Whiskey Bar: Leviathan

billmon's usual brilliance-this time about hobbes, the NSA/TIA (TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS) intelligrab, the police state "we" want (50% of americans basically don't give a flying fuck about the 4th amendment, but as billmon points out, the bill of rights are inalienable, e.g. not the problem of polling numbers. they just are, and should always have been.), the more we will have to give to declare TOTAL VICTORY over our various emphermeral enemies.

it's good stuff.

funny enough, watching "Seven" the other night, i was struck by macguffin, which involves morgan freeman's character having a back door to a guy at the FBI who has...the cross-referenced records of people at the public library's reading habits. the movie is 1995 vintage, but this is treated like...something...they...would...do, or maybe andrew kevin walker knew something, i dunno. still, it is funny how innocent it all looks (hey, they caught the bad guy with it, sort of, after he had chopped off gwyneth's fetching head, but still). now we know--when push comes to shove, this country's citizens will toss aside our "inalienable rights" like they are the remains of a swanson "fat american fuckwad size!" TV dinner after a good five minutes of eating and watching "Access Hollywood". and it doesn't look so innocent anymore, this plot device. it just looks like a way to catch reporters at ABC you don't like.

The Crystal Agency

this is the funniest thing i've ever seen since just now when i thought of it.

but it is funny. v funny. apparently someone really hates the crystal agency. and they are tied in with anal sex toys.

seriously.

Roger Ailes

As National Taxpayers Union President Dr. John E. Berthoud told The Examiner, “You can’t tax like Reagan while spending like Dean.”

Reagan raised taxes 3 times in his tenure and ran a massive deficit. Dean ran a balanced budget the entire time he was governor of vermont while bringing health insurance to all of the state's children. "Dr." Berthoud is a liar and an ass, and the Examiner in its myriad forms is a pathetic paper for publishing such claptrap without conscience. what the hell is wrong with these people?

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Addressing Byron York's confusion

everyone is wrong except me and my friends.

not.

as i said in response to the excellent post from GG above:

i think there is a fallacy at work with the labelling of left and right that parallels quite well the fallacy of "swearing means it isn't true".

there is a strong tendency to dismiss arguments by mainstream reporters and pundits because of the "fever swamp" nature of the blogosphere, an atmosphere rife with "hate mail" and "language you wouldn't want your children to use" etc. The Washington post kerfuffle was a great example, but there are others. sometimes this semantic issue crosses over into the real world in amazing ways--i'm constantly stunned that we've seen literally millions of words written about whether or not V Plame sent J Wilson on his trip and that's nepotism. every time i see this, i think, "so was joe wilson not an expert on niger? did he not know people there? was he not qualified?" if my wife recommends me for a job for which i am qualified, it doesn't meet the definition of nepotism.

we keep being told semantics, labels, and signifiers are more important than facts that are verifiable and established. and it makes me crazy.

it even ties into my whole "post-modernity used to be on the left but has moved with horrifying consequences to the right" meme, but that's a post for another day.

Whiskey Bar: Sex Pistols

Billmon--master of the phrase turn.

"whores buying whores for whores" may be today's phrase-that-pays if you call in now, win 98.7 dollars or whatever.

read it. laugh. weep. no actual john lydon references.

Kerry Dismisses Idea Whites Run Nomination - Yahoo! News

a couple of choice bits:

McCain, a likely candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2008, is scheduled to speak May 13 at Liberty University, a Baptist institution founded in 1971 by Falwell. Kennedy described the appearance as an opportunity for the frank, straight-talking McCain to reach young people and others who listen to the conservative minister.

so mccain is "frank, straight-talking" oh omniscient AP writer? how nice. get me an equivalent quote from about feingold or boxer or whatever in a straight news piece. good luck.

please someone invent the media so that it can be partisand and liberal. please. i'm begging.

Bush, Hu Produce Summit of Symbols

so, 'splain me this: how is it that a woman speaking her mind to a foreign leader has broken the law in our country? and how, when explaining to a fascist like Hu Jintao the freedoms which define western democracy, are we getting that point across? i mean, Hu watches all this and thinks--"yeah, they toss their uppity protesters in jail too! Totally wicked awesome".

then he reminds bush that he has some of our debt in his attic, and would we like it back? and bush says thanks but no, would you mind keeping it? and hu says, welllllll, if you are really nice to me and stop lecturing me about stuff that you don't even do yourself, and then bush says ok please don't hurt me i'll lay down here and just be quiet.

and the future of democracy looks bright! gotta wear shades!!!!!

Chaubise

Nepalese dissident blog. the world is an amazing place, n'est-ce pas?

Independent Online Edition > Asia

it goes without saying, but let it be said anyway--the Nepalese deserve Democracy and freedom as much as anyone else. i hope they can overcome an instransigent king who likes to use religion and violence to support his rule and come out on the other side with few martyrs and many heroes.

Blog my wife. Please!

controversy doesn't rage so much as bubble around the net.

Blogcritics.org: Exhibit Review: Jill Greenberg's Politically Charged End Times
Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: Jill Greenberg is a Sick Woman Who Should Be Arrested and Charged With Child Abuse
Jill Greenberg
Daddy Types, the weblog for new dads: Jill Greenberg: "End Times" Indeed
American Photo: Podcast Interview With Jill Greenberg

all in reference to this show at this gallery. please join us on saturday if you are in the LA area for the opening.

Rolling Stone : The Worst President in History?

let me join the giant chorus linking to the above, a very nice piece by sean wilentz positing...well, you can probably guess.

that's right. chester a. arthur, worst president ever.

this story should make your head explode, unless you hate everything good about our country. secret trials and testimony, no habeaus corpus, people held in jail after they have been found innocent of the non-charges against them--it has it all, and so much more than even King George the Third could have thought of in his wildest dreams.

but it's here, and now. it makes me ashamed to be an american, more than almost anything else about the past 5 years.

precis version:

the uighurs, ironically, are favorites of conservatives and neo-cons alike, as they fight the chinese gov't in NW china. their cause has been taken up by right-wing republican lawyers, real top people as well.

their plight is so much more awful then can be believed--they have been declared something twice. first they were declared "enemy combatents" then, rather pathetically, "non-anti americans". of course, neither judgment was based on real law in a real courtroom, just kangaroo bullshit. but one thing is clear--they are utterly totally completely innocent of any fucking charges against them. all of them. they are innocent. and they rot in jail. think about that for a minute then weep for our fucking country.


that's my comment at digby's house.

posted over at sadly! no in response to LGF post response.

just want to point out--in general, that whole LGF list is pretty non-controversial, right?

1. Stop stoning women to death

i agree, one hundred percent. it's a western liberal value that is being promulgated here. fuck any religion that would deny women basic rights.

2. Stop forcibly removing women's genitilia.

right on. women's rights are fundamental to our core beliefs--especially as liberals.

3. Stop forcing women to wear black trash can liners.

well, complicated, because lots of women in the islamic world actually will defend their "subjagation" and their removal of sex from the public square. i think it's fucked up, myself, and agree with this as well, as does any pro-western non-asshole, but it is a tad complicated.

4. Stop blowing up buildings, subways, and such.

yes, it is true, many of these acts have been commited around the world lately by islamisists of various stripes. their level of aposotasy in so doing is beyond my knowledge, but in general, that seems like a good idea, however righteous they may feel their cause is. killing civilians is teh l4m3.

5. Stop attacking Israel.

here things get interesting. i think it is safe to say people who call for the genocide of other people based on their religious persuasion are assholes and all right thinking people should hate them right back for it. but protesting israel's various land grabs, inhumane treatment of palestinians etc.--that's a tougher call. i'm split on this myself, though again, if you are saying israelis should die for existing, you are a shitbag.

6. Stop killing Jews in France.

sure. we agree with that as well. is a bad thing.

7. Stop suing anyone who says things you don't want to hear.

here we start to go off the rails a bit. ever been to the UK? they sue each other over saying things every day. i don't see what this has to do with islam.

8. Stop throwing juvenile hissyfits over silly cartoons.

i agree wholeheartedly with this. if your religion is so fucking weak and pathetic it can't take a bit of ribbing, may i suggest secular humanism as an alternative? i mean, seriously, can anyone disagree here at S!N that parody is a good thing and that the world needs more, not less, of it?

9. Stop trying to kill apostates.

it does in fact say that this is what one is supposed to do with apostates in the quran. verbatim. kind of fucked up for a "holy book".

