RaptorMagic

How Our Government Works

2010-02-12T09:07:00.000-08:00

John Cole calls it "This Is What Obstructionism + Nihilism + the Wurlitzer Looks Like", and it's supposed to be sarcastic. But it's true, and it's truly sad to say that this is actually what our federal government looks like these days. If Republican domination of America goes on much longer, I will be ashamed to talk to my kids about democracy.

They won't fire even one shot

2010-02-05T14:52:00.000-08:00

Steve Benen says that "the biggest Democratic political problem of the day is ... picking among the several GOP scandals and deciding where to invest party energies." Wrong. The biggest Democratic political problem if the day is that Dem leaders won't make a fuss over any of the GOP's tantrums, corruption, or obstruction.

We don't have a two-party system; it's maybe a one-and-a-half-party system? If that much?

IOKIYAR

2010-01-28T11:20:00.000-08:00

IOKIYAR, a common abbreviation in progressive circles: It's OK if you're a Republican. If a Dem and a Repo do the same thing, the Dem will be slammed for it and the Repo will get a free pass:

Dixie Chicks got slammed for criticizing Bush (though they didn't say anything rude or untrue). So is anyone slamming Ted Nugent for criticizing Obama (and being rude and untrue in the process)? Silly question.
Talking Points Memo asks, "If an underwear bomb means we're not safe under Obama, does a shoe bomb mean Bush didn't really keep us safe after 9/11?" (And along those lines, one editor I know says, "We take off our shoes because Richard What's-'is-name carried explosives in his shoe. Do we now take off our underwear? This is all generals fighting the last war.")
Peggy Noonan says that Charles Schumer calling Scott Brown—accurately—a "far-right teabagger" is "obnoxious intrusion" and "name calling". Yet far-right teabaggers calling Obama a Marxist, Nazi, facist, or Antichrist is... what, exactly?
No More Mister Nice Blog asks us, "Can you imagine if, in the runup to 2006 or 2008, most of the major Democratic presidential contenders had attended a convention featuring a Condi Rice pinata, and maybe a Dick Cheney face shoot or a George W. Bush pretzel-eating contest? And can you further imagine Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Joe Biden trying to outdo one another on missing-WMD jokes and Katrina-failure jokes, all while attendees got to knock down a guy dressed in drag as Lynne Cheney, sumo wrestler?"

We're on a road to nowhere

2010-01-22T16:13:00.001-08:00

I don't often agree with Nate Silver's opinions, but he has perfectly captured exactly where the Democrats are today: behind in the casino by more than they can afford, and with their ATM card cancelled.

Priorities

2009-12-22T14:46:00.000-08:00

Briefly noted at That's My Congress: "The website of the House Judiciary Committee reveals that this month's scheduled hearing, bringing FBI officials to answer questions about the bureau's domestic surveillance of law-abiding Americans, has been canceled. The second of two hearings regarding the government's role in preventing head injuries in football, on the other hand, will proceed as scheduled."

The Party That Means Business

2009-09-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

An excellent blog post at Firedoglake spells out how Repos are all in favor of a 'public option' when it's publically-funded and -managed insurance for property, including subsidies, retroactive coverage, and mandated universality—the same Repos who oppose the same things for human beings:

Along the Gulf Coast, on the barrier islands on the Atlantic, in below-water expanses behind river levees and in desert communities plagued by flash floods, our federal government is there using tax dollars to help take care of damaged property.
But people? Providing a public option so people can buy health insurance through the federal government is "socialism," according to Senator John Kyl, the Republican senator from Arizona, a desert state where flash floods are as permanent a feature of reality as sickness and injury. Will someone ask Kyl why he favors what he calls socialist policies for property, but not people?

Remember those turtles on the cable-TV ad, the Slowskis?

2009-09-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

Because 40 years of trying, two years of campaigning, and 10 months of Congressional negotiations just aren't enough: Republicans ask US Senate to slow down on healthcare. HA! Folks, this process is anything but rushed. Don't let Repos run out the clock, and don't let conservative Dems kill the public option.

But Barnum reminds us, the nation is full of fools

2009-09-15T15:27:00.000-07:00

More quote pulling:

only a complete fool would be blaming Obama for our current mess, and only a complete fool could look at the last few decades and think the solution to our nation’s woes is giving the Republicans another shot in 2010 and 2012. Only this time, they really will take us towards that elusive conservative Utopia that eluded them while they ran the house, the Senate, and the White House! I promise! The check is in the mail! I will respect you in the morning!

Epitaph for journalism

2009-09-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

Eric Boehlert has a great dissection of modern "reporting", showing how the American media has become corrupted and biased:

So to summarize: ABC News confirms that it will chase any right-wing "fight" even if it's baseless; even if it's "unfounded." In reporting those fights, ABC News will purposefully exclude Democrat voices from the story. And ABC News, while acknowledging a fight is "unfounded," will allow partisan Republicans to blame the White House for the "controversy."

It's in ABC's own words, folks, not some Democratic Party memo. It's just the latest evidence that the "news" business in this country promotes arguments; the media treats every issue as "on the one hand, on the other hand" even when one side tells the truth and the other side lies.

Wilsooooonnnnnn!!!!

2009-09-10T10:37:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry Wilson! I'm sorry you're such a sad, pathetic sack of lying dirt! I'm sorry somebody with your attitude toward the truth has any power or authority in our society!

Investigate & prosecute crimes

2009-09-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

Quote of the day, from Doug J at Balloon Juice: "It’s simply astounding to me that the Village thought it was urgent to drop everything and impeach Bill Clinton for a blowjob, consequences be damned, are so concerned about what would happen if we prosecuted people for the violation of basic human rights."

We put out your fire, here's the bill

2009-09-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

We don't object to public management of police, fire, and sewer services. We shouldn't hold up public management of health insurance either:

What it all comes down to

2009-08-26T14:00:00.000-07:00

The model of a modern major public option

2009-08-04T08:42:00.000-07:00

OK, let's say you refuse to admit that Medicare is a good program and a good model for what a public-run health-insurance plan should look like. How about this?:

If Kaiser is what a government-run, health care provider would look like, why hasn't it been subjected to a barrage of criticism? [...] the people who "hated Kaiser" were only the people who had never tried it.

See what this financial planner has to say about how a single-payer system works for consumers and beats the competition.

HP vs. Lord V rap battle

2009-07-17T17:44:00.000-07:00

Coolness.

Perhaps the best health-insurance op-ed ever

2009-07-10T12:53:00.000-07:00

Titled "If You Don't Want the Public Option, Get the Hell Out of the Way", but the content is actually so much more.

Elect Tony Woods!

2009-06-25T20:47:00.000-07:00

My congressional district (CA-10) will probably have a special election this year, as Ellen Tauscher will be confirmed to a job in the State Dept. I'm backing Tony Woods, who was promoted today by the big-name AmericaBlog.

Fair, balanced, and full of ****

2009-06-24T18:14:00.000-07:00

In the world of Faux News, there are no bad Republicans.

