest in Europe when completed in 2010.

The Moscow City Tower will be a “mixed-use, super-dense, vertical city” capable of accommodating 25,000 people, according to Lord Foster. It will have nine underground floors of parking and shopping space, a public ice rink on the first floor, an hotel, twenty-four floors of apartments and offices and a public observation deck with cafés and bars at the top.

Ahhhh... I love living in the future. Only question now is whether the Freedom Tower in NYC will be complete by the time the MCT opens.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

give us this day, our daily snark

Seasoned political strategists—and spouses—JAMES CARVILLE, 61, who helped orchestrate Bill Clinton’s winning campaign in 1992, and MARY MATALIN, 52, a longtime adviser to Dick Cheney, have signed on to counsel the candidates for school president.

What a great idea! Cute and insightful! Laugh a little, learn a little! The only problem we can foresee is that it can only last one episode:

CANDIDATE ONE: What is your advice, famous Democratic consultant James Carville?

CARVILLE: Here’s what you do: Build your reputation as a brilliant political strategist on one successful campaign that in the end did absolutely nothing to reverse your party’s 30-year free-fall, then become a tired (but well-compensated) parody of yourself on cable television.

CANDIDATE TWO: Do you have any better advice, longtime Republican adviser Mary Matalin?

MATALIN: Yes. Use your insider status and media know-how to ensure that your primary client has a slightly lower approval rating than Joseph Goebbels.

CANDIDATES (in unison): Please go away now.

From Wonkette

Monday, March 20, 2006

does Ronald know?

As ace anchorman Kent Brockman revealed last night in an episode of The Simpsons rife with innuendo:

...and the Hamburglar was survived by his longtime companion, Mayor McCheese.

Guess politics makes for some strange bedfellows indeed. Robble robble...

Sunday, March 19, 2006

finally!

Someone at AP has noticed:

When the president starts a sentence with "some say" or offers up what "some in Washington" believe, as he is doing more often these days, a rhetorical retort almost assuredly follows.
The device usually is code for Democrats or other White House opponents. In describing what they advocate, Bush often omits an important nuance or substitutes an extreme stance that bears little resemblance to their actual position.

He typically then says he "strongly disagrees" — conveniently knocking down a straw man of his own making.

Bush routinely is criticized for dressing up events with a too-rosy glow. But experts in political speech say the straw man device, in which the president makes himself appear entirely reasonable by contrast to supposed "critics," is just as problematic.

this week's best use of double entredre

From the London Times, describing the lewd actions of an 'A-list Hollywood celebrity' at St. Andrews in Scotland:

The masseuse was attending to the knotted muscles of his neck and head when further down the fairway, she alleges, he whipped off his modesty towel and played an extra stroke or two. His grip was good, both on himself and the masseuse’s wrist, but his address to the ball was rushed and he was well above par without even holing out.

Ouch...I'm surprised they didn't include speculation as to whether it was a 3 or a 5 wood.

UPDATE: this post has a number of page views. so I decided to investigate and see if I couldn't name that star. I dunno, I have a thing for blind items. While early speculation focused on sexaholic/golfaholic Michael Douglas-Zeta Jones, in reality the only Hollywood celebrities during the timeframe the alleged molestation occured were particpants in Dunhill Links Championship of 2004: Samuel L. Jackson, Dennis Quaid, and Kevin Costner. Now you could have made an argument for each based on marital history, but further details revealed that the new owners of St. Andrews, the Kohlers, were alleged to be friends with the Hollywood molester. Kevin Costner got Mr. Kohler a gig on his mediocre golf pic Open Range, marking this mystery solved.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

sopranos and william s. burroughs

The longer WSB monologue on the Seven Souls of Egyptian mythology, which was excerpted on the excellent season premiere of the Sopranos (an aside: chilling appearance by Ade in Carmela's dream), excerpt appears in italics:

SEVEN SOULS

The ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls,

Top soul, and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren, the Secret Name. This corresponds to my Director, He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that's where Ren came in.

Second soul, and second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power, Light The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right buttons.

Number three is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she, or it is third man out . . . depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings and head of light. Sort of thing you might see on a screen in an Indian restaurant in Panama. The Khu is responsible for the subject and can be injured in his defense- but not permanently, since the first three souls are eternal. They go beck to Heaven for another vessel.