10. And generally stop being a bunck of jerk-offs.

But then again, if they did that, they wouldn't be muslims, now would they?

now this stuff strikes me as racist, or religionist, or whatever. but here's the crux of the thing. religion does in fact suck. my religion--judaism--sucks ass. lame with the women, bad with the lessons taught, violent and vindictive, pro-slavery and incest etc.. christianity suuu uuu uu cccks. the last 2000 years of history, sanguinary as they are, will attest to that. and yes, it is true, islam suuu huuu hhuuuuuu ccccks. it does. i know the quran has a lot of beautiful stuff in it (as does the new testament) about helping the poor, the golden rule and so on. but the bad stuff in the quran is so fricking bad it is astounding, and i don't believe anyone who is a s!n reader would disagree with that analysis. really, you think the whole "kill or convert the infidel" thing is cool? you're down with women being treated like fucking dirt?

so, cognitive dissonance--i think most people here agree with 90% of what the LGF poster says, if you look at it objectively. we've just all been taught to kiss the ass of everyone else's religion--me, i'm not willing to do that. religion is the worst thing on our earth right now, and islam shouldn't get a free pass, even if it means agreeing with horrible LGFers.

just to clarify, i agree with the angle that the person who wrote the above doesn't realize how much he or she has not noticed all sorts of things about the world--while many islamic terrorists blow up subways, many american bombs fall on wedding parties, for instance. but that's not the point i'm trying to make--of course you should expect shallow analysis from LGF. you should just point out areas of agreement as well, whomever (and however invidious) the messenger may be.

the spectator (UK) and its insanely racist cover image.

maybe i'm being overly sensitive here. The Spectator is England's leading right wing magazine. they are huge fans of Condi Rice, i'm sure. but what the hell were they thinking putting out the cover of her that they did? i'ts a little hard to see on their site, but i'm in the UK and just saw the cover at a magazine stand. it manages to pack a real racist punch, with oversized lips etc. really disgusting.

of course, i want to make clear that i continue to loath sec. rice's works. i think she was a shamefully negligent NSA chief and will have to answer for that in posterity, o rmaybe when she actually runs for president. but that is purely on politics, and her race has absolutely nothing to do with it. this sort of thing is really beyond the pale. coming as it does from a reputable right-wing source makes it even more reprehensible. the editor of the spectator should be forced to resign.

it makes me sick the more i look at it.

if people can't see it, i suppose i can host the jpeg here but i just don't want to.

contemplating london at 5 AM

this city for me is all about the architecture. i can just walk and walk. it's a reminder of LA's great weakness--the spread out nature of it makes it impossible to get a feel for a neighborhood's look. but we all kmow that in LA--that's why the houses are where people dump their inspiration.

my life excitement is all about seeing spurs tomorrow at white hart lane. the more perspicacious among you may note that spurs in fact are playing in newcastle. this is true. i'm going to a stadium to watch a soccer game on a big screen.

i'm kind of a geek. at best.

there's a whole blogospher thing about Ned Lamont in CT running in a primary against lieberman. go to one of the superior sites adn you can learn more. me, i gave him 10 bucks just to keep up the green family's perfect record of supporting lost causes. be it henry wallace or fred harris or jesse jackson it doesn't matter--greens have worked for, donated to, marched on behalf of, what have you. and nothing. 0 for the building.

well, short of ambien it looks like i'm going to get to see the sun rise over this beautiful place. for a moment i don't have to think about the NTAC (no talent ass clown, obviously) and his NTAC funky posse who run our country, and i can feel a little bit of hope for once.

critics say

oh do they? here's what i saw in a brief moment of CNN-with-the-sound-on (much more blood boiling than the silent alternative):

critics say rumsfeld shouldn't have compared iraq to nazi germany
critics say that the prosecution in the moussaoui case...
critics say bush needs to change course in iraq
critics say iraq is already in a civil war
critics say we are all fucked and going to die any minute now

they didn't do the last one.

so

fucking

lazy

bush's rhetorical strawman magic (ably pointed out here by the AP) is lame. it makes him and those who back him up on it look like dumb people. and losers. mostly dumb, though.

"some on the other side of this issue would turn our seniors into food and distribute that food to terrorist insurgents. we are against that"

he may not have said that exactly. i don't remember. point is, this is the dumb loser lazy reporter version: who are those critics? do they have credibility to opine on the subject on which they are being (albeit incredibly broadly) quoted?

for instance, if one of those "critics" about whether or not iraq was or was not in a civil war turned out to be...ayad allawi, former PM and our man in havana, wouldn't that be worthy of mentioning?

nope, too fucking hard.

then we cut to "your technology future" in which holograms.are.the.future.maybe and some guy gets about 2 seconds to say "they may be the future, in ten years."

all these people suck. their newsreaders suck. their writers and editors and producers suck. and they are doing the bidding of their bosses, who SSSSSSSSSSSSSUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKkk

f em all

found the mute button.

out.

Los Angeles V. New York: Driving Edition

So, in a (not findable on line as far as i can tell) article from Los Angeles Magazine a few years, we discovered that the PhD traffic pattern studying guys at UC Berkeley had taken a long look at many different urban traffic systems. they'd discovered that LA drivers could drive, on average, 20 MPH faster in full traffic than any other drivers they studied. LA drivers have actually adapted to their conditions and, in a funny way, evolved to deal with them.

Now i'm in NYC. i'm staying on what is probably one of the loudest corners in the universe, near both a major hospital (sirens from ambulances), a fire station (ditto), a boombox bass cranked up collection (seriously), and, of course, regular NY drivers. A regular NY driver hits his or her horn at any and all provocations. This Onion article pretty much nails what is wrong with this perfectly. i've watched a guy lay on his horn in the west village while a cab wouldn't go for some crazy reason. could it be someone else was backing up and the cab had to wait? why yes, of course that was it. but asshole guy still laid on the horn, despite the fact that tons of young children surrounded his car on all sides. when i pointed out that he might want to wait for the cab to be able to move...well, you know how that goes with New Yorkers.

Motherfucking ass-stain cum gargler!!!!

now little violet can say it too! awesome! and the cabs, when someone is getting dropped off or picked up and the cab dares to not drive off and crush them, well that's worth everyone honking, even though this goes on every day all the time and everyone knows it. getting in the far left or right lane on an avenue means this WILL happen. doesn't matter. gotta honk.

NY drivers: you suck at driving. you suck at figuring out how to avoid these situations. you misunderstand them and behave with total insanity about them. then you make fun of LA.

so i say to all of you what i said to him:

eat me, taint clown

Hullabaloo

blah blah tristero at digby's blog blah blah. i'm right-er than him anyway. but not more right. if you know what i mean. kakutani's review is here, and as lousy as you would expect. she's the kind of person who walks down a wide boulevard that has been nicely cleaned by the rains the night before, but still somehow manages to find a pile of shit to step in. then she smears it all over the damn sidewalk and inevitably you step in it too.

so...

two things:

one: don't go crediting Kakutani with anything. she is a terrible writer, a mediocre thinker. i don't give a shit about her reviews of larry mcmurty or richard ford--reviewing fiction is a meaningless enterprise for serious humans, but it does help or hurt sales, and about that we should care not ne whit. however, when she writes about politics, she is invariably shallow and asinine in her thinking. she never rises above a combination of ninth grade thinking mixed with nasty and vicious rich-person-dinner-party social observations. she did it to clinton and several others. she is not an ally. it's like people cherry picking chris matthews--look, he was really good here!!!!! and ignoring the fact that he is a fuckwad. she is too.

two: you can't take fukuyama seriously, ever. he is like james cramer--36,000 dow forever? no? ok, get off the public stage, your pundit card has been revoked because you are stupid. period. end of history? fuck off, dude. you wrote that shit in 92 and oh...my...god...were you wrong. embarrassingly so. but we keep giving asshats like this credence--so don't be surprised when he helps lead us into a fucking war of fucking choice like the idiot he has proven himself to be.

and kakutani, loser that she is, falls right into the "because he was one of them it is particularly important" trap. wrong. because he was one of them he was wrong and stupid. and evil.

The Poor Man Institute � Beyond the infinite

see, this is a blog post about my own comment at another (reflexively meta) blog. the comment is about how republicans have taken post-modern post-derrida philosophy and turned it into will-for-power. now i'm blogging that comment.

see, republicans? THIS is how you do meta--pointless and inane navel gazing that comments on itself even as it empties itself of meaning in the process.

get it?

The Corner on National Review Online#091836

hey tim graham of the corner at National Review--

I've seen Crash, but not Hustle and Flow, but doesn't it seem there's great disagreement between Terence Howard's roles? In one, he's a slick Hollywood producer, disappointed that white boss Tony Danza makes him dumb down the black character in his sitcom.

well, if by "producer" you mean "director" and if by "slick" you mean "not as slick as his cohorts" then you...well, then you are still an idiot. just an accurate one.

i'm thinking of generating a quick opinion about something about which i know naught, but don't worry--i'll get my facts wrong.

Attytood: Good night and get lost! Chris Matthews exhumes McCarthy

A fine article by the always excellent Will Bunch about The Horror That is Chris Matthews.

but i wanted to highlight this excellent comment by "pope Ratzo"

So what if there were communists in the US in the '50s? Haven't we realized by now that the entire atmosphere of fear that was created during the Cold War was just as phoney as the fear of "terrorists" is today?

It's the shrieking of morons like Matthews that's created all the fear that keeps people like George Bush in power, and might have propelled McCarthy into the White House if it hadn't been for a few newsmen with balls like Murrow.

More people die from toenail fungus in this country than terrorism, yet we've shredded our Constitution, sunk our economy, spent our future on a useless war, and given our country to psychopaths like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. All because of a fear of something that's not real.