Mark Sanford?

2009-06-24T14:01:00.001-07:00

The news today that South Carolina gov. Mark Sanford went AWOL from family and office because of an extramarital affair causes two questions to rattle around in my head:

When will the American public realize that a Republican officeholder who pounds the "family values" drum is probably having a sex scandal, divorce, or affair?
Would it have been less harmful for Sanford if the original rumor of his whereabouts—namely, hiking the Appalachian Trail on Naked Hiking Day—had turned out to be true?

How many "lone" wolves make a pack?

2009-06-18T14:09:00.000-07:00

The right says it's not responsible for people shooting up churches, murdering doctors, and shooting everyone from college students to police officers. We on the left say differently: when your policies and propaganda produce monthly terrorism, you can no longer write them off as "lone wolves." Where the left protested against Bush's policies with words, the right is doing it with guns, spurred on by the words of the right-wing media that dominates this country. I strongly recommend you click the link and read the post. (And if you have time, read the one that "follows" it—above it, blogwise—the one that asks the critical question, "Are you deliberately trying to start a civil war?")

"Sweet Mother of Abraham Lincoln!"

2009-05-29T14:09:00.000-07:00

I guessed Grover Cleveland:

Are you ready to have your mind blown? Who might you guess is the earliest president, chronologically, to have a grandchild alive today? Don’t cheat. Guess.

Correct answer is at the usually excellent blog Gin And Tacos.

We -- Americans -- will torture again

2009-05-04T11:57:00.000-07:00

Don't fool yourself. We will do it again. And we will claim it's legal, and we will suffer as a result, but we will not hold the culprits culpable. Republicans are now telling us that torture has only stopped because of a Democratic executive order, not because of any law, and it will be done again.

Torture -- and more importantly, the insane "unitary executive" theory that underpinned it and a thousand other abuses -- remains a viable and so-far undisputed weapon in the Republican toolkit. It will return, as surely as the Republican theory of total executive supremacy survived Watergate and Iran-Contra.
Consider the odds. Beginning with the 1968 election of Richard Nixon, Republicans occupied the White House for 28 of 40 years, reelecting three Presidents to second terms, each of whom -- Nixon, Regan [sic] and George W. Bush -- presided over scandalous escalations in the executive supremacy theory. Democrats have reelected just one during this time. And he was impeached.

We get the government we deserve. You and I, my fellow citizens, are to blame if we don't investigate and prosecute:

As tiresome as it can sometimes be to see people frame matters so that it all comes down to one issue and one issue only, I find myself returning to this one again and again. Whether or not torture is your issue. Or wiretapping. Or indefinite detention. Or signing statements. Or anything, really -- environment, global warming, abortion, health care, taxes, terrorism, the war. No matter what your issue is, at heart, you're dependent on a continuing and consistent respect for the law. Because without it, none of your work on politics and policy is worth anything the moment the White House falls to someone who's not you.

The Sith lord we've been looking for

2009-05-04T09:12:00.000-07:00

Everything depends on establishing a constitutional right for cloning. Then all that will be left are the outer rim territories...

No pardons for torturers!

2009-04-21T11:40:00.001-07:00

A post on Daily Kos is a wonderful expression of my own feelings about how Americans should not be expected to take to the streets just to convince the government to prosecute crimes.

I can only fathom that we are supposed to beg.
I think we are supposed to get down on our knees, even grovel for it, and beg that our nation act in accordance with its own laws, with international laws, and with basic decency. We among the more expendable classes are supposed to write passionate editorials; we are supposed to form grass roots movements; we are supposed to make the usual dozens of phone calls, and be ashamed, and debase ourselves -- and then, perhaps, if we are very lucky, and if beg enough and with the right arguments and place enough pressure in the right, most uncomfortable spots, then our own government will relent, and our laws will be followed, and investigations conducted, and if warranted, those responsible will be prosecuted. And we will finally as a nation, at long last, reject torture in practice as well as in words. [...]
Whether or not any of the parties involved are actually convicted, whether even a single one of them see a day of jail time is not the question. Whether we preclude that possibility, as policy of government, is the more damaging question. For in precluding even the possibility of justice, we immunize the act, and if we immunize the act then it is not, in any meaningful sense, actually illegal.

We should not have to beg to have crimes by powerful people treated as seriously as crimes by the powerless. We should not have to campaign to have crimes by Americans treated as seriously as the same crimes committed by people in other countries. And yet that's what the national politicians and commentators are telling us.

Perhaps, in Frank Luntz fashion, we simply lack the correct frame. Perhaps we simply don't have the right word, catchphrase, or slogan to enable people to understand that by not investigating and prosecuting torture, we have made it legal. I realize that there are honest differences of opinion; some people know how our civil rights have been trampled over the past decade and yet believe that that's a good thing. But many more people are simply unaware of what has happened, and that's what framing is for. So after reading that Kos post, consider brainstorming: what phrase on earth will it take to make people realize that we have legalized the unthinkable?

My contribution: "No pardons for torturers!" Refusal to investigate, and pre-emptive refusal to prosecute, is effectively the same as a pardon. If Obama pardoned Bush, Cheney, and everyone else involved in American torture, I think there might be an actual outcry; so let's oppose this by naming it what it is. "No pardons for torturers!"

Dead Wrong in Public for 2009

2009-04-08T21:05:00.001-07:00

Angels, Twins, Red Sox, and Rays to make the playoffs in the American League; Diamondbacks, Cubs, Phillies, and Mets in the NL. Cubs beat the Rays in the Series (my heart says Rays, but my brain thinks the Sox will be there instead). The Dodgers and Giants slug it out for second and third in the NL West; the A's would have a terrific season if it weren't for all the injuries to fragile veterans and fragile young pitching arms.

We're long past numb

2009-04-06T20:58:00.000-07:00

This Associated Press analysis connects some dots that need connecting: Something is horribly wrong in this country, and we're ignoring it:

The mass shootings that left 14 people dead in Binghamton, N.Y., on Friday were horrifying, depressing, nationally wrenching. They were also, to some extent, unsurprising in a society where the term "mass shooting" has lost its status as unthinkable aberration and become mere fodder for a fresh news cycle. [...]
People are of course responsible for their actions, but it's hard to avoid wondering what's afoot in the darkest recesses of what we like to call American exceptionalism. For so long, the national narrative has been so bullish about equality of opportunity, so persuasive in its romance of possibility for all. Is it so subversive to speculate, then, that when the engine of possibility runs into roadblocks, people can't cope?

Immoral, in any culture

2009-03-31T11:26:00.000-07:00

We are propping up a government in Afghanistan that is becoming more and more oppressive. Now that we have finally stopped the steady deterioration of civil rights in the U.S., isn't it time to speak out against eliminations of freedoms in countries we are responsible for?

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which "legalises" rape, women's groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.
In a massive blow for women's rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman's right to leave the home, according to UN papers seen by The Independent.
"It is one of the worst bills passed by the parliament this century," fumed Shinkai Karokhail, a woman MP who campaigned against the legislation. "It is totally against women's rights. This law makes women more vulnerable." [...]