The four remaining souls must take their chances with the subject in the Land of the Dead. Number four is Ba, the heart, often treacherous. This is a hawk's body with your face on it, shrunk down to the size of a fist. Many a hero has been brought down, like Samson, by a perfidious Ba.

Number five is Ka, the Double, most closely associated with the subject. The Ka, which usually reaches adolescence at the time of bodily death, is the only reliable guide through the Land of the Dead to the western Lands.

Number six is Khaibit, the Shadow, Memory, your whole past conditioning from
this and other lives.

Number seven is Sekhu, the Remains.

I first encountered this concept in Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings, and saw that it corresponded precisely with my own mythology, developed over a period of many years, since birth in fact. Ren, the Director, the Secret Name, is your life story, your destiny-in one word or one sentence, what was your life about? Nixon: Watergate. Billy the Kid: Quien es? And what is the Ren of the Director? Actors frantically packing in thousands of furnished rooms and theatrical hotels: "Don't bother with all that junk, John. The Director is on stage! And you know what that means in show biz: every man for himself."

Sekem corresponds to my Technician: Lights. Action. Camera. ' "Look, boss, we don't got enough Sek to fry an elderly woman in a fleabag hotel fire. And you want a hurricane?" "Well, Joe, we'll just have to start faking it" "Fucking moguls don't even know what buttons to push or what happens when you push them. Sure; start faking it and leave the details to Joe." Look, from a real disaster you get a pig of Sek: sacrifice, tears, heartbreak, heroism and violent death. Always remember, one case of VD yields more Sek than a cancer ward. And you get the lowest acts of which humans are capable-remember the Italian steward who put on women's clothes and so filched a seat in a lifeboat? "A cur in human shape, certainly he was born and saved to set a new standard by which to judge infamy and shame." With a Sek surplus you can underwrite the next one, but if the first one's a fake you can't underwrite a shithouse. Sekem is second man out: 'No power left in this set" He drinks a bicarbonate of soda and disappears in a belch.

Lots of people don't have a Khu these days. No Khu would work for them. Mafioso Don: "Get offa me, Khu crumb! Worka for a living!"

Ba, the Heart: that's sex. Always treacherous. Suck all the Sek out of a man. Many Bas, have poison juices. The Ka is about the only soul a man can trust. If you don't make it, he don't make it. But it is very difficult to contact your real Ka. Sekhu is the physical body, and the planet is mostly populated with walking Sekhus, just enough Sek to keep them moving. The Venusian invasion is a takeover of the souls. Ren is degraded by Hollywood down to John Wayne levels. Sekem works for the Company. The Khus are all transparent fakes. The Bas is rotten with AIDS. The Ka is paralyzed. Khaibit sits on yon like a nagging wife. Sekhu is poisoned with radiation and contaminants and cancer. There is intrigue among the souls, and treachery. No worse fate can befall a man than to be surrounded by traitor souls.

And what about Mr. Eight-Ball, who has these souls? They don't exist without him, and he gets the dirty end of every stick. Eights of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your dirty rotten vampires: A hundred years ago there were rat-killing .dogs known as "Fancies." A man bet on his "Fancy," how many rata he would kill.

The rats were confined in a circular arena too high for a rat to jump over. But they formed pyramids, so that the top rats could escape. Sekhu is bottom rat in the pyramid. Like the vital bottom integer in a serial, when that goes, the whole serial universe gone up in smoke. It never existed. Angelic boys who walk on water, sweet inhuman voices from a distant star. The Khu, sweet -bird of night, with luminous wings and a head of light, flies across the full moon . . . a born-again redneck raise's his shotgun. . . . "Stinkin' Khu!" The Egyptians recognized many degrees of immortality. The Ren and the Sekem and the Khu are relatively immortal, but still subject to injury. The other souls who survive physical death are much more precariously situated. Can any soul survive the searing fireball of an atomic blast? If humans and animal souls are seen as electromagnetic force fields, such fields could be totally disrupted by a nuclear explosion. The mummy's 'nightmare: disintegration of souls, and this is precisely the ultrasecret and supersensitive function of the atom bomb: a Soul Killer, to alleviate an escalating soul glut.

i was going to post pics but the photo function is fubared...hmmm
UPDATE: photos phixed

cognitive dissonance

I got these two LEDs for bicyclists, one red and one white. I found them today in a bargain bin of bike accessories at my neighborhood drug store. They come with a bungee strap with hooks into a little groove by the bulb, such that you can affix them as lights in front or behind you as you ride. A great way to deal with the fragile vandal-magnets which are dynamo-powered headlights. And only a euro a piece. This is only interesting because the day before i was wondered where I could get something like this. Guess this indicates that if you have a truly original idea, it has to be totally crazy, unless someone would have obviously thought it up.