Yes, terrorists brought down the WTC on 9/11. No it was not the end of the world, any more than Pearl Harbor. But in 1941 there was a MAN in the White House who exhorted us to DENY FEAR instead of a weasel who cries "Yellow Alert" and wants us sheiking in our boots.

I live a few blocks away from the tallest building in the world. If it comes down, it'll land on my rose bushes. It's up to us to not be cowed by the fearmongers.

Posted by: Pope Ratzo at March 7, 2006 05:05 PM

exactly, dude. exactly.

NewsHog: ABC And The IED's From Iran That Were Made In The UK

so imagine the most ridiculous over-the-top possible way that deadly technology, the kind that is killing our soldiers, would have made it to Iraq. whatever your guess is, you haven't gone to far enough into crazyville. cuz right downtown there is a world where British special services fucks up a sting operation with the IRA, a sting operation that exposes new quality infrared triggered bombs to the IRA. well, would you believe they sold that tech (the IRA) to other terrorist orgs, and that it ended up in Iraq, where it is killing british and american troops?

Of course. of course that is what happened.

MEMRI TV

this is the craziest thing i've ever seen. sheer amazement. see as iranian students dutifully take notes about the "proof" that tom and jerry was all about getting the jews image better.

what the fuck is wrong with these people?

gothamimage makes a great point in the comments, and though it is lonely there, that isn't a reason to not highlight!

what, and who, is "Dubai"? and not in a jonah-goldberg-i-didn't-do-a-google-search kind of way, i mean really, following up on gotham--when GWB says "Dubai" and "Arab" in this context let's be really clear; he mean those arabs with whom one can do business. like the sheikhs. he doesn't mean the population of Dubai, who after all have NOTHING to do with this deal. he means the cronies who were installed at the head of a jury-rigged kleptocracy 80 years ago.

so next time you are wondering if being against the port deal might indeed make you a racist, just remember--the worst it does is make you anti-kleptocrat. and being a kleptocracist isn't that bad a thing.

Following is the ending to an otherwise superb Charles Pierce piece
at The American Prospect:

It constantly eludes me why what should be the most aggressive, most skeptical, and most irascible press corps in the world seems so ready always to turtle up. There isn't even a practical reason to believe that Dick Cheney looked into the soulful jowls of Brit Hume and found his troubled inner soldier there.

What's he going to do if you don't write stuff like this? Shoot you?

Forget I said that.

OK, charles seems to get a lot about what is wrong with the washington press core (and with joe klein as a representative thereof) with razor sharpness. but then, at the end, just like Lindsay Jacobellis, he stumbles.

The answer to charles' question? really, i have to tell anyone? money, power and fucking, and the confluence of the three. that's why joe klein is like he is. that is why the washington press core eats whatever shit is handed to them these days.

someone figured it out: pays these fucks enough money and we can co-opt them completely! and lo, media deregulation happened, and the news sector became the entertainment sector, and instead of having to co-opt with some sort of "reason" (like in the days of James REston, say, where you agreed that communism was bad over a bottle of scotch and he then changed his copy), you just get the fuckers paid. fat coin. 50 million here, 500k there, whatever. money. oh, and you get them laid. with hot girls/boys. and a nice house in cleveland park or georgetown or wherever.

it
is
so
fucking
obvious.

funny thing, that's what the bush people do best: corporate cronyism. that will cost all of us ten trillion or so dollars when all is said and done. the greatest shift of human wealth in history. the pundit class is, relatively speaking, kind of cheap. a 10 dollar hooker.

mediawhoresonline, how i miss you.

Dakota Today

excellent south dakota perspective on the "rapist bill of rights" that the governor is considering signing, a bill that would in fact make all abortion illegal in the state and subject doctors to jail time.

no need to go to mt. rushmore or the black hills if this one passes, at least not in this family.

if the democrats want to be taken seriously, then they need to make hay out of the fact that meet the press will have peter king, john warner and arnie gropenfuhrer as their three guests this weekend.

a press release might read:

"democrats will no longer go on MTP until it stops having 2 to 1 republicans to dems, let alone this weekend's ridiculous and insulting 'mix' of 3 republicans. given that the american people continue to give incredibly low marks to republicans in congress and the president in particular, it is also an insult to the american people. If MTP cannot commit to balance, then they can go over to Fox News Channel, another station that democratic politicians will not be appearing on in the future."
Harry Reid (in my dreams, obviously).

i mean, how hard can it be to PLAY FUCKING HARDBALL ONCE IN A WHILE? (speaking of shows that should be boycotted by Democrats...)

This post sponsored by my anger, now with thirty percent more vitriol!

i have a friend, let's call him (again) jon although his name is john. good guy, works in the biz, he's smart, nice, good politics etc. so he looks at this dubai ports deal and he says (perhaps to himself first, later to me): "don't hate this deal just because it is the bushies. i mean, maybe they are the right people, the UAE folk, for this job. maybe we are being racist. maybe, just maybe, we should give bush the benefit of the doubt."

and i know, you're thinking yourself, like Kevin Drum and some others--we are just being knee-jerk here. let's look at this on the merits, separate from whatever our feelings might be about the monkeyspunk running our country.

it seems so...tolerant...so...liberal...so...nice...so...meritocratic.

YOU

MUST

BE

KIDDING

have these people been asleep for the last five years? do you think there is even the slightest chance that every day that we learn more about this deal will be another day that we realize the bushites are incompetent crony capitalists who would sell their grandmom to the arabs after they were done shooting her in the face? am i being too harsh? too "bush-hatey"?

let's see: john snow ran CSX and still holds stock in his trust. CSX sold their stevedoring business to Dubai ports. John snow was on the committee that unanimously approved this deal. it turns out this deal circumvented US law. how? in such a way that cronies of the bush administration could get more money. huh.

that's funny. not the haha kind, the beat-my-skull-against-the-wall-until-it-leaves-bloody-stains funny.

and if anyone thinks that Dubai ports would do the best possible job running our ports efficiently and safely, please line up for drunken hunting lessons with mr. cheney. line forms (pun intended) on the left.

Free speech, even if it hurts - Los Angeles Times

In re David Irving, holocaust denier, getting sentenced to jail.

just wanted to remind everyone--the thing that sucks about free speech is that assholes get to take advantage. the thing that's great about free speech is everything else. david irving, professional liar scumbag and anti-semite, should not go to jail. he should just be hated and shunned by all polite society.

if you don't believe this, you don't really believe in free speech, "for me but not for thee"

what about o'reilly et al? why glenn g is slightly off the mark regarding the coming together of left and right on issues of "liberty". Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Are there American political values that transcend ideology?

Where Glenn states that

The set of precepts composing core American political values is clear and uncontroversial to most. We are a nation that lives under the rule of law. No man is above the law, including the President. Presidents do not have the right to engage in conduct which Congress makes it a criminal offense to engage in. To avoid the President seizing the powers of a King, the powers he exercises must always be checked and balanced by the Congress and the courts. In order to ensure that we have a representative government, only the people, through their Congress, make the laws, and everyone, including the President, is required to abide by those laws. We are a nation that is ruled by the people -- our elected officials do not rule over us -- and when we enact restrictions through our Congress on what our Government can do to us as citizens (as we did with FISA), those laws bind all citizens, including our elected officials.

None of those principles is even arguably liberal or conservative in the contemporary, political sense of those words. They are the defining American principles of government which has guided our country since its founding. And the Administration’s radical theory that any matter relating to national security threats "is for the President alone to decide" and that neither Congress nor the courts "can place any limits on the President's determinations" – which even bestows on the President the power to ignore Congressional laws or to wield war powers against American citizens on U.S. soil – could not be any more contrary to all of these core principles.

These are the principles that led Americans, in 1978, to enact a law, in response to decades of abuse of eavsdroping powers by Administrations of both parties, which made it a criminal offense for our government to eavesdrop on Americans without judicial oversight and approval. We collectively decided that we want aggressive eavesdropping against our foreign enemies, and the law we enacted enables aggressive eavesdropping. But we also decided that we trust our government to eavesdrop on Americans only with judicial oversight, not in secret and with no oversight. Through our Congress, that was the law we passed, and with that law, we imposed restrictions on the powers which our government could exercise against us.

he ignores the fact that there exists in this country a group who dedicates themselves on a daily basis to this very fundamental aspect of American law. they are called the ACLU. they are attacked regularly by the right, and not the "fringe" of which Glenn speaks, but rather by o'reilly and limbaugh and malkin and so on, e.g. "mainstream" conservatives. and say what one will about "classical conservatism"--these are the current exemplars of conservatism in the public sphere.

to quote a certain king, sorry, president of ours, "they hate us for our freedoms."

and that is what makes the modern left different from the modern right. where once the left was all for "speech codes" and punishments therein, it has all flipped, and now it is the right who attacks all kinds of speech as "treason" and so on.

just sayin'.