Health-care reform we need

2009-03-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has proposed a single-payer health reform bill, similar to bills currently pending before the House (H.R. 1200 and H.R. 676). (No bill number yet, title is "American Health Security Act of 2009".) A single-payer insurance system is our best hope for insuring all Americans and reducing health-care costs. This Daily Kos diary has a ton of detail and discussion: "Remember that according to multiple independent analysis, [he gives citations] single payer is the only way to actually control total costs."

Disturbing question

2009-03-27T11:48:00.000-07:00

What fancy utensil am I supposed to use to eat a "body sorbet"?

High school cool

2009-03-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

Four Spanish teenagers built a balloon-and-camera rig for under $200 and with it managed to take pictures of space from about 19 miles altitude, with the equipment returning safely to the ground about 23 miles from its launch point. Cooooool-ness. (Here's the students' web site, translated by computer into English.)

Stomping on those who are already down

2009-03-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

I don't have any personal experience to support or refute this description of how Lyme disease works and how its patients are being hurt by the medical and insurance systems, but it rings true. We know that there are Big Machines chewing up the Little Guy all over our society, and these seem to be some of the biggest mismatches.

[...] As you can tell by now, this issue is a political and medical snake pit. But the thing that I've found most striking about it is that Lyme patients aren't the only ones caught in it. You can find almost identical battles raging -- with insurers and "official" medical groups lined up on one side, and persecuted heretic doctors and their grateful patients lined up on the other -- among the MS, autism, chronic fatigue syndrome, and Gulf War syndrome communities. In fact, almost every chronic disease that's emerged or spread since the early 80s has ended up re-creating this exact split. You have to wonder: Why? What's going on here?
A few perspicacious science journalists think they've got an answer. The problem, they say, started back in 1980, when Ronald Reagan changed the rules governing how scientists (and the entities they work for) profit from their work. Where scientists used to gain fame and fortune by publishing and sharing their work in conferences and journals -- and were thus rewarded for furthering general knowledge -- the new rules encouraged them to hoard their discoveries as trade secrets; and then leverage their patents and their seats on medical boards to write the disease definitions, mandate approved treatments, and completely control the scientific discourse in order to maximize the profits they made.
The upshot -- in all these cases -- is that when a new disease is discovered, a small cadre of researchers rushes in to lock down the disease's definition, patent its treatment, and control the flow of information around it as soon as they can manage it. From that point, any further discussion of the issue is off-limits; and any new discoveries or treatments not controlled by this cadre are discouraged by means both subtle and brutal. So instead of ongoing scientific give-and-take that leads to increasingly better information and treatment over time, the entire research conversation stalls at a very early stage -- and can stay stalled for decades. In the meantime, patients and clinicians are shut out of the discussion and left to work out practical treatments and new theories on their own, often in defiance of well-funded opposition that's staked its careers and fortunes on preventing any challenges to their established theory. [...]

Celebrate!

2009-03-05T11:58:00.000-08:00

Today, March 5, is the square root of Christmas! And also the first day of Nerdigras.

Finally, at last, some recognition

2009-02-10T12:12:00.000-08:00

From a Faux News article headlined "Obama Appeals to Liberal Media in First Prime Time Press Conference":

He seated a left-wing radio host [Ed Schultz] in the coveted front row. He called on a liberal blogger [Sam Stein] from the Huffington Post. He even brought far-left columnist Helen Thomas out of the wilderness[...]

Even if Faux in its bitterness has to lie by embellishing, it is news when anyone in the media with a non-right-wing point of view gets any attention.

Their ideas got us into this mess

2009-02-06T16:20:00.001-08:00

A Nobel laureate in economics believes that the stimulus package under consideration isn't enough, and that the Republican proposals for it would hurt the country rather than help. Big time.

Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts. It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. [...]
It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. [...]
It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

Somebody please tell me: why were there twice as many Republican politicians as Democratic ones talking about the bill on TV this week? Remember, when it comes to the future, Peter Drucker told us "what got us here won't get us there." Right-wing fixations like tax cuts and hacking government created this problem, and they won't solve it. They were proved wrong, we (rightly) booted them out of the majority for it; now, stop listening to them.

Editors win!

2009-02-06T14:27:00.000-08:00

Why it's definitely a good idea to marry a good speller.

IOKIYAR Number... where are we again?

2009-02-04T10:21:00.000-08:00

There are many, many things that are OK for Republicans but not OK for Democrats, according to our national media. Perjury, for instance; political corruption, for another; sexual affairs, for another; I could go on literally all day.

Among the differences in treatment: what does "patience" mean, and who deserves it when? For years and years, George Bush and the press urged Americans to be patient about Iraq; now, after ten days of the Obama administration, Republicans are "signaling they are losing patience with President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress." Oh, that is truly rich. And reported without snicking, emoticons, or irony!

Full list of Bush's appeals for patience is here, wrapped up by this thesis sentence:

Apparently patience is a partisan virtue, extended only to presidents who start wars and depressions, not those who are elected to clean them up.

The first right-wing conspiracy theory of the Obama administration

2009-01-20T09:09:00.000-08:00

I guarantee you that right-wingers will claim that Obama isn't really the president because Justice Roberts messed up the language of the oath:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Roberts moved "faithfully" to follow "States", and Obama paused but then he said it as Roberts had said.

Follow-up: In a comment on the Volokh Conspiracy post on this topic, DailyRich says something I agree with: "Eh, Bush nailed the oath and flubbed everything else, I'll gladly take the trade-off."

More follow-up: The Constitution says the new president takes office at noon without stating any qualification or requirement about the oath. And, at the luncheon immediately following, apparently Justice Roberts took the blame and apologized.

Final follow-up: The Prez and Chief, as expected, had a do-over. So if someone says he's not President because he botched the oath, they're double crazy.

Vive l'union!

2009-01-17T09:49:00.000-08:00

The next time you whine about "lazy union members", please remind yourself: everyone involved in Thursday's rescue from a crippled airliner belonged to a union.

Bob Corker and Richard Shelby like to claim that union labor is a failed business model. But I haven't heard much about Bob Corker and Richard Shelby saving 155 people's lives.

Repos promote Repo ideas; Dems promote ... Repo ideas

2009-01-12T13:42:00.000-08:00

Digby is talking about Guantanamo and torture, but she could be describing any of a half-dozen political topics:

As Greenwald discusses today, Obama is doing what all Democrats in my adult lifetime have always done --- he is working as hard as he can to prove that he isn't captive to his left. (You would think that the fact that the left is the law and order faction on this issue would at least make some of them scratch their heads.) And he seems to be doing a good job of it --- even Pat Buchanan is effusive in his praise of Obama for making sure that everyone knows he isn't "Reverend Wright's man."
But I'm not sure that's what's required right now. The nation is confused and scared about their economic security. They are embarrassed and angry at what the Republicans did. In fact, it seems that I heard somebody recently talking about how they desperately wanted ... change. I guess that's a word that's open to interpretation, but it seems to me that it's at least possible that they meant they wanted Obama to change the policies of the Bush administration.

