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October 31, 2004

Spooky Visitors

 by Jeremy

It's Halloween and we've got all the lights out except for a dozen or so candles and our two Jack-O-Lanterns, oh and a Paul Revere tin lantern. We have spooky classical music on the radio.

For some reason we are not getting as many trick-or-treaters on our block as we normally do, though we've gotten some fun ones.

But here's what we did get...audible over the loud horns and violins of the spooky soundtrack we had playing, we could hear through the open back windows, the howls of some very obliging and very spooky sounding coyotes.

We do occasionally have coyotes in the woods behind our house, sometimes scampering, with their wild eyes and guiltily hunched shoulders, through our yard. But they rarely howl so distinctly. This time they certainly did; they were evidently very much in the holiday spirit. We went out back and saw Lexie, the dog next door, standing outside barking severely at the woods. That was ten minutes ago and she still won't shut up. I think those spooky coyotes are long gone now.

Here, to spook and edify you, is what the coyote howls sounded like (this is a real coyote howling but not recorded by me).

UPDATE: Are you snickering at the notion that coyotes can be frightening? Put your drink down, check your pacemaker, and click this. Maybe Lexie is not so crazy to still be barking, though it has been half an hour already.

Posted by Jeremy at 07:41 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Missing Candidate

 by Jeremy

I just some somone on TV say she wants to elect a president who will admit when he has made a mistake. My question is this: does anyone out there know of such a candidate? Is there a write-in campaign for Jim Bakker I'm not aware of? Can you make sense of this for me?

Posted by Jeremy at 12:06 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 30, 2004

Link, Link Like the Wind

 by Jeremy

Ok, I realize that you can't link to every cockamamie post on some county newspaper article featuring local bloggers. I'm just hoping you'll consider linking to this particular cockamamie post. It's a good article, though there are always things in these articles that are worthy of debate or contradiction or correction (and please do). But, in the interest not only of me, but of my fellow local bloggers, link...for the love of all that is holy.

Or at least consider it?

You mean you're going to let Osama Bin Laden, Yassir Arafat, and that goddamn Lancet article...and that election...(did I miss anything?) distract you from something like this?

But seriously, it's fine if you don't link (except for one person who said he'd link but didn't and is not going to get any Halloween candy from me if he knocks on my door this year. No hard feelings, but no joke either. Not even a candy corn). (UPDATE: OK, one candy corn. But the Snickers are another story)

Posted by Jeremy at 10:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Vaira Vike-Freiberga

 by Jeremy

Here is something this psychology professor and president of Latvia said in an interview last year on CNN when Wolf Blitzer asked why she supported an invasion of Iraq:

Because we have had experience of loss of liberty. We have experienced tyranny and we know that the Second World War and its sequels were [due in^*] large part to not containing, for instance Hitler's ambitions, when there was still time. Mind you, Stalin's ambitions had a lot to do with it, too, and he was something much more difficult to contain. But in fact, these two tyrants were allowed to run rampant over a large part of Europe. And this part of Europe was cut off from the rest of it and knew exactly what it means to live under tyranny and the price of appeasement. We paid it. We paid it.

* The CNN transcription has this as "new and" but I can't make any sense of that. I assumed she said "due in."

Posted by Jeremy at 01:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Underreported Stories

 by Jeremy

Here are a few things I think are worth reading as we reflect on the war in Iraq as well as the candidates' respective views on its wisdom and its future. First from the Wall Street Journal (I've lost some of you already, I know, but you should read on) featuring some important perspective from Iraqi blogger Ali Fadhil:

BAGHDAD, Iraq--Basking in the sun by the Al Hamra Hotel swimming pool, a Spanish journalist complained to me that "all my editors want is blood, blood, blood. No context. No politics."

Such editors are cruising to be scooped by such local Iraqi blogs as Iraq the Model, which last summer debunked a Los Angeles Times story on the departure of Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer. The Times told its readers that Bremer had fled abruptly, "afraid to look in the eye the people he had ruled for more than a year." In fact, as Iraq the Model reported, Mr. Bremer before leaving delivered a television address that gave a moving account of his tenure and his hopes for the new all-Iraqi interim government.

The bloggers had heard it, the L.A. Times reporter had not. The paper ultimately had to correct its account, though never acknowledging the indignant Iraqis who caught its snide oversight.

Meet one of those bloggers, Ali Fadhil, a key author of Iraq the Model, perhaps the best known of the blogs, with 7,000 individual visitors a day. Thirty-four years old, a Sunni, Fadhil is a cheerful Baghdad doctor who contributes news and commentary.

Medical students in Iraq use English in their classrooms, so doctors are overrepresented among English-language bloggers, as they are among translators. All of the main contributors to Iraq the Model are young physicians who see a cross-section of Iraqi patients daily and have witnessed, Ali says, a steep improvement in medical services since Saddam was overthrown.

[...]

Ali is more worried about the Americans, given John Kerry's talk of setting an announced timetable for the removal of U.S. troops, and he is dismayed by U.S. commentators and career bureaucrats who say that democracy in Iraq is impossible. "What they really are saying is that we are barbarians. There is some racism in that. They despise Islam and think it cannot reform itself or lead to reform. They think we are so ignorant we need a dictator."

But "look at what happened in Najaf when the US chased out al Sadr. The media said the people were angry, but they were only angry with al Sadr. They demonstrated against al Sadr and for the [interim] government. There was very little news on that."

I would also strongly encourage you to see Frank Martin's post on the horror that was Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime:

Imagine discussing Omaha beach without the context of Bergen-Belsen. Imagine someone in a position of responsibility within the media making the editioral decision to ensure that no one talked about Bergen-Belsen because it might effect the emotions of the audience in way that doesnt further their political goals. What would we call that kind of person?

Posted by Jeremy at 11:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Culture of Fear

 by Jeremy

Jeff Jarvis makes a compelling case for Bin Laden as a renter of Fahrenheit 911 (chalk up another sale to Michael Moore):

: The eerie thing about the bin Laden tape is how he remixes Michael Moore -- remixes as if in a Cuisinart. I swear the guy saw Fahrenheit 9/11 and picked up the themes for his latest wacky show -- even the fixation with that goat book. It's so nutty that if he weren't such an evil murdering slime, it would almost be funny. Or it would sound like another 527 ad.

Here's Bin Laden:

We had agreed with the [the Sept. 11] overall commander Mohamed Atta, may God rest his soul, to carry out all operations in 20 minutes -- before Bush and his administration could take notice.

It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the American forces would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone at a time when they most needed him because he thought listening to a child discussing her goat and its ramming was more important than the planes and their ramming of the skyscrapers. This gave us three times the time needed to carry out the operations, thanks be to God. . . .

Your security is not in the hands of [Democratic presidential candidate John F.] Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands, and each state that does not harm our security will remain safe.

The thing I don't get is why is he implying that he will attack us again? Didn't he hear Moore's pronouncement that "there is no terrorist threat"? Since when is Bin Laden conspiring with Karl Rove to create the culture of fear. When did that start happening? I just don't understand these things I guess.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:10 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 29, 2004

Where the '100,000' Comes From

 by Jeremy

I think we will be seeing more stories tearing this down, but Shannon Love does a pretty good job, explaining that the study used epidemiological statistical methods in which data from randomly sampled areas is extrapolated and applied to a general whole -- in other words, it's crap:

At the very end of the paper (page 7, paragraph 1) they concede that:

"We suspect that a random sample of 33 Iraqi locations is likely to encounter one or a couple of particularly devastated areas. Nonetheless, since 52 of 73 (71%) violent deaths and 53 of 142 (37%) deaths during the conflict occurred in one cluster, it is possible that by extraordinary chance, the survey mortality estimate has been skewed upward. "

Gee, you think? It's almost as if military violence is not randomly distributed across the population of Iraq but is instead intelligently directed at specific areas, rendering a statistical extrapolation of deaths totally useless.

In the next paragraph they admit:

"Removing half the increase in infant deaths and the Falluja data still produces a 37% increase in estimated mortality."

That puts their final numbers just above the high end of the range reported by other sources.

This "peer reviewed study" is a piece of polemical garbage. Everybody is supposed to take away the bumper sticker summary, "Coalition kills 100,000 Iraqi civilians, half of them children," without reading the details. It tries to use crude epidemiological models like those used to study disease and applies them to the conscious infliction of violence by human beings. The result is statistical static.

(Via Michael Totten)

Posted by Jeremy at 08:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Hate-Based Polling is the New Black

 by Jeremy

Frank Martin in the comments to my previous post:

How can you tell when Bush is winning? When the spam goes up and the hate mail flows.

My cup runneth over.

And Megan McArdle has a related observation in preface to her endorsement:

What a long, agonizing trip its been. Throughout the process, I've been subjected to approximately 8 zillion exhortations along the lines of "How on earth could you consider voting for that son-of-a-bitch?" People who bemoan the increasing partisanship of our society will be pleased to hear that both parties seem to be thoroughly united in the belief that anyone who is not voting their way is either a drooling moron or a venal hatemonger, out to destory All That Is Good and Fine in This Great Nation of Ours.

Posted by Jeremy at 02:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Spam, Europe

 by Jeremy

I've been getting flooded with spam comments and so I've fiddled with the dials on MT-Blacklist to try and block them more efficiently. There's a possibility that I've inadvertently blocked all of Europe from commenting! If you are one of our European readers...please don't take it personally. I like Europe; I really do. It's one of my top favorite continents!

Seriously, please email me to let me know if you've been blocked from commenting, and I will fix the error ASAP.

UPDATE: I found an entry in my blacklist called "EU.com" and I removed it. I'm not sure, but I think Europe is free to come and go as it pleases now (not that you've been beating down the door to comment, I'm just saying).

Posted by Jeremy at 01:47 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

A local news article on blogging: I'm quoted

 by Jeremy

I'm told there are two photos of me in the print version but thankfully they do not appear in the web version [UPDATE: one now does]. This article is a good faith swing at sizing up the blogosphere with respect to matters personal, political, and media-related.

The paper, I'm sorry to say, makes you pay to read online, so I've posted the article for all to see here. Here's the link to the original location if you want to pay, which I heartily encourage you to do if you live in the region or otherwise want to support our local paper.

Quoted in the article, in addition to Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos) are a number of local bloggers, though our URLs are not included. You found me. Check out Kristen Beam here. Scott Brodeur is here. Also Jennifer Myszkowski, Kelsey Flynn, and Nerissa Nields. I'm trusting you can find Daily Kos, Matt Drudge, and Wonkette on your own.

I think it's a pretty good article. The only thing I want to correct for the record is the impression that I am some sort of union official ("union administrator"). I am the benefits administrator for an insurance plan offered by a labor union. Just an honest conflation of details I think.

I Also believe that Steve, the reporter who wrote the story, didn't know how huge Instapundit is until after he'd written the story or I think he'd have cited it as an example of one of the most popular blogs (though Wonkette and Drudge have superior name recognition among non-blog readers).

Posted by Jeremy at 12:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Though it pains the Lancet to say it...

 by Jeremy

The medical journal, The Lancet, has reported this clinical finding:

"Democratic imperialism has led to more deaths not fewer. This political and military failure continues to cause scores of casualties among non-combatants. It is a failure that deserves to be a serious subject for research."

This because U.S. bombing has killed a hundred thousand women and children, or a million, or ten million. Whatever number Saddam disappeared or exterminated, add at least one. Let's just say I'm waiting for actual journalists to check this story (though, gee whiz, the election is only a few days away. The Lancet probably forgot to consider that).

The researchers said the findings raise questions for those responsible for launching a pre-emptive war.

How can they think we'll so easily believe that 100,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed by U.S. and British bombs? It must have seemed like a small number as compared with Saddam's attrocities. Here's one account:

Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam's needless war with Iran. Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam's reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam's 8,000-odd days in power.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

U. N. to Watch Polls

 by Jeremy

U. N. Observers Help Ensure Honest U. S. Vote

The United Nations Electoral Assistance Division (EAD) brought in through an emergency act of Congress to oversee an election that has already been marred by a number of problems, has released a report on its preliminary findings, a U. N. spokesman reports today:

"Our team of observers have catalogued numerous irregularities, as listed below along with our recommended interventions and corrective actions:

PROBLEM: 58,000 absentee ballots have gone missing in the State of Florida.

ACTION: Informed Florida election board and Unites States Federal Election Commission of same.

RECCOMMENDATION: Find the forms. Send them out. Repeat as necessary.

PROBLEM: Employees contracted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) have registered numerous people more than once and have submitted forms containing fictional names.

ACTION: Informed election authorities.

RECCOMMENDATION: Try to be more accurate in future.

PROBLEM: Hundreds of thousands of residents of Clarke County, Ohio taken from their homes in 'cattle cars' and brought to makeshift tent cities where more than 50,000 have been slaughtered by bands of hooded 'neo Nazi' militia. Irregularities include (but are not limited to): crucifixion, enslavement, beheadings, systematic genocide with the aid of helicopter gunships and bombers, mass rape of children.

ACTION: Asked government officials to desist within a realistic time frame.

RECCOMMENDATION: See above action; repeat as necessary. No further recommendations are offered as no substantial voting irregularities, per se, have been documented.

Observers also expressed concerns about electronic polling machines that leave no paper trail.

* * * To see the previous posts in this series click here.

Posted by Jeremy at 07:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 28, 2004

Kerry Gets Serious While Guardian Chats with 'Americans'

 by Jeremy

Kerry finds his presidential gravitas, and the Guardian is there to document it:

A lunar eclipse. A World Series victory after 86 years for the Boston Red Sox. For the Democratic faithful, it was an unmistakable omen: John Kerry, locked for weeks in a dead heat with George Bush, now had the stars on his side.

And they also manage to find a typical American to quote:

"If there was any doubt I had, I don't no more," said Jennifer Hawkins, 27, a restaurant manager and part-time student. "He was just awesome."

Posted by Jeremy at 09:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

 by Jeremy

The Red Sox Did it!!!

Posted by Jeremy at 12:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 27, 2004

Behind the Scenes at Instapundit Mission Control

 by Jeremy

Michael Totten, who has been minding the Insta-store along with Megan McArdle (AKA Jane Galt) and Ann Althouse, has figured out how Glenn Reynolds does it:

Cows have four stomachs. Glenn Reynolds has six brains.

One reads the Internet. (Yes, the entire Internet.) A second brain thinks about what the first brain reads. A third answers his email. (I have access to his inbox. It gives a whole new meaning to the word ?Instalanche.?) A fourth brain composes posts on Instapundit. A fifth writes columns for Tech Central Station, MSNBC, and The Guardian. A sixth teaches law.

[...]

Before I became one-third of Instapundit I didn?t know how he does it. Now I really don?t know how he does it.

I figured it was something like that. Six brains. Cool.

Posted by Jeremy at 09:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

World Series Post

 by Jeremy

I'm not generally known as a patriotic baseball freak. But, following the opening ceremony of the fourth game of the World Series, I feel I must point out one thing: the first word of our national anthem is not "Wo" and is certainly not "Wo-oh."

That's all.

Posted by Jeremy at 08:19 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Arafat Unwell

 by Jeremy

It seems Arafat may be on his way out. I have previously gotten the sense that he has some sort of familiar sounding chronic digestive problem and recently had a severe 'stomach flu' and I've wondered if he's got stomach cancer, but I can't see how. He'd be thin as a rail and, given how long people have been speculating, he'd surely be dead by now. And now this:

Arafat underwent a minor diagnostic procedure on Monday after complaining of stomach pains. Palestinian officials said then that an endoscopy found no serious ailment but the president remained weak.

Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said stomach cancer had been ruled out.

Been there, done that. Except I'm not an extremely frail old man with undoubtedly many other ailments and (one would like to think) a grim awareness of having caused the deaths of many innocent people. It sounds like, stomach cancer or no, he's dying of 'old age.' If he's got something like gastroparesis (which I have previously said was fair game to wish on malevolent people!) then it sounds like that is the least of his problems, just an uncomfortable barometer of his general lack of health.

Couple this with Sharon's move to pull out of Gaza and it's not inconceivable that this could be looked at as the beginning of a turning point in the Middle East. But for the better or the worse? I'd like to think Arafat's vacuum will be filled by those who actually support a two state solution, but I don't have the foggiest idea.

Posted by Jeremy at 05:50 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

How to Blog

 by Jeremy

I like this advice from Seth Godin on blogging (via Jeff Jarvis):

Beware the CEO blog

It's apparently the newest thing. I just got off the phone with one CEO who's itching to start, and read an email from another who just did.

Here's the problem. Blogs work when they are based on:
Candor
Urgency
Timeliness
Pithiness and
Controversy

(maybe Utility if you want six).

Does this sound like a CEO to you?

Short and sweet, folks: If you can't be at least four of the five things listed above, please don't bother. People have a choice (4.5 million choices, in fact) and nobody is going to read your blog, link to your blog or quote your blog unless there's something in it for them.

Save the fluff for the annual report.

I'm nothing like a CEO and never hope to be one, but Cara and I have just launched an online printing empire [laughs the laugh of an evil capitalist] and I have, naturally, started a blog to go with it. I think I'm doing a decent job, but it feels a little (ok, a lot) different from proper blogging. I don't want to blog disingenuously (and thus too many days pass between posts) but it reminds me of making a speech and trying to sound casual and sincere (not that I've done many). I suppose when you blog you're selling your opinions, so it's similar. But blogging your business will either keep you honest -- because you've got to believe in what you're selling or your blog will suck hard -- or you will stop blogging.

On the other hand, I don't think my Pixeltrip blog has to be a good blog per se, so much as simply a way for customers to get to know the people who run what would otherwise be a faceless, web-based store. When you pop over to the local copy shop, similarly, and find that the owners are a nice couple who you enjoy making small talk with, you don't necessarily care whether the conversation is first rate.

That's where I've probably been making a mistake: I've been trying to blog interesting and informative things about printing and/or about other products we sell. But I've been struggling to come up with stuff. I should let myself blog a little more freely.

Here's the caveat, though: people who click on to a print shop site are, if only for the moment, preoccupied with the project they're working on. They're trying to make decisions about paper, ink colors, rubber stamps, trying to comprehend the difference between lithography and thermography...so they really do want to learn stuff. So maybe I'm on the right track after all.

[Perhaps Seth Godin should have added don't blog endlessly about your own subjective stuff. Don't think out loud at people unless you honestly think they'll find it interesting. In other words, I'll shut up now.]