HaloScan.com - Comments

for what it's worth--dick cheney set to the rocking sounds of filter's "hey man, nice shot"

Reuters AlertNet - U.S. religious group condemns Iraq war

so the world council of churches believes bush is bad, iraq was a mistake of a war etc.

and many on the left will approvingly link to this, saying "see, even religious folk are on our side now."

in fact, i see it already has a link as dailykos.

and yet, the moment religious groups show too much fealty to the right (the brewing North Carolina republican registration of church members scandal) we will say "see--religion mixing with politics! bad!!!"

say it slowly, say it loud, whisper it in the ear of a loved one, whatever, just say it: religion is the problem. it's the problem when you agree with it, and the probably when you don't.

hypocrites.

UPDATE: THIS POST GOT PULLED BY THE WAPO TWICE TONIGHT. ANYONE WANT TO TELL ME WHY?


Responding to the washington post online and their continuing insistence that a) comity is more important than truth and that b) jack abramoff was a bid democrat, i write as follows:

if one thousand readers respond to a story, using language so foul it would curl the very hair of a sea captain, and those thousand responses were right on the facts--would their intemperate language change the underlying facts?

it's a yes or no question.

let me save you the trouble. no. the facts would remain. swearing is the reddest of herrings.

deb howell either lied or was hideously incompetent.

you covered up for her by removing non-profane posts which made substantive points that were not refutable and that put you in a terrible light. they showed that you were compounding your initial lie with further ones.

that's two really ugly lies, both which happen to support a republican narrative, one that (provably) has been deliberately crafted.

your readership, particularly on line, skews both left and sophisticated when it comes to these things. we saw through this in, oh, 2 minutes.

you aren't servicing that readership. that's bad business practice.

you should be fired. deb howell should be fired in disgrace. Derek Willis should either show us his evidence or be fired. sue schmidt should prove to us she doesn't do what she is told by republican operatives, or she should be fired.

you aren't just bad reporters and editors, you are people whose ethics are anethema to everything i believe in and try to teach my daughter. it's sickening.

profanity, or lack thereof, changes none of this.

So the NYTimes front-pages Sudan today. And midway through the third graf comes this little bit of kistof-ian gratuitous religiousity (with a backhanded karate chop at the left!):

Fighting between rebel groups and government-backed militias has destroyed entire villages, killing more than 200,000 and displacing about 2 million people. Both the United States and the United Nations have been criticized for responding too slowly to evidence that the African Union peacekeepers were having little effect.

Evangelical Christians have been particularly outspoken in their calls for a more active American role, and Mr. Bush's remarks, in a question-and-answer session in Tampa, appeared to focus increased attention on the issue.

NATO has played a small logistical role in Sudan thus far, primarily airlifting African troops. Until recently, government officials had said NATO might do more, but all the discussion has been about providing equipment, communications and other logistical support.

i put in all three paragraphs there to highlight the extraordinary incongruity of that sentence. let's look at the "and" there--when you read papers by kids learning to write, they often struggle with the concept of "but" (hell, when you read scripts by fully grown adults you will see the same thing) being oppositional, not THIS, but THAT. i think that David Sanger, front pager for the Times, has forgotten how "and" works. it tends to link two related thoughts in one sentence. are we supposed to assume that bush is throwing out red meat to the base by highlighting something of signifigance to them? if so, Sanger should report that directly. he has both things in the same sentence, after all.

of course, i'm giving the benefit of the doubt where none is due. let's imagine a scenario--kristof grabs sanger for lunch at the office. they go somewhere midtown--i want to go with smith and wollensky, but i'm guessing--and kristof bends sanger's ear for an hour and a half about two things: one, how good it feels to buy cambodian hookers, and two, how the evangelicals really do get it on darfur better than anyone, really they do. and how remiss the times is in covering that fact.

cut to the next day, and sanger is preparing his column. he asks kristof for input, and kristof suggests highlighting the evangelical involvement in darfur. sanger, rushed for time, shoves something in there. eh voila, total nonsensical writing on the front page of the times!

and hey, the left wing blogosphere has been highlighting sudan troubles for 2 years. we have a couple of million readers in total over here. our readers are active. but i didn't note an utterly weird sentence about us in there. or about john kerry, who brought darfur and sudan up repeatedly in his campaign.

the times continues down a suicidal path. it will never be seen as being pro-evangelical enough, and it will lose its core readership, its base, if you will, of left-leaning folk.

How the blogosphere ate my brain, an essay

As usual, Glenn Greenwald is on fire, here.

he puts the NSA scandal, and its potential arc, in the context of the Watergate scandal. he's not the first to do, though he is the most articulate. that glenn guy is a really good writer and thinker. there's a big future ahead for him i suspect in policy. i hope spitzer is aware of him.

that said, i think he's a bit off base here in his Watergate analogy. what has changed since then? what is the key change in how the public consciousness is provoked and shifted? why, it's the internet! the internet changes everything. and it's not clear, in this case, that it changes things for the better.

let me explain: i was talking to friends last night, facetiously to an extent, about "scandal fatigue". I mean, every time Peter Daou makes a scandal list it is increasingly depressing. so why doesn't any of it stick? why, for instance, could whitewater go on and on, despite early and frequent exonerations of the clintons? well, it might be that those were the old days, when newspapers could focus on such things with real resources. the days before the 24 hour news cycle.

at first, it seemed with the advent of the cable channels that focus was what they did best. if they got their teeth on something prurient, slimy, or trashy, they just wouldn't let go.

and then came drudge. some won't remember, but before it turned out he was a shill for the republican party (and i'd love to know if they sought him out or if he...offered his services. natas si drol and all that. hope his soul is toasty currently) he was a paradigm-shifter. you could sit at your desk at work and Bam! news! hot and fresh. and though the cable news nets wanted to blow him off, and the networks even more so, how could they once he started putting up real numbers, breaking real stories? Of course, we found out later those stories were bullshit plants by Lucianne Goldberg and her hellspawn, but that wasn't the point--for all their haughtiness, the newspapers and networks, the opinion shapers, had to take note.

and they did.

then, to speed this travelougue up a bit, instapundit gets going, and then comes mediawhoresonline (lamented, missed, asskicking rip-roaring monsters they were) and bob somersby at the daily howler. then atrios and kos. and here's where it gets interesting. Markos decided to build something different--a real community. and dailykos is (re)born. then an interesting thing starts to happen. diaries and posts come so fast and furious it is impossible to keep up. and they rush by--ever pushed out by the one that was posted two minutes later.

but it gets even more complicated. as it happens, every post has the possibility to reference some other expert's take on something: "jane's got something new on plame, read here" or "glenn really nailed the NSA thing, read here" or "look what CNN just posted here" and so on. it's relentless, and it leaves us no time to focus on any of it as we try to focus on all of it. it's a new paradigm of how to process information, and it's never been tried on a mass scale before. all source material on everything is ubiquitous and omnipresent, and expert commentary is available often about 5 minutes after a new piece of info surfaces.

and it is amazing! it's amazing how many brilliant thinkers and writers and polemicists are out there--all at my fingertips. 24 hours a day! such a profusion of public thinking and writing is unprecedented in scope in the history of the world.

Gutenberg was a piker compared to bennett cerf. sorry, but it's true.

but with such a massive shift in how information interfaces with all of us, one must ask--what effect has all this had on our ability to make change happen in the off-line world? and i believe the answer is: it has lessened it. because information is now flowing faster than our ability to incorporate it, deal with it, and use it. by the time we've really pondered on anything, something new happens.

[as a side note here--some might say "well, these particular people who are running the country are so corrupt, so venal, and so incompetent that it is THAT fact that makes it hard to focus. it's the old "do stony things happen more often when people are stoned, or is it just that it seems that way because...you're stoned." i'm saying the paradigm shift just coincidentally happened at the same time as the vogons taking over our country.]

anyhoo--net of all this is, cheney shoots some old guy in the face, and it knocks the new diary off the front page, and out of mind.

so, what to do? well, we are going to have to figure out how to manage this process in such a way that we break through the noise (and by we i mean "the left" or "the left blogosphere" or "rational scientific people" or "secular humanists" or "brights" or whomever.) anyone but fucking rick warren or james dobson or al-zarqawi or the republican party and its apologists. we haven't got it right yet.

one possibility: imagine a world in which the democrats in concert with the blogosphere (hey, if there is a blogosphere can their be a blogosopher? just askin.) just don't comment on whatever new shit flows down the intersewer. "cheney shot someone in the face? hope he's ok. anyway Bush broke the law with the NSA thing." repeat eternally until you've made your point.

i guess i'll cross post this at my kos diary you know, for the irony of it all.

Metal Sludge - W. Axl Rose throws suprise listening party for Guns n' Roses recording "Chinese Democracy" in NYC! - The Power & Glory since 1998

look at this photo and then please ask yourself:

what

happened

to

axl

rose?