Live-blogging the Fiesta Bowl, sort of

2009-01-05T20:22:00.000-08:00

Ohio State just scored to make it 17-15 (failed 2-point try), and I just had these thoughts:

When the hell are referees going to start flagging coaches for being too far out on the field or for protesting calls in an unsporting fashion or both?! Both Tressel and Brown have been out as far as the numbers tonight, which should be a penalty even if they're being polite—and they weren't!
The pass by Boeckman to Young for the TD was not just a great call; it was also satisfying, because Boeckman deserves a lot of success for the classy way he has carried himself this season.
USC easily beat Ohio State this year, and after seeing a few Texas games this year I'm convinced we could beat them just as easily.

A pacifist supports Israel

2009-01-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

I almost never agree with Clifford May, and I can't remember ever linking to the National Review Online before. But May's op-ed about Gaza is right in many respects. If you ignore his hyperbole, and throw out the self-serving hypothetical at the end, his thesis is correct: Hamas is to blame for this war, and Israel is right to fight it.

Israel pulled out of Gaza years ago, leaving the residents there with no legitimate complaint about Israeli occupation or persecution (not that that prevented anyone from complaining about the 'persecution' of not being given charity or of not being allowed to come and go in and out of Israel). And for some months now, both Hamas and Israel have refrained from military conflict.

But that wasn't good enough for Hamas, which decided to start shelling Israel. Every democracy has the right and obligation, when attacked by military action, to respond with force.

Many critics of Israel are calling its military actions "unjustified," which prompts the question of what would be a justified response to artillery assaults. Others, including even people who should be relatively neutral in this conflict such as the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights use the word "disproportionate" because more Gazans are being hurt than Israelis. The L.A. Times reports that "[Hamas's] homemade rockets are wildly inaccurate and rarely cause serious casualties; three Israeli civilians have been killed by rocket fire" in the past two weeks. (I'm quoting the article as printed in the Contra Costa Times this morning; the online version reads differently.) The "only" that is strongly implied here is ridiculous; it suggests that, if a man starts shooting at you but is such a poor marksman that only one in ten bullets hits, you should shoot to wound him rather than to kill.

Israel is doing what it should, and the damage in Gaza—no matter how tragic and undesireable—is Hamas's fault. The Times quotes an Oxfam executive saying that "trying to fight a military campaign in the densely populated streets and alleys of the Gaza Strip will inevitably lead to civilian casualties." Well, yes. That's exactly Hamas's point and purpose. They decided it would be in their best interests to trade Gazan lives for Israeli ones. Israel is in the right to enter Gaza seeking to destroy people who would make such a calculation.

Usually I disagree with what I see as the American government's knee-jerk support of Israeli policy. And I believe that terrorism is best defeated through law-enforcement measures, not military ones. But organized military action by a governing authority is not terrorism; in this case, the U.S. government is correct to support Israel's actions and announcements.

Update: Naturally, I realized later that this post held a few invisible shorthands—things I was thinking but didn't write, such as the idea that deciding what is "proportionate" must include some component of evaluating "effective". Rather than try to back-fill them all, let me merely point out the inadequacy of this venue for actually solving; it's just a musing point, of course. Far better musing is here and also here.

Word of the Day

2008-12-09T17:57:00.000-08:00

In a post that explains why the Russians are doing something better than we are, IOZ refers to Barack Obama as "The Elect". I love it.

The piece also delivers this excellent punch line:

In the end, best-case scenario, we have a much-reduced domestic auto industry slowly repaying loans at extremely favorable interest rates. Lemme repeat, for the cheap seats: that's the best case scenario. I mean, fuck Larry Summers. Why not just put Terry Gilliam at Treasury?

Don't touch that shrimp cocktail!

2008-12-03T10:26:00.000-08:00

I'm in my usual post-election mode—reading politics, but not commenting, because it all seems so hopeless again. But here's a truly excellent intersection of policy, entertainment, and "you can do something about it":

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Tons of stars in here: Margaret Cho, Kathy Najimi, John C. Reilly; I am still waiting for the Allison Janney role that I don't like. And for everyone who moans about how musicals (film and stage both) are dying, at least we still have the performers we need if the format ever revives: Neil Patrick Harris is one of the best musical actors around today (previous evidence here).

Take my conservative opponents.. please!

2008-11-11T16:15:00.000-08:00

I've been seeing (and even been in the midst of) lots of discussion about whether to debate with conservatives now that their policies have been rejected, and if yes then whether to be 'civil'. In my usual way of "what works, is", I say you have to win before you can change the rules of the game (such as "the tone of the debate"). Here's an excellent summary of why I feel it's fruitless to take the right wing seriously these days. Among the excellent pieces to always remember: "You will always lose a game you do not realize you are playing."

Bigger than huge

2008-11-09T17:05:00.000-08:00

I got a laugh today when someone pointed me to this tidbit from the blog Crooks & Liars:

How BIG was Obama's victory? As it now stands, with North Carolina upping his total to 364, he could've spotted McCain New York and California and still won with 8 to spare. Let that sink in for a minute; a "suntanned" big city liberal Democrat named Barack Hussein Obama has won the presidency and did not need the New York and California electoral votes to do it.

(Note: now 365 with one elector from Nebraska. "Suntanned" quote courtesy of the rude Italian prime minister.)

Blog Olympics

2008-11-08T09:36:00.000-08:00

I read a lot of blogs during political season, and over the course of the year I can tell that I've landed on certain URLs more than the rest. The competition is over, the scores are in, and here's the medal ceremony:

Bronze: Hullabaloo. In previous elections, Digby was boring, repetitive; she solved this a while back by making the blog a team effort, adding variety in both topics and sources. The quote blocks still run too long—okay, okay, we get the idea, we want to hear your point—but this is the site I go to first to find out what other sites are saying. Others in this class are Sadly, No! and Lawyers, Guns, and Money, but those are merely for humor as they monitor mostly amateur rightwing sites; Hullabaloo calls bull on "real" media and think tanks.
Silver: Daily Kos. Formerly the undisputed champion, still the best for pure news, polls, and activism. It can be hard to keep up with because of its enormity, but the diary-rescue process at least provides a first pass at finding the quality that extends throughout the site.
Gold: Who Is IOZ?. A ten even from the Bolshevik judge. Knocked the Rude Pundit off the podium this election cycle, through pith and insight and wit and encyclopedic knowledge. Warning for the faint of heart: not nearly as crude as the RP, but still plenty of faggotry (his word), pot, and correctly-pronounced French as well.

Hallelujah! There's Work To Do

2008-11-07T23:16:00.000-08:00

Be glad! We elected the right man, just in time.

That's enough celebrating. It's time to get to work. We Americans cannot expect one person to clean up the mess of the past 28 years. We are in this together; roll up your sleeves.

The second time as farce

2008-10-22T21:11:00.000-07:00

I thought the Repos couldn't recruit anyone less likeable than Bob Dole, but they did.