Posted by Jeremy at 07:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bush Flip Flops and Good Thing, Too

 by Jeremy

Yes indeed. Bush now says he supports civil unions, though he skirts around the actual term UPDATE: I read a poor account initially -- here's what he said:

President Bush said in an interview this past weekend that he disagreed with the Republican Party platform opposing civil unions of same-sex couples and that the matter should be left up to the states.

Mr. Bush has previously said that states should be permitted to allow same-sex unions, even though White House officials have said he would not have endorsed such unions as governor of Texas. But Mr. Bush has never before made a point of so publicly disagreeing with his party's official position on the issue.

In an interview on Sunday with Charles Gibson, an anchor of "Good Morning America" on ABC, Mr. Bush said, "I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do so." ABC, which broadcast part of the interview on Monday, is to broadcast the part about civil unions on Tuesday.

Is this just pre election B.S? Not even Andrew Sullivan thinks so:

Who knows what to make of George W. Bush's statement today that he now favors civil unions for gay couples - although his party platform is against them. For what it's worth, I tend to think this is his real position, rather than a belated realization that his extremism on this matter has cost him many votes. But if it is his real position, why didn't he say so before? And how can he support the FMA which specifically bars the "incidents of marriage" for gay couples? President speak in forked tongue. More to the point, he must surely be opposed to the state amendments in eight states that ban marriage for gays and also anything that even vaguely looks like a marriage. Those states are Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Utah. If you agree with this president, you have to vote against these state constitutional amendments. They bar civil unions as well.

In other words, Bush has painted himself into the same species of triangulated, flip-flopped corner with respect to his supposed support for a constitutional amendment (that he knows won't pass) as the impossible corner Kerry has boxed himself into when it comes to Iraq. Rabid homophobes just don't have a genuine horse in this race and may never get one. If the best the bigots can get at a time of utterly unprecedented advances in civil rights for gay couples is some empty pandering by Bush, then the Pat Robertson fan club are in serious trouble.

In Iraq and other countries facing fascist rule and/or sharia law, the potential future for gay couples (just to take an example) could well be very, very bleak if even ham-handed steps are not taken to beat a path for democratic reform.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:27 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 26, 2004

World Series Live Blog

 by Jeremy

Ok, I admit I was being sarcastic with that last post. Red Sox. There I said. Yankees. Yankees. Yankees. There, I said that too.

Local baseball guru David Pinto is live blogging the world series over at Baseball Musings. I think I will be using it to follow along while watching it on the tube. Dave's commentary is far superior.

Posted by Jeremy at 09:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Post About You Know Who

 by Jeremy

I have been wanting to post about a certain team playing in a certain series. I used to support this team's arch rivals, who did not quite make it to the series I mention. Now that I live in Massachusetts I am bound by certain ridiculously superstitious rules to avoid putting a hex on the certain team I refer to above. So I haven't said how I have been re-programmed enough that I am excited now that the team I used to like didn't make it and the team I especially can't mention are not altogether disappointing (they way they always have before...but I fear I have already said too much).

Anyhow, Norm, believe it or not, has a great post on you know who, regarding the you know what. Read it.

Posted by Jeremy at 09:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Scandal and Counter-Scandal

 by Jeremy

You know, this story about missing explosives, I have to admit, is too complicated at this early stage for me to feel able to post about in detail. I tried. I kept deleting whole paragraphs and starting again. There's something rotten in this thing, but right now I'm going to read a bit more about all of this.

I can't see, though, how it could be a mere coincidence that a scandal being used by Kerry and Edwards to attack Bush's war leadership, a scandal that appears less earth-shaking the more you read about it, happens by chance to appear just a week prior to the election. It's also a bit intriguing that CBS had apparently been planning to air this story on October 31st but they found they were in competition with the New York Times, so they decided, for that reason alone, they could not sit on the story:

Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of "60 Minutes," said in a statement that "our plan was to run the story on [Oct.] 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold, so the decision was made for the Times to run it."

If it had been reported two days before the election, clearly, there would not have been much time for it to be debunked or spun (though you can already hear the air hissing out of this balloon just one day after it did come out).

It seems 380 tons of explosives would have to have been carted out not by a few looters with donkeys but by a massive convoy of trucks. A military emailer to Michael Totten (yes, I know, it's not a fact to be accepted, but it's a point to consider as you read accounts of this story in the paper) has this to say:

380 tons of explosives would require about 40 truckloads to haul it away. It would have taken more than 1 week (and an unbelievable amount of man-hours and heavy-moving equipment) simply to load the trucks. To imply that those trucks could have been loaded and then driven away unnoticed, under the watchful eye of the 3rd ID is absolutely ludicrous.

So either the U.S. military was told by George Bush himself "hey, so it's a convoy of 40 trucks leaving a munitions area. Don't sweat it. Let the fuckers take the stuff" (which would be incompetent indeed) or, just perhaps, they were taken out of there during the lengthy lead up to the invasion, or at least before the U.S. would have been able to get there.

Ann Althouse has this to say:

I'VE NEVER READ A CODE OF JOURNALISTIC ETHICS, but it seems to me that this much is clear: it is absolutely intolerable for a news organization to hold onto a story for the purpose of breaking it so close to an election as to prevent a fair investigation and response.

Roger Simon's remarkably reliable nose for scandal (or in this case perhaps I should say 'counter-scandal') is smelling a rat here and he's pissed; and if Roger's suspicions are born out then we should all be royally pissed:

If the reports that Mohammed El Baradei or someone close to him is behind the leak of the putative documents that caused the new NYTrogate Scandal regarding missing explosive in Irag, the implications are staggering.

Consider this: That means a high official of the United Nations... and not just an ordinary high official but one empowered with preventing nuclear weapons proliferation... is trying to influence a US election. And we thought we had seen everything with the Oil-for-Food scandal!

I don't know exactly how this is all going to pan out, but it's clear that this hot potato is not the October surprise that Kerry and Edwards are trying to turn it into, even if the story is taken at face value by many voters. Ann Althouse again:

This is a pesky issue to be dealing with so late in the game, but for those already convinced the war was woefully mismanaged, it may not matter that much. Indeed, those who accept the raggedness of the post-war effort and stand by Bush may also not care that much.

Another way of defining that latter category of voter might be that we are people who wish things had gone better after the fall of the regime (though we feared far worse), are still unsure how much incompetence was to blame, but in any event don't know who else was planning on doing anything about that regime.

Here's a killer fact:

380 tons of explosives unaccounted for, 243,000 tons of munitions destroyed, and who in hell knows how many other tons of God-knows-what is God-knows-where. And I dare say this and more was in the hands of blood thirsty bastards for many years before this war and that many people in high governmental offices knew this as well and declined to do anything about it.

Posted by Jeremy at 07:32 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Election Prediction

 by Jeremy

Here is my entry in Norm's celebrated presidential pundit/prophet event. I was uncertain as to how to proceed so I decided to cheat by consulting my magic 8 ball. I hereby give you the opportunity to consult it yourself. If the 8 ball does not answer your question then you are not concentrating hard enough. Ask the question in a booming voice and then refresh your browser until you get a solid response.

But remember, I am the master of the 8 ball so the prize is mine to claim.

UPDATE: Well, while the magic 8 Ball was close in terms of the electoral vote, it was not so close on the popular vote. In fact, it was pointed out to me that the ratio between the two probably isn't even possible. I checked the Magic 8 Ball website for some satisfaction on this complaint and here, wouldn't you know, is the disclaimer I wish I'd seen before entering this contest:

While Mattel has never guaranteed the accuracy of the Magic 8 Ball?s answers, it?s safe to say that the desired (if not correct) answer will eventually make its way through the mysterious and murky black liquid inside Magic 8 Ball.

Well caveat-frick'n-emptor.

UPDATE #2: Here (for those with strong stomachs) is a kind of alien autopsy, if you will, of an actual Magic 8 Ball in a laboratory setting (note: I do not condone this sort of thing and post this not out of vindictiveness, but in the genuine interest of scientific inquiry).

Posted by Jeremy at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 25, 2004

My Future Plans as a Voter

 by Jeremy

It's decided:

• Totten for Senate in 1996 2006 (working slogan, "Because He's Old Enough." But we're not launching a campaign yet, per Patrick, because if we harass him while he's busy trying to fly the instapundit mothership this week, he might crash it and then we're all doomed).
• Tony Blair in 2008
• With Tony Blair as President, I will lobby for him to appoint Norm to the Supreme Court (I still harbor a belief that Blair reads Normblog, though I should know better. The logic is simply this: c'mon, gimme a break [shrugs and arches eyebrows meaningfully, exhortatively])

Posted by Jeremy at 06:07 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Don't think of a pink elephant

 by Jeremy

Please ignore the HTML gibberish in the gray section on top of the page (UPDATE: fixed now thanks to a tip from Chris Lawrence). It's not some kind of call for help written in code. It's a plea for Truthlaidbear to finally track me down at my new location so I can be upgraded from "Insignificant and, Anyway, Squished Cockroach" up to something like "Pathetic Fucking Weasel" or whatever the case may be. The genius of that guy is that he makes us beg for it (relax, I'm kidding, sort of. I'm sure he's a nice person. And the concept is fun. But do you see, my British friends? Unadulterated irony is all very fun until someone loses an eye. I'm being ironic again, by the way. Did you notice that? I mean the second time? And once again, just then -- that last time. Oh, and there again...OK. I begin to see the problem).

Just take everything and reverse it, then unreverse the things that were obviously sincerely meant then, if you're still angry, have a good chuckle at yourself and re-reverse the offending thingy.

If you find this confusing, here's some advice from a letter President Bush has written to Pootergeek, or something. I think it's supposed to be ironic (see above) but I actually find it a useful tool and plan to print it on a business card to carry around with me.

Please don't take that last comment as some kind of ironic barb. It was ironic but not ironic barby so much, perhaps, as ironic ken.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:33 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 24, 2004

Why I am Voting for Bush

 by Jeremy

The least important but most difficult aspect of my decision: my tiresome inner struggle (feel free to skip this part)

It hasn't been easy for me. I am 37. In the last nearly 20 years of voting in presidential elections and primaries, I have cast votes for Jesse Jackson (primary), Michael Dukakis, Clinton, and Nader twice. Did I want any of these people to actually lead the country? Yes to Dukakis (though who knows how that actually would have turned out) and yes to Clinton the first time. After four years of Clinton I threw my vote away on Nader, because I wanted to make a statement (though I knew no one would hear it). That's also when I quit the Democratic party, feeling that Clinton had taken the party so far to the right that party loyalty no longer meant anything to a progressive voter. I threw Nader a bone once again in 2000 because my statement was so well received the first time, I didn't want to disappoint. Anyway, I reasoned, Gore would take Massachusetts no matter how I voted. He did, of course, in a landslide.

Kerry is going to take Massachusetts; there can no doubt about that. It would be easy, then, to hide behind this fact when deciding how to cast my vote next week. I could avoid many ugly exchanges by voting for Kerry (knowing he will win my state anyway) but I have zero intention of doing that (reasons to follow). I could write someone in: Tony Blair, McCain/Lieberman, Lieberman/McCain, Michael Totten (is he old enough!?), Roger L. Simon, etc. But when I visualize myself writing-in someone who will not win, cannot serve, or who anyway is not running, I can't avoid the image of myself feeling like a damned jackass the next day (and for years afterward) for using my vote as a security blanket. The final alternative, then, is to vote for Bush. This too is easy for me in one sense, in that I know my vote will not be reflected in my state's result. In other respects, though, it's the most difficult course of action because numerous people will for the rest of my life accuse me of having sold my soul to the anti-christ, but I guess I've decided I'm OK with that. In any event, these people already think that so I might as well cross the final 'T's and dot the last 'I's (in blood of course).

It's a War, I'm sorry to report

But then there's the fact that I want Bush rather than Kerry to be commander in chief for the next four years because I think the fate of the world depends on it.

If Bush were to appoint Kerry as Attorney General, I'd be OK with that (since we're speaking of imagined candidates and such) but I don't want Kerry anywhere near the driver's seat when it comes to the foreign policy side of the war against fascistic elements in the Arab and Muslim world that we are currently, regrettably, in.

Why I won't vote for Kerry

There are many levels to this whole question and many ways to approach an answer, but I will use that New York Times Magazine profile of Kerry as a launching point for a partial response. First a characterization of a view of the post 9/11 world that I think fairly represents the Democratic Party's philosophical stance (referred to misleadingly as 'the liberal view' in this excerpt):

In the liberal view, the enemy this time -- an entirely new kind of ''non-state actor'' known as Al Qaeda -- more closely resembles an especially murderous drug cartel than it does the vaunted Red Army. Instead of military might, liberal thinkers believe, the moment calls for a combination of expansive diplomacy abroad and interdiction at home, an effort more akin to the war on drugs than to any conventional war of the last century.

Even Democrats who stress that combating terrorism should include a strong military option argue that the ''war on terror'' is a flawed construct. ''We're not in a war on terror, in the literal sense,'' says Richard Holbrooke, the Clinton-era diplomat who could well become Kerry's secretary of state. ''The war on terror is like saying 'the war on poverty.' It's just a metaphor. What we're really talking about is winning the ideological struggle so that people stop turning themselves into suicide bombers.''

This, of course, is the same article in which Kerry infamously used the term "nuisance," to describe the diminished state of threat he'd like to reduce terrorism to, and in which he compared the struggle against terrorism to the law enforcement struggle against prostitution and illegal gambling. I found it unfortunate that the outcry against this was spun as if it were some cynical Karl Rove semantic trick. In fact the article gives a credible picture of a John Kerry who does largely have a law enforcement view (albeit a serious one) of how the struggle (rather than war) against Islamist terrorism can be best won:

Kerry turned his work on the committee into a book on global crime, titled ''The New War,'' published in 1997. He readily admitted to me that the book ''wasn't exclusively on Al Qaeda''; in fact, it barely mentioned the rise of Islamic extremism. But when I spoke to Kerry in August, he said that many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror.

''Of all the records in the Senate, if you don't mind my saying, I think I was ahead of the curve on this entire dark side of globalization,'' he said. ''I think that the Senate committee report on contras, narcotics and drugs, et cetera, is a seminal report. People have based research papers on it. People have based documents on it, movies on it. I think it was a significant piece of work.''

More senior members of the foreign-relations committee, like Joe Biden and Richard Lugar, were far more visible and vocal on the emerging threat of Islamic terrorism. But through his BCCI investigation, Kerry did discover that a wide array of international criminals -- Latin American drug lords, Palestinian terrorists, arms dealers -- had one thing in common: they were able to move money around through the same illicit channels. And he worked hard, and with little credit, to shut those channels down.

In 1988, Kerry successfully proposed an amendment that forced the Treasury Department to negotiate so-called Kerry Agreements with foreign countries. Under these agreements, foreign governments had to promise to keep a close watch on their banks for potential money laundering or they risked losing their access to U.S. markets. Other measures Kerry tried to pass throughout the 90's, virtually all of them blocked by Republican senators on the banking committee, would end up, in the wake of 9/11, in the USA Patriot Act

Overlook the now familiar Kerry grandiosity in that second paragraph, and you have a picture of an aggressive bureaucratic player in the legal aspects of the war on terror, and one of the architects of some of the valid sections of the Patriot Act.

The thing that frightens me very much is that this all resonates with what has been my growing sense that Kerry has both a mandate and an inclination to avoid framing this modern struggle as a war. And in prosecuting a campaign against theocratic fascism (as they doggedly pursue nuclear weapons) as if it were a loose international syndicate of of non-state actors, this point of view coveniently avoids facing the fact Al Qaeda and other Jihadist terrorists, if they are non-state actors, are not that way by choice. This should have been the lesson of 9/11 when state-sponsored 'actors' (remember when Afghanistan was not a fledgling democracy?) killed 3,000 innocent people in what even then must have felt like a disappointingly meager kill compared with what they would certainly like to have seen (50,000 workers, two thousand foot tall buildings that, for all anyone knew, might have toppled rather than pancaked, etc.).

So yes, let's hope that an unflinching commitment by the U.S. and its allies aware that they are fighting a war can keep these people from seizing control of states (Iraq? Not if the U.S. and Britain win this war. Pakistan? Scary as hell, isn't it? Sudan? I don't remember when prostitutes, gangsters or even the IRA killed tens of thousands of innocent people and counting). If Al Qaeda gets its hands on a nuclear weapon we will no longer have the luxury of debating whether this is really a war or whether these are or are not state 'actors.'

I am not sure that Kerry doesn't, to an extent, share these fears. But (alright let's throw away the term 'flip-flop') I think he will spend his presidency triangulating between opposing views, each with its parcel of validity. He will see what he can do to reconcile the view that Bush and Rove contrived a 'war' out of a law enforcement problem, with the concern of others (like Edwards? like some part of Kerry himself?) that this is a war we can and must win but that it might turn into a war we could lose if we don't act decisively. And he'll have to fold in the Anybody But Bush vote that made his presidency possible, as well as his mandate to restore our diplomatic warmth with France and Germany, etc. He will have his work cut out for him, in other words, just playing it safe.

But how can I think Bush is better?

The world knows he will act when he says he will. He had an opportunity to invade Syria but didn't (the insane fundamentalist warlord my friends warn me about would certainly have done that). Bush hasn't been very tough on Iran or North Korea, true. But then he hasn't yet threatened either.

Kerry has said he would get tough with Iran if it becomes necessary. But we'd be back to the pre 9/11 guessing game where the U.N. threatens consequences, the U.S. signs on, but the whether cosequences come will be anyone's guess. Kerry, who has characterized the war in Iraq as a disastrous mistake, will remove the current level of credibility from any U.S. threat of military consequences. This would be extremely dangerous. And it isn't just a matter of what the response to a threat will be; it's a matter of whether or not fascist and Islamist states will consider the flouting of American backed resolutions a viable course of action to start with.

To put it more positively: Bush led the liberation of both Afghanistan and Iraq. I don't see how or why a 'progressive' would want to deny that. Life is lousy for many people in these countries and many people continue to die, particularly in Iraq. Many more people were dying before but, of course, we could more easily distance ourselves from that, just as we can distance ourselves from the slow genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

Whoever you vote for I hope we can all put behind us for good the fantasy of casting a vote that will cleanse the blood from our hands.