Another post about being a dev exec in h town

because i ankled. sort of.

i used to work with this guy from this country that is below sea level. very nice guy, but could be...difficult? he had a close friend with whom he had worked for several years (in a slightly different capacity), another director, and the two of them would bitch and moan about how hollywood was screwing them, how evil it was, how much better things were in the old days back home in clogville. or wherever.

these two guys have quotes of probably over 10 million dollars, between the two of them. they've been responsible for some of the worst (and, in my opinion, some of the best) hollywood action movies of the past 20 years. they've managed to get themselves studio deals with all the trimmings. they've bought houses in the hills. they've got budgets of over 100 million approved. their exquisitely stupid notes have been swallowed by many of the very people they bemoan.

if hollywood were a tit, they have sucked a DD cup down to about an A.

and yet. here it is, 1999 or thereabouts, with between them two of the biggest flops in the history of htown behind them, and still they bitch about the assholes who pay them their massive checks. and to be clear, in my humble, they are both genuises, and in both of their cases, have genuinely been fucked over by the process.

and yet.

gigantic checks cleared and cashed. the opportunity to make movies that so few can even dream of. my sympathy is limited.

my...friend...at some other blog is indeed one of the very best of the best. he's seen the shortest end of the stick one could imagine in our town. like so many others. william faulkner, for instance. kurt fucking weill and bertolt fucking brecht before him.

but still, the checks do clear, and the houses are nice.

i'm just saying.

The Poor Man Institute � Keyboard Kommando Komix PROUDLY presents �

new Keyboard Kommando commands your attention Captain!

read now and weep later.

The perks of power are sweet! SWEET!

Jonathan Schwarz of "A Tiny Revolution" with an excellent catch regarding an incident in Turkey 2 years ago, an incident considered by many Turks to be the most humiliating public betrayal in recent history.

would you believe it involves the US? and that you'd never heard of it in an american newspaper?

you would. if you were me.

OK--let's watch as my head explodes.

assuming, as i do (being sane and rational) that the NY Times, when it reports on international affairs, is not a hotbed of liberalism but rather a very good newspaper--right, we can agree on that? good, so assuming that is the case, today's front pager about "Afghan attacks linked to Taliban points to Pakistan" would have to lead a sane person to say, "gee, we've pretty much screwed the pooch on Afghanistan. And pakistan, while we're up."

1. We invade Afghanistan, bombing a county in the stone age back into the iron age. fair enough, they did have it coming, sort of. or the taliban did, anyway, although our bombs tend to hit more civilians than anything else, and those civilians had, in the main, welcomed the taliban when they came to power mostly because the (often US backed) warlords were serial rapists (especially of young boys) making the taliban look good by comparison. but fine, we did what we had to do. other than destroying the taliban totally, or capturing that bin laden guy.

but other than that, what have the romans ever done for us?

2. We pledge large amounts of money to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. this is a good idea on several levels: a real Marshall plan for this part of the world would make an enormous difference in the lives of afghanis, who've seen the short end of the stick over and over from us, from their leaders, from the soviets. we could right a few wrongs here and look good in the court of world opinion. maybe even regionally, such as in...

3. pakistan, who are ostensibly our ally. why are they our ally? well, it's not because of AQ Khan, who sold the bomb to N Korea and Libya. it's not because of the ISI, who supported the taliban and OBL. it's not because of musharraf, who's a dictator. no, it's because they have the bomb, period. one thing we've learned these past 5 years is that countries WITH the bomb don't get attacked, pace N. Korea. Countries without it are fair game. so pakistan can support our mortal enemy OBL, can support our enemies the taliban, no problem.

4. we stop giving any money of any note to afghanistan about 6 months after we pledge to rebuild their society. hamid karzai is installed, and then elected, to be the "mayor of kabul" since the rest of the country is back in the hands of the rapist warlords, with whom we have been doing business since 1982 or so.

5. the taliban regroup. they get money from...our ally...pakistan! and guns! and the afghan warlords, many of whom HATE the taliban, suck it up and start helping them, because while they may hate the taliban, they hate outsiders more. although they are happy to take our guns and butter.

6. Musharraf continues to be unable to find OBL, although it seems clear he travels with impunity in the hinterlands of NW pakistan. still our ally though!

7. the ISI starts arming suicide bombers (something afghanistan has never had before) to go into afghanistan and blow themselves up the better to bring the taliban, you know, the guys who blew up buddhist statues and ruined women's lives, and harbored OBL? those guys? to bring those guys back into contention to run various parts of afghanistan.

8. meanwhile, a massive and devastating earthquake hits pakistan. another opportunity for the US, the richest country in the world, to show the muslim world of our munificence. squandered. even as we speak. but we are tied up somewhere else, known as...

9.Iraq.

10. worst. president. ever.

here: Afghan conundrum.

Strange Detractor's professional accomplishments

now that shit is funny.

very very funny.

go. read. leave me and my blog in peace. for the time has come for all good men to play soccer. right now. at pop star's house. you know the one i mean.

so over at some writer's blog, some guy who claims to know my friend who was at this dinner the other night...

it's a bad intro. i'm not a writer. i'm a (recovering) development executive. here's the thing about being a development executive. and it's good news/bad news.

good news. once upon a time i'm playing on my hardscrabble soccer team in the LA Municipal league. this was a team i'd put together in one of the mid-level divisions (the core of which would go on to dominate in the top division later), we played at some shitty fields, but we had a good time. i had a writer friend on the team (several), most of them not getting much work. some of them seemingly living in their cars. but we were all friends, and my junior junior junior exec career was just beginning, so i was a beacon of hope for these guys. one friend and his partner had done a t. corghasson (spelling?) boyle short story adaptation, and a pretty damn good one. no one had bitten, but it had got them meetings around town. which, of course, pays very little rent. but here i am at my new fancy job (pay? 27,000k a year.) reading, oh, conservatively, 8 scripts every tuesday (spec day!!!), all on a rush, all needing synopses and comments, and should my bosses actually read them?. plus a manuscript, usually on wednesdays, 500 pages and could you turn it around in 2 hours? and is it any good? and about 15 scripts a weekend. and the notes: mother of gog and magog, the notes! massive tomes, documents that would stand the test of time! oh mighty notes, i must have written an asimovian output of them. and to some damn good writers--some of the top in the industry. i had been working in the biz for a year or so. no background in film. but these guys had to execute my notes, or be fired.

but i continue, as is my way, to digress.

so my friend, let's call him John, though his real name is jon, has written this adaptation of boyle. and i force my boss to read it, because my boss has been fixated on this brilliant moon ghost story thingie. for years. but no one has been interested. so he likes the boyle script, brings the writers in for a meeting, and lo! and behold! they get hired. and they get a nice chunk of change, something around 6 figures. and suddenly, i've hooked my friends up with a great paying gig. and that is just fucking cool.

that's the good. the bad, and here josh f only gets it half right: sure, often the gig requires saying "this is grrrrrrrrrreat" about steaming piles of ordure. but more often, in my experience, it requires coming up with endless stuff to say about why, oh, i don't know, a story about the gadget guy at the CIA should be about a low level engineer type who discovers the secret to cold fusion. in other words, auto-job-justification. pages and pages. notes on notes. notes on drafts that are based on previous notes rewritten to meet previous notes all of which are contradictory. and if the writer is "good", all of which have been executed faithfully, because by jove if the character needs to be more "somber" yet "funnier" somewhere in the same set of notes, you had better deliver.

you think i need barton fink to give me that barton fink feeling? i've got a thousand barton finks!

i once told a certain director from a certain country where they wear a certain kind of shoe made out of a certain naturally growing substance about a certain script that became a certain movie with academy award winning actors/editors/producers/production designers/composers and so on...i told this guy, upon receiving the (greenlit, budgeted and ready to roll, full fee to the director who was like a boss to me, in that i worked for him) script, that it sucked. ass. that it would be a mistake to make it.

i was fired.

just in case any prospective future employers are reading this, i just want to make very very clear: message received.

back to my regularly scheduled ranting.

The Washington Note

so the other thing today--valerie plame was working on something important? you don't say? covert? you don't say. involving nuclear proliferation (which, for the morons in the crowd, is the same thing as nucular proliferation)? huh. Iran? really? funny that.

so to summarize: A covert operative, one who our government spent enormous amounts of (our) money training, sent out into the field where she made relationships with people in dark and dangerous places, who further put her life on the line in the service of our country and against the proliferation of the most deadly weapons on earth, who in turn came back to the states to try to get the government response just right, and who's husband has been called a national hero by no less than GB 41, that's the person they chose to out?

if you can't figure out why this is the most evil act imaginable by government official, you are beyond hope. there is a special place in A.Q. Khan's heart for you, though.

Here is the report,
in all its gory glory, about the right wing-ed imbalance on the Sunday wind breakers aka Press the Meat et al.

basically, you will be shocked shocked shocked to find that the damn things have more conservatives than liberals, that positions seemingly held by a majority of americans are not represented etc.

i've always wondered--that guy Scott Ritter, ex-marine, ex-head of the Iraq WMD task force--yeah, you've heard his name, oddly he never ever seems to get on these shows.

which is funny. because he is the only person involved who had any kind of voice (and who wasn't, say, insane, like your ramsey clarks of the world) in the national media who got the WMD call right. everyone else who pontificated was just wrong wrong wrong. not ritter. that got him disinvited from the party, apparently. weird.

Debt and Denial - New York Times

Krugmania! Now more than ever.

since most can't read the above without the magic password from the times selectoton, here is an excerpt, and a choice one at that:

"Last year America spent 57 percent more than it earned on world markets. That is, our imports were 57 percent larger than our exports.