And I thought their nominee couldn't pick anyone less qualified — and more oblivious to their unqualifiedness — than Dan Quayle, but they did.

Thank you, right wingers. My bet: Obama with 356 electoral votes.

"Gay" is not a basis for discrimination in CT

2008-10-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

The Connecticut Supreme Court today ruled that the state must provide same-sex couples the opportunity to marry, not just enter into civil unions. The court's ruling about why separate is not equal was very clear and compelling, but even happier for me was the ruling's language about homosexuality in general (emphasis mine):

The characteristic that defines the members of this group -- attraction to persons of the same sex -- bears no logical relationship to their ability to perform in society, either in familial relations or otherwise as productive citizens. Because sexual orientation is such an essential component of personhood, even if there is some possibility that a person’s sexual preference can be altered, it would be wholly unacceptable for the state to require anyone to do so.

I don't usually do bumper stickers...

2008-10-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

...but I might make an exception for this:

The new Big Racist Lie

2008-10-01T15:15:00.000-07:00

The reactionaries who control this country have developed a new Big Lie, and it's subtle so you might have missed it. They're claiming that the current crisis in banking and credit is the result of lending to minorities, and specifically the result of Demon-crats forcing banks to lend to minorities. This is bullshit. But it's bullshit being given legitimate play in mainstream media: check out the liars on cable news, liars on public radio, liars in syndicated editorials and liars in national op-eds, and a liar in John McCain campaign commercials (not that that last is very surprising).

The details on the new Big Lie are here, but the top line for ethical Americans is simply to be aware of the lie and be on the lookout for it. The counterpunches are:

The Community Reinvestment Act did not require anyone to lend to anyone.
Yet CRA loans are on average more secure and provide a higher return than mortgages in general.
The suggestion that the banking business's current problems are the fault of minorities and those who support equality for them is vile and evil and should be denounced.

IOKIYAR*

2008-09-19T09:21:00.000-07:00

Read this excellent statement of why some people have it easier in this country than others.

* It's OK If You're A Republican

Defeat the tax-and-spend Republicans

2008-09-11T10:42:00.001-07:00

Maybe you know someone who gripes that Obama will raise their taxes. Ask them if their family makes more than $600,000 a year; if they don't, they should clam up. And if they make a lot less than that — say, anything under $100,000 — make sure they know McCain would cost them more money than Obama.

According to a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain are both proposing tax plans that would result in cuts for most American families. Obama's plan gives the biggest cuts to those who make the least, while McCain would give the largest cuts to the very wealthy.

Specifically, Obama's policy is heavy on cuts for the 60% of households with the lowest incomes; McCain focuses on cuts for the 1% of households with the largest incomes.

Excellent headline

2008-09-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

I'm a fan of big science. And I'm a fan of those who explain that Big Science is important. But that doesn't mean we can't have a sense of humor about it, as evidenced by this headline.

We have found the antonym of "Mother Jones"

2008-08-29T10:18:00.000-07:00

She is Sarah Palin. Oh, my aching head. I simply cannot imagine how McCain thought this would be a plus for him. Demographic echoes of Spiro Agnew: To be fair, Agnew was 50, a WWII veteran, and a member of the bar. Still, they're both so very fresh out of local politics, just first-term governors, and Palin comes ready-made with an ethics investigation whereas nobody discovered Agnew's crimes until after he was elected. And of course some will remember Geraldine Ferrarro: Picking a woman because she's a woman shouldn't appeal to anyone.

But most importantly, McCain chose a pro-oil, anti-choice, pro-gun, creationist far-righter—someone who is close to being as reactionary as you can get in America and still get elected. The fact that this pick will make the Focus On The Family crowd happy should scare the rest of us.

Republicans love to talk about experience—and as I've said before, American's don't always value experience highest or we never would have wound up with Bill Clinton or Abraham Lincoln. But they only talk about it. Republicans promote judges, prosecutors, and candidates who aren't qualified, so long as they carry the correct anti-civil-liberties, pro-business, party-first cards in their wallets.

Tell me again how we're a democracy?

2008-03-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

A reporter Vice President Dick Cheney that two-thirds of Americans oppose the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and Cheney said,

"So?"

Choosing between Clinton and Obama

2008-03-05T15:21:00.000-08:00

The policy difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama—the difference in what they would attempt to accomplish in office—is negligible. Both would pull us out of Iraq only very, very slowly (too bad). Neither is in favor of extending "marriage," by that name, to same-sex couples (too bad). Both kowtow to the ethanol lobby (too bad), though Obama bends over further. Neither one would normalize relations with Cuba (too bad), though Clinton is slightly more reactionary about the island. Both believe there is hope for Iran and North Korea, but neither would move the U.S. toward a two-China policy. And on and on and yes, I have checked out all their position papers. The Washington Post seems to think they can be distinguished from each other, based on the less than 10 percent of their Senate votes that differ, but I consider them all very fine points.

The difference between them in political service is also negligible. I might give Obama a little more credit, for a longer time served in elected office (but then, those are state years, not federal years). But as I've said before, I consider Clinton's time on public policy matters before the Senate to be worth about the same as Obama's time on public policy matters before he was elected in Illinois.

Clinton has more experience in election campaigns and with the media. Obama is the better public speaker.

Both are lawyers, with similar educations and some time in pro bono or community work (counting First Lady duties here as similar to nonprofit efforts).

Both can get very, very proposal-wonky. Both have been begged by their campaigns not to go off on geeky, detailed, white-paper answers in their personal appearances. Obama took this advice earlier than Clinton did, but both now are "working the house" in about the same way, which is heavy on inspiration and light on perspiration. (You can win the White House on strength of personality without knowing much about which policy lever moves what social measure—see Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush Jr. You can also win if you have both sufficient personality and wonky goodness—see Bill Clinton. You cannot win by being adept with policy detail if people don't find you personally appealing—examples too numerous to give here—unless the opposition has a candidate who violates these rules even more drastically—see Nixon.)

No president will "change the way business is done in Washington". I'm not voting based on any (empty) hope that a candidate will work some miracle on our political system.

Obama is more electable, by a little. Many, many more people hate Clinton—nationwide, in key markets, and in the media—and baggage matters. But Obama's youth and "inexperience" and middle name and more will provide plenty of general-election ammunition.

Neither has served in the military. Neither has been divorced, neither has been charged with infidelity or (sanely) with corruption, neither has been homeless or unemployed, and so on.

So what the hell is there to choose by? Policy, experience, and electability are, separately and collectively, a wash.

Of course, Obama is black and Clinton is a woman. Both have faced obstacles as a result of these characteristics. Racism is less acceptable than sexism in America, but I can't even begin to estimate which of those is more extensive or has more of an impact on its victims.

Also, they have different personal styles. Obama is well known for seeking compromise; Clinton is well known for not giving in on political positions. Obama is well known for speaking softly in private, attempting to bring opponents together and to have good relations on all sides; Clinton is well know for being abrasive even to her allies.

