perfidy

I can't let others get screedy for me by proxy. Click the "more" link for some screedy goodness from John Cole.

If I ever up and accidentally screw a couple million people out of a couple of billion dollars and perhaps cause a crisis in the market and perhaps send nervous jitters through an already skittish economy, I hope the Justice department is this easy on me:

Merrill Lynch & Company, in an agreement with prosecutors that let it avoid criminal charges over its role in the Enron debacle, promised today not to engage in business deals — even ones that appear legal — that it believes might be used to mislead investors about a company's financial condition.

The Wall Street firm also agreed to allow the government to monitor portions of its business for the next 18 months.

You got that? Their deal is, as punishment for helping to f--k over millions of people- they promise not to f--k anyone over in the future- at least for the next 18 months while people are watching them.

Justice is blind, deaf, and dumb. Meanwhile, Tommy Chong is going to jail for selling bongs on the internet. My head hurts.

For the record, GOP- this is how you drive people like me away from the party, you pompous, moralizing, a-holes. I also might point out that Tommy Chong's business employed 25 people- which, if I am to believe the employment numbers I read about every few weeks, means that the Bush administration is about three million, three hundred thousand TWENTY-FIVE jobs behind Cheech and Chong in the job creation category.

Priorities, Bush. Priorities. And pedants- spare me the exact number of jobs lost during the last four years and why we can't blame them all on Bush- I know my numbers are wrong, but I am venting. You get the damned point.

Buckethead blogs thoughtfully about the seesaw. Nice!

On this point, one reason that I am a centrist is that I am naturally concilatory. ("Oh really," you say? "Oh, yes!" I say). That's not to imply that I have no opinions of my own, but I tend, in general, to give credit to the ideas deployed against mine. I'd like to claim that this grows out of my general thoughfulness and decency, but I doubt that's the case. I just like to feel like I know what's what, and if I have to modify my arguments to fit new evidence or previously unconsidered circumstances, fine. (Case in point, thanks to NDR and Ross' arguments, I have moderated my stance on the EU considerably, though I still don't like the Constitution as proposed)

As a result, I flip-flop around like a halibut on a pier.

The impetus for my urge to find common ground stems in part from a recognition that in general, within American political discourse, points of concensus outweigh fundamental differences. (I've read my Richard Hofstadter, and also my Louis Hartz.)

This general narrowness is neither right or wrong, and it's definitely not the whole story, but if you take any two reasonably intelligent, well-informed people (Buckethead and I will do, in a pinch) and put us in a room together, we will generally find that we share more big-picture opinions than we differ on, and can often find room to respect those where we do differ. There are exceptions. Nativism, racism, sexism, issues where moral boundaries trump political equations, all exist and are vital in American politics (I didn't say "to", I said, "in." So siddown.) But speaking generally, Americans agree on most stuff. See below.

I have stopped blogging about politics for the time being because I'm just so BORED with it all. The loudest voices in the political debate are idiots, almost to a wo/man. NPR does a fine job, but then comes out with some mealy-mouthed inanity which defies fact, logic, and the laws of physics. The Wall Street Journal engages in willing self-delusion. Marketroids run the joint at CNN, Fox News, and on the radio, and print is the domain of shrill, mendacious harridans like Ann Coulter. The decline of moderate discussion is a disease, and I'm weary of it.

I was in a discussion last night about politics, and the point was made that prior to September, 2001, American political identity had become complacent, and most people's attentions were turned towards locality-- their own kind, in other words. Times were good, so there wasn't much to challenge our assumptions. Now that the nation has re-asserted its patriotism in the face of external attack, that resurgence is tinged with that same provinciality, exacerbated by the tendency for many people not to engage in introspection before denouncing "enemies". For all the (sincere) outpourings of grief, gratitude, and unity at the time, the shock was transient but habit is not.

I don't like what I see-- it worries me. The California recall is turning into an event of high weirdness beyond belief even for that strange-ass place. The Presidential campaign is already a monkey knife-fight to the death, and it's not even October yet. Many Republicans, especially in office, seem to forget that they set the hate/loathing bar pretty fuckin' high back there in the days of slander, semen, and frothing, righteous rage, and yet get all petulant when their kung fu is used against them. Payback's a bitch, innit? The vocal liberal fringe seems to forget that there is a fundamental difference between: a President who--though you may totally disagree with every damn thing he does-- still thinks he's doing the right thing for the country as he sees it; and a bunch of religious fanatics who are working to kill as many of "us" as possible.

The few moderate voices out there are like Kevin Bacon at the end of Animal House, shouting "remain calm! All is well!" while a crowd buries them (me, delusionally) in the pavement (even though personally I'd rather be a crass sensualist like John Belushi and drive off with a cheerleader in a cherry Cadillac).

Granted, my perspective is skewed by virtue of the fact that this a blog, and I read other blogs, and blogs as a medium aren't exactly known for moderate opinionating [Heh. Indeed.]. But from the top of the Federal government down, everyone's behaving like children. If they were real men like in days of yore, you'd have the canings and fistfighting and the deuls at dawn on the cliffs of New Jersey, but instead all we have is a bunch of wealthy, overgrown infants grabbing all they can from the money trench, all the while trying to put devil horns on the other team. And there's another bunch of wealthy, overgrown infants reporting on it.

At least football is on, so I can watch some civilized brutality. Go Browns!

"Sold me out, and that's a fact! Uh! Now get ready you mother, for the big payback."
-James Brown, 1974

Writing in Slate, Dahlia Lithwick makes me feel brilliant. I haven't blogged on the California recall for a myriad of reasons: it bores me; it's too partisan, which bores me; California bores me; I would rather give anal suppositories to a cat.

But when the 9th Circuit court halted the recall, citing Bush v. Gore left, right, center, and ten inches deep, I thought to myself.... "ahhh, revenge is a sweet-ass thing!" Dahlia agrees.

There's really only one way to read the panel's decision from Monday. It's a sauce-for-the-gander exercise in payback. Pure and simple. The panel not only refused to accept the Supremes' admonition that the nation would not be fooled again; it refused even to address it. Applying Bush v. Gore again and again in the unanimous opinion, the judges told the high court that it has no power to declare a case a one-ride ticket and defied the court to step in again to tell them otherwise. (The court isn't likely to step in, as many have now noted, because they cannot win if they do. By getting involved, they risk either looking corrupt and partisan if they reverse the decision or permitting the courts to legislate things like the distances between polling places and the pant-length for elections workers for all eternity.)

. . . .

Reading the opinion, it's hard to escape the fact that the court seems to take pleasure in applying the broad and indefensible legal principle laid out in Bush v. Gore even more broadly and indefensibly. This wasn't just a liberal panel trying to prop up an embattled Democrat. The 9th Circuit isn't necessarily political, even where it's ideological. No, the more likely explanation for the panel's decision is that the court, which has been ridiculed, reversed, and unanimously shot down by the Supremes at rates that exceed (although not by much) any other court of appeals, just wanted this one sweet shot at revenge. This time, said the panel, it's personal.

Reading the opinion, you can almost hear the panel saying: "Hey, let's not just halt this recall, let's have a little fun with the thing!" The opinion includes a fond historical nod to voting with fava beans and the wry observation that punch cards are "intractably afflicted with technologic dyscalculia." It's tough to count the number of times the judges gleefully point out that the secretary of state is barred from defending the punch-card machines because he is already subject to a consent decree holding that they suck.

Please see Buckethead's recent posts, Ross's as well, and weep (or laugh).

I am so smart.

Just found out that they have shut down the Federal government tomorrow, which means I have the day off. Sweet.

Geitner Simmons links to a story from Germany. Isn't the internet grand?

The story concerns Norwegian researchers who discovered that all the ills of "modern" life, stress, depression, sleeplessness, are shared by the indigenous population of Mindoro Island in the Philippines. 

We were greatly surprised when the data was analyzed and we found that, not only did the jungle dwellers have the same ailments we did, they had them to an even greater degree. Also, we found that the distribution of ailments was exactly like that in modern society," Staff and Hellesnes said.

Fatigue, depression, sleeplessness are all common complaints that are not solved by a hunter-gatherer lifestyle grounded by some basic agriculture.

Like present-day affluent Norwegians, the most common physical complaints were muscle and skeletal pains. But while 82.1 percent of Norwegians answered that they have had such problems in the course of the past 30 days, 100 percent of the Mindoro felt the same.

Stomach ailments pestered 60 percent of Norwegians during the previous month - over 80 percent of the Mindoro had the same complaint.

The lack of control over their existence gave the Mindoro far more to worry about, and even such basic elements like food or childbirth are laden with uncertainty on the fringe of the jungle. A basic difference between the two varying cultures is that the Mindoro do not view their pains as illnesses, but rather as a normal state of affairs.

Huh. People is people.

The researchers also note that "Norwegians also did not consider such afflictions to be illnesses until relatively recently, and place some of the blame on the World Health Organization for defining health as the absence of ailments."