Here's another passage with which the memetic power of political narratology is subtly alluded to:

MORE PITFALLS IN THE "INCOMPETENCE" ARGUMENT. Dems may think they've hit political paydirt in constantly hammering Bush as incompetent, both on Iraq and on domestic policy, but there's a political pitfall in this approach worth looking out for. If Bush is perceived as incompetent merely in the execution of his policies -- and not in the creation of the policies themselves or in the selection of the people who make them -- it follows that all Bush needs to do is implement them better, perhaps with the help of a new addition to the team, and all will be right in Bushworld again, not to mention for the rest of us.
As Josh has noted, the "bring-in-a-seasoned-veteran" chant is growing ever more audible. He sees this as a sign that the "establishment in DC" is rising up to "geld" Bush. One hopes so. But there's another possibility: That the appearance of said seasoned veteran will set the stage for a "Bush begins his comeback" storyline. Make no mistake: commentators will be aching to tell this tale, and many in the Washington establishment will be aching to hear it. Both the notion that Dems might be starting to succeed politically, and the idea that someone who was supposed to be a "popular war president" has record low poll numbers and is failing spectacularly, are proving too difficult to swallow for too many powerful people. You can almost hear the mental wiring of leading pundits and analysts short-circuiting all across Washington. So brace yourselves for comeback stories.

Another longer essay on the state of media communications and its disconnect from Internet strategy caught my eye:

Traditionally, and there's no great rationale except tradition behind this, a campaign spends 75% of its budget on paid TV in the last few weeks to reach swing voters. There's a waiting game involved here. In New Jersey for instance, we kept waiting for Forrester to go on TV before we did, so that we could save money. We ended going up first, and spent at one point more than $1 million a week on cable and broadcast. Forrester had to respond. There's this weird game of who can buy more points and saturate the airwaves more. Partly it's because no consultant ever wants to lose because he didn't run enough TV, partly it's a compensation issue, and partly it's because if you've ever seen $4 million of negative TV and mail slammed at you in one week you become completely terrified of being crunched. So campaigns are modeled around the idea that you pay your organizers crap, and save everything for the last few weeks when you blast the other guy on broadcast where the swing voters live.

The downsides of this type of campaign are quite clear. One, swing voters aren't where you might think they are, on broadcast TV. Above I wrote that this type of campaigning is based on tradition, but that's not quite fair. It's based on polls that show that voters say they get their local information from local news. But do they? That's unclear. After all, swing voters aren't swing voters because they can't make up their minds. They just don't have enough information. They aren't news junkies. And these people are glued to their local news? Come on. Advertising on local news just isn't hitting the swing vote anymore as much as it used to in a three channel world.

Two, it's really really expensive and you get a lot less for your money. One problem with advertising blitzes in the last week on broadcast TV is that you can't microtarget different audiences with different messages. With cable and the internet, you can. But broadcast is both more expensive and much less targeted. Ergo, you spend more and get less.

Three, this strategy doesn't talk to your base and doesn't help GOTV. It's targeted at swing voters with big themes, and can turn off your base which wants harder messaging. Four, it means that the field narrative and the communications narrative are completely divorced from each other, like they were during the Kerry campaign. Your GOTV suffers dramatically from the disconnect. Five, this strategy doesn't allow a campaign to take advantage of the internet, which is a medium that melds the two narratives. Paul Hackett in OH-2 is a good example of what can happen when a field campaign, an internet campaign, and a paid media campaign all cohere. Excitement, persuasion, and turnout are the result. With a traditional campaign that doesn't advertise to the unconnected, you are in the 20th century and not where the country is.

I read another intersteding but a bit less coherent essay regarding Mencken and the perversion of political language, using the key examples of 'pro-life', 'Death Tax' and 'liberal'. All good points, all though I don't think all liberals are necessarily progressives. In particular, I am struck by the libertarian arguments of Ronald Bailey in his book Liberation Biology, that some social conservatives and some social liberals nevertheless form a bloc against GMO, gene therapy, stem cells and therapeutic cloning, making them, in another candiate for word of the year, bioconservatives. Nothing is as black and white as partisanship.