In the end, those are the two areas that distinguish these politicians the most. I'm not making my choice based on race or sex, though I know that others will. (And as a white male, even if I wanted to make one or both of those my criteria, it would be a horrible idea to say so out loud.)

I hope Obama wins. I believe he would be listened to by more people, on both sides of the aisle and in all houses, than Clinton would. I don't believe that he would accomplish a long list of things that she wouldn't, or that our politics would suddenly become a lot more civil, or that the nation would take better care of its citizens. I do believe that, on balance, all of those areas would be a little better as a result of Obama's personal and political styles than they would from Clinton's.

That's my take on why to vote for one or the other. It's just my words, no practical effect; I had already voted for Dennis Kucinich when he dropped out, and my second option would have been Bill Richardson. The post below this one looks at the horse-race aspect of why or the other will actually be the nominee.

Edits: The list of policy topics above is, necessary, short; and so it inevitably omits an issue that is, for someone somewhere, the only thing they decide on: abortion, the death penalty, the environment, and so on. This post was not an attempt at an exhaustive comparison of their positions, so don't go off on me for those omissions.

A dead heat down the homestretch

2008-03-05T15:20:00.000-08:00

News outlets depend on drama, even when there isn't any. And sometimes they choose the wrong drama, as they did this morning with all kinds of pro-Clinton headlines (at least in the San Francisco area). The real story here is that rank-and-file Democrats are split down the middle and that means the party leaders get to choose the nominee.

Nothing really happened yesterday to swing the Democratic nomination either way. Neither candidate scored big enough to win. Depending on which wire service or political poll site you believe, the delegate count last night had Clinton's net gain somewhere between +11 and +23, out of 370 available. Total pledged so far are something like Obama 1,340, Clinton 1,206 (needed to win: 2,025). Clinton is ahead by about 10% among the unpledged "superdelegates"—the big wigs who are allowed to change their vote—so Obama's overall lead is 1,542 to 1,447 (both totals +/-25 depending on how you count the supers).

With just over 600 pledged delegates left to select, a candidate would have to win all 12 remaining primaries, by 100% to 0%, to lock up the nomination. And that ain't going to happen. Ordinary-people voting is so close that the superdelegates are going to decide this.

What will happen: over the next couple of months, if one candidate wins a really big chunk of the remaining primaries (say, 10 out of 12) or more than 2/3 of the remaining delegates, there will be a lot of pressure on the other one to drop out. Enough of the 350 or so not-yet-announced superdelegates will start declaring themselves for the candidate who has momentum that people will say the other candidate "ought" to drop out for the good of the party.

If the two candidates split the wins and split the delegates, then the supers will wait until the convention, in August, to make their decision. They'll do that because they'll know they can go there and be treated like royalty, each side begging for their vote—and because they will want to seriously sniff the public-opinion aroma as long as they possibly can before committing.

By the way, I don't have any problem with the presence of superdelegates. I think this election is exactly proving the value of the setup the Democratic Party installed after McGovern. No winner-take-all primaries—a good thing. A mix of primaries and caucuses—another good thing. In most elections, someone builds a big enough lead and they're nominated. But when nobody gets clear of the competition, the nomination is brokered by a combination of public opinion and party leaders. I would change the timing (I'd like the whole process to take place from March to early June), but I wouldn't modify anything else about this.

That's the horse-race portion of my musing. I'm putting my comments about the substance of the two candidates in a separate post.

(n.b. I love it when I'm right. I said two weeks ago that the opera wasn't over yet and that the candidates could be tied going into the convention.)

U.S. presidential candidates do NOT have to have "experience"

2008-01-09T11:40:00.000-08:00

(I wrote this in December 2006 for an e-mail list. Because the subject of "candidate experience" keeps coming up, I decided to post it here.)

It's a common misconception that foreign-policy experience is a requirement for the presidency. And yeah, people like Dole throw that at people like Clinton, but it never works. Not any more, anyway.

The short story is that, between Buchanan (elected 1856) and Truman (elected 1948), foreign-policy experience was nearly irrelevant to each president's first campaign. So we shouldn't be surprised that it became much less important again from the late 1970s onward.

Look at the last couple dozen presidents, and omit anyone who succeeded to the presidency before running for the job. (I'm not sure we can draw any conclusions from presidencies before or resulting from the Civil War, so I've left off Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant.)

Hayes: governor of Ohio
Garfield: representative
[[Arthur]]
Cleveland: mayor of Buffalo, governor of New York
Harrison: senator
McKinley: representative, governor of Ohio
[[T. Roosevelt]]
Taft: federal judge, cabinet member (War)
Wilson: president of Princeton, governor of New Jersey
Harding: lt. gov. of Ohio, senator
Coolidge: governor of Massachusetts
Hoover: businessman, cabinet member (Commerce)
F. Roosevelt: cabinet member (Navy), governor of New York
[[Truman]]
Eisenhower: general, president of Columbia
Kennedy: representative, senator
[[Johnson]]
Nixon: representative, senator, VP
[[Ford]]
Carter: governor of Georgia
Reagan: governor of California
Bush Sr: representative, ambassador, VP
Clinton: governor of Arkansas
Bush Jr: governor of Texas

Let's leave out time in the military*. Then let's say that serving in the Senate counts as foreign-affairs time. From Buchanan to Hoover, foreign-affairs experience was a rare thing: Johnson, Harrison, and Harding in the senate, Taft briefly Secretary of War.

The isolationism that followed WWI faded some with the prosperity of the late 1920s, helping Hoover; he had huge international credentials (as a businessman and business diplomat). But it came back when times went bad again: FDR won because of his domestic agenda, and even in small part because people thought he would avoid foreign entanglements.

Then, everyone from Truman to Nixon, plus "Reagan III", was unassailable as far as experience in international relations. But Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush Jr have returned us to our previous pattern.

I think WWII and the Cold War deflected Americans from electing governors, but I think that that trend is over. We're back to not electing anyone with any international chops.

* It used to be that everyone had a service record. Yeah, TR had San Juan Hill, and JFK had PT-109. But Ike's is the only military experience that really made a difference in an election as policymaking or international relations. We also often hear people moaning about how recent politicians don't have any military experience. But once the Civil War veterans grew old, we had five presidents, from Taft to Hoover, who had not served on active duty. This is another way that I think the electorate is changing, though on this one it's too soon to tell if it'll stick.

For a mainstream-press take on the history of "not enough experience", see this article.

Choice

2008-01-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

What fits your busy schedule better, exercising one hour a day or being dead 24 hours a day?

Online geography game

2007-12-20T08:30:00.000-08:00

Cool, it flashes city names or famous site at you and you have to click a map. You have to reach a target point score for each level to move on to the next; I scored 417,394, finishing at level 10 (out of 12), for a "traveller IQ" of 116. (I'm really bad at sub-Saharan Africa.) The world game map is small, so be very pleased any time you click within 200 km of the target. The site has other games for each continent, flags of the world, and so on.