--Pithy moralizing follows--

Too true. A sense of crisis is proportional to your living situation. This is one of the first lessons that any child learns when becoming part of the larger world, and it's too often forgotten by adults. Just take a look at this gigantic blogworld flapdoodle about free lunches for schoolkids.

The original article by John Hawkins at Right Wing News, here, makes a point about free lunches and who should pay for them, in a particularly careless and insenstive manner. Michele at A Small Victory smacks back with a from-the-gut post here, Hawkins smacks back, marveling that " there still are people in America, most of whom seem to be posting at A Small Victory (how they can afford computers, but not food for their kids is beyond me), who believe that everyone else has a responsibility to pay for their kid's food," and a cast of thousands throw in their two cents. Read it and despair, or have a little gut-laugh that we have it so good. Your choice.

The icon that the Ministry uses for the category Partisan Politics is a seesaw. It seems that it was a better choice than we realized when we picked it almost at random.

A couple things I have read lately have gotten me thinking. First, the court action that has - possibly - delayed the California recall election. This brings back unpleasant memories of the fubar Florida scenario back from '00, only this time, the sides are reversed. That the Democrats there are now eagerly awaiting further court intervention in the furtherance of their political goals, and Republicans are crying foul seems to cause absolutely no embarrassment. A great many of our politicians clearly (though this does not surprise us) have an expedient sort of political principle. It is easy to stand on principle when it advances your interests. Sure enough, there are cases where politicians have stood on principle even when it did not - or even at great cost to their ambitions, but these are rare.

If this legal battle heats up, we could see a small-scale replay of the ugliness that attended the aftermath of the Presidential election, and the further polarization of the political parties. Add in the coming Democratic Primary season, and '04 might turn out to be rather bloody. The rancor that will likely ensue will further alienate the two sides of American politics.

Our good friend Ross, over at Spiral Dive, recently wrote two posts that are striking in their dissimilarity. The first, graciously titled "Standard, Dumb-Ass Answers" is a list of twelve responses that Ross will no longer accept from a republican in regard to, I guess, any political or topical issue. Here's the list: 

1. If it's so bad in the US, why does everybody want to come here?
2. If you don't like it, why don't you just MOVE to another country?
3. France Sucks!
4. We'll just have to disagree, and you are too stupid to understand why you are wrong.
5. Take the average tax cut! See how the average American gets $1003 back?
6. The free market is the only thing that makes this country great.
7. By criticizing the President, you are unpatriotic. You do not support the troops. Therefore you are also guilty of treason.
8. If we DIDN'T have a tax cut, we'd have lost 1.4 million MORE jobs.
9. Halliburton is a fine company.
10. Nobody can prove global warming exists, so it doesn't.
11. Tax Cut! I don't know why!
12. Everybody knows that when you cut taxes, you can solve anything!

He goes on to castigate the attempts of many right wing and war bloggers to construct strategic explanations for the (generally necessarily) secret plans of our government and military that fit the facts as they have unfolded. 

The list is funny, especially #3. While France may suck, that fact would not be a good explanation for any American policy decision. It most certainly is not a trump card. Bumper sticker patriotism finds its natural home in Ross' list.

This exercise contrasts greatly (with one exception) to the tone and content of the next post, Mythical Leftists. It's a long one, but worth reading. Ross offers a thoughtful and reasoned explanation of liberal views on life. And Ross' views are liberal, in the old sense of that word. This article gently but persuasively argues that creating a straw man of the left is a bad thing, and that those on the right should realize that liberals like himself should not be thought of as godless commies, who hate America or the West, and really have good and ethical reasons for advancing the policy opinions that they do.

Why is Ross motivated enough to write this long post saying that the right is wrong for doing to him what he did to them in the post immediately before? Ross is center-left in politics. He responded to an article that was not aimed at him, but rather at those who live in a slightly redder political universe to his left. In the process, he constructed an admirable defense of (truly) liberal beliefs, which are commonly held on both sides of the political median. But Ross, in his defense, overlooks the fact that there is a left. That left is not that different from how Scott describes it in the selection that Ross quotes.

Ross personally knows at least one conservative (me), and we have had many an engaging and delightful argument over politics, over beer. The first thing he writes after the long quote is, "I am pleased to find a right-winger who can actually spell, can correctly construct sentences, and who actually takes the time to lay out his arguments and beliefs. Well done, sir." Well, I am pleased to find at least one leftist who doesn't want to kill millions of Ukrainians.

This sort of thinking spoils the (generally excellent) points that Ross makes in the remainder of the post. It makes this thoughtful article more like the first - contemptuous of conservatives, and subverts what I assume is the intent of the piece. Ross wants the right to extend to him consideration that he is unwilling to extend to them.

I am guilty of this myself. It used to piss off our Minister Emeritus Mike to no end. I am more partisan than I would like to be. I would like to look at someone like Tom Daschle and say, he's goodhearted - he has the best interests of the nation in mind, but we have different ideas about how to go about achieving it. Then I hear him say something that is so screamingly contrary to fact and hostile to my interests that I say things like, "Jeebus, he's an effing Commie!"

People disagree on matters of policy. That's why we have politics, and elections. That's why we have this blog. The map that Johno included in his "Glories of Centrism" post shows that in one respect we are not as divided as we think. Ross' two posts show that in another, we are polarized even when we try to be tolerant.

I said I'd link to another BTD post, in recompense for my slothful forgetfulness over the weekend. Which I will do. I was going to link to some commentary I thought useful, or interesting, and offer my own spin on it, in typical blog fashion. However, as I was sifting through the site, I saw that their tribute to Johnny Cash was embarrassingly better than mine. So I will link that, because I spent the weekend listening to the Man in Black whilst painting, and Mrs. Buckethead's band played a Cash cover last night, and I can't get over the fact that he's gone.

Johnny Cash

Last week, I got an email from Greg over at Begging to Differ letting me know that on Sunday they were hosting a webcomicapaloozafestarama. He said he'd send me a link on Sunday which he did; and I said I'd post a link, which I didn't because I am a thoughtless amnesiac mofo. To rectify the situation, I am now posting the link, and a small sample of the delicious comedy goodness that can be found over at Begging to Differ. And, I will also post another link, just so Begging to Differ's blog ecosystem stats go up.

Go here to see the whole shebang, but first absorb the goodness to be found in this comic:

That's from Cox and Forkum (sounds vaguely obscene. That's a good thing for editorial cartoonists, I think.) BTD seems to think that this will be a regular thing, so go back every Sunday to see it.

The Ministry is pleased to announce the creation of three wholly new, completely original and stupendously nifty categories. After listening to the unending whines of of Johno and Buckethead for new categories for their particular fetishes, the Ministry graciously refrained from having them summarily executed, and spent almost a whole dollar to find new images for the category icons. And so, with a moderate amount of further ado, here are the new categories:

and

In the near future, some of the Ministry's wizened HTML gnomes will be flogged from their stupor, and sent to update some old posts to reflect the new categories. Additionally, a the icon for the Perfidy Attacks category was deemed surplus to requirements, and taken behind the Ministry headquarters and shot. The new icon will hopefully be more respectful and... useful.

[wik] The Ministry of Perfidies Future with an update: 

In time, That Buck Rogers Stuff would be replaced, and divided into several categories, each with better icons. Music Wonkery was removed, then re-added with a new icon to distinguish itself from the icon we started using for Minister Johno. The icon for Perfidy Attacks was retained, but now represents an omnibus Our Measured Response category. You can see all of these on the Archives page to the right ovah deh.

The code gnomes have been run hard and put away wet with all the post category updating. Think of them when you look at your non-bleeding fingers.

This message from the Ministry of Minor Perfidy, 2025 edition, thank you for your cooperation. 

CalPundit notes an interesting phenomenon.

You know that map you see everywhere? The red-and-blue map of the USA that makes it look like the coasts are 100% Lib'ral Democrats and the heartland is solidly Conservative-By-God-Republicans?

Well, as it turns out, that map tracks very closely the map of states who are net contributors and net drains on the welfare budget. Ironically, "red states" who tend to vote Republican and whose politicians are most vocal about high taxes, the horrors of the welfare state, and the evils of Communist California, Taxachusetts, etc., tend to be net drains, getting back more welfare dollars than they put in.

That is, whereas big-government baddie Massachusetts puts in $1.75 to the welfare pool for each dollar it draws back out, small-government supporting Idaho draws $1.31 out of the welfare pool for every dollar it puts in. Thus, it almost seems as if the states that most resent the welfare system are the ones gaining the greatest benefit for the least input.

Check out the post for the maps and CalPundit's analysis.

I don't know quite what to make of this beyond a brain exercise. Like most brain exercises, it contributes little to a substantial discussion of American politics, and indeed obscures what's REALLY going on. The Red/Blue map is interesting, but it creates an artificial dichotomy where none exists. For a more nuanced view of the American political landscape, check out.....

This:

It's a map made up by Brad Delong, that takes the usual Red/Blue map and blends the colors to track the actual breakdown of Democrat vs. Republican electoral college votes cast in the 2000 Pars-dential election.

Instead of the stark, unbridgeable divisions that the red and blue map would suggest, wouldja look at that... it's all shades of... purple.