Both left and right have said that the thing that is most likely to reduce Al Qaeda's recruiting power will be to increase the opportunities available to young people in Arab and Muslim countries. The irony, from my perspective, is that the left seems to putting forth the idea that this can best be achieved through measures like debt forgiveness?, the lifting of blind sanctions against 'rogue' states?, oil-for-food style programs through the U.N? and the unclinching of the invisible fist of American imperialism, however that would work? (and yes, I favor preventing greedy corporations, not to mention fascists, theocrats, and kings from exploiting poor people in the Arab world).

Well, I suppose that last example, Oil-for-Food, was a bit of a setup. What it illustrates to me is that there are situations where the political structure of a country is so fundamentally oppressive that there is no way to increase the lot of its most oppressed people without radically changing that structure (have I gone crazy? has the world turned upside down? do you see why I have Marx shrugging on this site?).

I think I could go on all day and only scratch the surface here, so I'll leave it for now. I'll post more of my thinking as the week rolls on. I simply wanted to start this week by coming right out and saying it: I will be voting Democratic for congress and I will advocate in favor of improved health care, same sex marriage, legal abortion, and other domestic issues of importance on which I disagree with the current president but, on November 2nd, I will be voting for Bush.

And I hope you appreciate the honesty of the title I chose for this post. I was thinking of calling it "Why I am Voting for Economic and Social Justice, Improved Rights for Women and Gays, and against Nukes...Where it Matters Most" or something equally easy for people to ignore while skimming through dozens of titles in their news aggregator.

Posted by Jeremy at 04:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Varying Degrees Above Average

 by Jeremy

I find this both credible and completely unsurprising:

To Bush-bashers, it may be the most infuriating revelation yet from the military records of the two presidential candidates: the young George W. Bush probably had a higher I.Q. than did the young John Kerry.

[...]

Mr. Bush's score on the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test at age 22 again suggests that his I.Q was the mid-120's, putting Mr. Bush in about the 95th percentile of the population, according to Mr. Sailer. Mr. Kerry's I.Q. was about 120, in the 91st percentile, according to Mr. Sailer's extrapolation of his score at age 22 on the Navy Officer Qualification Test.

Of course, I don't necessarily think the higher a candidate's I.Q. the more likely they are to be a better president. John F. Kennedy's I.Q. was evidently 119. But if one of your main reasons for hating a candidate is that you think he's an idiot, then this sort of statistic can get you into trouble with yourself.

(Hat Tip: Roger)

Posted by Jeremy at 01:35 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Dear Yankee Imperialist Heathen Running Dog Zionist Libertine American Scum,

 by Jeremy

Marcus and Harry have some election polling results from Axis of Evil swing voters.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 23, 2004

Guardian Prays for Bush's Safety

 by Jeremy

...and wishes him Godspeed for the next four years. Or at least their lawyers should so advise them, after inciting his assassination [emphasis mine, though the words do tend to jump off the page without waiting to be asked]:

On November 2, the entire civilized world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?

The threat of assassination is not some distant, ironically charged historical reference; these days it's practically part of the official presidential job description. It could happen, in other words. And yes, assassins and mass murderers often do have some crazy, paranoid excuse prepared for the occasion of their capture. But then Jody Foster didn't actually announce she'd sleep with the first man who shot Reagan, any more than The Beatles conceived the White Album as a way of getting Charles Manson to start the race war that God willed. And probably David Berkowitz wasn't commanded by a talking dog to take the lives of young women in their cars.

The problem for the Guardian is that if someone does shoot Bush and then says "the Guardian told me to do it" it would not sound in the least paranoid and might actually hold water in a court of law.

So they had better start praying...

(Hat Tip: Cara, who read about it on Harry's Place and Normblog)

Posted by Jeremy at 03:02 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Althouse Blogs Dylan

 by Jeremy

Ann Althouse has blogged Dylan's new autobiography (the bits that seemed salient to her, summarized in fortune cookie length). This is a good read.

Posted by Jeremy at 02:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 22, 2004

DoS Attack

 by Jeremy

If you happened to notice that this blog was down for a couple of hours (or if you emailed me and it got bounced) it's because the hosting company I use, Affordablehost, the best hosting company I've ever hitched my wagon to, was the target of a massive "Denial of Service" attack. I have no reason to believe it had anything to do with me (other than paranoia owing to the fact that I ridiculed and heaped contempt upon Yassir Arafat this morning, but then again, I don't exactly have the attention of the world; Google would not have had time to tattle on me even).

I really like the fact that Affordble host emails updates like this. And they warn everybody whenever planned maintenance is going to happen. A solid company!

Anyway, all seems to be well now.

Posted by Jeremy at 11:27 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Johann Hari, Robert Fisk

 by Jeremy

Well, The Independent, the left leaning UK newspaper for which both Hari and Fisk have written, has a not very detailed report on the debate. I dare say the paper is pro-Fisk, so I'm still waiting for something a little more detailed and authoritative and less biased. But I guess we can conclude that the debate was civil and that Fisk was not reduced to a pile of ash, nor was Hari.

Two of The Independent's most provocative writers engaged a large audience in an animated public debate on the merits of the Iraq war at Manchester town hall last night.

The Independent debate, which placed Robert Fisk against Johann Hari on the question "Has the Iraq war made the world a safer place?", gave an eloquent voice to anti-war sentiment, in the traditions of Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky. Fisk's case, that the war had succeeded only in consigning Iraq to a state of "anarchy and madness", comfortably held sway among the audience of 500.

[...]

Fisk, whose writing in The Independent had clearly won over many in the audience, described how a recent journey south from Baghdad to Najaf revealed burnt-out Iraqi police vehicles, US trucks and an occupying force which was manifestly overrun. "The chances of [January] elections are fading faster than water running into the desert," said Fisk. "The Americans must leave Iraq, the Americans will leave Iraq, but the Americans can't leave Iraq."

Hari countered with his own vivid experiences among the Marsh Arabs. "While the Baathist [minders] were away, I asked them: what do you think about the war? They concluded it was better to take your chance with the Americans than live with infernal Baathism."

I'm looking forward to Johann's take on how it went. They should have had a live stream.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:58 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The Arafat Interview

 by Jeremy

Arafat on Kerry

Our brief chat with this touchingly private, fiercely independent terror pimp reveals a man of many moods and, somewhat surprisingly, we find he is a staunch supporter of one John Forbes Kerry.

WHOKNEW: Over the years you've come to be known as something of a bad guy.

YASSIR ARAFAT: Oh? How so?

WK: Well, I mean, exploiting the misfortune of the Palestinian people, just to start with the most hypocritical point, but then the slaughtering of Israeli children like so many heads of veal, etc. Things along those general lines. But I don't want to start out on the wrong foot here, and I mean that.

YA: Look, don't you think these questions get a bit boring? I don't wish to disrespect you, but I mean these are the same top ten sort of questions your readers can get from any magazine article, any book. Why don't you ask me something a bit different?

WK: Well, sure. Now that you mention it I think our readers would be interested to know a little more about your recent announcement that you are endorsing John Kerry in the U.S. Presidential election. Could you talk a little bit about Kerry, a man who you have said reminds you of yourself?

YA: John Kerry has a similar gift of grace; you listen to him and you know there's somebody home, the lights are on, the elevator is working. This is electric, compared to George W. Bush, who is the shallowest man to occupy the White House since Calvin Coolidge. Kerry is a real trouper. He had to overcome a ton of dismal press last winter, is up against the Republican radio machine, seems to enjoy crowds and hoopla, and compared to Mr. Bush, the Speaker of Very Short Sentences, Mr. Kerry is positively Churchillian. I think his snoot is a pretty regular snoot.

WK: Snoot?

YA: If you have to ask...

WK: You don't care for President Bush?

YA: What a disaster this shallow and deceitful president has been! But Mr. Kerry is wise enough to know that reasonableness and high principle must anchor his campaign. Anger doesn't play so well as a theme in presidential politics. And much depends on fate. He is jousting, showing the colors, rallying the faithful, and biding his time. Are going to eat that corn chip?

WK: It's all yours. I think you'll find it quite delicious.

YA: Thanks.

WK: But to be more specific, what are the issues that you think Kerry is stronger on. Can you elaborate?

YA: John Kerry is campaigning for the office of the presidency, he is on the front lines of a campaign to take back his country for the people, and he's working hard 7 days a week, day and night, and is addressing all the issues that concern the American people, that includes drastic job losses, the economy, the crushing deficit, health care, the environment, education...

WK: Anything else?

YA: If you would let me finish...

WK: Sorry.

YA: ...Kerry offers other reasons for hope. He opposes converting Yucca Mountain into a nuclear waste dump. He noted in the first debate that America cannot demand that other countries dispose of their nukes while America is busy engineering new ones. Kerry will make the rich pay their share, and end corporate welfare - I have heard some inklings of that.

WK: Anything to add?

YA: Just one thing; I think it's a shame he has shaken off that charming Boston accent he once had. 'Jenjis Khaaan' indeed! He could charm the socks off of you with that type of talk. But now -- and I don't understand this -- now he no longer speaks this way. Now he has no hook. And I think it does him no favors. It was kind of cute I guess is what I'm saying.

WK: Well thank you very much!

YA: Right. Go have your Sabbath, or whatever. All my best.

* * * To see the previous posts in this series click here.

Posted by Jeremy at 01:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 21, 2004

Those Moods

 by Jeremy

I would like to post seriously about my voting strategy and the attendant rationale. I will do that tomorrow. Today I just wasn't in the mood to blog.

Here's what I want to know: how does one arrange to have at least one person around one at all times prepared to whisper "oh, he's just in another one of his black moods."

Don't know where to put the question mark in that last paragraph.

Here's something I'd like to share: we were at the supermarket and we heard some kind of ruckus in the halloween snacks aisle. It turned out to have been a shelf of nifty haunted house models with moving parts, lights, and sound, endlessly repeating spooky riffs, ghoulish echoes, and macabre mishegas. My favorite was the haunted pirate house. There were a lot of scary Yarghs in that one. And I'm American here so correct me if this sounds off base, but I think it may be accurate to describe the pirate ghost's speaking voice as a kind of Wiltshire accented Harvey Fierstein. He kept saying things like "Who goes therrre!? Showw yrrself! Ferr ninety nine yearrrs we have walked the shorrrres of the isle of doooooom..."

It was very spooky, but once you'd heard it six or seven times it got pretty old. Still, I couldn't get that voice out of my head. I guess you could say it haunted me. The only way to purge it from my soul was to immitate it. I changed the words though, and I share it with you because Cara did not find it especially funny, though she should have. I feel slighted. Tell if you think this is funny. First, get a mental version of that pirate's voice going in your head.

Then consider the fact that you've got half a dozen pirates living in a house together for ninety nine years. How many times are they going to tell their sorry tale, you have to wonder. Isn't it far more likely, at any given moment, eavesdropping at their door, that you'd hear something like...

"Arrrgh! Ninety Nine yearrrrs and still no one can be botherrrred to take oot the trash but me. And would it kill ye mateys to pick up aroond herrre once in a hwyle? Aye, and would ye pass me the clickerrrrr? Whoo goes therrre?! I'm jist askin' ferrr a little consideration, a little respect, is that so wrrrong?"

UPDATE: Hey, I found a streaming video of the exact pirate model mentioned above (forget all that 99 years stuff; that was one of my big lies).

I'm sorry, but to me that's funny.

Posted by Jeremy at 09:41 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

October 20, 2004

I'm a Trivial Psychic #2

 by Jeremy

After seeing the first batch of forgiveness people on Tim Blair I remarked to Cara "It's like some kind of health food American Gothic." There was the kernel of something funny there, but I couldn't quite hone it into a pithy witticism worthy of blogging.

But today I find more forgiveness cases on Tim Blair and among them is this.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kerry Snags a Potent Endorsement

 by Jeremy

Getting the nod from Arafat was sweet, and that's no lie, but with this vote of confidence, who now can doubt that JFK has the JUICE to be POTUS:

If you like the job George W. Bush is doing as President, you should go ahead and vote for him. But if you ask HIGH TIMES, that's a bad idea.

Woo boy! They are in love with Kerry! They do have one nice thing to say about Bush:

Bush Jr. spent the first half of the 80's getting wasted

Well make up yer minds, dudes! Who's your daddy, here?

[The following is a dramatization]

"So, like...uh...who you gonna............."

"..........................uh.........'gonna?'"

".........pass me a nutter butter?...........vote for"

"...who's the one that's for free Afghani for millions of people?"

"No man, he said he freed Afghanistan. That's not really the same.......hey, you gonna eat that corn chip?"

"...hey..............did you eat that shit?"

"I asked, dude. If you wanted it you should have said so, man."

"That was not a corn chip, dude."

"Well what was it then?"

"You don't wanna know, kemosabe."

"Well it tasted good."

"......Kerry, man. I like his wife's accent. She reminds of...who's that guy from that movie...it like starts with a 'L' or something."

"Peter Fonda?"

"That's it....wait....Peter Lorre, man. I like that little guy."

"That little guy is cooler than he looks, man.

"Anyway.......that thing tasted good, huh?....anyway...let's endorse that little guy."

"Whatever dude."

Posted by Jeremy at 09:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

A Compelling Argument for Blogging Anonymously

 by Jeremy

An Australian journalist kidnapped in Iraq was freed after his captors checked the popular internet search engine Google to confirm his identity.

John Martinkus was seized in Baghdad on Saturday, the first Australian held hostage in Iraq since the US-led invasion.

But his captors agreed to release him after they were convinced he was not working for the CIA or a US contractor.

Of course the real stroke of luck here was that Martinkus was captured by terrorists who had even the slightest scruple about whose head they removed. I suppose the point of decapitating people who are trying to rebuild Iraq would be lost if all the journalists were to go home in fear.

(Hat tip: Jeff Jarvis)

Posted by Jeremy at 02:31 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

October 19, 2004

Fisked Alive

 by Jeremy

Johann will debate Robert Fisk this Thursday. If there is anything left of Fisk but smoldering ash and the last echoes of a pathetic murmer, I will still respect Johann nonetheless.

Posted by Jeremy at 08:30 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Jarvis on Stewart

 by Jeremy

Jeff Jarvis is on CNBC right this very second talking about Jon Stewart's embarrassing tizzy on Crossfire. Jeff applauds Stewart. I just don't agree. It's nice to see Jeff on the tube again though, differences of opinion notwithstanding.

Well that was a short segment. Here's what I don't get: Jeff is saying that he agrees with Jon Stewart in saying that TV news has to do better than to fuel the sensational mud slinging side of this campaign and cites the high ratings and has previously cited the hundreds of thousands of downloads as evidence that people agree with this.

I have to say I think it's exactly the opposite. Hundreds of thousands of people downloaded that segment because they wanted to see the mudslinging. It's like two nerds in the schoolyard bitch-slapping each other. What hundreds of thousands of viewers have been doing has been yelling "OOOOHHH! Fight! Fight! Fight!!!"

But it has to be said that the Stewart kid started it. And he was just as nasty to Begala.

And I don't understand how people can frame this as "Stewart socks it to Carlson." You want me to believe that Jon Stewart wants to take on a big mean reactionary, and the biggest, meanest one he can find is...Tucker Carlson? I guess Pat Buchanan and Henry Kissinger were too cuddly and liberal to bother with? Or they haven't hurt America enough?

The real story is "comedian bombs on national television." And I think he knows that. If a news show wants commentary on this silly story, they need to assemble a panel of comedians, not journalists and political analysts.

I'm sorry (sort of) but I'm pissy about this because I think the kind of satire Jon Stewart does (used to do?) is important. But too many people have told him what he does is important and he now believes it. It's not quite as bad as a man of the cloth molesting a child, but it follows along the same general template. This is what I mean when I say he has jumped the shark. And now, no more posts on this B.S. ever again; I promise.

Posted by Jeremy at 07:52 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Andrew Sullivan on Team America

 by Jeremy

Letting slide a few adolescent jokes that he'd be forgiven for finding offensive, Andrew Sullivan has this to say about "Team America":

TEAM AMERICA - FUCK YEAH: Parker and Stone are now indisputably the comic geniuses of their generation. The point of the movie is not nihilism - it's sanity. Sanity against the moronic ra-ra pro-Americanism of many in the Bush camp, who seem blind to any empirical evidence, prudence, or skepticism in their attempt to protect us from Jihadist terror; and sanity against the moronic Sontagian left that fails to see any danger in the first place (except that from president Bush, of course). I doubt if Alec Baldwyn, or Arec Bardwyn as Kim Jong Il calls him, will ever recover from this brilliant skewering. Or the dumb-as-a-post Matt Damon. Or Hans Brix. The scene between the Swedish do-gooder and the little NoKo nutjob should be mandatory in every introductory class for international relations. I nearly bust a gut in the movie theater, to the consternation of the hairy one and a couple of companions. But then I'm a sucker for "r" and "l" jokes and I was brought up on "Thunderbirds." The song, "Everyone has AIDS," deserves to win an Oscar. And I say that as someone just a couple hundred T-cells away from AIDS. Fuck yeah.

Most everyone will have to be prepared to let at least one thing slide, but be a sport. This hilarious film is worth it. Just see the movie, goddammit!

Posted by Jeremy at 10:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Fact Check

 by Jeremy

I was recently asked for my views on blogs vis a vis the mainstream press and politics (so of course my twenty word response was both comprehensive and beyond reproach or debate). But one of the questions involved whether I thought blogs are influencing the content -- for better or worse -- in television and print news media.

Because the thing is supposed to be published soon (locally, but online too; I'll keep you posted) I won't get too far into it here. But my basic perspective on the issue is that bloggers are 'consumers' (vile word, but I'm still in the market for an alternative) of news who now have a more effective voice than just letters to the editor that seldom get printed.

But there's a Shrodinger's Cat kind of question here: are readers via blogs beginning to alter newspapers and television, or are newspapers (to take that side of the question alone for a moment) as they have always done, waking up to a disconnect (oof, another word I hate. What's happening to me?) between their least self-examined habits and their readers' comfort level? (Does that make any sense? I'm going to look like an idiot in this newspaper article I can tell already).

Newspapers have to sort out the difference between readers' prejudices vs. our valid gripes. Ultimately both responsible news...uh...consumers, and responsible news editors and journalists have the same goal: to protect the invaluable work of responsible journalism from the creeping rot of laziness, prejudice, greed and, yes, even the urge to pander to fair weather readers. That's what I think responsible bloggers are doing.