How did we manage to live so far beyond our means? By running up debts to Japan, China and Middle Eastern oil producers. We're as addicted to imported money as we are to imported oil.

Sometimes large-scale foreign borrowing makes sense. In the 19th century the United States borrowed vast sums from Europe, using the funds to build railroads and other industrial infrastructure. That debt-financed wave of investment left America stronger, not weaker.

But this time our overseas borrowing isn't financing an investment boom: adjusted for the size of the economy, business investment is actually low by historical standards. Instead, we're using borrowed money to build houses, buy consumer goods and, of course, finance the federal budget deficit. "

Good times, people, good times. As someone who lives at the epicenter of the housing bubble, i feel it is incumbent on me to set 100 dollar bills on fire while drinking expensive champagne. that's what the neighbors do around here, anyway.

The Moderate Voice - White House Faces Renewed Credibility Problems On Katrina

In.Comp.E.Tent.

the people who run our country are not very good at their jobs, if one doesn't count auto-nest-feathering and bomb-dropping. though it must be said we've dropped a lot of inaccurate bombs in Iraq these past two years.

anyway, democrats--competence is the issue. competence. run on it. make it your platform. make it your frame. i don't care if you say that "republicans used to be competent, but they've lost their way". whatever. the point is, forget everything but this--democrats get things done, get social security checks showing up every month, run medicare effectively, punish wrongdoers etc.

These republicans couldn't hit water from a rowboat in the middle of the ocean.

Match Point Review, WITH TOTAL SPOILERS, so if you haven't seen it, don't read this.

Match Point was by far my favorite mainstream movie this year. my favorite underground movie was done by a sub-ethnic group so obscure, using non-narrative techniques so different from western studio ethics, that i can't even tell you about it. fine, one word. turkmenistan.

but back to match point. what makes this movie so different from today's standard thriller (for the sake of argument, let's call that "Derailed", so very down the middle)?

well, remember Jim Thompson: "there is only one plot: things are not as they seem."
now more than ever. every scene in every thriller must be fraught with potential peril. the audience must be kept waiting to know just what is coming next. they can't be in on the secrets of each character--BOW DOWN TO THE MIGHTY REVEAL PEONS!!!!

that's the way it is. and don't even get me started on M. Night's third revealatorium--it is but to puke. but that's a post for another day. back to match point.

the genius of this movie is that in every scene, where you are programmed to wait for the other shoe to drop...it never does. if a character says he or she is doing something, that's what they are doing. when someone appears out of the blue--the tennis player who shows up in the second act, say--they are there to illuminate some aspect of our main characters, not to reveal the real reason behind their dastardly plan. and yet, rather than become dull or episodic, this has the effect of making the movie feel like a real story, with the flow that comes from a good novel with an omniscient (and not faulty) narrator.

because this is a great little story, a taut and intense plot, well shot and well acted. in fact, until the third to last scene, it is a movie that could have directed by...well, um, who does good thrillers these days? anyone? hitchcock. it feels like a solid hitchcock movie. in that antepenultimate (look it up) scene, where jonathan rhys-meyers tells a ghost that if existence has specific meaning, then he will be caught--well, it is woody allen, so you are right to guess he won't get caught. but that doesn't detract from the last scene at all--it's just a sop for the insider types. like me.

jon and scarlett both give superb and naturalistic performances as well. you believe them both--they never oversell their characters, they just inhabit them (with one proviso--that doesn't look like much of a groundstroke on J R-M, but hey, he's better than DiCaprio's basketball skills in "The Basketball Diaries").

it's a beautiful piece of work--i'm excited to watch it again on ppv.

Rolling Stone : God's Senator

Just to be clear--it isn't only muslim fundamentalists who are utterly batshit crazy. sens coburn of ok and brownback (as this article makes clear) are loony. full of hate for their fellow man. soaked in contradiction that they clearly aren't smart enough to absorb and deal with. utterly religious, and unable to incorporate new ideas into their orthodoxy.

welcome to the future as long as we secularists are unwilling to fight harder and meaner for what we believe.

Paul Craig Roberts: Who Will Save America?

a representative quote from former reagan administration official roberts:

Before flinching at my assertion of blackmail, ask yourself why President Bush refuses to obey the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The purpose of the FISA court is to ensure that administrations do not spy for partisan political reasons. The warrant requirement is to ensure that a panel of independent federal judges hears a legitimate reason for the spying, thus protecting a president from the temptation to abuse the powers of government. The only reason for the Bush administration to evade the court is that the Bush administration had no legitimate reasons for its spying. This should be obvious even to a naif.



he's pissed. and scared.

"What next, bearded one?" - signandsight

more on the whiny little pathetic creatures who can't take some ribbing of their prophet, from a german journalist.

brilliant.

Salon.com News | "Everyone is afraid to criticize Islam"

says it so well. why are we allowing ourselves to be fooled into "respecting the feelings" of these assholes?

hirsi ali is a hero in the truest sense. she deserves the kudos of the entire free world. here is an excerpt:

Was apologizing for the cartoons the wrong thing to do?

Once again, the West pursued the principle of first turning one cheek, then the other. In fact, it's already a tradition. In 1980, privately owned British broadcaster ITV aired a documentary about the stoning of a Saudi Arabian princess who had allegedly committed adultery. The government in Riyadh intervened and the British government issued an apology. We saw the same kowtowing response in 1987 when [Dutch comedian] Rudi Carrell derided [the Iranian leader] Ayatollah Khomeini in a comedy skit. In 2000, a play about the youngest wife of the prophet Mohammed, titled "Aisha," was canceled before it ever opened in Rotterdam. Then there was the van Gogh murder and now the cartoons. We are constantly apologizing, and we don't notice how much abuse we're taking. Meanwhile, the other side doesn't give an inch.

What should the appropriate European response look like?

There should be solidarity. The cartoons should be displayed everywhere. After all, the Arabs can't boycott goods from every country. They're far too dependent on imports. And Scandinavian companies should be compensated for their losses. Freedom of speech should at least be worth that much to us.

But shouldn't Muslims, like any religious community, also be able to protect themselves against slander and insult?

That's exactly the reflex I was just talking about: offering the other cheek. Not a day passes, in Europe and elsewhere, when radical imams aren't preaching hatred in their mosques. They call Jews and Christians inferior, and we say they're just exercising their freedom of speech. When will the Europeans realize that the Islamists don't allow their critics the same right? After the West prostrates itself, they'll be more than happy to say that Allah has made the infidels spineless.

What will be the upshot of the storm of protests against the cartoons?

We could see the same thing happening that has happened in the Netherlands, where writers, journalists and artists have felt intimidated ever since the van Gogh murder. Everyone is afraid to criticize Islam. Significantly, "Submission" still isn't being shown in theaters.

Cross Posted at my daily kos diary, where maybe someone will read it.

It's hard to admit that your lifelong beliefs, inculcated from people who were otherwise quite perceptive and accurate about the state of the world, could be so horribly wrong. but facts are facts. the point of being a secular humanist, nay the very definition of one, to me at least, is that when new information comes in that refutes other firmly held beliefs, and that information stands up to scientifically based scrutiny, you change your beliefs to accomodate this new information.

Right?

So, a bit about me. i was raised by a social democratic professor father, and an early and ardent feminist mother. i lived either in London, where such beliefs were mainstream, or in Northampton, Massachusetts, about as liberal a college town as one could find. i think i went to my first gay rights march when i was 7, in 1975 or so. i was surrounded, literally, by people who believed that difference (later known as diversity, or multi-culturism) was to be celebrated. i guess the extreme version of this would say that headhunters in borneo were behaving in a manner appropriate to their culture, and who were we to judge them?

it always annoyed me that my parents were mostly right about everything political (although supporting one quixotic campaign after another [Fred Harris for President in 1976 for instance] ,was ultimately a useless endeavor), so where was the chance at rebellion? But something about the whole 70s/80s progressive beliefs always rubbed me the wrong way.

Moral Relativism was one central component of that group of beliefs which made up the "Academic Left" of that era. Let's call that the philosophically grounded version of the simpler concept of "tolerance." ultimately, tolerance is a profoundly Liberal (and liberal) sentiment: that one should listen to and respect the beliefs of others, especially if one disagrees with those beliefs. one root of this belief comes, at least in part, from the central nature of the protection of minority rights that Hamilton held so dear, as he made clear in his Federalist papers. those guys were very open minded for their time, the founding fathers. they were...tolerant. obviously within the proscribed area of possible reality of the 1770s, but nonetheless still very open to other's ideas.