As Brad DeLong puts it,

No islands. No sharp divisions. No yawning cultural and sociological gap--just slightly varying shades of purple, mixed blue and red. Only seven states in 2000 had a Republican presidential vote share more than sixty percent. Only five states in 2000 had a Republican presidential vote share less than forty percent.

The first map is false advertising--the combination of our quirky system of electing a president with the tendentious arguments political commentators interested in maximizing perceived differences.

The second map is reality.

Damn right. No totally blue states except maybe Massachusetts, home of the Conservative Democrat, and New York, home of the immense solidly Democrat immigrant populations of the outer boroughs of NYC. Only a few really reddish states in the middle of the West right where you'd expect them. You can see that the states with the biggest cities skew blue as urban populations tend to do, but there is no strong pattern among most of the rest. Mostly it's a world of subtle shades of purple.

Which is why it's such a damn shame that "the media" keeps harping on the differences. Sean Hannity, I'm talking to you, sport.

General Wesley Clark is going to run for President. He will announce his candidacy tomorrow, but first I'd like to point out some problems that he might face:

• His name is Wesley. Remember ST:TNG.
• He's from Arkansas. We haven't had a lot of luck with presidents from that state. Though to be fair, this argument would have me voting for Dean.
• Most of his advisors are ex-Clinton staff, a group well known for their probity and ethics. On the other hand, they are effective.
• He is a war hero from where, again? Oh yeah, that war that started in Sarajevo. No not that one, the little one that came eighty years later. We bombed some stuff. Like the Chinese embassy.

I think it might be a little too late for him to have entered and still win - though it frightens me that I say this over a year before the actual election. The other monkeys have had time to build organizations, raise money, and get, in some cases, as much as ten percent of the population aware of their existence. Clark has a long way to go.

That said, many Democrats will feel that he is the perfect complement for their favorite candidate, and soon we will see Dean/Clark, Gephardt/Clark, Kerry/Clark and Kucinich/Clark bumperstickers. He is almost a shoe-in for the VP. Though Clark should remember what one former VP had to say about the office, "The Vice Presidency ain't worth a bucket of warm spit."

Space.com is reporting that Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites have successfully completed a full on test burn of a prototype hybrid rocket motor. (Another company has also tested a hybrid motor. Reportedly, Scaled Composites will decide which rocket to go with soon.)

Rutan has already conducted a series of tests of the White Knight mother ship that will carry the smaller SpaceShipOne to high altitude, where it will begin its independent flight into space. SpaceShipOne is designed to land like a glider, and it has undergone several gliding test flights.

The hybrid motors burn Nitrous Oxide (whippets) and hydroxy-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) - otherwise known as rubber. While these are not the most energetic of all propellants (Liquid Hydrogen and Oxygen, used for the Shuttle main engines, are the most powerful) they have the advantage of being stable, easily stored and non reactive; and safer than almost all other potential rocket fuels.

It looks like Rutan is the most likely winner of the X-Prize, moving along at a rapid pace. I think it would be a rather amazing thing if they launch on Dec 17th, the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brother's first flight. It could happen.

Back in my halcyon grad-school days, I used to think Ted Rall was a pretty nifty cartoonist. Sure, he was a hard-lefty, but he scored a lot of really excellent points off the American Right, especially their gibbering and howling in the run-up to the Kangaroo Impeachment of President Billy Nutsack. Moreover, I lived in Amherst MA, where my stolid Centrism played like John Birch in some places. So, I read him, I liked him, I didn't always think he made sense. 

But no more. Over the last couple years, I've watched Ted Rall sink deep, deep into moral equivalency and come out the other side into crazyland. 

In this post, Michael Totten lovingly and thorougly fisks a Ted Rall column that among other things asserts " the more we tell ourselves that the Iraqi resistance is a bunch of evil freedom-haters, the deeper we'll sink into this quagmire," and elsewhere calls the same Ba'ath resistance "patriots."

If you read that carefully, you see that Ted Rall really is calling those crazy Ba'ath truckbombing rapist warlord shitwads "morally good freedom-loving patriots." Also, apparently the Iraqi police-trainees who were killed last week, the ones who are helping to establish a homegrown Iraqi social order that is not based on rape, terror, and disappearances, are "[c]ops, who work for a foreign army of occupation [and therefore] are not innocent. They are collaborators. Traitors. They had it coming."

Let me get this straight.

The remnants of a brutally repressive regime, who have taken to killing innocent people and are dedicated to fomenting chaos, starvation, poverty, and martial law in their own country so that they may return to their former positions as local warlords, are freedom loving patriots. Okay, sure, whatever.

And The Iraqi citizens training as police officers, who are working to dig their country and people out of the Saddam Hussein Memorial Thirty-Year Shit-Trench are traitors who had it coming. Got it. Great.

What the fuck, please? I mean, you can argue about how full the glass is. We can, and will, argue as to whether the Iraqi libervasion was justified, for years to come. But that doesn't change certain things they in most places call "facts." Fact: The libervasion happened. We broke the eggs and killed a bunch of people. Now the US can a) bug out and leave the mess they created to fix itself however it will, or b) stick around and try to keep things afloat.

Fact: There is plenty of room to argue about how best to handle the occupation. The President may, or may not, have the right strategery. I'm betting towards "not," personally. But this argument does not negate the fact of the invasion, option b).

Fact: By any moral code accepted by a large number of average people in the Western world, there is a difference between blowing yourself up along with a number of other people, and training a police force to make sure that kind of thing doesn't happen.

Fact: Moral equivalence is fine as a mind-exercise. Moral equivalence is even fine as a tool for living, as long as it is one of many designed to make a person well-rounded. However, moral equivalence is a hell of a stupid way to live. Hence the term, "Fisking."

I'm horrified that certain elements of the American Left, a group who on the whole are perfectly reasonable patriotic people who just happen to see things differently than most of the blog world, have come to the conclusion that American action is always wrong, resistance to power is always right no matter what the flavor, and that training local police forces in Iraq so that US soldiers may cede authority to them is equivalent to flying a loaded jetliner into a building full of people.

It goes without saying (or at least it should), but Iraqi police recruits are as much traitors to their country as the Democratic Party is to our own, with no respect to Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, or any of the rest of the creeps who are Ted's peers on the other side.

Gives the rest of us a real bad name, it does, and it makes me wanna punch them in the neck.

Please read the fisking, and watch Michael crush a vestige of my slightly-more-liberal past like a bug. It's kind of sad. I really used to like that shitwad.

Max Power links to this article from The Wave, a San Francisco-based entertainment magazine, in which an interviewer asks certain questions of some of the city's candidates for mayor. 

They may seem familiar to you.

From the article:

Rather than confuse you with endorsements, position papers and other outmoded means of political influence, we've decided to get to the bottom of the only question that matters: Is a particular candidate human or an insidious replicant, possessed of physical strength and computational abilities far exceeding our own, but lacking empathy and possibly even bent on our destruction as a species?

The only reliable method that we know of for sniffing out replicants is the Voight-Kampff Test, created by Phillip K. Dick in his book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and later used by Harrison Ford's character, Deckard, in the film Blade Runner. The test uses a series of questions to evoke an emotional response which androids are incapable of having. By the candidates' responses to this line of questioning, we feel we can say with some certainty whether or not they're replicants. However, we're stopping short of recommending that you vote for them or not. After all, though a replicant mayor may be more likely to gouge a supervisor's eyes out with their thumbs, they have another quality that could be great in an elected official: a four year life span.

Read on, and see which candidates would readily gouge out your eyes and wear them as a garland, and which ones are horrible inhuman machine beings. Fascinating.

New York City notes, part II.

My favorite parts of Manhattan have always been the East Village and the Lower East Side. Starting at about 10th street and heading south, and going no farther west than Broadway, is where I find the places for people like me. I am happy to report that Disney has not yet gotten a toehold here. Canal Street is still a crazy parade, Clinton Street is still full of Latinos, Welcome To The Johnsons, Motor City Bar, Barramundi, Lakeside Lounge, Beauty Bar and Tonic are all still open, and The Pickle Guys are still holding it down next door to the accordian store and the yarmulke wholesaler.

Walking around that part of the city the day after Johnny Cash died made me miss Joey Ramone all over again. The Lower East Side was Joey Ramone's New York, and it fit him to a T. Gawky and alluring, deceptively savvy yet bashingly simple, chaotic, surprisingly kind, and tragic. It was a bad week... Warren Zevon, Johnny Cash, and John Ritter, who I seem to like a lot better than most people do.

But the majority of our trip this time was spent in Brooklyn, kicking around Park Slope and Williamsburg. Being a partisan for Queens myself, I had never really spent much time in the BK apart from a few bars on Smith Street, a party or two in eastern Willamsburg, and that time I spent at a hospital just south of downtown Brooklyn when my testicle was trying to kill me.