Jeff Jarvis often says how when you blog something, others will "fact check your ass," usually with little regard for your delicate feelings. This is a good thing. It keeps blogs good; it's why such a large percentage of the blogosphere continues to contains high quality content. So fact checking the asses of the mainstream media is not a Quixotic war of Hubris (or even an exercise in antidisestablishmentarianism). It's a matter of readers wanting to keep the institution of journalism responsive to its own principles of objectivity.

Of course, editors have to decide when readers are full of shit and when, on the other hand, we are simply laying down something they don't really want to hear.

But anyway...........there's this in the New York Times:

This is an ongoing series in the Times' election coverage. Bloggers, of course, did not invent the fact-check. But I think bloggers have noticed that this age-old publishing responsibility has gone slack in many prominent papers, at least from time to time. The truth (and it's OK for a news organization to openly acknowledge this) is approached through a continuing cycle of fact-check-guided passes on the tangents of a story until the heart is struck, or at least it surface nicked (Ok, I admit it: that metaphor is a surrealistically graphic as it is useless).

Does the New York Times "Fact Check" column include fact-checks on its own prior reporting? I don't know. I doubt it. But I think if they did such a thing readers would love them for it.

Am I being as smug and obnoxious as Jon Stewart was the other night? I'm not trashing the New York Times. The New York Times, I am saying for example, is an important institution and I don't want to see it rot from within. Hence, we criticize because we love (oh...and sometimes it's because we hate, depending upon the writer of the article in question).

Posted by Jeremy at 10:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 18, 2004

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnddd....we have a shark jumped, ladies and gentleman!

 by Jeremy

That's how this referee calls it, anyway. Jon Stewart has jumped the shark. I was never a big fan of Crossfire, but poor Jon Stewart has officially become an industry fatcat. We saw it happen to Letterman until a near death experience brought him half way back a few years ago. What's it gonna take to bring Stewart's bloated ego back down to its normal size? Time will tell. Last night he went nine rounds with a two headed straw man and did not prevail. A defeat like that is only going to make him puff up just a little bit bigger.

When's he gonna pop? I don't know, but it ain't gonna be pretty, folks.

I can't wait to see the satirical fun that Jon Stewart has with that smug-a-thon...oh wait. Scratch that.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Blogrolling.com Strike Two

 by Jeremy

Once again I've had to remove my blogroll because blogrolling.com has dropped of the face of the Earth. It has worked fine for the last couple of months or so. I'll give it another chance. Let's call it a three strike policy.

And my apologies to those who have us in their news aggregators. I had to "rebuild all files" to eradicate (temporarily) any trace of blogrolling.com content.

Not that I'm a complainer.

Posted by Jeremy at 11:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Michael Feels Our Pain

 by Jeremy

Though he's thousands of miles away, he could be describing the Haymarket cafe here in Northampton, MA. It's uncanny. But in any event, read this brilliant post by Michael J. Totten. It's one for the fridge (we could tack it up right next to our picture of Woody Guthrie with "This machine kills fascists" scrawled on his guitar, even though, or especially because we're not entirely sure Woody would mean that today the way we'd think he should).

UPDATE: Will from A General Theory of Rubbish has supplied a
musical compliment to the picture and spirit of Woody Guthrie as featured above.

Posted by Jeremy at 07:55 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

America: Heck Yeah!

 by Jeremy

Cara and I saw "Team America" today. I think it may be the funniest movie I've ever seen. However, if you hate or disapprove of "South Park" you will almost certainly hate or disapprove of this film (by the same guys).

To tens of thousands of clever, pot-smoking college students who thought they were the funniest guys on the planet and came up with hilarious spoofs that may or may not have been as funny as they thought they were the previous night but they'll never know because they couldn't really remember them the next morning, this movie is like the messiah.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are not only as funny as they thought they were the previous night and, by some miracle, actually remembered to write down their ideas, but (and this is the messiah part) they actually made the movie (not to mention the TV series) they said they were going to make. That plus the fact that some people we are all tired of hearing from get their comeuppance.

But I'm going to shut up and let Trey Parker talk this film up:

They were like.... Especially the R rated puppet thing. You know they were just like 'Guys we can't make any money out of an R rated puppet movie.' And we were like 'you said you couldn't make any money out of an R rated musical too but you did' and so they were really... and especially until... because until people saw it, you know, we had nothing... we just went and we said R rated puppet movie and they didn't even know what to think. All we had to do was to show them some Thunderbirds stuff and we are kind of thinking this and they are like 'what?' and we are like 'it will look even better then that' and so until they started seeing footage they were really... I mean this movie got shut down and started up at least three times.

Just go see it.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 17, 2004

Please Don't Feed or Startle the American Voter!

 by Jeremy

Don't poke your fingers into its cage. Don't taunt or tease the American voter, or throw stones or point sticks at it. Do not look it in the eye. If it insists upon voting for Bush, try to make yourself as large as possible by stretching your arms out over your head, then make a loud noise. If this fails, you should remain as quiet as possible, doing your best to appear dead; stay this way for a very, very long time.

After you have read and agreed to the above, the more courageous among you may proceed (hat tip: Jeff Jarvis).

Posted by Jeremy at 02:44 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

As long as the kids are having fun, that's all that matters

 by Jeremy

Has anyone gotten spam from the people who run the yesbushcan.com and cheneybush.com websites? (I believe both domains resolve to the same site, but frankly life is too short for me to bother checking again).

It's supposed to lure imperialist Bush apologizing dupes like myself into signing up for stuff that will embarrass us later, I guess. You can invite these ostensible Bush supporters (who are really -- gasp! -- Indymedia types) to your Bush rallies and stuff, and it looks like you can add Bush "campaign" feeds to your blog that, I would assume, will say things on your website that will make you look stupid.

By all means visit their site, who cares.

The spam they sent me was an inducement to fact check all sorts of documents such as dui (or dwi, depending on where you're from) reports for Bush and Cheney the same way we clever 'conservative' bloggers exposed the false CBS documents. You get the idea.

Here is their whois info. The address in France at the bottom is the registrar; I don't know if they have any direct connection to the content mentioned above. But if anyone has any clue who these people actually are, it would make an amusing story -- kind of call their bluff on the invitation to spot the phony document. I didn't come up with anything much upon quickly searching via Google. Maybe you know who they are. This does it for me, though. I've got it off my chest:

domain: YESBUSHCAN.COM

owner-address: Support and Commitment, Inc
owner-address: 55 W. Maiden St.
owner-address: 10027
owner-address: New York
owner-address: New York
owner-address: United States of America
owner-phone: +1.2128831023
owner-e-mail: info@cheneybush.com
admin-c: SAC25-GANDI
tech-c: AR41-GANDI
bill-c: SAC25-GANDI
nserver: ns7.gandi.net 217.70.177.44
nserver: custom2.gandi.net 217.70.179.35
reg_created: 2004-08-14 10:12:25
expires: 2005-08-14 10:12:25
created: 2004-08-14 16:12:25
changed: 2004-08-14 16:30:47

person: Support and Commitment, Inc.
nic-hdl: SAC25-GANDI
address: Support and Commitment, Inc.
address: 55 W. Maiden St.
address: 10027
address: New York
address: New York
address: United States of America
phone: +1.2128831023
e-mail: info@georgewbush.org
lastupdated: 2004-08-16 19:58:55

person: GANDI Auto Register 4.1
nic-hdl: AR41-GANDI
address: GANDI
address: 38 rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth
address: F-75003
address: Paris
address: France
phone: N/A
e-mail: support@gandi.net"

Posted by Jeremy at 12:22 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 16, 2004

Self Promotion

 by Jeremy

We've started a small, online business. If you've seen the "pixeltrip" in my email address and have wondered what the hell it means, now you know.

So what do we do? We offer online design and ordering of offset-printed products: business cards, letterhead, business forms, bumper stickers...scads of groovy items.

We've taken out an ad, our very first; it's on Michael Totten's blog. Yes, yes, we'll do mailings, spammings, we'll suspend ourselves in plexiglass boxes over the Thames, all that stuff. But right now we just wanted to have our grand-opening among our friends in the blogosphere (though we don't want you to keep us secret -- please tell the world!). If you click through from Michael's ad you'll get 10% off on more than half of our products!

Tell your friends, your boss, your neighbors. Design and order a couple hundred of the perfect bumper sticker...don't you need some post-it notes with your blog's logo on it? Sure you do.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 15, 2004

Ah, But We Call This Valley Home

 by Jeremy

Amherst, Massachusetts makes ripples in the blogosphere once again.

I liked it better when our beloved neighbor town's claim to fame was the notorious collection of items from the police beat section of the Amherst Bulletin, published in Harper's a couple of years ago (so that urban sophisticates could laugh at us). Here is a sampling. Hell, here's the whole thing (it's my damn town, isn't it? Sort of? By the way: if I'm not mistaken, the man mentioned in the first item is Bill; he appears in two or three other items: can you find him? The guy waving in front of the Spirit Haus is almost certainly Jim.):

12:20 p.m. A man digging up dirt and crawling on the ground near the intersection of North Pleasant and Pine streets checked out OK, police said.

2:19 a.m. Youths collecting rocks on North East Street were gone when police got there.

8:41 a.m. A squirrel that was acting oddly on North East Street was gone when police got there.

11:25 p.m. A vehicle that left Village Park at a high rate of speed was gone when police got there.

12:58 p.m. Police found a T-shirt on fire on the side of Belchertown Road.

11:31 a.m. A Village Park resident told police that a man looked at her strangely.

5:11 p.m. A man who parked his vehicle near the police station and put on a pair of gloves when he exited checked out OK.

7:29 a.m. A woman wearing only a T-shirt on her upper body and attempting to scale the chain-link fence surrounding the high school athletic fields near Triangle Street was gone when police got there.

9:15 p.m. A golden retriever by the side of Montague Road was just taking a nap and had not been hit by a vehicle.

10:53 a.m. A man licking the pavement on Main Street in front of Subway was gone when police got there.

2:36 a.m. An amateur radio operator in South Amherst told police that he was worried about interference that his radio was picking up.

9:21 p.m. A person told police that a slippery substance was placed on the sidewalk near the Unitarian church. Police determined that the substance had been placed by the Department of Public Works to provide better traction for pedestrians.

7:46 p.m. Brandywine Apartments residents told police that a man and a woman were attempting to sell pies door-to-door.

10:59 a.m. Footprints outside a Pine Street barn were just indentations made by falling snow, police said.

11:07 a.m. People meditating inside a car parked behind a West Street home were sent on their way by police.

9:55 a.m. A Rolling Green Drive resident told police that his girlfriend had been receiving poems at her Hadley workplace from a sixty-year-old man. Amherst police advised the man to contact Hadley police about the problem.

5:00 p.m. A Lake Wyola area resident told police that threatening graffiti was placed on his lawn. Police determined that the graffiti was just markings made by phone-company employees.

5:01 p.m. A man crawling on his belly at the intersection of Meadow and North Pleasant streets was gone when police got there.

7:48 a.m. Police received a report that a woman was sitting near the Amtrak station smoking cigarettes and laughing.

3:29 a.m. A man pulled his car up to a gas pump at Cumberland Farms on Russell Street and stayed in the car for fifteen minutes without getting out. Police said that when they arrived on the scene, the man was still in the car listening to a motivational tape.

4:47 a.m. A Village Park man and woman arguing over the type of wedding band they would purchase had settled their dispute by the time police got there. Police said the couple were eating nachos when they arrived.

9:03 p.m. A man wearing an all-black outfit who was walking near Village Park checked out OK.

11:48 a.m. Police received a report that a South Prospect man did not report for work. The man was found at his home taking a vacation day.

11:34 p.m. Police checked on a Belchertown Road man on behalf of his mother and found him asleep. The man was told to call his mother.

1:21 a.m. People walking back and forth on North Pleasant Street checked out OK.

9:41 a.m. Police determined that a child reported home alone at The Brook was actually an adult who was OK.

11:19 p.m. A resident at The Brook told police that her dog was acting strangely. Police said the dog appeared to be fine.

11:42 p.m. A moaning sound coming from a Belchertown Road home was quiet when police got there.

1:15 a.m. Police determined that an erratic operator on Main Street was just a bad driver.

5:57 a.m. A beastly looking dog walking on Triangle Street was gone when police got there.

9:57 p.m. A woman receiving phone calls from people she described as "giggling teens" was given advice by police.

11:23 p.m. Children riding Big Wheels on the sidewalks at South Point Apartments were gone when police got there.

3:40 p.m. A woman seen placing a large amount of plastic utensils into a car parked near the CVS pharmacy on University Drive checked out OK.

3:00 p.m. Police received a report that a person, possibly dead or just in need of medical assistance, was lying in the back yard of a vacant Schoolhouse Road home. The man, who said he was just practicing his singing, agreed to leave the area.

1:08 a.m. Police checked the security of a downtown building and found it secure.

4:38 a.m. A Hulst Pond resident reported hearing a spinning sound coming from the wall of her bathroom. Police determined that the noise was coming from her electric toothbrush, which was spinning inside a cup.

11:30 p.m. Police found a vehicle parked near fields on Hubbard Hill Road. The man and woman inside the car told police they were just chatting and looking at the stars.

8:45 p.m. No trace could be found of youths reported to be playing in trees at Brandywine Apartments.

9:55 a.m. A man waving at passing traffic in front of the Spirit Haus was gone when police got there.

9:48 p.m. A man seen picking weeds from Cowles Lane told police that he had finished his work for the evening.

4:42 p.m. Police received a report that the "Entering Pelham" sign was removed from Belchertown Road. Police said it was still there when they got there.

1:08 a.m. A group of ten to twenty people wearing no clothing running around outside the Boulders was gone when police got there.

8:16 p.m. A Carriage Street woman who had not arrived home was just running late, police said.

8:01 p.m. A man who was seen cleaning the centerline of North Pleasant Street in front of Bart's Homemade was gone when police got there.

1:44 p.m. Six adults whom an observer said were on the ground and making moaning sounds at Townhouse Apartments checked out OK.

2:47 p.m. A Village Park woman told police that she found a brownie underneath her license plate.

5:03 p.m. A South Amherst resident receiving annoying phone calls from her mother was referred to the phone company for assistance.

4:57 p.m. Police said an East Pleasant Street resident mistook a rotting piece of wood in the back yard for a human leg.

3:30 a.m. Police found a vehicle parked at Atkins Farms Country Market. The two women inside the vehicle told police that they were pretending to be Charlie's Angels and were going to steal a pumpkin from in front of the store.

7:15 a.m. Police received a report that a rott-weiler was carrying a small child in its mouth on Buffam Road. Police determined that the object was actually a stuffed scarecrow.

8:11 a.m. Police received a report that a vehicle traveling toward Belchertown had a child inside it who was not dressed appropriately for the cool weather.

1:34 a.m. A woman found sleeping in a car parked at the Big Y Supermarket told police that she was preparing for a long ride.

10:10 a.m. A North Hadley Road resident reported receiving strange emails and cassette tapes filled with spiritual music.

2:52 p.m. Police were called to the scene of a six-foot snow sculpture in the shape of a male sexual organ but were unable to dismantle it. They tried to knock the sculpture down, but it had iced over. The next morning a ten-ton loader from the Public Works Department broke up the sculpture.

10:34 a.m. A Montague Road woman told police that she encountered a suspicious man skiing who asked her strange questions about her dog.

3:40 p.m. A man with an artificial leg dressed in all-black clothing walking near an Olympia Drive residence was gone when police got there.

7:11 p.m. Police assisted a Hillcrest Place resident in removing a sleeping opossum from his porch.

11:05 p.m. A frozen turkey was found in the middle of North Pleasant Street in the area of several fraternity houses. Fraternity members denied any knowledge of how the turkey got there. An officer moved the turkey to the side of the road.

5:05 p.m. Police checked on a pedestrian walking in the middle of Pelham Road. The person said he was just crossing the street and was not causing problems.

8:17 a.m. and 8:18 a.m. Police checked on Valley View Drive and Chestnut Court residents participating in the "Are You OK" program. Both residents were fine.

Posted by Jeremy at 08:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kerry's Plan for Iraq

 by Jeremy

Kerry Announces Iraq Voting Plan

LA TIMES - In a televised news conference today, presidential hopeful John Forbes Kerry announced a "very famous plan" for a January vote in a wartorn Iraq in which things are likely to get worse before they get better, analysts say, unless there is a fundamental improvement in U.S. policy which is not likely, consensus holds, under a Bush presidency.

"I don't know if the American people are aware of this," Kerry intoned over the roar of an enthusiastic yet dignified crowd, the kind of crowd that knows what it wants and is damn well going to get it, even though it is not doing as well in the polls as you'd have thought it would be doing by now, "but the Bush administration has just engaged in a campaign of forced nail-painting in Afghanistan in a fashion reminiscent of Coco Chanel. And do you know, they were using magic markers?" An audible gasp was heard as this last phrase was uttered, punctuated by Kerry's trademark finger points and manly-yet-exotic karate chops.

"It shouldn't surprise you to learn," the very presidential Kerry continued, "that my plan for Iraq is far more sophisticated than that. Let me simply say this: airbrush."

Calling it his "I Was a War Hero in Viet Nam and Cheney's Daughter is a Proud Lesbian" Plan, Kerry vows the approach will succeed despite Bush's foolish blundering. "Furthermore," the soon to be president promised, "I will elicit the help of the French, who have already pledged to provide professional nail salon airbrush artists to do the job right," meaning instead of wrong, the way that Bush does things.

Not only will the airbrushed scenes not wear off however hard you rub them, Kerry campaign sources say, "but look, who'd want to? People pay good money for this level of detail and definition. Did you get a load of the foam on those waves? That's just really hard to do" the sources said, "no question about it."

If the Iraqi election ends in disaster, experts agree, it will be Bush's fault. As one senior analyst put it, "Mission accomplished -- you know; Halliburton. And, in a way," he added, turning to gaze thoughfully at a breathtaking sunset just beginning to form over the Hollywood Hills, "plastic turkey."

* * * To see the previous posts in this series click here.

Posted by Jeremy at 02:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 14, 2004

Cheney's Daughter, Kerry's Faux Pas, and More...

 by Jeremy

My name is Jeremy Brown and I approve this illustration:

Kerry has suggested that Saddam Hussein has not directly supported terrorist attacks against Americans, though we know that Saddam directly sponsored the families of suicide bombers in Israel and we know too that Americans have been killed by suicide bombers in Israel.