Friday, March 17, 2006

can't blog...head hurting...must quote

Finally someone is as proud of Holland as I am:

Holland: Come For the Tits, Stay For the Gays Kissing

...Or if you prefer, come for the gays kissing and stay for the pot. Whatever your bag is, though, you'll have to watch a movie of Low Countries Spice before you can immigrate to the Netherlands:

The camera focuses on two gay men kissing in a park. Later, a topless woman emerges from the sea and walks onto a crowded beach. For would-be immigrants to the Netherlands, this film is a test of their readiness to participate in the liberal Dutch culture.

If they can't stomach it, no need to apply.

Despite whether they find the film offensive, applicants must buy a copy and watch it if they hope to pass the Netherlands' new entrance examination.

"If only the INS* were so enlightened," says reader Charles Bilodeau. Actually, I wouldn't want to be the viewer who has to watch whatever civic integration film the U.S. government would come up with to show our country's freewheeling side, but the Dutch picture raises a more interesting question than just "Where are the wooden shoes?" It's a pretty strong refutation of Stanley Fish's claim that liberals lack confidence in their own beliefs. Here's a whole country projecting a national image based on tolerance for liberal behavior—which admittedly is not a great stretch given Dutch history. But it's one thing to brag about tolerance toward religious dissenters hundreds of years ago, and something else to make it a point of pride to be on the liberal side of what are still radioactive cultural issues—and to send the implicit "like it or lump it" message to people who want to immigrate. "The film shows you how people live in the Netherlands," the website for Coming to the Netherlands says. "Some things that are quite ordinary and acceptable in the Netherlands are forbidden in other countries. For example, in the Netherlands women are allowed to sunbathe on the beach with few clothes on, and people have the freedom of expression to show that they are homosexuals or lesbians. The film includes images of this."

Unfortunately, that's a preamble to the news that you can order an edited version of the film if you live in Iran—which kind of defeats the purpose.

* Of course, Charles meant to say "CIS, ICE, and/or CBP."

Thursday, March 16, 2006

thinking about some fried chicken

"The House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel was what they called it when they were speaking Chinese. Venerable because of his goatee, white as the dogwood blossom, a badge of unimpeachable credibility in Confucian eyes. Inscrutable because he has gone to his grave without divulging the Secret of the Eleven Herbs and Spices. It has been the first fast-food franchise established on the Bund, many decades earlier. Judge Fang had what amounted to a private table in the corner. He had once reduced Chang to a state of catalepsis by describing an avenue in Brooklyn that was lined with fried chicken establishments for miles, all of them ripoffs of Kentucky Fried Chicken."


 --Neal Stephenson, "The Diamond Age", p.91

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

utrecht photoblogging

The Nieuwegracht from the Pausdam, Utrecht Centrum

raise your right hand and repeat after me

From Wayne Besen:

In Annapolis, (Capital of) Maryland, at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at AU, was requested to testify and he did so.

At the conclusion of his testimony, a right-wing senator rose to say, "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says that marriage shall occur only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?"

Raskin: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

trial logo

get real, michael crichton

..listen to the rocket scientists now what's that, grandpa? global warming is a myth of the alarmist liberal media? the stem cell hysteria and its conflation with abortion? a deliberate lie? couldn't hear that last comment through the tinfoil hat, huh?

oh, no, you mean global warming is a myth like W's fiscal conservatism or Saddam's WMD, something which is non-existent but was generally assumed to be true, to be CW, until gruesomely proven otherwise. And while I don't think we should immediately shutter every factory, there is something justified in seeing all of the know-nothing theorists broken by mounting evidence. Some people just can't accept that there is an alteration in the global climate, something I think strongly correlated to a pathological hatred of the mechanistic aspects of classical evolution, leading to a politicizing of all life science issues, hence the conclusion dismissing climate warming as impossible because man can't affect the earth on scales that large.

Then they employ the old trick of bringing up their opponent's argument, by invoking the mystery of the Ice Age and how the earth just waxes and wanes in temperature naturally and if it is growing hotter it is just that, ignoring the growing immediacy of the issue
(via MSNBC):

Following two recent studies on changes to Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, NASA is touting a survey that it says confirms “climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in Earth’s largest storehouses of ice and snow.”
In a press release for the survey, NASA directly tied the changes to warming and described the survey as “the most comprehensive” ever in both regions.
That stand can in part be explained by lead author Jay Zwally’s warning.