Know what? I love Brooklyn. Moreover, the two friend we went to see both live in impossible sitcom apartments. Especially the Vet. The Vet is fresh out of Evil Animal Medical School, moved to New York to take a job in Queens, and lives in a converted warehouse space in the heart of Williamsburg. Apart from being the finest living space I have ever had the pleasure to inhabit in New York, the hipster tide around the neighborhood has ebbed just a little because the thirtysomething liberals and older hipsters have moved in with their money and chased the young Onanistic hipster crowd somewhere else. Where? Hell if I know. East New York? Flatbush? Bed-Stuy? Who cares. It's fantastic! And it makes it possible for actual human-type people to live in spectacular apartments with exposed brickwork, skylights, and four fire doors between them and the outside world. Wonderful. Brooklyn is what Manhattan would be if the power and allure of limitless money hadn't twisted it, Gollum-like, into something crabbed, grasping, and unpleasant.*

Up next: Sappho, Johnny Cash, and Performativity in Art

*Except the St. Marks Bookstore! Long live the St. Marks Bookstore! Unaccountably, I was unable to find a single book at the Strand that I wanted to buy, but at St. Marks, the Goodwife had to physically discipline me to keep me from buying the whole store.

And also the vegetarian chili cheeseburger at Veggie City Diner on 14th. They should build a statute to its immortal glory.

And also the exceptions noted above. It is possible that the usually worse-than-useless J/M/Z subway line is actually a giant viaduct of ley energy, funneling Brooklyn-vibes into Lower Manhattan and Lower Manhattan-vibes into Brooklyn as a guard against the encroaching armies of Disney. That'd be cool, and explain an awful lot.

New York City Notes, Part I.

So the Goodwife and I took the Chinatown bus to New York on Friday night as part of the Goodwife Birthing-Day Festivular Extravaganza 2003 celebration. It's been a long while since I had time to see the city to any great extent, since previous trips back had been on business for the Death Star, my former employer. All I can say?

Sheesh.

My erstwhile city has gone downhill in some strong and meaningful ways. That's not to say that we have slipped back to the Early Koch Years where violence could leap at you from any doorway. Rather, the Disneyfication of Manhattan has proceeded faster than a case of the gangrene up the leg of a Confed'rate soldier left in the mud at Antietam.

Case in point. On Saturday night, at the behest of new friends, we went to a bar in Chelsea, not too many blocks north of the Meatpacking District, about which more later. The Chelsea I remember was a maze of gay bars, wealthy hipsters, and arty/literary types flocking to the new galleries in the Twenties between Tenth and Eleventh. It was remote, a little barren, and a little too ugly to properly gentrify.

As we came up the stairs from the subway at 14th and 8th, it was already clear that change had happened. Roaming packs of women, dressed up like self-hating hookers, were charging up and down every street and avenue, especially coming east from the Hudson. Guh? There's no public transportation in that direction! All that's over there is the mouth of the Holland tunnel (twenty blocks south...) and... oh... Jersey. Right. What are they doing? Walking the river bottom like zombies? And what are they doing not standing in line for Puffy's place over in the Flatiron district?

The bar we ended up at was unreservedly awful, but we stayed out of kindess for the host. It was a beautiful space with a very large, multitiered, brick garden, with $11 drinks and a vew of the stupidest humans I have ever been in personal contact with. Between 10:30 and midnight, we watched the crowd flip over from cheesy debutantes and aftershaven tools living out the Wall Street Dream on the last hundred dollars of their credit line to a 90% bridge and tunnel crowd. In Chelsea!! What the hell? I have never seen that many huaraches, white pants, or hungry leers in my life, outside the gay bars that used to line the street where this place stands now. I have never felt more out of my element in New York, a city that doesn't look twice if you walk down the street stark naked with a giant rubber chicken head on your penis. So, we left. And got hassled by the staff on the way out for not being beautiful. (For the record, I looked effing fabulous)

Worse than this, the fucking meatpacking district, where gay men used to come to, erm, pack meat, is now a fucking tourist and trading desk jockey playground. Fuck! Goddamn Bloomberg, and yes, Giuliani, have a lot to answer for. All the fun, mildew, grit, soul, and nastiness has been bled out of that stretch of lower Manhattan, in favor of the hooting, backwards-hat wearing motherfucker crowd and the hoochies that hang on them like lampreys and I hate it forever.

One of the writer friends we were out with put it well. "Manhattan is the liver of New York."

Damn straight. So we hopped a train back to Brooklyn where we belong.

Next: Joey Ramone, the Lower East Side, real life sitcom living arrangements, and smashing success in the outer boroughs. Fucking Manhattan may rot.

Last night I watched a documentary about the World Trade Center in New York, from its planning to construction to the present day. It was very interesting, but I didn't really care for the ending.

This morning I found out that Johnny Cash had died. Although I can't say it was unexpected-- he's been sick for years, and June was his heart and soul-- that doesn't make it any less sorrowful.

But today I am boarding the Chinatown Bus for New York for my first pleasure trip there since I moved away in mid-2000. It's the goodwife's birthday this week and I wanted to do something special. I expect to be hammered and look fabulous doing it by 8 PM. That way I'll be in bed before all the G-d D-mned hipsters come out and I won't have to punch anyone.

It's the greatest city in the world. Where else can you get haggis delivered hot to your door at four in the morning?

Johnny Cash died of complications due to Diabetes today. He was 71.

I will regret forever that I never saw him play live. He will be missed.

Ross at Spiral Dive (hi, Ross!) gives voice to something that I've been thinking about for a long time.

I've been thinking about the [Palestine-Israel] conflict extensively for the last day or two, and I've decided that I just don't have enough evidence to decide one way or the other. I've been critical of Israel in the past, but let's face it -- it's armchair, arms-length criticism. I really don't have any idea about the reality on the ground. Read the web and you'll find two polar opposites. Does the truth lie in the middle? On one extreme or the other? I have no idea.

Read the entire thing. There's a long, long history behind the situation that makes matters even more complicated than Ross's analysis, but I share Ross' sense of resignation, sadness, and beleagured faith in the goodness of people. I'm strongly inclined to back Israel, but frequently something happens-- a missile goes astray, a raid kills civilians-- that makes it hard to separate the just from the unjust.

Maybe it's due to today's date, or perhaps to my general fatigue, but I find myself growing weary of the hothouse of petty punditry that the internet fosters, especially when it comes to thorny, impossible situations like Israel or the roots of Islamic terrorism. The level of informedness, even from the most erudite sources, hovers somewhere between "Cat In The Hat" and "Weekend At Bernie's II".

Not that I will take a break from blogging-- oh, no, no!-- but the sheer blinkered partisanship just makes me tired. Between the Coulters and the Moores, the content-free blandishments of NPR and the counterfactual drum-beating of Fox News, not to mention the awful entertainment-pap that masquerades as network news, I have an unstoppable urge to draw the curtains, order a pizza and watch Adam Sandler and Chris Farley movies until my brain dribbles out my ears. Today, all America should do just that, for the good of all mankind. F'r god's sake, what a bunch of immature A-personality attention whores our public figures are.

Oh, and I see that the President used September 11, 2003 to start stumping for pieces of the Patriot II.

Asshole.

Two years ago, on a clear, sunny day just like today in every respect but one, over 3000 people died. They died at the hands of terrorists willing to sacrifice their lives to kill the innocent, in the service of an insane and evil cause.

Some ways, we were lucky. Had the planes hit the towers later, many more might have died. Had the towers collapsed sooner, the death toll might have been in the tens of thousands. Had the plane hit the Pentagon on the inside of the north side, it would have missed the mostly untenanted, newly remodeled section on the south. Had the passengers not taken action over rural Pennsylvania, the Capitol or White House might have been hit instead of a field. We should give thanks that only 3000 died.

We have hunted those responsible, with some success, though their leader remains at large. We have sought to end terrorism, and the governments that make it possible. We have not had a terrorist attack on American soil since that terrible day. That must count as at least provisional success in the war on terror.

Over 250 American soldiers, marines and pilots have died in the war on terror. We must remember them also. They fight, and sacrifice, so that we may be safe and free.

But for the 3000, and the 250, we have to continue the fight, to give meaning to the sacrifice of the dead. We have to win. The cost of terrorism to its practitioners must be made so high that no one will ever think to do it again.
I have already mentioned the 9/11 Digital archive, which is well worth seeing. You should also go to Voices: Stories From 9/11 And Beyond at A Small Victory. Bill Whittle has a new post that adds some perspective.

For more links, simply go to the Winds of Change which has the best round up I've seen.

Even though the RIAA is Johno's bete noire, I seem to be posting a lot about it lately. That Junior college across the river from MIT must be keeping him extraordinarily busy for him to miss this incredible monument to recording industry hypocrisy.

The wired article details the activities of BigChampagne, a company that creates databases of information on song downloads, sorted by region. It sells that information (at a substantial markup) to the record labels. When a label sees that one of their songs is being played once a week at three in the morning, and in the same market that song is the number ten download on kazaa; they can put the arm on the local radio station to increase its airtime.

On the one hand, this is clever, sensible and good business. BC has found a need in the market for a certain type of information, and it has filled that need. The labels are responding to the actual desires of real customers by trying to get frequently downloaded songs onto the radio. Which will increase their album sales.