We're all God's children. And I think if you were to talk to John Kerry's grandfather, who was a Jew, he would have told you that being targeted and killed simply because of what you were born as, is to be a victim of terrorism, and Saddam supported that.

Is it an insult to call Kerry's grandfather a Jew? Of course not. But it sounds creepily inappropriate, doesn't it? And if my hypothetical speaker didn't mean it that way he ought to apologize, wouldn't you think?

Or would it be, somehow, anti-Semitic to be put off by such a remark?

Anyway, here's what Kerry said last night (and, though it struck me as very strange, I cravenly avoided live blogging it last night pending later reflection):

``We're all God's children,'' Kerry said. ``And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was. She's being who she was born as. I think if you talk to anybody, it's not a choice.''

Here's the outrageous reaction of Edward's wife, Elizabeth:

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, stepped into the dispute.

Speaking of Mrs. Cheney, she said, ``She's overreacted to this and treated it as if it's shameful to have this discussion. ... I think that it indicates a certain amount of shame with respect to her daughter's sexual preferences.''

Did Mrs. Cheney say anything that would warrant such an obscene accusation? Or did she simply commit an unpardonable act of anti-Kerry hate speech:

Lynne Cheney issued her post-debate rebuke to a cheering crowd outside Pittsburgh. "The only thing I can conclude is he is not a good man. I'm speaking as a mom," she said. "What a cheap and tawdry political trick."

Kerry needs to apologize. And Elizabeth Edwards should apologize to Kerry for 'helping' him.

UPDATE: Roger deconstructs Elizabeth Edwards' statement.

Posted by Jeremy at 06:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Busy day for me today...I'll post this evening.

 by Jeremy

Have you seen the ad on Michael Totten's blog? That's us. Check it out, tell your friends. More details later.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 13, 2004

Live Blog the Debate Again? ...yes. This is the last one, right?

 by Jeremy

I will try to not live blog this responsibly because I have other things I want to do. But sometimes I get responsible by accident. But Cara says I should be not as responsible. So I think I'm going to not be as responsible.

Wow! Kerry and Edwards just took the stage doing, like a production number with a kind of neo, jazz-dancy sort of take on Frankenstein. They're on this cool spinning turntable part of the stage and they're bringing a guy back from the dead. Edwards is smiling. Kerry is nodding and smiling. Oops! Kerry's boob just popped out!

Here are the candidates...

Q to Kerry: Something about Tacos and Vodka (oh wait: that was Cara reading out loud from Vodkapundit)

Cara says Kerry looks chastened and unhappy while Bush looks like the cat that ate the canary. Did Kerry lose to Bush at pinball backstage? Probably that's it.

Is this supposed to be about domestic issues? They're talking about terrorism and security.

19 year old woman voting in Afghanistan, Bush reminds us. Kerry wears his all purpose schoolmarmish smile of vague superiority.

Kerry: Bush outsourced the plastic turkey to Osama Bin Laden.

Q about flu!? [Bush lied. People sneezed] Bush says he will outsource flu treatment to Afghan warlords, adding, NOT!

Kerry: "I stand firmly opposed to influenza." Actually he's talking about the poor state of health insurance and the number of people who've lost their insurance "under president Bush." This is not a new problem, and Kerry is offering an opportunity for people to buy in...

Bush: Surprisingly good response: A plan is not just to find problems and then offer something that can't be paid for.

Q to Kerry: How can you keep your pledge to not race taxis? Answer: reinstating pay-as-you-go [I've got news for the Senator: taxis already are pay-as-you-go]

Q to Bush about what he'd say to someone who loses job to outsourcing: reply is that the guy will be offered opportunities to get educated in skills to fit in given a changing world, etc.

General observation: so far this is Kerry's nightmare, meaning Bush is far more credible and articulate on domestic issues than I or probably anyone would have expected (regardless of whether or not he's talking doo doo).

Kerry: cheesy but effective line: Bush lecturing me on fiscal responsibility is a little like Tony Soprano lecturing me on law enforcment. This is effective because it rings true. Ouch, as they say.

Kerry: won't be able to stop outsourcing. But we'll shut the tax loophole for corporations who move overseas.

Alex Trebek is now on stage talking about jobs for a thousand...no, sorry that was Kerry.

Bush is really on tonight. This is Bush a la 2000.

Kerry made a good point about Bush's brag about Pell grants being up, protesting that more Pell grants are being given b/c people have less money. Then adds that Bush is "playing" with his voting record. Bush interjects that he's not playing, but sounds small and snarky. He's better off not cutting in snappily like that.

Bush: Talking about marriage and the courts...doesn't feel that the courts should be ruling on this issue. Sounds weak on this, like he knows it's an issue where he can't say the right thing.

Kerry: "we're all God's children, Bob..." Sounds disingenuous. Says Bush and he agree that "marriage is between a man and a woman." So what's the difference again?

Kerry: talks up pro choice fairly well. But then claims that, while Bush has not said he'll try to overturn Roe v. Wade, "we know" from the candidates he'd look at appointing to the court that he'd appoint anti Roe v. Wade justices.

Bush: It's important to have a culture of life...but I believe "reasonable people can come together" on this issue, as with banning partial birth abortion. Bush's tone is very avuncular here, quite wisely.

Big score for Bush: "He's been in the U.S. senate for 20 years: he has no record of reforming health care." [one person in the audience lets out a whoop] This was a slam dunk. Kerry's reponse was that Bush is once again distorting his voting record and cites a couple of health bills he voted on. But Nader couldn't have said this better than Bush just did.

Bush flubs a would be witty remark on the folly of Kerry quoting leading news sources...ends with "never mind."

Bush talks against gov't run health programs. Kerry says maybe this is why Bush has cut funding to the VA. This reads like a clever and biting retort, but Kerry delivers it lamely, clarifying that his plan, though, is not gov't run health care.

Bush is saying that saving Social Security is a huge priority for the next four years and talks up a private account sort of deal that, frankly, I find scary.

Kerry says Bushes Social Security plan is irresponsible. His plan is that he will "take care of social security." Now why didn't Bush think of that?

Bush, again surprisingly, is winning in terms of tone, which of course means nothing. But Kerry, for whom this should be an easy win, is not sounding as confident. The bottom line with these issues is that you have to do your reading. A debate is useless as a venue for hearing anything of substance from these guys on these issues.

It may not be fair, but Bush's hurdle here is to sound like he has a real mastery of the domestic issues and that he takes these issues seriously, and he's doing that well. Kerry has an impossible task: to convince people that he has viable plans to solve problems like health care that have never been solved and that he will have the unprecedented guts to stand up and make these vaguely defined plans happen. All he can really hope to do is make Bush seem unqualified to be president, to make him seem like a jibbering idiot on domestic issues. Kerry has not been able to do that so far.

Q to Bush: Do you want to overturn Roe v. Wade? Bush response: I won't have a litmus test.

Kerry: Uh...me neither. "Clearly the president wants to leave an ambivalence or intends to undo it." [this is feeble].
Kerry on minimum wage: "This is one of those issues that separates the president and myself." The fact that Kerry has to remind us that there are a few such issues is bad for Kerry.

Kerry is losing this debate as of this point (10:00pm).

[I'm going to get some diet coke. My Metoclopramide has worn off.]

Kerry sounds weary responding to the litmus test issue (this is his "when will these people stop blaming me for the stupid things I've said" tone.)

Thus far I'd say Kerry is having his worst night while Bush is having his best. Very bad luck for John Kerry. But there's an element of truth coming out here: Kerry is a bureaucrat and is coming across that way. Bush, though you, dear reader, may hate his policies, has conviction and, on a few issues, vision. Tony Blair would be flossing his teeth with either of these guys. Once again, can I vote for Blair?

Kerry is talking up "mend it, don't end it" meaning a plan he supported to fix bad quotas w/o ending affirmative action. This is another one of those issues where Kerry's and Bush's claims are tough to distinguish from each other.

Q about faith: "I pray a lot." "But I'm mindful in a free society that people can worship or not." You're equally American if you believe in God or not. The fact that he's givin us permission to be an atheist might normally piss me off, but he's saying it w/o irony or apparent discomfort. My friends think I'm an imperialist dupe for this, but I think Bush is telling us the truth.

Kerry: "Well I respect everything the president has just said." Kerry doesn't know what the hell to say here; he's praying, I dare say, for something useful to say. "We have a separate but equal school system here in America." This should be a powerful point, but where did this come from? It comes across as a throw away here. Kerry is NOT on tonight.

Kerry: "Let me pay the president here a compliment if I may." In the days after 9/11 he did a great job, genunine, etc. But now he's the opposite. He's divided the country. "As president I'm committed to changing that." I don't find this reassuring somehow; it sounds like a promise to think twice about standing on his convictions.

Bush: Kerry says this is a divided country? "It was pretty divided in the 2000 election." This was a good point well delivered.

Bush re: Laura Bush: "She speaks English a lot better than I do." Bush owns the crowd at this point, as my street performing friends used to say.

Kerry gets an honest laugh at his own expense by saying that, just like Bush, he married up, though himself perhaps a little more than most, then smiles like a human being. Good way to acknowledge a sense of irony about himself and his wife.

Kerry sounds so stiff during his closing arguments. This time particularly so because he had just sounded so genuine two seconds ago. You could almost hear the gears grind has he transitioned into his closing speech.

Bush: Sounds infinitely more genuine: this is really much more his forte.

I was unsure about the first two debates, but Bush won this one without any reasonable doubt. And I honestly had assumed without question that the opposite was going to be the case. The world, folks, is a crazy unpredictable place.

As Bush and Kerry shake hands you can just hear Bush saying "good job" to Kerry.

I'm going to go see what other people are saying now.

Posted by Jeremy at 08:47 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

I Can't Wait Until the Election is Over/ Don't Use Squinty Small Fonts

 by Jeremy

You know, as much as I fear and distrust Kerry (because I think if he's elected he'll have a mandate to return the country to normalcy when even he doesn't believe such a thing is an option) I just want the thing to be over, regardless of who wins.

It seems as if two thirds of the country is convinced that their guy is the Christ and the other guy is Hitler (forget Satan, he's so, like, medieval).

I have not bought into most of Jeff Jarvis' lamentations over the mud campaign (I don't think this year has been worse than most except that every attack is taken by one side or the other as if a church were desecrated) or the shame of voting for negatives (meaning you fear what the opponent would do or you welcome what your guy won't do) because I think most of that reflects the fact that there is an unusually important issue -- war, terrorism, theocratic fascism -- that has been making most voters feel that this election isn't just about pretending that your chosen issues may finally be addressed (I remember making career plans based on Clinton's health insurance reform promises!) but that in fact there is something happening on whose success much depends, as Hitchens understates it (though some people only recognize this subconsciously, in spite of themselves, and in bed at night).

But I'm tired of people being cruel to each other, as in the case of this exchange (via Jeff Jarvis) between the New York Times and one of its readers (and I'm not taking sides here):

[Okrent of the New York Times:] When a reporter receives an e-mail message that says, "I hope your kid gets his head blown off in a Republican war," a limit has been passed.

That's what a coward named Steve Schwenk, from San Francisco, wrote to national political correspondent Adam Nagourney several days ago because Nagourney wrote something Schwenk considered (if such a person is capable of consideration) pro-Bush. Some women reporters regularly receive sexual insults and threats. As nasty as critics on the right can get (plenty nasty), the left seems to be winning the vileness derby this year. Maybe the bloggers who encourage their readers to send this sort of thing to The Times might want to ask them instead to say it in public. I don't think they'd dare.

[Jeff Jarvis:]And now here's what Steve Schwenk -- and I presume it to be him -- left as a comment below:
For a man who bemoans the absence of civility on the left, Okrent sure has a strange way of dealing with it.

[Commenter presumed to be Schwenk:]He not only distorted what I said in my e-mail, but he called me a coward and told the entire country who I am and where I live after very effectively making me out to be a monster.

My kids were terrified by the never ending phone calls and hang ups. My daughter asked what we should do if a mob came to the house to get us. And needless to say, the humiliation I now have to experience in responding to the repeated inquiries about whether that was really me will go one for weeks. Did I mention that I am looking for a job?

The worst part is that the bastard completely distorted what my e-mail said and why I was complaining. He left out the 99% that raised legitimate questions and focused only on the sensational words of anger I regretfully used.

Thanks, Daniel Okrent. And thanks, to you too, "Adam." I all but pleaded with them not to do it, that it would really harm me and was an unfair response to a private e-mail. Okrent's assistant hung up on me and Nagourney laughed me off, like it was his right to harm me since he works at the NYT and thinks he's a star.

And they wonder why people are angry.

I do tend to believe that there is more of this stuff coming from the 'Left', by which I mean a fringe on the anti-Bush 'Left' that has gotten desperate and hateful, ostensibly because they think they are dealing with something 'far worse than [supply something you think is unsurpassably evil].' To my mind this is transference. There are those who sense that something comparable to Nazism is looming in the world but they can't, for one reason or another, allow themselves to believe it could be coming from within the Arab/Muslim world. I think the problem here is that such an admission would mean that the 'beast' is part of human nature, rather than the result of election fraud in Florida.

But I digress.

Here is some advice (originally to bloggers) from Damian Counsell:

If people have done something foolish, say how foolish the thing they have done is, not how foolish the people who did it are. They'll take it personally either way, but the former is fair comment, the latter is actionable. Oh yes, and don't use squinty small fonts.

Let's make him our snarky sage of the week.

Posted by Jeremy at 07:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 12, 2004

Monkeys, Humans, the Culture of Fear, Dred Scott...

 by Jeremy

I have no evidence either way, but I'm disinclined to believe that George W. Bush is a lying, mentally retarded human/monkey who drinks the blood feminist babies on his Sabbath. And, though many of those who advise that we should vote our hopes instead of our fears warn that the bill of rights will be rescinded and all political and social dissidents hauled off to Guantanamo if Bush is reelected, I don't think Bush is poised to launch a Christian fundamentalist Jihad as soon as his genius-moron simian hand touches the bible on inauguration day (so I guess hope is not my strong suit).

But I will say this: one of the things that worries me about another four years of Bush is the prospect of his appointing a supreme court justice.

Still, having said that, do we really believe that his fumfering mention of the Dred Scott case during the debate the other night was a use of code on a par with something you'd see in a Bin Laden video?

Here's my take: if you're repeating fundamentalist dogma as a well rehearsed code to announce that the vanguard of the revolution will be taking the White House shortly, wouldn't you get it right? It strikes me as more likely that he has been exposed to this Dred Scott/ Roe v. Wade idea and has only half bought into it, since he had to root around for the example before uttering it in a cocked up way during the debate. Dred Scott was certainly an example of the Supreme court putting their own beliefs ahead of a reasonable interpretation of the constitution. Does Bush see Roe v. Wade that way? Probably. But will he be able to appoint someone to the court whose personal beliefs dictate that he or she will never uphold abortion rights? That would be an example of precisely what Bush said he opposes in a supreme court justice, and it's hard to imagine such a person passing muster, even in a congress where Democrats are not a majority.

So the question is, can we believe Bush or is he a lying, mentally retarded human/monkey, etc...return to beginning and repeat.

Posted by Jeremy at 05:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Stuff Like This Makes You Wonder

 by Jeremy

I don't even know what to say about this story, other than 'wow':

A teenage girl missing for more than a week and given up for dead by her family was found alive on the weekend in her wrecked car at the bottom of a ravine near Seattle.

Laura Hatch's survival was an "extraordinary tale," said police Sgt. John Urquhart. She had been missing since leaving a party on Oct. 2.

[...]

Doctors at Harborview Medical Center say Hatch likely survived because her severe dehydration kept a blood clot in her brain from growing. Her other injuries include broken facial bones.

Police said Hatch was speeding along a winding two-lane road after leaving the party, when her car went through a gap between guardrails and plunged down the ravine.

[...]

On Saturday, Hatch's parents organized a volunteer search. That night Sha Nohr, a church member and mother of a friend of Hatch's, said she had dreams of a wooded area and heard the message, "Keep going, keep going."

Nohr said she and her daughter drove to the area where the crash occurred on Sunday, praying as she drove.

Nohr said something drew her to stop and climb over a concrete barrier and down almost 30 metres of a densely wooded slope, where she was barely able to see the wrecked Toyota Camry amid the trees.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Conceptual Representational Scatological Political Art is Imagined and Well

 by Jeremy

If you have time, pop over to your mental museum during your lunch break and see this statue by Pootergeek (sorry, the lifesized mental image is too large to post here).

UPDATE: Didn't my junior high school English teacher warn me about 'dangling signifiers' all those years ago? (or was that something else?) Anyway, let me provide the referent (as my annoying college English instructors might have forced me to say). I mean, here's the link.

Posted by Jeremy at 08:20 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

International Solidarity? They did 'Smokin' in the Boys' Room, Right? An Insurance Company?

 by Jeremy

I'm not really keeping score anymore, but isn't it supposed to be a bad thing for the nominally pro-labor Left to not only fail to show solidarity with workers struggling to organize in the wake of a fascist dictatorship, but to venomously denounce them and express solidarity with the fascists and theocrats who are trying to kill them? Sure I guess I've moved pretty close to the center these past couple of years, but did I miss a memo on the whole "we're pro-labor and anti-fascist" thing?

Harry's not too thrilled about it, anyway:

In the labour movement there is a word for betraying fellow trade unionists - scabbing.

But even that isn't strong enough to describe the disgust that any internationalist, any principled trade unionist, socialist or Labour Party member, regardless of their views on the war, will feel towards the Stop the War Coalition.

UPDATE: Just to clarify, because that's necessary in this day and age, I used to think "international solidarity" meant this (well intentioned, whether you buy it or not) whereas the term has been co-opted, as my elders used to say, and now is supposed to mean this (well, hell, just google it and check out most of the first hundred results or more).

Posted by Jeremy at 12:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Frank on "The New War" by John Kerry

 by Jeremy

How would you like to have the following blurb on the back of your book:

I read his whole book! I felt like jamming knitting needles into my eyes afterwards.

To tell you the truth, I'd kill for a blurb like that (or, you know, to have written a book).