“If the trends we’re seeing continue and climate warming continues as predicted, the polar ice sheets could change dramatically,” he said in the press release last Wednesday. “The Greenland ice sheet could be facing an irreversible decline by the end of the century.”

Oh, and the outrage of the people can make a difference, even at hide-bound bureaucracies like NASA:

A change in policy appears to be occurring after NASA scientist Jim Hansen complained about being silenced because of the Bush administration’s opposition to mandatory curbs on greenhouse gases that many scientists tie to global warming.
“A few months ago this press release might have been seriously edited or not approved,” Zwally said.
Based on satellite mapping of ice sheets and published in the Journal of Glaciology, the survey validated computer models projecting impacts on Earth from global warming.

“The survey documented for the first time extensive thinning of the West Antarctic ice shelves, an increase in snowfall in the interior of Greenland and thinning at the edges,” NASA said in the press release. “All are signs of a warming climate predicted by computer models.”

And what was the role of human carbon production in the ongoing melting of Greenland?

In the most recent press release, NASA did not directly tie the warming to humans and the burning of fossil fuels, which emits carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas.
But Zwally noted that the predicted climate warming cited in the press release is caused by manmade emissions. A natural warming cycle is technically possible, he said, but not likely given how closely the warming and models track.
Zwally said he expects to have even stronger satellite data within a year.
“We’re seeing the early signs of changes in the ice sheets,” he added. “The climate warming from greenhouse gases has really just started.”

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

what the hell are YOU smoking?

Monday, March 13, 2006

Soon to be made into a Major Motion Picture

Already with this weekend's Southern Republican Leadership Conference, the media has inaugurated the beginning of the 2008 horse race for POTUS, with many notable GOPers gathering just upriver from the city their party has destroyed with inept staffing and planning, to do a serious focus group on their newest product line.
Despite all manner of risky operations to inject marrow into the party apparatus, coherence in message and purpose appears to elude the Democratic Party. Everybody knows what they don't like about government policy as of late, so the party currently in power seems to be having great play with the 'you got any better ideas?' tagline that Democrats have internalized this criticism, knowing the strategic mistake whipping up a half-baked Public Contract for Everyone for the other side to campaign against early and nationally. It is interesting to read commenters responding to the call for Rovian tricks to bring down our next potential Republican president, John McCain. Some were so fluffy-bunny pure that that could naught but shake their heads in shame that people could resort to such wickedness in the service of politics. How could we adopt the tactics of the most evil man in America,etc and so on. "Um, because they work", someone says and then nag-free comments proved substantial: well, to answer how would Karl Rove respond to McCain, beyond citing the obvious example of the racist leaflets, one commenter assidously noted that Rove's signature trick is weakening his opponents strongest point. While this is a key insight, I would have liked to have found more, such as constantly attacking, extensive use of surrogates, politicizing of national security, and his fascination with technology, all of which shoudl be understood before the use of 'Rovian' tectics is dismissed by progressives or libertarians. And one should put the use of racism, xenophobia, homophobia as all being potential in the real world, although this is trending to be not advantageous in a country, it creeps up subtly in all sorts of pimpin' ways.
So what would Rove do? First, some serious fucking data mining about every potential voter in the United States of America, including information on how they spent their money and use this data to access one of the most important issues nowadays and which the Democrats have been getting ripped off for awhile (surprising if the media is supposed to be sympathetic views, but moeny talks): media buys. In fact, the fact they they have so fully internalized the media myth that 'the blogosphere is filled with hatred and inaccuracy, making it political poison' that this very willing force for collective action goes wasted. the blogosphere is filled with hatred and love for just about every topic th
Karl's next step: lovingly crafting all of those ads to be shown on the media buy, each twisting the anger points of a particular section of the body politic. Many more steps are opaque to the public view, but most are mundane following that, get out the vote and staffing voting locations with supporters, reassuring supporters and hustling up the dough. So let's stick to the one part most effective and interesting, the anger points. What anger points can be expoited in the next brave new wave of the Grand Old Party?
John McCain
Besides old news, which is so used to be discredited, there would have to be some retailatory Swift Boating because, really, if John Kerry's service is questioned while Bush skates on his mediocre Guard record, then the meme of the public having a right to know will supersede any precious historical vitrine we might want to keep the senator's POW records, Rove would say at least. This is distasteful on its own, which is why you must personalize it with veterans upset about the candidate; in Mac's case, that would be a POW still kept alive in Vietnam after the end of the war...so the unlikely event of that happened (you never know in our increasingly googlized world) those kind of statements suggest the ol' Manchurian tactic, or as it is known in common parlance, Candidate X has a Hidden Agenda.
War hero? Hmm, is what neo-cons with access to secure documents regarding the senator have said:
According to an eyewitness to the Navy's worst fire disaster that killed 134 sailors and injured 62, McCain and the Forrestal's skipper, Capt. John K. Beling, were warned about the danger of using M-65 1000-lb. bombs manufactured in 1935, which were deemed too dangerous to use during World War II and, later, on B-52 bombers. The fire from the Zuni misfire resulted in the heavy 1000 pounders being knocked loose from the pylons of McCain's A-4, which were only designed to hold 500-pound bombs.