Tolerance was so central to my upbringing, that it curled off into the P.C. of late 70s/early-mid 80s. P.C., as some will remember, was an internal issue of the Left (we used to make jokes about how we had to mention every agenda at every meeting--"what will the anti-fur pro-vegetarian radlebfems think" etc.) back then. it was later seized on by the Right as a club against us, and in retrospect, it was the beginning of the Right using our own belief system to get their own power boosted.

so where did all this multi-culti stuff lead? well, i would argue to two places. first (and grist for the mill of a second post, i don't want to deal with it here) i believe it became the linchpin of the criticism of the left, and of progressivism in general, in a way that allowed people to take what were once racist beliefs but could now be subsumed under the rubric of "anti-affirmative action" in the negative, or "i'm a proud white man celebratin' my heritage with this confederate flag" in the proactive mode. in turn i think this hurt our standing in the real world of american politics, and some of what tom frank talks about in "What's wrong with Kansas" comes out of this same place. these are bad things, but much less pernicious than the second outcome. and here we come to the present day, via the magic of cartoons, of all things.

we all know the story by now, how the muslim world has reacted in the main to the publication in a danish newspaper of mildly critical and marginally satirical cartoons depicting mohammed in various different ways. the muslim reaction was predictable--salman rushdie gave us a preview, and theo van gogh as well. islam has a shitty track record at inculcating criticism and improving from it. rather, it tends, as a religion, to lash out at criticism in ways we are all seeing now. I absolutely do not want to single out Islam here--all the major monotheistic (or polytheistic, in the case of Hinduism, or something-or-othertheistic, as in buddhism) religions can't handle logically grounded criticism, but some deal with it better than others. it is central to jewishness to push against the religion for many jews, and always has been. but really, all religions are pretty much terrible for progressivism, whatever good lefty catholic priest or unitarians might say to the contrary. Sam Harris has made the case quite brilliantly in "The End of Faith" that in fact moderate religious folk are the most dangerous people of all, as they allow us to believe that somehow these religions are sane or rational. they are neither, none of them. they are all ancients wrong-headed attempts to understand a world that is utterly different from the one we live in today. they fuck us up. bad.

but as a liberal, as a lefty, i'm supposed to celebrate this diversity of belief. i'm supposed to respect people's religious values. i'm supposed to believe that our country very existence comes from such beliefs. and no matter how weird, one is supposed to tread lightly when criticizing such beliefs. in this country, we have in Mormonism and Scientology two of the craziest fucking set of precepts one could imagine. you would have to be a fucking science fiction writer to come up with that shit.

oh. right. funny, but sad clown funny. shakes the clown funny. bad funny.

so i find myself, as is my wont, perusing your dailykos, your atrios, your americablogs, and yet on no strong intelligent lefty site can one just boldly state the obvious: You can't write a cartoon about your prophet? he's that insecure? your belief in him is that insecure? i can't express my opinion because of your insecurity? THAT IS FUCKING LAME AND IRRATIONAL, AND A BELIEF SYSTEM THAT IS SO FUCKING DELICATE AS TO FEAR ATTACKS FROM CARTOONISTS IS AN EMBARRASSMENT TO ALL RATIONAL HUMAN BEINGS!!!!!!!

sorry, yelling there. i've calmed down a bit. why can't otherwise right (and by right i mean left) thinking folk say this? because religion is the bridge too far. to belittle religion is to be racist, or anti-diversity and multi-culti, and it is ingrained into us on the left that this is a very.bad.thing.

well, that's wrong. it's just plain wrong. their are elements of the right who can say the obvious about islam with far greater accuracy than our side can. i'm not going to link to the horror festival otherwise known as Little Green Footballs, but trust me, those paranoid whack jobs over there are far more comprehensive and right-on in their analysis of islamic behavior than anyone on our side is, even Juan Cole, one of my favorite writers. don't get me wrong--if you turn the right towards the insanity and shortcomings of Christianity in its myriad guises, they revert to type, and will attack you for daring to say their god is as stupid as mohammeds. but still, what is wrong with us on the left that we can't see this situation for what it is: example number 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 that religion is one giant death cult and that ultimately the battle that matters will be between rationalists and god freaks.

get on the right damn side of the ramparts, i say.

Cross Posted at my Daily Kos diary

some excerpts from the The Onion, sorry I mean the NY Times select op-ed page. The comedy comes when you juxtapose Friedman's column, where he warns himself not to drink the kool-aid, gets thirsty, looks around for something to drink, and says "hey kool-aid, oh yeah". a long gulp later, he reminds himself, "don't drink the kool aid!"

in and of itself, hilarity! but even better is when you move your eyes mere inches to the right side of the page, where you see krugman smash friedman's column with a sledgehammer of truth, or to continue the metaphor, some tonic for the truth troops. excerpts from each below. put all liquids down before reading.


Friedman (the italic portions are his internal narrative--they are very funny in an unintentional on the page but didn't make the on-line version, and Friedman's non-internal narrative will be in bold, to stir or save confusion.)

"Well, it wasn't exactly Nixon to China. But it wasn't bean bag either. I'd say the president's State of the Union speech, when it came to calling for an end to our oil addiction and a real push to improve our educational competitiveness, was more like Nixon goes to New Mexico. It was an important change in direction and tone -- but still a long way from China, a long way from a definitive change in policy and implementation.

Oh, come on, Friedman, get real! The president throws a few paragraphs your way and you go all weak in the knees. Show some spine, man! You need to trash this thing. You know these guys are not serious. This is a president who once called for putting a man on Mars and then just dropped it. You assumed they were going to do the Iraq war right -- remember? Look where that got you, you moron. You should have listened to your wife!"

I'm going to go ahead and guess that he wrote this before he heard the US Energy Secretary saying "When bush said 75%, he didn't mean it." or that he didn't see the Saudi Ambassador's quote about "really, you guys are giving us the shaft? let me get a quick word with my bitch friend Georgie." Or perhaps he missed the fact that the administration is laying off scientists who study alternative fuels even as we speak. hey, it could have happened. maybe he doesn't get a news feed at the office. he certainly wasn't reading kos yesterday, i can tell you that.

more TF

So here's my bottom line: I'm glad the president is changing his rhetoric on energy and says he is changing his funding priorities. It makes for a great headline. But he has to go much further if he wants to make a great difference. There's no pain-free solution. Remember how President Kennedy ended his May 25, 1961, State of the Union speech calling for a moon shot? He said: "I have not asked for a single program which did not cause one or all Americans some inconvenience, or some hardship, or some sacrifice."

Pigs will fly before Bush says that.

You may be right. And if he fails to carry through with this energy initiative, I'll be the first to rip him for it. In the meantime, I prefer to give him a new reputation to live up to. You never know. ..."

I want to make a bet right now. Thomas Friedman will not "be the first to rip him for it." i don't think he'll be the 1075th. If he rips Bush, he will be stumbling into a party where only the host and two alcoholics are left, mumbling over the last shots of Jaeger.
Again, to be clear--this initiative--and there aren't html tags that could make the word initiative be ironic enough--this initiative lasted exactly as long as it took bush to speak it. then it ended.

now on to the shrill one. he doesn't write with the same...panache as TF, so no need for italics. just bold. And shrill. so very shrill.

"So President Bush's plan to reduce imports of Middle East oil turns out to be no more substantial than his plan -- floated two years ago, then flushed down the memory hole -- to send humans to Mars.
But what did you expect? After five years in power, the Bush administration is still -- perhaps more than ever -- run by Mayberry Machiavellis, who don't take the business of governing seriously.
Here's the story on oil: In the State of the Union address, Mr. Bush suggested that "cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol" and other technologies would allow us "to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East."
But the next day, officials explained that he didn't really mean what he said. "This was purely an example," said Samuel Bodman, the energy secretary. And the administration has actually been scaling back the very research that Mr. Bush hyped on Tuesday night: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is about to lay off staff because of cuts to its budget.
"A veteran researcher," reports The New York Times, "said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol."
Why announce impressive sounding goals when you have no plan to achieve them? The best guess is that the energy "plan" was hastily thrown together to give Mr. Bush something positive to say."

huh. look at that. very same page as friedman's ruminations come krugman's refutations. what we at my college called a harsh biscuit. tierney and friedman must hate krugman. he just crushes them every damn time.
i don't really have anything clever to add to PK. he is the master and i am a mere acolyte. The other op-edders must beg Gail Collins every time not to let Krugman destroy them on their very own page. yet he does. it does, however, make one wonder about the standards the times has for its op-ed writers. then one remembers A.M. Rosenthal and Safire-on-Atta-meeting, and one realizes there aren't any.

(One last point--the alert reader will note that i have edited Friedman to make him look worse than the actual op-ed. this is true. but tom friedman, for his many crimes against coherent thought, logical analysis, and good writing, deserves no break, not from me, not from anyone. it's his megaphone and he is the one yelling in all our damn ears with his nonsense. so tough titty, Tom.)

Some chit-chat at firedoglake (and elsewhere) about paid plants in the blogosphere. most people seem to be focused on comment plants--either churning them out for marketing reasons (if you keep posting comments then later when you post something relevant you will seem like a trustworthy person) or political--stirring the pot with (usually) republican talking points.

it's all true, and soon we will find proof. i'm hunting for it right now, talking to my marketing and promotion contacts, and will have something concrete within days. but the real question, one that relates nicely to the armstrong williams/maggie gallagher/the list is fucking endless with right wing hacks payola non-scandal is this: who amongst us in the blogosphere is a paid shill who is not announcing same? given the current state of world affairs you would have to be a fool not to think that one of the top ten right wing bloggers is getting paid sub rosa by somebody scaife-y. or CIA-y. not to be paranoid or anything.

to think anything else is to be a fool. they (the right wing noise machine, also, oddly enough, the name of my new band) are playing hard, playing to win. i hope those on the side of decency and light and puppies will do the same.

this post sponsored by "The Death and Resurrection Show", Killing Joke, from the last (and quite great) album from them.

test

Back and better than ever new and improved.

so let's start with the report about Jack Kelley and his fabulistness, if you know what i mean. Pace The Onion: Holy Fucking Shit! This guy lied about everything and anything. He was a sociopath of the first order, and i am surprised bodies didn't turn up when other journalists went to investigate.