In any event, if you haven't already, go read Frank's annotated summary of Kerry's not-so-new book.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 11, 2004

Kerry Makes Idiotic Remark then Blames Bush

 by Jeremy

Somehow, once again, the Bush administration has succeeded in brainwashing people into believing even for a moment that John Kerry is not Jesus Christ.

I'll grant that the Bush spin room often screws these things up unnecessarily. In this case they've given the impression that they think Kerry believes terrorism is only a nuisance. This is because too much emphasis has been put on this 'out of context' quote from Kerry yesterday:

"have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance..."

It's clear that he doesn't mean we have to return to thinking terrorists are just a nuisance, but we have to defeat them to the point where that actually is the case. Even for this Kerry owes an apology for suggesting that a blown up school bus here or there ought to be described as a nuisance. But he could clarify that (though he will not).

But it's too bad the Bush people have put emphasis on this aspect of the flub. This has made it credible for the Kerry camp to claim that Kerry did not say something idiotically, campaign-killingly stupid in a New York Times interview. True, Kerry did not say terrorism is merely a nuisance. But here's more of that original context. Here, by my reading, is the real money quote:

"As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life."

What he was really doing, then, was comparing Islamo-fascist terrorism to gambling and prostitution. Bush isn't inventing that part, nor have I heard Kerry denying it.

Think about this: would you want to be heard to equate, let's say, the Ku Klux Klan lynchings of the previous century (I can't think of a good contemporary example because Kerry has already used it) with gambling and prostitution? If you somehow (because your drink was accidentally drugged? because you had a bout of viral encephalitis?) said a thing like this by mistake, wouldn't you be unbelievably mortified and very much on the defensive?

Yeah, well so would I. Kerry's head does not work that way. Instead he's outraged that anyone would hold him accountable for what he says.

UPDATE: Upon re-reading this, there's a point I don't think I've driven home. It would not have even occurred to me to use a law enforcement model in which I compare theocratic-fascist terrorism with the problem of people playing poker or having sex in a manner that contravenes state law. It probably would not have occurred to you either. So even if Kerry's reaction had been, oops, better apologize and explain ASAP, how could he have thought of saying it in the first place. So it does indicate something rather unsettling about Kerry's perspective on this issue. Bush, unless he hypnotized Kerry and programmed him to say those things, did not invent this.

Posted by Jeremy at 02:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Ink Question

 by Jeremy

There is at least one man in Afghanistan who not only seems to think Saturday's election meant something, he also seems not to doubt the indelibility of the ink used to mark people's fingers:

Bibi Gul said that on her way to the polls she received a reminder of the hardline regime ? which was ousted by an American bombing campaign in late 2001.

"A man with a scarf around his head asked me where I was going. He said: 'If you vote, I will see it from your thumb and I will cut off your hand,'" she said.

She said she could not afford to take a taxi home to avoid the man, but would pay no heed.

(Via Harry)

Posted by Jeremy at 01:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Two Things...

 by Jeremy

I used to watch "Crockett's Victory Garden." The host I remember is this guy, who looks a bit like a mythical character (I can't find his picture, sorry. I guess there's a newer guy now. When PBS gets a new host for a show the old one, anyone would think, gets eaten by wild boars and any mention of his name is erased from the public record. Indeed I risk much by by including this parenthesis. But he looked a bit like a garden gnome. I don't mean that as an insult; it worked for him and was clearly a decision, rather than an accident of birth). I know there was a host before him and I want to say his name was Crockett, but I can't remember nor can I remember what he looked like, and I think that's sad. But The newer guy used to end each show by kneeling down next to a plant, sometimes exotic, sometimes not, and saying something like,

[semi-fabricated quote follows]:

"The American Hosta: This hardy, shade-loving perennial offers lots more variety for your garden than some people give it credit. Brought to Europe in the late 18th century from Japan, Korea and China, and finally making their way to the Americas, hostas underwent a major process of hybridization over the past 40 to 50 years. Modern hosta varieties offer a bit of everything. There's both large and small, and all manner of variegated and complexly textured foliage. There are now miniature varieties available that do well in raised beds or urban settings where space is tight. And although hostas aren't known for it, some varieties even yield pretty flowers during part of the season. Let's make it our plant of the week."

I always admired the pluck of that, the American spirit of self-reliance and rugged individualism that empowers you to just squat down, embrace a possibly unflowering plant and make the unilateral, executive decision to just go ahead and "make it" our plant of the day.

So that's cool. But it's not my point. The point is:

Let's make this our quote of the month (retroactive to October 2^nd and effective through November 2^nd, 2004):

There was a time I'd have expected better from a left-wing Guardian journalist than from a right-wing US President.

And the other thing is...crap, I forgot the other thing.

Sorry...this post was a little top-heavy.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

If the Shoe Fits...

 by Jeremy

CNN.com - Libya?gives human?rights prize to Venezuela's Chavez - Oct 10, 2004

Libya Sunday awarded its annual Moammar Gadhafi human rights prize to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez for resisting "imperialism" and being a champion of the poor.

Posted by Jeremy at 01:21 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 10, 2004

The Varifrank Hate Poll

 by Jeremy

While I'm on the subjects of hate and -- quite unrelatedly -- Varifrank, here's a method Frank has divined for determining the relative success of the respective candidates' campaigns:

There are state polls, push polls, and pundit opinion and downright speculation. Yet with all that, I have one sure way to tell how things are going. Hate mail and abusive comments.

The better President Bush is doing the more hate mail I receive.

By that metric, President Bush seems to be doing very well indeed.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I'm a Trivial Psychic

 by Jeremy

While I was liveblogging the debate the other night, I let forth a couple of celebrity-related seeming non-seqiturs, one of which was the following:

Kerry: "If we had used smart diplomacy..." [as my wife Morgan Fairchild has consistently suggested]

...which was just my way of saying I didn't want to get writer's cramp taking dictation from a man talking doo doo.

And today I read this on Varifrank about his reading of "The New War" by John Kerry:

I'm busy chasing down all sorts of things as a result of the first read through of "The New War". But in the first of what are sure to be many A-HA'S! I found this.

Money quote:
During this period, Kerry was linked romantically with several Hollywood starlets, including Morgan Fairchild

Read his post and follow the link if you feel there's something you're not following here (if you're a Jazz fan, don't be thrown by the coincidence of the name Tommy Flanagan, which in this case is cleverly pronounced, 'Fla-NAY-gin' because it sounds all the more invented that way).

UPDATE: I know you're going to accuse me of one of two things: either I read the Varifrank post last month and then half forgot it or I didn't read it and you've caught me being a non-Varifrank-reader. Well, ha-ha, because neither is the case. This past month I was too busy and stressed out to read everything I wanted to, so I'd been reading peoples posts with ruthless selectivity and I hadn't read that particular post until today when I was browsing around Frank's new site. So there.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:09 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

GP Captain's Log 20041010.2042: Blob Capsules

 by Jeremy

Note that the numerals in the title are a nod to Mr. Den Beste.

We had a really lovely Fall dinner this evening. Beautiful New England produce, apple pie, apple cider, string beans, carrots, potatoes (apologies to Hadley potato farmers: those were from Idaho).

It has been forming a bit of a knot in my stomach and moving up a bit into my esophagus. I tried tensing and releasing my diaphragm, which imitates peristalsis, but it moved things up. So I ran for the ice cold diet coke. This really works. It seems to beat the beast back down into the dungeon of the stomach. And now the flexes seem to be moving things lower.

But here, for the benefit of my occasional Gastroparesis Googling comrades, is something that occurs to me: the bubbles, the caffeine...yes, probably part of the picture. But I was really paying attention and I think it's the cold that has the most crucial effect.

This ruined ending (hey, the movie came out in 1958; the statute of limitations is over) illustrates what I will call my "Blob Theory" of GP treatment:

Steve discovers that the blob hates cold temperatures. The firefighters and some students fight off the blob with C02 fire extinguishers and the blob freezes. The army takes the blob and drops it off in the North Pole.

So here's the idea: freeze-pills. I guess all you'd really need to do is fashion an ice tray that would make ice 'cubes' shaped like large vitamin capsules. The only trouble is that they would tend to melt before they hit your stomach, so you'd have to freeze them inside gelatin capsules.

I'm going to try it. I'll give you an update. Then I have to think of a name so that I will be remembered for generations in connection with this new treatment. Somehow I think "Brown Blob Capsules" won't capture the hearts of thousands. Give this procedure a try yourself, though. Be my guest (though I disclaim any responsiblity for any injury that might be caused by swallowing ice).

Here's my naive thinking on the subject. As I understand it, it was originally thought that GP involved stomach muscles that stay lax and refuse to tense. Now it's commonly thought that the problem is the opposite, that the muscle stays contracted and won't release. Apparently this is why Viagra has been found to help. But, though heat is supposed to relax muscle spasms in back pain, for instance,(hot drinks, though don't help my stomach) ice packs can also relax muscle, as it says here:

Ice packs can reduce blood flow to the muscles and thus relax them.

Well, there you go then. Maybe the problem with heat is that it worsens the inflammation that is also probably part of the problem (due to the secondary effects of food staying in the stomach too long?).

Ok, so I'm no doctor. But I'll experiment. I just have to decide how to spend the money I'll get from my Nobel prize (does the Nobel committee give awards out of sarcasm? They should. But they should call it the "Friggin' Nobel Prize.')

Ok, I admit it: a few people in the online Gastroparesis support group have said they chew on ice cubes and it got me thinking. There goes my Friggin' Nobel Prize.

Posted by Jeremy at 08:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Comments Beneath Contempt

 by Jeremy

...Not here, I'm happy to say. I haven't had a truly nasty comment in a long time. But someone has said some things about Norm Geras that are not only hateful toward him (rather than toward his views) but express a desire to spit on whole nations of people:

In Norm's words:

...one Ken Bell suggests that my position on the Iraq war may be due to my origins: because I am a white Rhodesian some of whose family now live in Israel (in Bell's words, 'a shithole').

I know -- and I'm sure many of you know better than I would -- that one of the things that stings the most about this kind of crap is the very fact that it stings as much as it does. You want to think you can get angry and then put it behind you. But it doesn't seem to work that way. It worms its way in.

I'll give you one example...

I was working in a factory a long time ago and the guy working at the bench next to me, along with a couple of others, said, just out of the blue and by the bye: "between the Japs and the Hebes this country is being bought out right from under us" (and I don't think that would have been less offensive if he'd used a more genteel phrase like "businessmen of both Japanese and Jewish heritage). What felt like an earthquake was just me shaking with anger. But, to my shame and continuing regret, I didn't say anything to the guy. In fact I never spoke to him again, which I suspect didn't exactly teach him a lesson. The price I pay for not having said anything to him is that it's still working on me twelve years later. I still rehearse things I should have said but didn't (for instance, while shaving in the morning). And I feel there must be better things I could be doing with my time (though throw in the shaving and I guess you can call that multi-tasking).

I'm happy to say that no one has used that sort of thinking to try to openly denounce my views on the war in Iraq, but there's always a first time.

Nevertheless, you should probably disqualify my opinions on this stuff because, as you may know, I'm a white American Jew.

Posted by Jeremy at 01:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Submitted for Your Approval: Press Bored by Voting Afghans

 by Jeremy

I guess I'm not the only one who feels like the lack of news coverage of the historic election in Afghanistan has felt like a sojourn into the Twilight Zone. Here's good ol' Jeff Jarvis expressing similar feelings to mine:

I tried last night to find a positive link to a new story about the Afghan election today. Couldn't find it. Today, the news isn't much different. Ohmygod, the ink on the thumbs isn't indelible! Well, forget it, then, let's bring back the Taliban. Jeesh.

This is a big deal: Democracy has come to a land and a people for the first time, a land where they were bombing Buddha and hiding women and plotting mass murders against us. This is good news.

Reuters' headline: Afghan poll mired in turmoil. BBC headline: Afghan vote ends in controversy. Newsweek's headline: We don't recognize the results. Washington Post headline: Afghan candidates declare results 'invalid'. Washington Times: Boycott mars Afghanistan's first election.

This is more like it: News.com from Australia: Joyous Afghans cast their vote. And go read Instapundit on Afghanistan and see the pictures of democracy's birth.

I used a naughty word or two in my post. I was going to bowdlerize the thing but I just couldn't do it. Sometimes foul language is the most precise language. And Jeff uses a word that, by Buzzmachine standards, is a swear:

This is good news, damnit.

Indeed it is, sir.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 09, 2004

Unwitting Celebrity Endorsement

 by Jeremy

I was already eager to go out and see "Team America" but now I'm giddy with anticipation.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Q: "How, Jeremy, can you even consider voting for Bush? I'm really disappointed in you..."

 by Jeremy

Answer: Here's one reason. Though the New York Times only mentions it grudgingly and seemingly in passing, millions of Afghans are voting today. And it wasn't a nifty three-fold, four-color pamphlet on glossy card stock in the mail that made it happen or that has continued to make it possible:

Voters queued for hours outside polling stations in bombed-out schools, blue-domed mosques and bullet-pocked hospitals to cast ballots, while more than 100,000 soldiers, police, U.S. troops and other security forces deployed to thwart attacks.

The international community spent nearly $200 million staging the vote. At least 12 election workers, and dozens of Afghan security forces, died in the past few months as the nation geared up for the vote.

This is from a New York Times story about accusations of fraud involving the use of ink to mark people as having voted so they can't vote more than once (good excuse to cover one of the most important stories of the last few years). It seems some are saying the ink can be rubbed off. As an aside, though: millions of fucking Afghans are voting. One of the candidates is a woman.

The first vote was cast by a woman (symbolic and in Pakistan, sure, but it heralds something undeniably real):

Here's a picture from the Times story above. Yes, the only women evident in the picture are not voting. Yes, the men look bored. Why do I post it? Do I think there's a detail in this picture that should move you viscerally? Hint: run your eyes back toward the end of the line; the feeling should hit you as your eyes struggle to resolve the small figures at the horizon (View image).

Posted by Jeremy at 11:26 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Indonesian Embassy Bombing in Paris

 by Jeremy

It's sad that we are so jaded now that a bombing like this seems small or can be seen as nothing more that a prequake tremor. If it happened in my neighborhood I'd sure as hell wonder why it wasn't making bigger news.

Ten people were injured yesterday when a parcel bomb exploded outside the Indonesian embassy in Paris, the first such attack in the French capital for nearly a decade. The device, planted beside an outside wall of the three-storey 19th-century building in the smart 16th arrondissement, exploded just after 5am, blowing out windows up to 100 metres away, damaging nearby vehicles and leaving a small crater in the pavement.

Most of those wounded were hit by flying shards. They were treated in hospital and later allowed home. Three were relatives of an embassy guard who were staying in the mission's basement.

Villepin resists the weak, girlish urge to cry 'terrorism.' Do they even use the 'b' word (bomb)? It might, you know, have been a gasline or something:

The French interior minister, Dominique de Villepin, described the bombing as "an act with criminal intentions", but stopped short of calling it a terrorist act.

However, Indonesia's president-elect, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, went further, saying: "I strongly condemn the terrorist act committed at the Indonesian embassy in Paris."

He added: "I hope the government of France will take appropriate action to bring the perpetrators to justice."

Posted by Jeremy at 11:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Howard Wins in Australia

 by Jeremy

A coerced and bribed electorate? Maybe that's it. Ask Philip Adams. (Alan E. Brain will show you to him if you'll step right this way).

Posted by Jeremy at 10:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 08, 2004

Ok, Yeah. I'll Do Some Debate Blogging.

 by Jeremy

hI'm going to take a little easier this time (if I can stop myself).

I wish it was moderated by Billy Crystal.

I'm from Missourah, so yuhv got to show me. Why do people say that?

Red light, green light...

Can you take that smile down a notch JFK?

Wishy Washy Kerry? Ans: Bush Lied (plastic turkey, etc.); Ashcroft...[Haliburton? Hasn't laid it down yet]...Is Kerry raving or is it just me? Well, a slow start is par for the course, let's be objective.

Bush: Still sounding a little like Jan Brady. That's the thing he's got to shake if he's going to win this debate. Howard Dean flipped Kerry's flop, Bush is saying. No big score there.

WMD Justification? He's not convincing on Iraq as threat, though I don't need convincing "we all thought there was weapons there..." [Kerry smiling as if Bush is making an ass of himself, which is an exaggeration]

Kerry: Bush has convinced you that I've changed my mind: "He wants you to think I've changed my mind" [I find this extremely ridiculous]. He's blaming Bush for Iran and N. Korea being more dangerous now. Very silly.

Kerry: "If we had used smart diplomacy..." [as my wife Morgan Fairchild has consistently suggested]

Kerry is coming across as forceful, angry but controlled, an adult. Bush still seems like a Brady. But Kerry is talking Ka-Ka about reaching out to allies and how we could have captured Saddam by playing fair and talking good.

Bush is smiling and tapping his foot, though he's not grimacing this time.

Bush: The finance minister in Iraq came to see me at the Oval Office 2 days ago [he sounds like a president at the moment] He's pulling out the "join me in the wrong war..." which is not only an effective line, it's damn well a good criticism.

Kerry: Afghanistan was the right war and Tora Bora was the right time.

Bush: [sounding angry but adult, for the moment] the war on terror is not just about Osama Bin Laden [you've got to know that Kerry would be saying that if Bush still had the full force of the U.S. military in Afghanistan.

Bush is now invoking Reagan as having been called stobborn b/c he had resolve. This is not from the swing-voter A-list. At least not mine.

Bush is on his game a bit more now. He's selling his approach to Middle East policy as something born of consistent policy, though the details are vague. His point is that he has been and will remain consistent in his vision.

Kerry: His line of criticism is that Bush is saying he will not change a course of action that is failing. But this is just another version of his 'I would have gotten the world behind us' canard.

Kerry: Yes rely on generals re: military strategy, but the president is the one who needs to lead on winning the peace. [true, but again it's about the putative success of the alternate plan that Kerry seems to suggest was perfectly viable but arbitrarily ignored. I don't buy it.]

Kerry: Describes Iran's possession of yellowcake, then defines yellowcake in a patronizing tone. This echoes the Niger yellowcake matter (the scandal that wasn't) in a way that doesn't help Kerry. "I'm going to lead the world in the greatest counter-proliferation effort." "If" we have to get tough with Iran then, yo baby, we will.

Bush: "That answer almost made me want to scowl." [That was silly and poorly placed.]