During the fighting of the fire and while VF-74 and VF-11 were still counting their dead, McCain was helicoptered off the Forrestal to the USS Oriskany, which suffered a major fire on October 27, 1966, that killed 44 sailors. In that event, thousand pound bombs were jettisoned away from the fire but the lessons of the Oriskany went unheeded by the Forrestal's officers, including McCain, who served with the VA-163 Saints on board the Oriskany when the fire on that vessel occurred. On October 26, 1967, McCain was shot down over North Vietnam during a bombing sortie from the Oriskany.

At the time of the Forrestal disaster, Admiral McCain was Commander-in-Chief of US Naval Forces Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR) and was busy covering up the details of the deadly and pre-meditated Israeli attack on the NSA spy ship, the USS Liberty, on June 8, 1967. The fact that both McCains were involved in two incidents just weeks apart that resulted in a total death count of 168 on the Forrestal and the Liberty, with an additional injury count of 234 on both ships (with a number of them later dying from their wounds) with an accompanying classified paper trail inside the Pentagon, may be all that was needed to hold a Sword of Damocles over the head of the "family honor"-oriented (McCain's persona is supported by his book about his father and grandfather, both Navy admirals, titled "Faith of My Fathers") and the "straight talking" McCain.

hmmm...well that's chilling...in the great meanwhile

Praise McCain's service, praise McCain's service over and over, all the while carefully funding and encouraging and running a campaign to paint McCain as a complete psycho. McCain's flip flop are so confusing because he's a weak leader. McCain is too Strangelovian. Narrow cast to the Dem base the critical stuff but praise his military service on all the talk shows and encourage leading Dem candidates to praise, just praise, McCain's service.

Bill Frist
Boring , out of touch Washington insider for president? Well, ok, and considering the poor and histronic leadership shown in that body, there's also the whole creepy medical issue. I'm sorry, you fine men and women of the medical arts but really you don't need this guy trumpeting his medical wisdom along with his holiness as personal virtues whilst his schemes with insurance corporations to line his pockets as more and more Americans go without health care.
So fund a 527 called Concerned Pet Owners of America to highlight his history of pet abuse, such as the deceptive gathering of puppies and kittens, as well as more recent discoveries of slaughtered pets on his property...be sure to highlight the well-known association with the sadistic killing of animals for pleasure and that of humans. I suggest quick edits where the dog changes to a human changes to a cat, perhaps occasioned by sinister negatively-exposed images and jarring jump cuts replete with twitchy cinematography. Tag: Frist? A prescription for disaster.

Phew, enough vitriol. I think I'll need a new section to this blog for it all after awhile. Looking in my Bibliophile's Dictionary, I think this section should be called Billingsgate, which is a lovely name for both invective and a London fishmarket.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Between Progress and Liberty

"Politicians have stopped promising to fulfill our dreams, and now can promise only to protect us from our nightmares."

"I’m a Jewish feminist lesbian with democratic-socialist leanings who has been in and organized her fair share of protests– but I couldn’t agree more. I am so over conventional, organized protesting. No one cares about them. Especially marching on Washington– a total waste of time and resources. It doesn’t shame or surprise anyone, Bush and his people don’t care if there are 1 million or 20 million people camped out on the mall."