On the other hand, it is rank hypocrisy for the labels to be using this information gleaned from file download services to increase their profits while simultaneously extorting $2000 from twelve year olds, and sueing the grandmas who are using those same file download services. Even congressmen, not known for being with it, are saying that, hey, record people, if you keep going like this, people aren't going to like you.

The record industry needs, at the very least, step down its evil to the level of Microsoft, and adopt an "embrace and extend" policy. By using the file trading services, they could (especially in combination with clever ideas like selling cheaper cds) increase profits. And not be quite so evil.

Astronomers have discovered that a giant black hole located in a cluster of galaxies in the Perseid Cluster has been vibrating on B-flat for about 2.5 billion years. The tone is 57 octaves below Middle C, and is the lowest, sexiest bass note ever recorded. The Pleiades are expected to give up the booty within another .5 billion years.

Geeky doggerel follows. Consider yourselves duly warned. 

Bass! How low can you go?
Big Bang, what a brother knows.
Once again back is the incredible
the inexorable
the gravimetrical B- Galactic Enemy Number One
Chandra said "Freeze!" and I got numb
Can I tell 'em 30K is the wavelength of my spin?
Theorized by many, hey Hawkins try again
Now I'm in Science and newsweeklies cuz my attractors attract weakly
And a black hole like me will not go meekly
Einstein was a prophet and I think you ought to listen to
what he can say to you, what you ought to do is
Follow for now, the power of the gravity
"Make a miracle, B, pump the lyrical"
Black is back, you'll all be sucked in
Check it out, yeah y'all, here we go again
Turn it up! Bring the noise!
Turn it up! Bring the noise!

The September 11 Digital Archive is being added to the Library of Congress's permanent collection, and the LC will host a day-long symposium on Wednesday, September 10, 2003. If you're in DC, play hooky and go. In the meantime, you can view the collection of images, video and stories here.

From Rocket Jones, (by way of Terra Taco) here are a couple links to nifty, neato google tricks:

Here you will discover how to use google as a calculator,

and here you will find a plethora of useful google tips.

Kerry has been on a tear lately. The other day, he jibed Dean for his comment that we should not take sides in the Middle East:

"It is either because he lacks the foreign policy experience or simply because he is wrong that governor Dean has proposed a radical shift in United States policy towards the Middle East. If the president were to make a remark such as this it would throw an already volatile region into even more turmoil."

Of course, Dean could lack experience and be wrong.

Then, he took a cheap shot at the Administration, I heard this on the radio this morning and couldn't find a link, but he said something on the order of:

"As I look out on this audience, I see people of every color, every creed and background. This must be John Ashcroft's worst nightmare."

Whatever you think of the Patriot act, calling the man a racist is just not right. It often infuriates me to hear anyone who disagrees with the left instantly labelled "racist" or "fascist" - it's just utter bullshit.

I don't want a bitter, lemon sucking jerk in the White House. Happily, he won't ever get there.

By the by, Dean also took a shot at Ashcroft:

"John Ashcroft is not a patriot. John Ashcroft is a descendant of Joseph McCarthy."

More bullshit, I'm afraid, from the Deanster. Ashcroft is not Satan. For that matter, tailgunner Joe was not Satan.

It would be nice if the Democrats could mount a campaign without inciting hatred for conservatives. Policy disagreement does not equal evil incarnate.

Yesterday, I remembered that I had not read the Limey Brit in some time. Instantly, I rushed over and found... a movie review.

Limey raves about the movie Equilibrium. Convinced by his sparkling prose, I rented the movie last night. It kicks ass. I have not enjoyed a movie as much since I was forced to watch Boondock Saints. (I have watched that movie of my own volition several times since. It also kicks ass.)

I have a few quibbles with the plot, but on the whole, it was fairly well thought out. And the action sequences are amazing. The Brit was right, this is not guns and martial arts, it is guns as martial art. Clever idea, and perfectly realized on film. Curiously, I am reading the Gunslinger series from Stephen King, and it gave me a new way to think about what the gunslinger does. Added bonus.

The funny thing is that I might have watched this movie months ago, but for the fact that when I picked up the box at the lackluster video, the front screamed, "better than the Matrix!!!" Needless to say, I was dubious. Oh well, now all is right with the world, and I need to find someone to teach me gun fu.

Joe Bob says, "Check it out!"

Clueless has a short (for him) post up focusing on the recent goings on in the Palestinian leadership. I've been thinking a bit about this since Abbas quit.

When I saw the first news reports of his resignation my first thought was, "Damn, he just set made a huge deposit in his Karma bank." Clueless commented,

If another Prime Minister is appointed and forms a cabinet, and then Arafat is exiled, then as a practical matter the new Prime Minister will have far more control than Abbas ever did. I think Abbas was genuinely trying to work things out, and the next PM might not be willing to do so. But such a leader would not have the kind of grip on power that Arafat has, and would in turn be easier to replace.

I don't know for sure whether Abbas is genuinely interested in peace or not, but I am sure that this resignation not permanent. Abbas will be back, and the very fact that he resigned because Arafat would not give him the power to work with the Israelis will in the future give Abbas some serious world credibility. If Arafat leaves, Abbas will come back, and likely with the support of both the American and Israeli governments.

What he does with that power, we'll have to see.

Have you ordered your copy yet?

If you need to ask what Quicksilver is, or who Neal Stephenson is, get off my webpage immediately. Thank you, come again!

Apologies for the light posting. Even community college staff get slammed sometimes.

Over at Oliver Kamm's excellent blog, I found a delightful attack on Noam Chomsky. Here is a choice excerpt:

If Chomsky's normative judgements are perverse, his empirical ones are - I search for the most neutral word I can find in the circumstances - ahistorical. He asserts, for example:

Kennedy invaded Cuba and then launched Operation Mongoose leading right to the missile crisis which practically destroyed the world.

...This type of thing is typical of Chomsky's work. To those who are unfamiliar with history, Chomsky's political writings might seem a rational and informed case. Yet when you strip away the invective you're left with little but heroic assumption, tendentious assertion, egregious omission and even outright fabrication. Unfortunately, historical literacy is an increasingly scarce condition, and Chomsky has managed to build a large constituency on the strength of it among those of college age.

The whole article, indeed the whole blog is informative and well written. Joe Bob says, "Check it out!"

The Kansas City Star is reporting that while Dean has attacted much support from young whites, his success in attracting minorities has been rather limited. The report goes on to detail how minorities are less lekely to be internet users than whites, and that this shows that Dean's internet fundraising is therefore inherently racist.

Just kidding.

Apparently, Dean's stances on gun control and gay marriage are limiting his appeal to blacks.

But this is all nonsense, since blacks and minorities will vote in huge majorities for whomever the Democrats put on the ballot. Jews and Blacks have historically voted as much as 9 to 1 in favor of Democrats.

Blacks have long been taken for granted by the Dems, and have suffered the most from Democratic policies on the national and local levels. They won't increase their electoral clout until there is some perception that their votes are up for grabs. Blacks used to be traditionally Republican, before the evil Goldwater pissed off Martin Luther King. If blacks in significant numbers, even as small as 25%, started voting Republican, the Democrats would lose the key bloc that allows them to maintain parity with their opponents. They'd have a very hard time keeping seats in Congress. That should make Black leaders more willing to negotiate for what they want, rather than remain the lackies of the Democratic Party.

The latest "Know Thy Enemy" installment is up on IMAO, and today the focus is Hamas. Among the many facts we learn are these jems:

• Hamas won't rest until the Jews are pushed out into the sea. That will significantly improve the GDP of the sea.
• Hamas is a big part of the "cycle of violence". They blow up innocent men, women, and children, and then Israel is like, "Hey, don't do that." And thus the cycle of violence continues.
• If you see a Hamas member, shout, "Hey! Look! It's a Jew!" Maybe he'll set himself off early. Dumbass.
• Contrary to popular belief, Hamas has nothing to do with ham. Actually, if you throw hams at them, they'll get angry.
• I don't like to loosely throw around charges of anti-Semitism, but I don't think Hamas members like Jews.

Frank even thinks Aquaman can beat Hamas.

Over at Yahoo, we hear that the RIAA is planning to sue another 261 music enthusiasts. The RIAA back in August said that it would only persecute the most egregious file sharers. In a further gracious move, the association offered an amnesty program - anyone afraid of being sued could admit in writing that they illegally traded music online and vow in a legally binding, notarized document, to never, ever do it again. Of course, the amnesty does not apply to anyone the RIAA already has subpoenaed for information regarding file swapping.

"We're willing to hold out our version of an olive branch," RIAA President Cary Sherman said. At least he noted that it was their version of an olive branch. About 57 million Americans use file-sharing services, according to Boston-based research firm the Yankee Group. We'll see how much of an olive branch the RIAA extends to them - they're only a fifth of the US population.

Watched a little of the Democratic Debate last night, while the NFL spewed forth a hideous spectacle of Britney, Aerosmith (who have long since transcended mere self-parody), and a cast of thousands to kick off what would be, with or without the help of this hoo-hah, an incredible NFL season. Go Browns.