I don't see what either candidate is going to do about Iran.

Bush: "We're not going to have a draft, period." Bush is saying we are bringing manpower from the Korean peninsula b/c we keep a deterent with modern weapons. Kerry can't seem to decide whether to smile derisively or not so his smile looks false and conflicted. It was very smart of Bush to have brought this point out before Kerry. Score one for the Bush defense (pre-emptive, you might say).

Kerry: I'm going to build a military that does was Reagan did, what Eisenhower did by building alliances.

Bush: forces himself in to rebut Kerry saying Bush went in alone. You tell Tony Blair we're going in alone, etc. This seemed sincere and appropriately angry, but no big score.

Question to Kerry: How will you keep us safe? We're not getting good cooperation. We've got a bunch of countries that pay a price for working with the United States. "I'm going to change that." [This sounds weak; he's digging in a pissy way]

Bush: We defend America by staying on the offense. We've got to be right 100% of the time [Kerry nods. It's either an obligatory 'me too' or it's a 'I'd be right 100% of the time, but you've haven't']

Kerry: "The president and his experts have said it's not a question of when, it's a question of if, and I accept that." [it seems to me that what Kerry is really doing here is to distance himself from the intelligence so that he can give the impression that if he'd seen that high level intelligence he'd have seen through it. There seems to be some grain of truth in the claim that Bush saw stuff that Kerry did not. But I am convinced that Kerry talked up his support for the war because he could get away with it, not because he was callously misled by Bush and 'his experts.']

Bush: In 2006 our seniors will get prescription drug coverage.

Kerry: 4 years ago Bush supported legal importation of drugs from Canada. [He's making flip flop accusation on this. I don't know the facts off the top of my head, but Kerry is credible here.] "The president sides with the...drug companies" [that's the sort of thing that Bush is not credible in defending]

Bush: what have you ever done for Medicare? Kerry cites an example and adds, "and then we did something you don't know how to do: we balanced the budget." [this is the first significat score for Kerry. Socko. Kerry sounded real on this. He's sounding like the real thing when talking about the ins and outs of health care.] "I have a plan to lower the cost of healthcare...to buy in to the same plan" that congress has. ["buy in?" Sounds expensive. And the question is not the superiority of his plan, but the liklihood of his doing the motherfucking thing, unlike Clinton. That's what he's got to address, acknowledge that we've been sold this kind of talk before and give us a reason to believe that he can reverse recessions and produce the reforms.]

They're bickering in earnest about health care and tort reform. Frankly I've missed the details. But I don't believe either of these guys on health care.

Bush on the lousy economy: "The bubble of the 1990's" burst. [This is a good point because it's the goddamn truth. And good for him for not calling it the Clinton bubble.] Then says the war is expensive. This is, of course, where he's more vulnerable. And the tax cuts are poison for him, though he says these are bringing the economy back around. I'm not buying this last claim.

Kerry: Bush is the first president in 72 years to lose jobs. [again, it's like the rampant, unregulated speculation of the 90's is no longer something the Democratic party thinks is a bad think because it's not helpful to them to mention it. But Bush shot himself in the foot on this issue by opening an artery via his tax cuts.]

Kerry: "he lost 1.6 million" jobs. [damned careless of him when you put it that way]

Kerry: "right into the camera: Yes!" meaning he will keep his promise to not raise taxes. He proudly promises a tax cut. [I wouldn't doubt that this would be a less harsh tax cut, but it rather takes the sting out of his criticism of Bush's tax cut, if you ask me. Promising a tax cut due to political pressure? So it's not an evil crime?]

Bush: He's the fiscal conservative? "It's just not credible." "Of course he's going to raise taxes" [groans of disapproval from a few in the audience]. Moderator too asks how Kerry can cut the deficit in half and cut taxes. Kerry says Bush is using fuzzy math to make it look impossible. Cute.

Question to Bush on environment: [ouch already]. Bush cites diesel fueld something or other, conservation reserve program bill, Health Forest bill, [missed one or two] [I dare say that what people what to know is how he responds to accusations of environmental abuses, but I guess that's coming.]

Kerry: defending his conservative credentials (welfare reform, etc.). "one of the worst administrations" for environment. Clear skies initiative "Orwellian." Chief of EPA resigned in protest. Going backwards re: wetlands and global warming. "I'm going to be a president that believes in science." [this issue is an easy win for Kerry. Kerry is smiling patronizingly through Bush's brief rebuttal about quitting the Kyoto treaty for valid reasons, not as knee jerk rejection. Kerry reponds that Bush has done nothing to try and fix it, but he will.]

I'M TAKING A PEE BREAK [did you not want to know that? Sorry.]

DISCLOSURE: I've fallen off the log. I'm pooped. I'll give you my premature impressions 20 minutes before the end of the debate:

Bush is much more on his game this time. This is the confidence that would have enabled him to beat Kerry in the last debate. But he got trounced on health care and on the environment. So the next 20 minutes is important for him.

Kerry is beating up on Bush over the patriot act, but then has to admit he voted for and supports it. He's shot down his own balloon on this argument.

I'm going to stop and check other people's coverage.

Later,
Jeremy

One more thing: I will never ever ever see Glenn Reynolds on TV because he never ever gives enough notice. Did anyone see him?

UPDATE: Bush gave a not very good answer re: who he'd appoint to Supreme Court. Then Kerry gave a very well delivered answer and sells the notion that this is one of the things that's being decided in this election. This is a score for Kerry.

Here's another premature conclusion: I wish we had a candidate who would be as good on domestic issues as Kerry claims he'd be. I just don't believe Kerry's the guy he's describing. Nevertheless, I'm predicting Kerry's going to benefit from this debate and Bush will stay put. Bush is unable to advance what should be a very strong position in having toppled the Baath regime in Iraq because he tied it so strongly to the WMD issue. So he can't seem to deliver the power on this issue.

Kerry is now defending himself on the before/against 87 billion statement. He always sounds like his old whiney entitled self again when he does this.

That prediction again: Kerry will be widely regarded as the winner of this debate, but over the next few days he will lose his boost. Bush did not shine, but he didn't flub as badly as last time.

The domestic policy debate is likely to be unpleasant for Bush. I don't think these debates are going to be make or break. But if Bush wins the election it won't be because of the debates, whereas if Kerry wins, it will be thought that the debates were what did it, thought I don't think that's how it's going to work. The site of November 2nd bearing down on us like a freight train, and that alone, is what will be forcing people to make up their minds. The debates are just reminding us of how soon that date is.

Ok, I'm signing off again...I think.

UPDATE # 639: There seems to be a preponderance of "Bush won" opinions. Who the hell knows. I guess I'm unhappy with Bush on domestic issues and thought Kerry capitalized well on those. But again, I think it's fantasy camp in terms of believing in Kerry as the savior on this front. When he assures us he's the true liberal/conservative/conservative/liberal pro-war/anti-war/anti-war/pro-war candidate I guess that's where I believe him.

Posted by Jeremy at 08:50 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Conservative Left

 by Jeremy

Cara and I have written about what we would call the reactionary Left (Roger uses the term too, though I remember the very day it came flying out of my angry mouth for the first time. It was August, 2003. But given the fact that he has often blogged my thoughts before I've blogged them myself, I'd say it was a case of parallel invention, or even of recognizing the obvious) by which we mean to refer to people like Naomi Klein, who are so interested in preserving the half-imagined culture of their youth that they resist any effort to change anything (even if the thing needing change is a brutal fascist dictatorship) and may even lend support, if only verbal, to the violent repression of those who would work for change.

But a post by Norm today (who, like Roger, also seems to be some kind of coincidence wizard) induces in me the notion that there is a lesser example of this phenomenon, one that might be referred to as the "conservative curmudgeon Left." Do you remember those conservative curmudgeons (maybe you used to be one, dear reader, until 9/11 re-calibrated your sense of priorities the way it did mine, distracting me as it did from my righteous and perfectly useless nodding over the Left Laundry List)? This type of conservative was the one who liked to place the blame for all the ills of society on [choose one of the following]: welfare queens, the degrading of religious faith, the sexual revolution (half-conscious euphemism for the Baby Boomer generation and to that extent contains a grain of truth), liberals in academia (half-conscious euphemism for the Baby Boomer generation and to that extent contains a grain of truth), the liberal press (half-conscious euphemism, etc...), or full-on Satanism (half-conscious euphemism, etc...).

Try this; try replacing the phrases in bold with references to things like 'secular humanism' or 'the feminist agenda' or 'the sexual revolution' [emphasis mine]:

What we have overlooked is how the pervasive values of market capitalism are corrupting not just the public sphere - our politics and culture... our personal emotions are being distorted to fit a culture in which the values of the market are paramount...

Well, I could go on with this but I'd need a multi-color coding system to do this properly (though I could pull it off using a little bit of web technology. I'll put that idea aside for another "Fair Use Friday" feature.)

But try this too; this statement by Martin Jacques, also quoted by Norm, doesn't need any alteration:

The very idea of what it means to be human - and the necessary conditions for human qualities to thrive - are being eroded.

Maybe conservative curmudgeons are the new working class.

Posted by Jeremy at 09:28 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Hey Kids, it's...

 by Jeremy

This time I took a closer look at one of those now famous Swedish pop band pictures and I think I've got myself a scoop here. What really strikes me as odd is that no one else seems to have noticed this one:

UPDATE: It's not obvious, but the picture of JFK playing the guitar is real; I simply altered his shirt color and added a vest.

* * * To see the previous posts in this series click here.

Posted by Jeremy at 02:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 07, 2004

Oops! Bumped Down a Class

 by Jeremy

While Iraq, now that labor organizing is no longer a form of government assisted suicide (you know, mass graves, la, la, la) is seeing a rebirth of its labor movement, England's Socialist Workers' Party is not prepared to be outdone. But how do you reinvigorate the revolution when you're confronted with a working class consisting of, well, working class people? You promote upper middle class college students and baby boomers with lots of free time (via Harry):

The millions who marched against the war make up the new working class of 2004

"Telecommuters of the World Unite...Dude!"

Posted by Jeremy at 09:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New York Times Covers Oil For Food Scam

 by Jeremy

The New York Times is on the Oil-for-Food Scandal and they're hitting hard:

Cheney's comments reflect a GOP strategy to use portions of the report, including abuses of the oil-for-food program, to try to move discussion away from the central conclusions on the absence of weapons of mass destruction.

It's almost as if Cheney wants us to think that it was some kind of big scandal or something, when the real blockbuster story is that there weren't any stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq, something not well reported previously. Also, France is offering some advice:

France urged caution Thursday in dealing with a U.S. inspector's allegations it was involved in corruption at the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq...

I hope someone thanked France for it's concern. With Chirac's help, Kerry and Edwards will get to the bottom of this well before November 2nd, aided by the assiduous fact-finding efforts of the mainstream press.

Posted by Jeremy at 06:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Though Nostradamus Shrugs Now...

 by Jeremy

...some people are a little too sure of themselves, as Roger shows us. And here I was beginning to question the wisdom of featuring the shrugging prophet on the banner with old Karl. I think we'll keep them both. Who next, though? I took a course in college called "Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud." Perhaps that course title was trying to tell me something.

Is there any way I can justify putting a picture of Brother Theodore up there somewhere? I'd like that.

Here's some advice from him: "Down, I say, down on all fours, and you'll have everything you want, be everything you want to be...Quadrupedism is the key to every lock, the power that heals, the real McCoy."

He also -- and this is so true -- blamed all the ills of the world on the food-eaters (you know who you are, and you should be ashamed of yourself).

Read his story; it's quite something!

UPDATE: I guess this jarring sentence says it all:

In the death camp, he said he saw men eaten alive by dogs while Nazi guards laughed, according to Who's Who in Comedy.

Posted by Jeremy at 05:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

My Observations on Movable Type 3.1

 by Jeremy

Many people will find it worth having, but it has been overhyped. I was excited about the dynamic posting feature (meaning archive pages would be created on the fly each time they are requested, rather than created once and stored on the server, needing to be 'rebuilt' every time there's a change in a comment or a template, etc.). But 1) this feature is incompatible with the Perl plugins that are advertised as if they were features of MT 3.1 and 2) I can't get it working (yes, I suppose the Sixapart people should do a review of me as an MT installer: fair enough. I guess I'd be panned).

And that's another thing: I had thought that plugins like MT-Blacklist 2 were written right into Movable Type now, but that celebrated plugin pack is just, well, a pack of plugins like any other. Granted, MT-Blacklist 2 is a bit spiffier than the previous version, but it worked just fine previously.

And I have given up on getting the dynamic pages feature to work. I'll grant you that this might just be me screwing something up or getting something stupidly wrong. But it underscores the fact that most of the new options in MT 3.1 are absolutely not user-friendly and should not be advertised as if they were solid features of the application (the exception is the Typekey feature, as mentioned below).

Another feature I was looking forward to was the scheduled posting feature, which is the thing I miss the most about Typepad (gee, maybe the MT people could try and purchase that feature from the MT people. Nah! they're competitors...but wait...). I had been using a plugin with MT 2.661 that allowed future post publishing, but it was a hack, albeit a good one. You would designate a future time for the post and then set up a 'cron job' on the server (in the UNIX nerd world that just means a command or script that runs at a certain date and time, or a recurring time, based on the server's system clock). The problem with this was that the cron job would post anything that was cued up as a 'future' post, even if some of them had been set to a day or time that had not yet arrived. So setting a specific date/time only controlled what was printed at the bottom of the post, not the actual time of launch for the post. Whereas Typepad's feature was the real thing.

So I was excited to have what sounded like the real thing again in MT 3.1. The problem is that this new feature in MT 3.1 is just the same plugin I was using in MT 2.661! At least this plugin actually has been written into MT so I didn't have to install it myself (small favors!). But I was less than impressed. And for some reason the cron jobs are failing now. Again, that's probably my fault: I probably screwed something up. But again, this is evidence that the upgrade is dangerous unless you are much more familiar with UNIXy Perly kinds of stuff than I am.

The thing that is really real: compatibility with Typekey, the system that allows you to permit only Typekey registered users to post comments on your blog. As good as MT-Blacklist is (and it is good!) using Typekey is an absolute fix for comment spam, though at the price of setting up a one-time hurdle for posters to have to jump (registering with Typekey).

Conclusion: MT should have been sold as the version that has the Typekey option built in. I think the dynamic pages feature isn't ready yet and should have been kept in the secret vault, since it isn't even compatible with the plugins they are 'plugging' with this version. And the plugins should not have been touted as if they were features. And they should not be bragging about the scheduled posting 'feature' (though the person who hacked this plugin deserves thanks and praise).

I played with Wordpress and found it to be an incredibly easy install! And it's completely dynamic, PHP instead of PERL and without either bragging about it or failing to deliver. On the other hand, you don't get all the current MT plugins or features. And it feels more bare, somehow, than MT. It would feel a bit like going from the Saturn SL1 I drive now back to a very nicely tuned VW bug, meaning it's probably a good alternative, but it has a less luxurious feel to it. But there is apparently an active community of PHP maniacs building improvements into it (Wordpress is open source). But my Wordpress comparisons are just my subjective impressions and should be taken with a grain of salt.

The other subjective thing is that I know much more about PHP (than about PERL) so I might be able to customize Wordpress just a little here and there. I might just switch to Wordpress in the end (because otherwise I'd have to get around to doing all of the important things in my life that I've been putting off. Like showering, eating (which is more trouble than it's worth anyway) and like that).

More words of praise for MT-Blacklist: it's very easy to install and works great. It's the one part of this fiasco that didn't go wrong. It seems very solid. You will break nothing by installing it (though follow the directions carefully and backup your blog first, just to be sure).

Posted by Jeremy at 07:43 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 06, 2004

The Iraqi Resistance: A Tutorial

 by Jeremy

Planning to participate in a debate on the war in Iraq? Need to brush up on your talking points? Here, via Norm, is a conversation between two Iraqi policemen as reported in the Guardian:

He tuned to his aide and said, as he started to unbutton his shirt:

"If the mujahideen open fire at you, be sure not to fire back."

"What do you mean sir?"

"I mean, make sure not to fire back because those are mujahideens, holy warriors."

"But those people are shooting at us and trying to kill us all the time," said the aide, his eyes wide, unable to believe what he was hearing.

"Of course they shoot at us! We are collaborators."

"What do you mean sir?" asked the aide.

"We are working with Americans, the infidel occupiers. This is why they are allowed to kill us."

"But we are stopping the criminals, arresting thieves and protecting the citizens - isn't this what police should do? Do you call this collaboration?"

"Yes, because sometimes the police help the Americans to arrest the resistance fighters."

"But those people are terrorists. They are killing and kidnapping civilians," said the increasingly incredulous junior officer.

"First," said the lieutenant, "the resistance don't kill civilians; they only attack the Americans. They are trying to liberate our country. Second, they only kidnap the Jews."

"And what about all the people who get killed in the car bombs? Are they occupiers too?" By now the aide was shaking with anger.

"Oh no, these car bombs are planted by the Americans and the Jews to smear the reputation of the resistance."

"What about the Russian contractors who were working to fix the electrical plants? Are those also Jews and collaborators?"

"See, the resistance detain people and investigate them. If they are OK they will be released, and by the way, they are all taught about Islam while they are being held, and are given Korans before being released. Or else they are killed if they are found guilty by the Sharia court."

Everyone in the car fell silent, and by now we were on the outskirts of Latifiya and we could here the explosions. The lieutenant, now wearing a coloured T-shirt, tucked his gun in his trousers and jumped out of the car and mixed with crowds. Later, four policemen were killed in the raid when insurgents attacked them.

Are you taking notes? You may be quizzed on this.

Posted by Jeremy at 05:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Joyous Occasion to Remember How Sad One Felt

 by Jeremy

Congratulations are in order for Kelsey!

When someone tells you they've just become engaged to be married do you, like me, struggle to find sufficiently purple prose to rise to the occasion, that perfectly pitched congratulatory toast? Well, when it happens to you, you might try saying simply this: "Just remember how sad you felt."

Maybe one can yankee-doodle this into a widely accepted, ironic expression, like "break a leg" to actors. As in:

Person 1: "So, we finally decided to rise to the occasion and get married."