Seasonally

2007-11-30T17:23:00.000-08:00

I especially enjoyed today's Richard Brautigan Poem of the Day. (As the message says, "The Richard Brautigan poem of the day" machine distributes verse from a variety of poets, some of them named "Richard Brautigan." You can sign up for this daily mail through Google Groups.)

The Trade
by Gary Snyder

I found myself inside a massive concrete shell
lit by glass tubes, with air pumped in, with
levels joined by moving stairs.

It was full of the things that were bought and made
in the twentieth century. Layed out in trays
or shelves.

The throngs of people of that century in their style,
clinging garb made on machines,

Were trading all their precious time
for things.

Winning converts

2007-11-25T09:00:00.000-08:00

My 101-year-old grandmother is visiting in California, a wonderful thing for all the family out here. She launched my love of baseball by introducing me to the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings back in the '60s, and she has been a cable-TV fan of the Yankees for many years. So it was another wonderful thing for me when she announced yesterday, "I guess I'll have to be a Dodger fan now," because Joe Torre has moved to be the L.A. manager.

I have got to figure out how to rig Grandma's computer or TV so I can send her recordings of the late-West-Coast games next year.

Sniffle

2007-10-02T22:31:00.000-07:00

I found out today that the house I grew up in has been torn down.

Nothing is your fault!

2007-08-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

I won't embed the video here because there are marginally NSFW shots, but find out the real source of all your pain and problems.

An era of better movies

2007-07-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

I took my daughter to see the movie of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix today, and among the trailers we saw was one for a movie from the first of Phillip Pullmans' His Dark Materials trilogy, The Golden Compass (December 2007, Cecil). Coming on the heels of very good films from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Bridge to Terebithia, this should have been unsurprising; but I still found my first reaction to be, "Wow. Someone in Hollywood thought that would make money?" Immediately I shushed myself (hell, I was in a movie theater after all); but yeah, they did! We've reached a point in film history where good stories that are accessible for children can get worldwide marketing. I suppose we went through one or two such phases before (E.T. kicked one off in the '70s), but it has been a while, and I don't think we've ever had such a sustained run of both quality and quantity.

So there's hope for the "other" movie-from-book that I've wanted to see since I was a boy (The Lord of the Rings being the first): John Christopher's "Tripods" trilogy.

J'accuse

2007-07-06T09:10:00.001-07:00

Keith Olbermann will be written off by the far right, once again, as an irrelevant partisan nutcase. (The psych types define this as projection.) That doesn't mean the rest of us, the Great Silent Majority in this country, shouldn't listen to him and finally stand up and say, yes, this is truth.

We enveloped our President in 2001. And those who did not believe he should have been elected—indeed those who did not believe he had been elected—willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.
And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.

For the record

2007-06-24T13:19:00.001-07:00

Yesterday (June 23) my son PJ, who turned 8 in February, finally rode a bike with no training wheels and no parent hanging on. He's currently riding a beat-up 16-inch, but already has a shiny, metallic red 20-inch bike ready and waiting for his legs to grow a bit.

Sally Ann asked whether this meant she would have to learn to ride a two-wheeler, but we told her no, she can stick with her "grown-up tricycle". (Looks like this one, but hers is homemade and painted black.)

Laugh it up, fuzzball

2007-06-19T14:51:00.001-07:00

This is a wonderful way to spend 60 seconds in the middle of a workday:

The "Gay Bomb"

2007-06-12T10:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try not to, something offensive is simultaneously so ridiculous that you simply must laugh.

Birder porn

2007-05-31T18:10:00.000-07:00

Here are three photos every birdwatcher will enjoy: Ride, ride-r, ride-est!

Bill Richardson on energy

2007-05-31T10:56:00.000-07:00

I wish I could stop getting spam from Democracy For America and MoveOn; nonetheless, I agree with them more often than not. And DFA is praising Bill Richardson for putting out a solid and specific energy plan. I recommend you watch the video.

I certainly haven't chosen a candidate yet—I'm still in that early fantasyland where Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel have a prayer—but Richardson has a good mix of electable characteristics and principled stands. He panders a little more than I like; having never used "Lopez" in public life I'd be disgusted if he started now. But his top-line items, including "bring the troops home lock, stock, and barrel", are smart and right.

Marketing test

2007-05-25T11:25:00.001-07:00

I posted on YouTube for the first time today: a Photoshop video one of my authors, Ellen Anon, made to promote her book, Photoshop CS3 for Nature Photographers:

Things that make you go hmmm

2007-05-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

On May 17, rookie sensation Tim Lincecum struck out future Hall of Famer Craig Biggio four times among 10 strikeouts total. According to the Giants' broadcasters, it was only the third time in his long career that Biggio had struck out four times in one game.

On May 22, Biggio took the day off when the Astros faced Lincecum again, one of only four games he has skipped this year. (The Giants won both games.)

We are paying farmers to help us get fat

2007-05-24T09:35:00.000-07:00

American farm subsidies are producing food prices that help increase obesity—and this effect is greater the lower your income is.

For the last several decades [...] U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of [corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, and cotton], especially corn and soy. [...] By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

Checkin' on my peeps

2007-05-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

Did you know that Peeps use the library? Wouldn't you like to know how?

Boomshine

2007-05-18T14:57:00.000-07:00

Silly little game o' the week: Boomshine. Caution, may promote timewasting.

Oh great. Another talky drunk.

2007-05-17T20:25:00.000-07:00

I do like me some Bushmills.

Get your drunk personality at LiquidGeneration.com.

Giveaway, takeaway

2007-05-15T22:36:00.000-07:00

The Utah Jazz and Dallas Mavericks are better players than the Golden State Warriors, and both should have won their series (as the Jazz did tonight). Some Warriors have a hot-head history. The referees used that hot-head history to go out of their way to make things easier for the Warriors' playoff opponents.

Did I just agree with a Republican? Slap me if I did

2007-05-11T15:27:00.000-07:00

Somebody pour me a drink. I think Rudy Guiliani came very close to winning my vote!

Rudolph W. Giuliani offered a direct challenge to Republican Party orthodoxy on Friday, asserting that his support for abortion rights, gun control and gay rights should not disqualify him from winning the party’s presidential nomination and that Republicans need to be tolerant of dissenting views on those issues if they want to hold the White House. [...]
“In a country like ours, where people of good faith, people who are equally decent and equally moral and equally religious, where they come to different conclusions about this, about something so very, very personal, I think you have to respect their viewpoint,” he said. “I would grant women the right to make that choice.”

New H.P. trailer

2007-05-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

The trailer that answers the eternal question, "Who are you, and what have you done with Hermione Granger?"

(To which I can't help but hear in the background, "Mmm - nothing - why, do you think I should?")

De-democritizing

2007-05-08T11:43:00.000-07:00

I would disagree that her steps 3 and 8 have already been formally taken here. But Naomi Wolf lists 10 steps that are the "blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship"; see how many you think George Bush has already put us through.

Are you a young man from Nantucket?