1) Unnamed Sources. here the key point rears its ugly head (just like in Shattered Glass--i guess no one wants to learn this lesson--more on that later)--if you can't pin someone down as to who said what to them, and that disability is institutionalized in the very format of your system, not much of a surprise when problems come up, no? i mean, you could basically say to your boss "yeah yeah this guy really said it, i have WRITTEN notes (wow, you wrote them down? they must be true)" and as far as i can tell from the somewhat discreet langauge of the report, your boss would say "print that sucker". pathetic. but what the authors of the report fail to discuss (as David Ehrenstein does quite brilliantly in this week's LA Weekly) is the EFFING MOTIVATION of the people giving you material anonymously. i won't cover too much ground here--david's discussion in the weekly should suffice--but this point seems obvious, and maybe we can get at the why of this disaster here.
a) perhaps the desire to get scoops, combined with the need to keep one's job, wrapped up with a post-Watergate isn't-deep-throat-the-coolest-thing-ever reportorial mentality will lead people to TURN OFF THEIR BRAINS. why, anonymous gov't official says that higher up official is "really focused on doing what's right for the country right now"--no shit? wow, and you'll let me print that? that your boss just cares too much? that is so...brave...you just want the truth to get out in my FRONT PAGE STORY YEAH FOR ME I WILL GET A RAISE AND MAYBE A PULITZER.

guess where this mentality takes you, friend. Bob woodward, the worst reporter on the planet, a truly stupid and vapid and sad little man masquerading as a....well, they put it best in the report at USA today. for some reason kovach et al believe a reporter's characteristics are "...easy to describe: independence, skepticism, curiosity and distrust of authority. " huh. so that's how they would describe woodward? jeff gerth? elizabeth bumiller? nedra pickler? Fox News? Paula Zahn? Tim Russert? These people fucking love authority! they ARE authority! They hang out at Press club functions and make haha googly-eyed jokes about this shit with the very people they are supposed to be "independent from, with a healthy level of distrust" (I made that quote up, but fuck it, gotta get with the times and The Times). HAHAHAHAHA oh shit i just snarfed my cognac. i'll ask hitchens to clean it up. back to my point--woodward's book is as bad, if not worse, than kelley's mendacities--woodward describes spin as fact, in truth he creates a narrative in which all spin MUST be fact, and in true Kantian fashion, because Woodward himself is doing the reporting. the very authorial voice he uses forces spin to be true. again, better writers than me have broken this shit down, but woodward is a dangerous man who must be given his day of reckoning by his fellow journalists.
b) in the report, a reporter at USA today is described as finding some of Kelley's stories "incredulous" . This bit of nonsense managed to both be spoken by a reporter at our finest McPaper, but was also left uncommented on by the three wise men of the report staff. i'm incredulous with laughter, or something.

Also--this asshole Kelley had the temerity to not pay his translators, and keep the money for himself. oh how i hate this detail--all these people saying "he was so good to me i didn't see it coming". Nope, i don't believe it, if this guy was ripping off hard working people in third world countries so he could buy a bigger bible (more on that later too) or whatever, he is just a pathetic piece of rat excrement. i can't imagine anything worse, he basically stiffed his waitress 10000. bastard ratfink fuckwad.

Last but not least, i love how they got through the whole report without mentioning that Kelley's "trustworthy demeanor" and "likablity" were largely a product of his religiousity. not one mention. fucking NYTimes at least had the sac to admit that Blair's blackness was a potential issue. this is the one area where i really feel let down by USA today's examination staff. Kelley talked a lot of shit about how important god was to him, over and over ad nauseam. some people eat that up, and it makes them more susceptible to lies. piousness can be that way. this has been true since they invented religion, but somehow the stupid part of the human genome survives through to this day to lick religion up (ewwwwww.)

today brings sad tidings from our dear friend at the Times--The Week in Review. This article, with its slightly mocking tone, tut-tuts that Americans DO in the main believe in Heaven, but that it is a place much like earth, oh dear. John Edwards, lying fake psychic asshole, as opposed, of course, to John Edwards, seemingly decent but ultimately doomed politician, is named as a phenomena that supports the views in the article, without any question about his alleged and obviously fake "abilities". I guess no one at the TImes watches "South Park", which had a takedown of Edwards this season so brilliant it was painful. Including was a scene of Stan saying, directly to the camera "John Edwards, you are a fake and a fraud, and if what i'm saying isn't true, then you should sue me." Genius, one of the funniest eps they've ever done, but i digress.

Anyhoo, this article talks about American belief in Heaven (82%! Hire three more Peter Steinfels!!!!), and how we like our Heaven all soft and squishy. Michael Novak, some kind of "academic", is unhappy that there is no more fire/brimstone, like the old days. This is where i start to scratch my head. Fine, i started the moment i saw the headline, this is where i draw blood and kill lice. This guy is a fucking PHD with an expertise in Heaven? Heaven forfend, has he perhaps been there? Seen it firsthand? Has he read works by others who have been there? Seen it firsthand? Or, more likely, has he read a bunch of other people's completely random guesses, and then created "expertise" out of gobeldygook. I mean, could i become a PhD in Arcturus 7 Alpha Prime life forms? I have as much knowledge about those aliens (greenish, small, thin, shiny thing at end of finger) as he does about heaven. SHit, there are whole books devoted to this stuff!

fucking pathetic. the whole article mindlessly accepts the assumptions of the religious folk, without even realizing it is doing so. it manages to patronize those who believe this crap, while pissing off those who don't.

robert

hey everybody--look at that---a blog from the man himself!

well, back to my crap...

Thomas Powers is an erudite man, one who constructs sentences with near-surgical precision. I'm not so much like that. i will break down his extraordinary article in the NY Review of books as follows:

a) a specific case was made to go to war, with specific claims that are verifiable
b) none of those claims have been verified. zero. zilch. nada.

a comment i left on abortion at the right christians blog:

so...boring...so...obvious...

a) all agree that the "born" are individuals with enumerated rights, regardless of religion. though those rights change from society to society, again all agree that the "right to life" (e.g. the right NOT to be killed by other members of the society) is primary.
b) some people, the GREAT majority of whom are driven by their religious convictions, believe that a fetus has those same rights that any individual has in society. But many others, in fact a plurality if not a super-majority, disagree with this viewpoint. So, unlike a) what we have here is a point of major dispute. does a) apply? some say yes, some say no, but in such numbers do some say no that those that say yes, pretty much everywhere in the civilized world, have to live with the will of the majority.
c) there are 5.7 billion people on earth, of whom only 2 or less billion are in fact Christian. Of those billion plus Christians, not all agree that fetuses have the rights of an individual in a society. yet
d) those who are both Christian AND believe in the rights of the fetus as an individual believe further that their belief system, esp. on this point, must supercede the beliefs of the other 4 or so billion people on this earth, both in the micro (their society) sense, and in the macro (the rest of the world who does not share their religious belief) sense.

e) now read carefully here, because this is the key point--IF YOU THINK THAT YOUR MINORITY BELIEF SYSTEM IN A GOD THAT KILLS HIS SON FOR YOUR SINS MUST BE FOLLOWED BY ALL UNDER ANY AND ALL CIRCUMSTANCES, YOU ARE INSANE.

f) To understand this is to understand why many people HATE religion and (even worse) religiosity. just to be clear--I promise, forever, not to make your daughter have an abortion. I really do. Until i hear from Christians that they promise NOT to prevent my daughter from having a safe and healthy abortion, should she so choose, i will reserve the right to find Christians, as far as cults go, to be the most dangerous and hateful of them all.

obviously, there is a fundamental and inherent insanity in a belief system that is self-reflexively and necessarily omnipotent, and one that 4 billion people don't have any time for. So...boring...to...have...to...point...this..out...



peace,

r

Don't read if you haven't seen the Matrix yet:


here is the movie i thought/wished to see:

neo discovers it's all a trick--zion is a construct, the machine world is a construct, it's all part of one unitary supercomputer. the architect is the only "representative" of the outside world, and he tells neo/the oracle that none of it is real, that in fact, there is no "real" for neo/the humans as they have been led to believe. and that either a) neo can go and tell everyone this, destroying whatever hope they have, or b) neo reaches into THE ARCHITECT and we smash cut to some hermetic white room at JPL or something, and all of the sudden they have finally created "true" AI, or maybe c) Neo is told by The Architect, "look, do whatever the fuck you want, you have know gained total control over the Matrix, remake it in "your" image.