A recent post by Oliver Willis seeks to establish a seven-point mainfesto for

progressivism. It's a noble attempt to set a clear brand identity for what has become a positive label for 'center-left/left' policy, with a pro-capitalist connotation that recognizes the change in the left due to the re-alignment towards market forces in the collapse of state-controlled economics. Problem is, to paraphrase recent comments by Jon Stewart, 'we have to first agree what reality is'. Likewise, progressivism has a very populist appeal, but that is because the issue is always stated in the most broad terms. When individual issues are open to debate as to their inclusion, progressives can get fractioned off due to their membership in other identity groups. Thus environmentalists are very easy to not only shave off of a progressive coalition, but can then be recuited to excerbate the total meltdown of such a tenous entity through their anger at the 'loss of ideals'. Progress for our Green implies fewer factories and cleaner air, while for our Objectivist libertarian, that progress means less jobs and fewer liberties to conduct commerce.

The two main opponents of progressivism are conservatism and libertarianism. Conservatives, by definition, advocate tradition and the status quo. They are skeptical of notions of "progress" and social change - in any direction - believing that it is best to retain social relations that have been proven stable by past experience. Libertarians, on the other hand, advocate their own brand of radical social change, which is in many ways opposed to the kind of change advocated by progressives. For this reason, libertarians claim that they are the true promoters of progress, and that the policies of progressivism are actually "regressive". A notable supporter of this view is Brink Lindsey, an economist working with the Cato Institute. Lindsey believes that by terming themselves progressives, liberals and social democrats have put a positive spin on what he claims to be regressive economic tendencies. Being a libertarian, he argues in favor of free market capitalism and believes that progressive economic policies (such as minimum wages, income taxes, payroll taxes, most social saftey nets and trade barriers) help to increase unemployment among the poor and unskilled, as well as increase costs for all members of society.

Progressives counter that free market capitalism can be demonstrated to be regressive due to negative social consequences caused by its rejection or mitigation of labor policies to improve corporate efficiency, and the fact that it is often at odds with fair trade and other movements that argue for labor rights and social justice in international relations and economics. They further believe that the kind of policies advocated by libertarians like Brink Lindsey would and have created severe poverty, widened the gap between rich and poor and allowed those who are already rich to gain an excessively high amount of both wealth and power over the rest of society.

Progress means different things for different people. Some would go so far as to take progress to include repressive and reactionary policies and institutions which get the label progressive merely because they are novel or original packagings. The move from liberal to progressive seems to conservatives to be calculated, although this argument relies on an apparent double standard in the conscious branding. Republican commenters wish to tar the idealism of progressive by saying they are just liberals in new clothing, having already so succesfully demonized liberals this both serves as guilt-by-association and a backhanded appeal to 'true' liberals to forsake these new impostors to their philosophy.

This relies implicitly on the concept of psychic income,as from this excerpt from Crashing the Gate by Markos of DailyKos and Jerome Armstrong of MyDD:

Without a doubt, there is very little mentorship in progressive organizations, because the money and the attitude are both lacking. They treat employees as though they should be happy to work in something "meaningful," even if it means living in poverty. There is an institutional hostility toward paying professionals--activists, writers, researchers, organizers, PR staffers, fundraisers, and so on--market rates for their work.

"Even the sweetest, most progressive family foundations do not want to pay for salaries," said Amy Kiser, development director for the nonprofit Ecology Center in Berkeley, California. "There is a preference for all-volunteer projects, and I'm guessing that speaks to some sort of purity."

The Right has no such attitudes. Many of the leaders come from the business world and understand the power of money to motivate and focus people. Rob Stein estimates that of the top eighty organizations he has studied in the VRWC, there are about 2,000 conservative leaders earning between $75,000 and $200,000. The Leadership Institute's Blackwell made $187,433 in salary in 2004, his top five lieutenants clocked in between $88,066 and $130,744. At Focus on the Family, the top five compensated employees earned between$78,411 and $106,856 in 2004. The pay is good, ensuring they keep their brightest and best, and creates a draw for talent from outside the conservative movement. No one ever failed to pay their rent or gave up eating out because they worked at a conservative organization.