Some thoughts.

Dennis the K looks like a Muppet and sounds like a LaRouche Democrat. It's so reasonable until you stop and think what demanding that all nations of the earth uphold US-style labor standards would do to our trade. It's a nice idea, but so is a manned mission to Jupiter.

Howard the Dean didn't have his best night. Latin America a "hemisphere"? Protectionist trade policy? Pulling out of Iraq ASAP? Guh? I've been a Dean supporter for months now, but if this is his new song, I'm not singing along.

John Edwards. Nice, but forgettable. A non-starter.

Dennis Leiberman. Could make the "toga party" speech from Animal House sound like a discussion of increasing the manufacturing capacity of all US bedsheet factories with assets totalling less than...zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Bob Graham. Sounded great. Looked preserved. I forgot he was running.

Carolyn Moseley-Braun. Didn't get to hear her speak. Pity.

John Kerry. Forceful, focussed, articulate, on point, and totally full of shit. Highlights from his bits replayed on the news this morning had my wife, my sweet, intelligent, politically reserved and half-asleep wife screaming derision at the television.

Dickie G. Said something about legislation, then something about something else, and I just couldn't stop wondering if he picked out his tie himself. A non-starter's non-starter.

Good Christ... is the best they got?

I don't normally even notice when foreign and domestic media play up discontent in the ranks of US soldiers in Iraq. After all, they need to sell papers and gain ratings, and that's part of the game. The truth will out.

Besides, Lord knows the troops have plenty to complain about-- I will NEVER understand why the Army issues the same socks to troops in Labrador and Iraq.

But sometimes, you just have to shake your head in wonder. Like at this Reuters story.

If they had the chance, U.S. soldiers at a base in Iraq would have had one question for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- When are we going home?.

But Rumsfeld canceled a speech he was due to give on Friday to the troops at their base at the palace of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in his hometown of Tikrit.

"I don't give a damn about Rumsfeld. All I give a damn about is going home," Specialist Rue Gretton said, humping packs of water bottles on his shoulders from a truck.

"The only thing his visit meant for us was we had to clean up a lot of mess to make the place look pretty. And he didn't even look at it anyway," Gretton said after soldiers swept the dusty streets around the complex of lakes and mansions. . . .

Rumsfeld has been criticized for sending too few troops to Iraq leaving them stretched thin on extended deployments trying to help rebuild the country and fight a guerrilla war. He has urged allies to supply some 15,000 additional troops and hopes training Iraqi forces will ease the burden on U.S. troops.

When the Armed Forces Network showed earlier footage of Rumsfeld saying that fresh U.S. troops were unnecessary in Iraq, soldiers at the base threw their hands in the air and shouted "No way" at the television.

"I ain't happy. No way am I happy seeing that," said Specialist Devon Pierce, whose wife was due to give birth to his first son in two weeks. "This tour is hard, real hard. It's too much. It should be six months."

So the US military is a bunch of crybaby milquetoasts who can't stand a little sand in their shorts? Well, sandwiched down at the bottom is this closing nugget: "Many also said that while they wanted to be with their families at backyard barbecues or on trips to the baseball park, they knew what they signed up for by joining the army and were committed to stabilizing Iraq."

Goddamn it. Look, there is no way under the sun to stop soldiers bitching. Every workplace bitches, and when your workplace is an active combat zone in the desert, maybe you do a little more bitching. Rumsfeld is being proven wrong, or at least is losing the tug-of-war. It's just so. . . so. . . maddening that this is the image of our troops that the international press chooses to promulgate.

But I shouldn't be surprised. The lead story coughed up just now by Google News is an MSNBC bit titled "French suppress schadenfreude over U.S. Iraq woes," the gist of which is about how, now that the US is asking for UN support in Iraq, the Europeans get to jeer and point a little at our shattered cowboy hubris.

Well eff you effing bunch of bureaucrats and cowards. I seem to remember a long, long Kabuki dance some months ago, where resolution after resolution after resolution demanding prompt action by Iraq (or else suffer the consequences) was deemed empty of meaning by the very body that passed all eighteen of them. And when the US stepped up to act, the UN chose not to, out of protest for the US' percieved motives. Well, sorry, assholes, for trying to get something done.

I don't agree fully with President Bush's Iraq policy, which has proven disastrously short on the long-term planning and infrastructure management. (In fact, eff him too for putting us in this position!) Bush and his folks did bungle the presentation of case for libervading Iraq to the international community, and they have been less than forthcoming about long-term goals, but I can't stand to see the US as a whole indicted for trying to do something about "eeevil," whatever else is at stake. The US is arrogant, our system can be corrupt, venal, inward-looking, and sometimes cruel. But have these critics looked at what else is out there, at what we are struggling against?

I don't get it. I'm the KING of "yes...but..." and the Emperor of "but have you considered....", which should make me a natural ally of the UN, but FUCK! Have your little laugh at our expense, ha ha, yes thank you, and fucking LEND A FUCKING HAND ALREADY if we ask for it, why not?

God, I hope we don't need to ask for it.

Henry Brighous of Crooked Timber comments on (well... sort of Fisks) an Iain Murray post about a speech by British MP Roger Helmer (isn't the internet grand???).

Helmer claims that federalism in the European Union doesn't have much in common with its American equivalent; it isn't democratic, and it isn't really federalism either. He's trying to square a rather inconvenient circle for the righties - by and large, right-wingers in the UK and US approve of federalism in the US (more rights for the states), but disapprove of it in Europe. Helmer's basic argument is that federalism is only legitimate if it applies within a single nation-state, where people share a common national identity and common sympathies. Thus, EU federalism is Bad - there's no such thing as a European national identity. However, US federalism is Good - after all America is "One Nation under God."

There's one small problem with this argument. Any half-way intelligent reading of American history will tell you that it's utter nonsense. 150 years ago, the US bore a remarkable resemblance to the EU today; a scattering of loosely affiliated states without all that much of a shared national identity. Then, from the Civil War on, it began to centralize. If Helmer and Murray are right, then, the modern American political system is at best a massive mistake, and at worst, a democratically illegitimate usurpation of powers by a centralizing federal government.

I hadn't though of it this way. Very interesting. My main concern about the EU federalizing is the way they are going about it-- the proposed Constitution could have been written by the IRS's pointy-heads for all the clarity it offers. But I must admit that the notion of many disaggregate nations coming together under one roof seemed, well, alien to me (and I call myself a historian....). Moreover the main objection the American Right has had to the EU's proposed constitution and further consolidation has in fact been the decrease in individual national sovereignty (and they call themselves Conservatives....). I'm going to have to think deeply about Iain Murray's assertion that "Europe cannot be democratic without destroying old nation-states," and whether that is true and desirable. The USA needed a massive internal war to unify totally... Lord knows that Europe has had a few of those. The Spaniard in the works in Europe's case, however, is that the EU formed in part to specifically prevent such a war from happening again. I wonder if greater consolidation could happen anyway, if Europe continues down the internally pacifist, carefully modulated collectivist road it's on. Of course, a war isn't out of the question either.

In short, this is a lot of food for thought for historians, political scientists, and the chattering classes. This blog has all three, so we'll be busy.
 

Reuters is reporting that U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet has bounced the plaintiff's revised attempt to sue McDonald's for poisoning the wells and making Bic Macs from the blood of... I mean, sue for using misleading advertising to lure children into eating unhealthy foods that make them fat.

I don't know about you, but there was never any doubt in my mind what those fries and burgers were doing to me. Even after they switched to vegetable oil. McDonald's? Unhealthy? Retards. How could you appear in public, with your face hanging out, and claim that you were duped by the fiendish ad campaigns of a fast food restaurant? I would die of shame if I ever signed onto that lawsuit.

Thank God the judge has some connection to reality. We need more judges like that, and less assholes trying to game the system for easy money. 
 

Over in the comments to Johno's health care post, I started talking about poverty. I have been hit by the accelerating catastrophe machine in the past, and know what it feels like. The fear of acquiring lifelong debt for an injury. Having everything come due on the same day, and then have the car break down. But...

We are approaching something unprecedented in human history. A time when all but a very small fraction of Americans are poor not by any absolute standard - but only in relation to other Americans who have more money. It won't take anything miraculous, just the continued moderate growth of the economy. The poverty line in this country is orders of magnitudes larger than the per capita incomes of most nations. There is no starvation in this country. We are in the middle, if you will believe the media, of a nationwide epidemic of obesity. And there do seem to be an inordinate number of lardbodies out there. This is not the sign of a subsistance economy.

The people on the left end of the bell curve here have it hard, but only by comparison to richer Americans. Poverty in the traditional, historical sense is gone.

I think that in the future, when we are richer (and barring insane socialistic or Al Gore presidencies, we will be) we can afford more services for the poor. But on one condition - we don't do it the way we have for the last seventy years.

Instead of providing a nightmarish singlepayer system like in Canada, or nationalized health care like in Britain, why don't we just give insurance vouchers, to preserve the free side of the system? Why don't we give huge tax benefits to those who set up medical savings accounts? (Fuck you money immune from taxation.) Why don't we let people save the money that they pay in Social Security taxes? Benefits yes, but in every case the choice for how to use them should be in the hands of the citizen, and out of the hands of the government.