2007-05-03T16:09:00.000-07:00

What poetry form are you? Find out here. (I'm Terza Rima... but it also says that if I were not Terza Rima I would be Heroic Couplets.)

Peeps for Passover

2007-04-06T16:31:00.001-07:00

I love Peeps. I think it's terrible what some people will do to Peeps. Terrible and hilarious.

Expensive, unintentional daycare

2007-04-03T14:01:00.000-07:00

We all know that that chronically homeless must be someplace during the day; here's an expert reporting on one preferred location, the public library. In the midst of this article, he says something that I wish were engraved on the back of the president's hand: "The belief that we are responsible for each other's social, economic, and political well-being, that we will care for our weakest members compassionately, should be the keystone in the moral architecture of a democratic culture."

Rube Goldberg machine video contest

2007-03-30T16:49:00.000-07:00

I've been working on some really fun books lately, and among those was Tony Mullen's Introducing Character Animation with Blender. This book is sneaky-good; not only is Tony an excellent writer and teacher, but because the DVD contains the entire Blender application (it's open-source, meaning distributed freely), the book actually serves as a complete kit to start from absolute scratch making your own digital animations.

The Blender community is small but very active and very vocal. They recently held a contest for animations of weird and complex machines--Rube Goldberg devices--and the winning videos are a lot of fun. The desk chair in the third-place video is great, but I like that the first-place winner uses good audio as well as animation.

What are they thinking?

2007-03-06T14:49:00.000-08:00

Diaries of a dog and a cat:

DAY 771 - There was some sort of gathering of their accomplices. I was placed in solitary throughout the event. However, I could hear the noise and smell the foul odor of the glass tubes filled with what they call "beer." More importantly, I overheard that my confinement was due to MY power of "allergies." Must learn what this is and how to use it to my advantage.

Think about consumerism

2007-02-07T10:02:00.000-08:00

I don't do catalogs (my wife does enough catalog and online shopping to meet the U.S. consumer quota for our whole family). But I did enjoy The Unemployed Philosopher's Guild (Freudian slippers! and be sure to browse the Art Pillows.) and the Carl Jung action figure and corn dog air freshener at Archie McPhee (hey, Peg: temporary librarian tattoos! and their Box o' Fun looks like the ultimate birthday-party goodie bag).

Metablogging

2007-01-26T15:02:00.000-08:00

I actually had two subtitles competing in my mind today. The runner-up was:

All the years that have come to pass
And all the years that shall be
I see here right before me
I see here before me

Things you shouldn't have to explain to a seven-year-old

2007-01-23T22:41:00.000-08:00

You have probably heard that immigration officers are conducting raids around the country, looking for people who have been ordered deported, and that they are also sweeping up a lot of others not on their lists. Well, we had a major wave of such raids in my neighborhood late last week (here's a local newspaper report on it, quoting the principal of my son's school).

Officials were arresting people who had not previously gotten their notice—folks who did not have deportation orders or overstayed visas. The immigration agents were, by reputable testimony, talking their way into homes unrelated to their warrant lists and arresting those who couldn't prove their citizenship, as well as accosting passersby to do the same.

Bad enough, all that, and that it made so many frightened families keep their kids cloistered at home. My son was afraid for many of his friends, including one in particular who, although his family is of Pacific Islander descent, I'm sure are citizens. But one evening I discovered that he had even been asking my wife whether she would be arrested soon... because she was born in Florida.

How can I tell him that he need not fear—that this isn't a police state, that nobody will ever stop him at random and demand to see his papers?

Could we be un-Bushed for a change?

2007-01-22T15:50:00.000-08:00

George Bush, in his radio address this week, proposed that we give people a tax break on their health insurance. This should not come as a surprise—after all, this was the guy who wanted to make it harder, not easier, to exercise our Constitutional right to bankruptcy, even when it's the result of catastrophic medical misfortune—but it's still amazing to me that he finds new ways to demonstrate his contempt for most Americans.

First there's the cognitive dissonance and detachment from reality. He thinks we need incentives to buy health insurance... as if a tax break would prompt more uninsured people to get insurance. As if uninsured people are, by and large, choosing to be uninsured. And as if our tax forms need to be even more complicated. He clearly doesn't hang out with many people who sit on hold with insurance companies, fill out insurance applications, or do their own taxes.

But even more offensively, there's the condescension. He doesn't like that so many of us are buying "gold-plated" plans, so he proposes to tax insurance premiums for plans that have relatively good coverage. He wants everyone to buy their own insurance, but not good insurance. Make everyone pay for a plan, but punish them if they manage to get a plan that will really help.

He's a rich jerk, helping rich people at the expense of everyone else. But you already knew that.

The Madison, Wisconsin, Isthmus television listings give an accurate and slightly entertaining picture of Mr. Bush's approach (scroll down to Tuesday at 8 p.m.). For complete details on the speech, see Paul Krugman's op-ed in today's New York Times (requires a subscription online).

Yet another minor embarrassment

2007-01-08T12:20:00.000-08:00

Having your decongestant expire just as your commuter train reaches its most crowded stop.

"Scary beyond belief?" "Yeah, you could say that."

2007-01-05T18:12:00.000-08:00

My Little Pony Live is "the world's biggest tea party". And a truly frightening concept in theatrical entertainment. I don't know who put us on their mailing list, but it's definitely not someone who likes us.

History rhymes, in a minor key

2006-12-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

Once again, we—yes, we Americans—are imprisoning children and stuffing people into racist concentration camps. (Yes, I said "once again;" this isn't the first time for either the "children" or the "concentration camp" aspects of this.)

Happy Solstice!

2006-12-21T06:50:00.000-08:00

No matter what our human calendars say, this is the day when the Earth's year ends and begins. Today, for those of us in the northern hemisphere, the sun turns around toward us again.

(You might think this is a day early, but no! The northern winter solstice occurs this year on December 22 if you're living along the Prime Meridian—technically, about 00:22 UT—but it falls on December 21, 2006, at 4:22 p.m. in the Pacific time zone. Solstice science here and here.)

Banksy

2006-12-20T21:58:00.000-08:00

I found this urban art page a while back and hadn't checked it out again. I happened to hit the link today and discovered that it now has a seasonally appropriate—and politically pointed—look.

Horses and heartstrings

2006-12-20T09:13:00.000-08:00


If you don't get teary-eyed over this, you're a Republican.

Elfomorphosis

2006-12-15T17:24:00.000-08:00

I just made a total elf of myself. Check me out by clicking here.

You are in a maze of twisty paragraphs, all alike

2006-12-15T12:08:00.000-08:00

A narrative about editing undergrad essays; I had to stop reading it at work for fear of laughing so loud people from the sixth floor would come rushing downstairs with first aid kits: "And then I was eaten by a grue."

One more college football note

2006-12-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

Update to my post of last week: just tonight, as Florida got chosen to play Ohio State in the national championship game, I heard Urban Meyer and Barry Alvarez both cite Florida's "tough" schedule as one reason why they're entitled to a shot. Once again, I say: BAH! Florida is 12-1 because they played a cream-puff schedule.