On our side, we face a steady stream of defections to the private sector where the pay is far better. As Napoleon said, an army travels on its stomach, a lesson progressive leaders have yet to learn. We train them young, teach them the ropes, and as they reach the age where they could take a more active leadership role in the movement, they decide they can't live with six roommates, default on their student loans, and eat Ramen noodles for dinner every night. They decide they want things like a car in good working order, they want to own a home, and they want to feel that their efforts are properly compensated. And the low pay also fails to lure committed people from the private sector. "People want to get out of the private sector and do work for them that feels karmically good to them," said Kiser. "But when they see how much it pays they are shocked. It keeps them out."

One of the big ironies is that progressive funders--who bear much of the fault for encouraging slave wages in progressive organizations--often run their own businesses or invest in for-profit ventures. And they would never treat their own employees in that manner. "I think that what's happened is that donors have developed two different brains," [major party donor and venture capitalist] Andy Rappaport explained to us when we met him in Redwood City, California, in August 2005. "There's our business brain, which holds our kind of rational, no-nonsense `This is how I earn my living, this is the way the world works' kind of stuff. And then there's our touchy-feely brain that deals with all of the social and political--and I think this is truer for the left than for the right, obviously. Progressive donors hold nonprofits to different standards and they don't naturally think about the application of things that many of us have learned in our for-profit endeavors to nonprofits.

[...]

Deborah Rappaport doesn't buy the notion of "psychic income"-- that good work is its own reward. "Everybody's looking to try to figure out what the lessons are to learn from the past forty years of the Republican Party, which I think in a lot of senses is a fool's errand at this point," she said. "But one of the things that I think we can learn is the professionalization of the organizations and the workers in those organizations. It's not just `Because you're doing good work, you should get psychic income.' It's `We value it, we respect it, we have high expectations of you and therefore we're going to compensate you appropriately.'"

Still, there is hostility from other progressives when they believe a liberal makes too much money, as if somehow that compromises the substance of his or her work. In reality, people should be properly compensated for their hard work. It's how we'll retain our top talent.

The Right doesn't have those problems, and as a result they have their best activists working on their issues. As long as progressives fail to grasp that simple lesson, we will continue losing our top people to the private sector, leaving the activist corps manned mostly by underappreciated, inexperienced, young liberals.

That the latter goal has been rather covert is a tribute to how caricatures of other people's psychology can lead to interesting misestimations of their beliefs and actions: conservatives, saturated with reports of liberal outrages and after absorbing and formulating responses to the most extreme of the other side's arguments, must think that liberals are all morally relative socialists. We all get so riled up arguing over intentions that no one keeps the issue on performance. So to those considering themselves liberals, conservatives say, do you want to be as dishonest as we are in talking about regulating abortion when we really want to ban it, or are you going to hide behind this new 'progressive' label when really you are all flag-burning, gay-marrying abortionists? This why-not-be-honest? hypocritical bullshit relies on the cliched but very real liberal guilt to work.

It is similar to the historically ignorant arguments that tar all modern-day liberals with comparision to the most extreme of Stalinist sympathizers and apologetics. Thus Truman and FDR can be both facists and socialists in their eyes.

So how does progressivism differ from liberalism, if we consider that the two are not one and the same by any means. Progress must be uniquely within the context of the present, thus progressive policies cannot just be retreads of old liberal ideas, even though they may no doubt contain some parts and will be portrayed as falling within a percived tradition of liberal social engineering no matter what their original political origins.

Let's look at Willis' seven points (paraphrased):
1. It's either forward with progress or trying to stand still and wish you could go backwards
2. America has a tradition of expanding liberties becuase of its ideals
3. The wealth of nations and their citizens depends on the freedom to innovate
4. Protest is not persuasion and we as a nation should not repeat past mistakes in national military strategy.
5. Equality in political rights is still a goal of progress and not an achievement
6. Regressive tendencies within the progressive movement must be guarded againest and excluded
7. and then the slogan: protect improve unite with examples.

So far this is as one commenter put it: Oliver’s post is the equivalent of saying you are for Mom and Apple Pie. You can’t argue against it, but it also does nothing to help you actually MAKE an apple pie, or help tell you how to be a good mom. So here's some specific policy prescriptions:

Removal of restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, which speaks for itself
Decriminalization of cannabis and reform of repressive drug laws which look antique in the 9-11 era yet have become a loophole for paramilitary tactics in law enforcement.
Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants that work here and help our industry, rather than a punitive policy which tries to restrict labor and punish businesses and families.

On all these things, progressives and libertarians can find common ground. More or less laws, in and of itself is not progress.

Liberum Arbitrium