Over at the Spoons Experience, Spoons discusses some interesting news about GOP priorities. The Manchester Union Leader had a talk with Ed Gillespie, RNC Chairman, and described the result:

No longer does the Republican Party stand for shrinking the federal government, for scaling back its encroachment into the lives of Americans, or for carrying the banner of federalism into the political battles of the day.

No, today the Republican Party stands for giving the American people whatever the latest polls say they want.

The party's unofficial but clear message to conservatives is: Where else are you going to go? To the Democrats? To the Libertarians? They don’t think so.

This relates to another thing I read over at the National Review, by Jay Nordlinger, one of the few remaining good things at that online magazine:

I was saying to a friend the other day, "Look, I'm a partisan Republican — a terrible partisan. More partisan than I would like to be, really, or feel comfortable being. But I don't like it when an entire party, in our two-party system, goes wacko. It can't be good for the country... The Democratic party is in the grip of something sick."

And my wise friend responded, "Yes, and another problem is that, when the other party goes nuts, you have no leverage over your own party, or your own president. You certainly have no place else to go. You're stuck."

True.

That is true, indeed. With the Mudville Nine generally either off in lalaland, or unelectable, or both; the Republicans at the moment are on bedrock because they are doing something about the war on terror. No Democrat except Lieberman has any credibility on this issue, and he'll never make it through the primaries. Given this situation, conservatives have no leverage on the party.

We have seen spending skyrocket, and most of it is not for defense, where we most need it. The size and scope of government is increasing under Bush - from unfunded mandates in education, to prescription drug handouts for the old, to the Patriot and Victo acts, to damn near anything except more troops - the only government expansion I could conscience. The deficits are rising, which is not as bad as some claim, but not good either.

If the administration and the lickspittle Republicans in Congress think this will win them votes, well, okay it probably will. But, Jeebus, what do you think Republicans are here for, to be Democrats with the urge to kill foriegners? Conservatism, as I have tried to demonstrate here on this webthingy, is more than polldriven political tacking before the wind, and is more than rhetorical posturing on conservative issues.

Small government is good because it preserves liberty. If the government is not involved, then it is not infringing on your rights, or your freedom. It is not restricting your choices through hidden regulatory obstacles, tax incentives, or coercion. Small government does not consist of a balanced budget and ten percent less government employees. It is a state of mind, a principle that leads toward eliminating unnecessary government interference in our lives, while attending instead to the duties that are proper to a government - national defense, etc.

The Republicans don't have to listen to the conservatives, because the Democrats aren't even in the game.

The Onion interviews P.J. O'Rourke this week:

If there are three words that need to be used more in American journalism, commentary, politics, personal life... it's the magic words "I don't know."

I've been thinking about the prospects of the mudville nine, and wondering a bit about typical primary politics.

How often does the early frontrunner end up getting the nomination? Dean has taken a solid lead over his opponents - where is the juice coming from? He has raised a solid amount of cash, and his poll numbers are good in New Hampshire. (Compared to Dennis the Menace Kucinich, who is polling at 0%. Zero! Department of Peace, my ass. Sorry.)

I see Dean as benefitting from a sort of McCain effect. He is an outsider, of sorts. He seems plainspoken, a trait that most Americans admire. He talks tough, in a Democratic sort of way. But I think what's happening is that he has become the acceptable candidate for those who can't stand Bush. Large numbers in the Democratic Party want to oppose Bush, often from visceral dislike. It's not so much that Dean has a lot of inherent pull, but that the other candidates are in some way unacceptable as a focus point for their feelings.

• Kerry's credentials are soured because he voted for the war - and his later protestation that Bush lied to him hasn't garnered him a lot of credibility.
• Gephardt is a dry, colorless pol, and only name recognition is keeping him in the game. And, he's a loser in past presidential runs.
• Lieberman is still saying that the war was a good thing. At least he's consistent.
• Edwards is a slick trial lawyer. He does not come across as a man of the people, which you need in this race. And, he's so far behind in the polls that people don't want to back a loser.
• Brown, Kucinich and Sharpton are obvious wackos.

What I've read of Dean shows typical populist democratic nostrums for our ills. I don't agree with them when they come out of his mouth any more than I do when they come out of McCain, Buchanan or William Jennings Bryan.

It is typical for a party to tack to its base during the primaries, and toward the center in the general election. The trick is to go far enough out to lock in your support, but not so far that you become unelectable. Dean hasn't skirted the line yet, but his campaign has yet to face its first crisis. He may have peaked too soon. And despite what Democrats may believe, no one will beat Bush unless they are to the right of him on the war on terror, and there certainly is plenty of room over there.

Wow... that just trips gaily off the tongue.

I see that Reuters is reporting that the Government has revised the rules governing what patients may be turned away by hospital emergency rooms, making it easier for hospitals to deny care.

The idea is that many poor people, who don't have insurance, are using the Emergency Room as a primary-care facility, and these rule changes are meant to fix that loophole.

Well, thanks. On the face of it, that's fine and dandy, but it totally fails to address the underlying problem-- that there are as many as forty million people in the USA who don't have insurance and therefore need to rely on emergency medicine.

The problems with this?

• Emergency room visits are damn expensive. This is part of the larger economic trap that poor people get into where they cannot afford high monthly payments on furniture, COBRA, or car insurance, for example, and then get bit in the ass when disaster strikes. I've been in this position, and it's really, really easy to get sucked into a debt spiral as catastrophe costs mount.
• It's really hard to get good baseline health care if you only go to the hospital when you're sick. That means that the 40 million uninsured Americans are not getting the yearly physicals, breast exams, prostate exams, mole checks, and so forth that lawmakers take for granted.
• Clearly, emergency rooms are not the place for primary care, but in the absence of any other reasonable, affordable choice, . . . ?

Basically, I think a baseline national health care program is a pretty great idea. I'm not looking for a full-blown endless-referral system, but just some broken-bone and checkup system that gives economically marginal citizens a chance to stay both economically and physically healthy.

Dean in '04!

[moreover] Politicians and policymakers always seem to forget that most Americans don't have much in the way of "fuck-you" money, as we used to call it in the entertainment biz. That is, savings socked away that can get you through a few months without a job, or cover a disaster. A lot of conservative social policy seems predicated on the existence of such "fuck-you" funds, and it just ain't there. Therefore, economists and politicians tend to wildly overestimate the ability of people to move out of depressed regions or search for a new job if their current one doesn't pay well enough. Just my two cents.

Instapundit links to this this Yahoo! News story via this blog:

Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, on Wednesday said it will cut list prices on compact discs by as much as 30 percent in an effort to boost sales that have been stymied by free online music-sharing services such as Kazaa.

Starting in October, Universal, the home to such artists as Mary J. Blige (news), U2 and Elton John (news), will trim its prices on most of its CDs to $12.98 from its current $16.98-$18.98 range of prices.

"Our research shows that the sweet spot is to sell our records below $12.98,' said Universal Music president Zach Horowitz. "We're confident that when we implement this we will get a dramatic and sustained increase."

However, Glennie then notes

"Research?" I'll bet some marketing consultant charged them a lot more than it costs to read Fritz's blog. . . .

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I've sat in hundreds of 'marketing' meetings and I know exactly what happened. All the chiefs and their main sidekick indians were sitting around a long-ass conference table like they have every week for years, kvetching about declining revenues. Then, during the open discussion, some incredibly senior sales rep from Minneapolis puts out his Marlboro, streches his legs, and pulls out a spreadsheet showing the bigwigs what he's been telling them for five years: Electric Fetus has been selling shitloads-- shitloads of the U2 back catalog at $9.99, whereas they couldn't give them away when the sticker said $16.99. One of the biggest bigwigs, who's at the end of his emotional rope, not to mention his contract, says, "Fuck it. Let's reduce 'em all. Best idea I ever had."

$13 is the magic number for new releases, and you can sell ANYTHING for $9.99, especially if it's a catalog reissue with hastily chosen and poorly mastered "bonus tracks". Once you see this in action, as I have, it becomes a matter of elementary psychology and pure god-given revelation. I cannot believe that it's taken the industry as a whole this long to figure this out. Unless I'm smarter than most people in the music industry. After all, I was smart enough to get out, right?

Loyal reader "Atomzooey" emails with this excerpt from an interview with Britney Spears (remember her?) by CNN hack Tucker Carlson:

CARLSON: A lot of entertainers have come out against the war in Iraq. Have you? 

SPEARS: Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens. 

CARLSON: Do you trust this president? 

SPEARS: Yes, I do. 

CARLSON: Excellent. Do you think he's going to win again? 

SPEARS: I don't know. I don't know that.

Thoughts that leap to mind like a thousand eager Freshman to a freshly tapped kegga Bud:

• Hear that sound? That's CNN, gasping for air like an unwanted dogfish on the deck of a Gloucester swordboat.
• This President can't lose, now that Britney Spears has delivered the all-important pre-teen vote!
• I'm impressed-- unlike Sean Penn, who appears smarter, Britney Spears know when she should shut up.
• I think that from this day forward, anyone who wishes to publicly discuss the President and his policies should first tongue-kiss Madonna. And enjoy it.

[update] Or Christina Aguilera. And enjoy it. Where do I sign up?

[moreover] Britney thinks we should "trust our President in every decision that he makes." Remember what I said yesterday about Rich Lowry? Well, I might have been wrong about him being craven. He might just be ignorant instead.

Hey, get a new T-Shirt.

This Fox story informs us that California will allow illegal aliens to get driver's licenses.

The legislation, by Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, would help undocumented immigrants get drivers' licenses by allowing them to submit a federal taxpayer identification number or some other state-approved form of identification to the Department of Motor Vehicles instead of a Social Security number. (emphasis mine.)

I think that California is quite purposefully ignoring something very important here, as their euphemistic description of illegal aliens indicates.

These are illegal aliens, for chrissake! We can have a meaningful and interesting debate over all the issues surrounding immigration except for this one. Access for foriegners: easy or hard? How long can they stay, and what can they do while they are here? How many immigrants a year, from what countries, and with what skills? How quickly can we assimilate them, and how should we do it? What requirements for naturalization? Reasonable people can differ on these issues, and I've heard good arguments for many sides of the argument.

But, illegal immigrants do not deserve the benefits we extend to our own citizens, and to those who have moved here legally and dealt with the insane bureaucracy of the INS. They are here illegally. If caught, they should be immediately deported. Any "undocumented immigrant" who shows up at a CA DMV should be instantly shown the door, and warned not to come back.

I am prepared to welcome any citizen of any nation regardless of race, creed, color, or hairdo - provided that they come here in accordance to the laws of this nation. Otherwise, get the hell out. It is ridiculous to extend to them taxpayer funded benefits when their very existence in this country spits on the laws we live by. And amnesty for illegals is a slap in the face to all the immigrants who did jump through all the hoops to get here legitimately.

They don't need an ID. They need a bus, ship, train or plane ticket home. 

In response to Johno's recent post, I have this to say: 

What kind of commie, pinko, terror-loving, raghead son of a....

Wait, what I meant to say was that he is exactly right.

David Brin has talked a lot about this, as well. Not so much about the Patriot Act in particular, but about what the most effective defense is. He believes, as I do, that an empowered and informed citizenry is the most effective defense. A distributed defense far more effective and responsive than anything the goverment could create by restricting our freedom. One might even say it would be... a general militia.

Two things - the events on flight 97 on the day, and the sniper madhunt in DC. The passengers on flight 97, in 90 minutes, used advanced communications technology and their own initiative to discover the intentions of the hijackers, formulate a plan, and foil the plot. Their example has made it unlikely that any American airliner will ever be hijacked again. Sadly, they lost their lives, but the principle still holds.

In the DC sniper situation, the police attempted to withhold critical information. The snipers were only caught when information accidently leaked, and a citizen put it all together and the suspects were arrested while sleeping in a rest area.

We are the first line of defense. In a terror war, we are on the front lines. Things like the Patriot Act are reprehensible not so much for infringements of our liberty, though they are guilty of that, but because they are ineffective. They get in the way of a proper defense. They try to sustain the myth of government omnicompetence.

We should not be reporting information to be collected in government deebees, there to be pondered by "experts," classified, and never to see the light of day unless the information gets in the hands of the DEA and some pot grower gets arrested.

The government should be releasing information to us. Websites tracking the activities of suspected terrorists should be published. The same monomaniacal geeks who engage in anal retentive fact checking of Michael Moore movies or Wolfowitz speeches could go nuts. Instead of a few government experts, you'd have thousands of people examining the data, weeding out the chaff, and forming consensus on the rest.

And if those fuckers ever come here, their faces would be all over the web.

These ideas would provoke horror in the minds of most bureaucrats. But stuff like that will be necessary, before too long. And in the long run, its the only way we can preserve our liberty and our security. 

The cover story of the recent issue of the Economist completely agrees with my scheme for reworking NASA - that it should focus on exploration and research, and that private industry should take over Earth to orbit transportation. Money quote:

"Indeed, if private enterprise can create astronauts with only millions of dollars, what might it achieve with a fraction of NASA's wasted billions? The Space Station is a mere 240 miles above the Earth. That is about four times further than any of today's private suborbital craft are trying to reach. But, if NASA were a customer, and not a competitor, in the business of building spacecraft, companies might have the incentive to extend their craft all the way into orbit.

...Meanwhile, the existence of the shuttle doubtless inhibits the development of a private space industry and the new private companies face regulatory restrictions that do not apply to the shuttle. Remove some of those barriers, scuttle the shuttle, and a private industry may bloom... And NASA could explore the real frontier."

You heard it here first. In related news, Slashdot has a roundup of links discussing the business case for reusable launch vehicles. There are a lot of interesting tidbits there, but I have been thinking that there may be some value in going back, at least for a little while, to usable rocket launchers.

While rockets are expensive, the shuttle is ridiculous. It is reusable in only the most restricted sense. If we really needed to get stuff into space, disposable launchers - maunfactured in quantity - could be substantially cheaper than operating the shuttle. The shuttle requires immense sums of money to launch, and more to be reconditioned for the next flight. Depending on disposables would eliminate at least one whole category of shuttle expenses.

The two current disposables in our inventory - the Atlas and the Delta, were both at one time man-rated. They could be again. And if we were making lots of them, they would cost less. We could put a two man glider like the Dyna-Soar (yes, aerospace engineers can have a sense of humor) we designed in the sixties on top of it. I'd be curious to know what their ground crew needs are. And we can always use the disposable shuttle pieces as a cargo lifter, as I have mentioned before.

With a little money and design work, the demise of the shuttle would not put us out of the space game, and could in fact increase our capabilities. Disposable launchers do not have the long turn around times of the shuttle - just order a new one and launch it. Cheap two man orbiters would not be the technological nightmare that the shuttle is, and not a single point of failure. The shuttle-based cargo lifter would have more cargo capacity than anything since the Saturn.

AND NONE OF IT REQUIRES A SINGLE DAMNED NEW PIECE OF TECHNOLOGY. All it takes is a little money, and a couple free weekends for the engineers at Boeing and Lockheed.

Again, the boys and girls at Reason have hit one out of the park. Julian Sanchez has a long piece which asks the right questions of those who defend the USA-PATRIOT Act against all criticism.

Read the entire article, but I extract this nugget of wisdom for you:

The broadest thing wrong with this standard, [namely, Rich Lowry's assertion that "The challenge to critics should be this: Name one civil liberty that has been violated under the Patriot Act"] though, is where it places the burden of proof. Civil libertarians want the answer to questions that as yet have barely been asked and never been answered: How will these new powers make us safer? Would they have prevented the September 11 attacks? Do they add anything to the existing powers the government failed to deploy effectively before then? Are they broader than necessary to aid in the fight against terror?

The PATRIOT apologists will have none of this. The default, as they see it, is to grant new powers unless there's proof that they'll lead overnight to tyranny. The presumption of liberty is replaced by a presumption of power. The sad reality, though, is that even a police state can't guarantee total safety: Whatever we do, the coming years will see more terror, more attacks. If we conclude, each time, that the culprit must be an excess of domestic freedom, a lack of government power, we are traveling a road with no end.

There's a fatalistic note to this conclusion that I don't love, but Sanchez' broad point hits the spot. The Federal Government exists at the convenience of the American People; indeed the Constitution focuses on delimiting exactly which areas the Feds are empowered to act in, leaving the rest to, who, again? Consequently, any Act that purports to increase the power of the Fed, especially along police-state lines, ought to be met with the strictest scrutiny.

Ultimately, Rich Lowry's approach amounts to patriotic cravenness, a blind apron-clinging trust that the Government would never(!) do anything that could harm us. Sanchez argues for a much clearer-headed, innately American way to approach the question of balancing liberty with security. Despite what you sometimes hear nowadays, a good patriot is a skeptic.

I apologize for depriving you all of the blinding light of my reason, the psychic kick to the head of my astounding insights, and the guilty titter that my unique brand of humor induces. However, the capitalist monkey on my back insists that I finish the renovation of my townhome so that I may rent it and so destroy the future and credit rating of some poor worker. This is all justified by the comfortable foam padding it will add to my bottom line.

So, all the paint fumes that I have inhaled over the long labor day weekend while my wife and prog sipped Mint Juleps on the porch have stunted my mental capacities. (Considering how low on the scale you started, have you considered whether mental capacities can go negative? -ed.)

While I make a last dash for the light at the end of the tunnel, praying that it is not an oncoming train and hoping that I can finish the damn house by next weekend, reread all of Johno's excellent posts while I laboriously handknit a couple posts in my limitless spare time.

Geek Lethal responds to my Ehrenreich thinkery:

"Personally, I found her thesis, that it sucks to be poor, not particularly revealing or challenging. What I found interesting was that so many people didn't know that already, and therefore had to buy her book to find that out."

Fucken-A.