Person 2: "Just remember how sad you felt! [ADD: clap on the back, then: Mazel Tov or Salud or Cheers, as appropriate]"

UPDATE: Kelsey's story has a happy ending (or beginning)! Chalk up another one to the power of joking at the expense of one's own personal pain (and if there needs to be a patron saint of that, then I nominate Brother Theodore)

Posted by Jeremy at 12:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 05, 2004

Phewf!

 by Jeremy

Well, it was beginning to feel as if I'd taken a powder these past few days. But I'm back now, baby. Oh, I don't pretend that live blogging the Vice Presidential debate is the most exciting or meaningful thing one can do with a blog. But damn, it's strenuous. I'm pumped now. It's hammered the rust off my hinges. Which is a good thing.

Thanks for indulging me!

Posted by Jeremy at 10:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

VP Debate Liveblog

 by Jeremy

What, is this an open book exam? They're taking notes before the debate. That seems fair enough.

Edwards establishes the goofy Dustin Hoffman smile. Cheney puts forth the assymetrical non-smile. "When I say put your pencils down you must put your pencils down immediately."

Al Qaeda/Saddam link question to Cheney:
Must look at within "broader context" Saddam "had been" on "state sponsored terror" list (Edwards scribbles). "What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do."

Edwards: "Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people." Details the increase of troops losses. Names Republican leaders who feel the war is a failure, i.e. Lugar. "We need a fresh start...speed up the training of the Iraqis."

Cheney: Responds calmly, characterizes success and looking toward rapidly training Iraqis.

Edward: says there is no connection between Al Qaeda and Hussein. Seems a bit out of sync, as if unhappy with Cheney's non-combative style.

Question to Edwards: would saddam still be in power if you and Kerry had your way? Somehow Edwards is saying that "we had Osama Bin Laden cornered in Tora Bora." "We were attacked by Al Qaeda..."

Edwards sounds pissed off, whereas Cheney is playing it calm.

Cheney: slightly more pissed. Returns to Kerry's claim that here ought to be a global test. He's looking at the moderator, rather than Edwards. Returns to Kerry's record.

Question: AFghanistan. In a second term, whtat would you do in Afghanistan. Ans: Key is to go after terrorists, take on Taliban...4 days away from democratic election, 10 million registered voters...enourmous progress "despite what John Edwards said about AFghanistan 2 and a half years ago. He was just wrong." Constitution...schools open..."this is major, major progress."

Edwards: They got it wrong. left job to warlords. left war on terror for Iraq. "These distortions have continued" claims that global test quote is wrong and everyone knows what he really meant (though he doesn't say). Here's what actually heppened inf AFG. now providing 75% of world's opium...

Cheney: 20 years ago similar situation in El Salvador...characterizes violence and chaos...but we had elections...

Edwards: Iran is more dangerous today than it was 4 years ago...N. Korea has moved ahead with nuclear weapons.

Edwards is consistently on the offensive, angry tone and seems to mean it, not just an act. Cheney has stayef fairly calm and going for authoritative tone.

Edwards quotes Kerry as saying we will never give a veto on U.S. Policy to foreign governments. "It is critical that we be credible...that they trust what we say at the United Nations"...etc. This is one of the reasons we've had so much difficulty in getting assistance in Iraq.

Cheney: 90% figure of America's share of casualities [update: said this figure omits Iraqis fighting with coalition]. Mentions votes for war spending and says to Edwards "you probably weren't around to vote for that." VERY sly way to introduce the notion of Edwards' lack of experience, which you knew was coming. Generally knocks his and Kerry's credibility. Sounding very slightly more testy, but not much.

Edwards responds with somewhat unconvincing assurances.

Cheney: "Your rhetoric" would be a lot more convincing if you had the evidence to back it up. Looks at Edwards directly and voice sounding stern but still calm.

Cheney: I'm not questioning Kerry's patriotism I'm questioning his judgement. He doesn't display the qualities of someone who has conviction. Cites Kerry's changes of policy toward war support and attributes it to keeping up with the Howard Dean popularity. This was effectively delivered, came across as credible rather than nasty.

Edwards: Kerry consistently supported sending money to support troops, but also thought it was wrong to rubber stamp (my words) a plan they thought was not good.

Cheney: you can't go back and forth on support once you've voted for war.

Edwards: Saddam Hussein has no weapons and "has little or no" connection to Al Qaeda. [This strikes me as a huge admission of some connection.]

Moderator: France and Germany siad they won't send troops even if Kerry president: doesn't that make your plan naive?

Edwards: stresses other aspects of plan: train Iraqi troops, more troops, election supervision..."success breeds contribution, breeds joining the coalition." Cheney grimacing subtly then rolled his eyes.

Cheney: re internationalizing the effort: "They don't have a plan, they have an echo." It's hard after kerry calls our allies a coalition of the coerced and the bribed to go out and bring in allies. Allawi addressed congress and Kerry demeaned him and challeneged his credibilty. That's not the way to build allies.

Edwards: doesn't answer Allawi point. Reiterates that 90% of coalition casualites [update: were American].

Cheney: sounding angry for the first time, says not counting Iraqi allies in casualty count is to demean them as allies. Sounded angry but sincerely meant, not nasty or petty. 'He just spanked him' Cara said. True.

Edwards: It's not true that there's a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda [I think he said that. Contradicts earlier admission]. It's not true that things are going well. "Remember shock and awe? Look at where we are now." WE can't be dragged kickking and screaming to protecting this coutnry. We all agree that 9/11 changed things. They opposed a homeland securty dept. and then opposed it. WE will impose all of the 9/11 commission reccomendations.

Cheney: Let's look at Zarqawi: training terrorists in AFgh., then went to Baghdad, training re; Ricin, etc., car bombings, beheadings...was in Baghdad before and after the war...

Moderator: while you were CEO of Haliburton you opposed sanction on Iran. What now? Cheney: I was talking about unilateral sanctions. WE might now want even tougher sanctions. WE've dealt with Iran differently than IRaq partly becuase they don't have 12 years of violating resolutions. We will now determine whether they are violating resolutions and will see if increase in sanctions is warranted...mentions Qaddafi surrendering nukes 5 days after capture of Saddam...AQ Kahn program shut down.

Edwards: Cheney talks about "someone associate with Al Qaeda in Iraq" but there are 60 countries with Al Qaeda memebers. VP has talked of lifiting sancition on Iran while CEO of Haliburton...while he was CEO they did business with Libya, investigation on bribes to officials...

Cheney: need more than 30 seconds [laugh]...smokescreen...false accustations, got to factcheck.com for facts on this...confuse voters...no substance to charges...

Edwards: these are the facts...did business with sworn enemies of the U.S...no bid contract in Iraq

Moderator: bad news in Israel...attacks, terrorist attacks, etc. What would you do?

Edwards: First: Israeli people have the right to defend themselves...6 children were killed in a bombing not far from where I [Update: Edwards] was staying in Israel...what are the Israeli peole expected to do?...they certainly don't have a partner in Arafat...need to crack down on the Saudis, confront Iran, etc.

Cheney: the reason they keep trying to attack Haliburton is the obscure their own record (this seems badly timed since Edwards was talking aobut terror in Israel). With respect to Israel and Palestine, Saddam Hussein paid $25,000 to families of suicice bombers. I think one of the reasons we don't have as many suicided bombings is because this money has dried up THE GUY MAKES A GOOD POINT HERE!!!

Edwards: he accused my voting record but he voted against meals on wheels for elderly [Cheney rolls eyes again], voted aginst Martin Luter King holiday [THAT'S A BAD ONE!], etc.

Cheney: Well, his record is just not very distinguised.

Cheney: No child left behind,

Edwards: I thought the question was about jobs and poverty [this is a point for Edwards -- Cheney was evading] 4 million more Americans have fallen into poverty since 2000. This is the first president to not create jobs. They're for outsourcing jobs, we're against it. We'll get back to fiscal responsibility.

Cheney: brags about benefits of tax cuts, no child left behind. Dropped 5 million people off the federal tax rolls...Edwards using old data.

Edwards: millions of poeple lost jobs and fallen into poverty, mess in Iraq.

Question: how will you fix the economy?

Edwards: becasue we will do what they have not done. To pay for health and education, we'll roll back tax cuts for people over 200,000 dollars/year, keep cuts in place for those earning less, plus tax cuts for health care and child care...also get rid of some bureaucratic spending...close some corporate loopholes...we cannot eliminate defiecti but can cut it in half and move toward fiscal respons.

Cheney: Kerry has voted for tax increases 98 times. Only going after top bracket? Fact is many small business owners fall into the top bracket and this is not smart because they employ many workers. Pres. and I will drive deficit down by 50% in 5 years.

Edwards: Kerry has supported or voted for tax cuts over 600 times.

Qustion to cheney: Describe Bush admin support for ban on same sex marriage. Answer: I still believe freedom means freedom for everybody, but that's different from question of regulating marriage and I think that's for the states to decide. But in Massachusetts has modified constitution to allow gay marriage and president felt it was important to make it clear that this is not the way to go. The pres. makes policy and I support his decisions.

Edwards: We don't just value wealth, as they do, we value work in this country. Now as to this question. I think the VP and his wife love their daugher...great respect for their embracing their daughter..."I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman" as does John Kerry [strikes me as an amazing thing that Edwards sounds more anti gay marriage than Cheney]

Moderator: are you and Kerry trying to have it both ways re: gay marriage?

Edwards: We believe marriage is between a man and a woman but that gay couples should have rights and benefits, but [says it a third time!] we believe marriage is between a man and a woman. But this issue is being used to divide America and it's wrong.

Cheney: Thanks Edwards for kind words about his family and leaves it at that.

Moderator: Asks if Cheney thinks Edwards is part of the problem of increase in medeical costs due to lawsuits? [both candidates laugh]

Cheney responds: Speaks generally about the increase in pressure and costs to doctors due to growing malpractices lawsuits. We think it can be fixed. Need to cap damages and limit rewards to attorneys. Kerry has voted against liability reform and I don't think Edwards supports it meaninfgully either.

Edwards: I also think that there are too many lawsuits. We think that lawyers should be held accountable for irresponsible cases. But we don't believe we should take away the right of people like Valery Lakey (spelling?)...cites case of child like others injured by faulty product

Moderator to Edwards: do you feel personally attacked when Cheney talks about having a trial lawyer on the ticket, etc?

Edwards: Answers carefully. Thinks it's misleading but avoids saying he takes it personally or as an attack. Says they mischaracterize the nature of the problem. Meicare up 17% We have a serious health care plan...they dont' have one, unwilling to do.

Cheney: Need tort reform, lawsuite abuse. Tells story of aircraft company success, but held back by cost of liability insurance. Medicare up 17% but he incorrectly suggests this is due to Bush policy which is not the case...loopholes due to 1997, Kerry supported law necessitated premium increases.

OBSERVATION: This moderator is asking fair questions and tough questions of both candidates.

Question: AIDS, how end growth? Huge growth among Black women.

Cheney: Great tragedy, millions of lives lost...in some parts of the world the entire productive generation eliminated...Bush has appropriated funds for education, medicines overseas...I had not heard those numbers on the growth among AFrican America women...need to do more...

Edwards: WE beleive the 15 billion dollars given to AFrica needs to be doubled. AIDS combined with genocide in Sudan are huge issues in AFrica that must be dealt with...also children without health coverage in the U.S., increases threat of AIDS, etc.

Moderator: you have the least experience of any VP candidate. "What qualifies you to be a heartbeat away?"

Edwards answer: Kerry and I will tell the truth [this sounded as stupid and evasive as it reads! I think this works against him.] the one thing we knoew from this adminstration...and I don't claim to have the longe policital resume that Cheney has...but what we know from this adminsitration is that a long administration does not mean good policy, etc. We will strengthen this military...

Cheney: Important thing in picking VP varies form PResident to president...when Bush chose me it wan'st b/c he was worried about carrying Wyoming [Edwards looked like he felt htis was a low blow. think about it. He's right, but it's also not unfair]. It's a very significatn responsiblity when you consider you may have to take over.

Edwards: talks about hwat he's learned about the strength of Kerry's character.

Cheney: I clearly beleive Bush will be a better commander in chief, he's already done it for 4 years...very speical qualities vital...not at all convicned Kerry has these qualities.

Moderator: how are you two diffetrent.

Cheney: Probably more similarities than differences. Both from modest backgrounds, very similar. I've made a choice for public service. I'm absolutely convicned that the trheat we face now is very real and that we have to use extraordinary force...[Edwards VERY loudly rips a piece of paper from his pad...VERY strange effect!!!]

Edwards: Mr. Vice PResident, we were attacked but we were not attacked by Saddam Hussein. Edwards broke the 'don't mention candidate's name rule' twice. [I don't understand this rule!] We're screen passengers but we don't screen the cargo. We have to be strong and aggressive but also smart.

Cheney declines to reponds.

Moderator: Flip-flopping often mentioned. "what's wrong with flip-flopping?"

Edwards: Can I now mention John Kerry's name? [yes. still don'g get it]. Flip flop: they should know something about flip flops: for then against homeland security dept., for then against putting funds aside for Social security, lobbied to have combat pay cut for troops, siad they'd fund no child left behind but billions short today...

Cheney: I can think of a lot of words to describe Kerry's position on Iraq, consistent is not one them. For 87 billion before I voted against it...would have voted for Iraq war again but ehn says wrong war, wrong place, wrong time...but eh key is not to put in more American troops, it's to bring Iraqis into the fight [more audible page ripping from Edwards]...

Edwards: details crisis in education...Bush admin failed to fund mandates for school standards...plan to get incentives for best teachers in schools.

Cheney: we're closing the achievement gap via no child left behind.

Moderator: You will inheret a deeply devided electorate. How will you bridge that divide.

Cheney: great disappointmet that we have not been able to do what Bush had done in Texas where he brought Democrats into bi-partisan effort [this seems a bit forced to me]. I'm not sure exactly why...but we'll keep working at it...it's essential for us...Zell Miller delivered keynote address at RNC

Edwards: PRes. said he would unite this country. Have you ever seen the country more divided. We can do better in this country. Back to health care...we're going to make same helath care avialabel to congress to all Americans [this can't be true. I'd like to htink it was]...will allow prescrition druges from Canada, stand up to drug companies re: ads, etc.

Cheney: [laughs: "it's hard to know where to start"] Says kerry and Edwards voted against a drug plan for seniors.

Edwards: They had a choice to be with the American people or with the big insurance companies [repeats as riff] They chose the big insurnance companies...

Cheney: taken down Saddam Hussein and Taliban...outcome will depend on american people and strength of president...

CLOSING: Edwards: remembers father learning math on televions. I was proud of him and proud to live in coutnry wehre I could get a college education. But now there is a light flickering in America...what they're going to give you is four more years of hte same...[he sounds sincere here, not scripted, though he clearly is scripted]...give us the power to fight for you...

CLOSING: Cheney: cut taxes, jobs, businesses, workers...all Americans ought to have access to medical care and finest schools...we will do everything we can to preserve social security [introduces doubt. Not wise]...

A FEW OBSERVATIONS:
Cara: Cheney was blinking a lot, a few bloggers are pointing out. [I agree!]

Both candidates seemed focused, sincere, showed mastery of policy and issues. Edwards seemed angrier though civil. Cheney was a bit more restrained except for one or two moments, but Cheney seemed to be going for a seasoned elder statesman sort of effect, though that's also pretty much his usual demeanor.

Winner: No obvious winner. But Edwards was a bit too pissy. And Cheney was less harsh than I though he might be. William Kristol just said that Cheney clearly won the foreign policy half and Edwards clearly won the domestic policy half. This rings true to me.

No surprises, no nightmare soundbites, no heroic soundbites.

Just saw a replay of some biting remarks from Cheney about Edwards record: terrible attendance record, not very distinguished. It was actually very strong, pretty harsh. I don't know why it didn't seem that intense upon first viewing. I guess it seems more harsh out of context since Edwards had been harsh too. But a clip like that could be used to make Cheney seem like a mean old man. That's not how it came across to me at the time, though.

UPDATE: this live blogging thing is tricky. I posted some things in in the wrong place and just fixed that, I think.

Posted by Jeremy at 08:50 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 04, 2004

UK Footprints, Yiddish Books, Farkakte Student

 by Jeremy

I've met this Aaron Lansky. He came to the Yiddish language class I was struggling through (with little success) while I was an undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, back in 1986. He told us some amazing stories about how he and his friends created the largest collection of Yiddish language books anywhere on the planet.

It figures, though, that it would take a Rhodesian professor in England to tip me off to the fact that Lansky has written a book about his continuing adventures. This is truly a strange world, this planet Blog.

And now, because it seems reciprocally appropriate, the places I've been in England:

Places Cara and I have stayed:
London, Thirsk, Rutland (enjoyed the Monty Python accents), Worcestershire (don't expect me to believe anything you say about how that name is spelled or pronounced. No two Brits make the same claim about that town and/or county)

Places We've visited with pleasure (some more than others):
Glastonbury, Salisbury, Whitby, Saltburn, Scarborough, Stratford-upon-Avon

Places We've driven through very quickly and found notable if distasteful:
Kidderminster, Birmingham, Leeds

Places Londoners looked at me blankly for asking directions to:
Hampstead (it was a guy with a strong Asian accent who finally gave me good directions to Hampstead by way of Abbey Road. "You know, the Beatles walked across there on the record album of the same name?"

Places I called the hotel in Hampstead from, thinking I was getting closer, but instead holding the phone away from my face while they laughed at me (they applauded when I finally arrived at the hotel):
East Acton

This was back in 1995 on our honeymoon. We hauled no Yiddish books the whole trip. Not even one.

Posted by Jeremy at 01:02 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Comments Problem

 by Jeremy

UPDATE: It is fixed. Fixed. You can now comment without having to wait for me to manually approve you comments. It turns out to have been the now incompatible dregs of the old version of MT-Blacklist. I had thought the new version came automatically with MT 3.1, but it turns out you, once again, have to install it, which means having to boil the marrow of a dung beetle's exoskeleton in molten amber, recompile the decompiler, download and upload the Siberian overdrive, and various things like that. So I guess I'll do all of those things.

Yes...I'll blog some actual content soon. But I wanted to let you know that I can't seem to turn off the feature that requires me to approve comments before they are published to the blog. So if you comment and don't see it on the blog right away, just give me some time (a minute, an hour, two hours?) and I'll surely approve it so your comment is published. I hope to fix this problem soon.

Posted by Jeremy at 05:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 03, 2004

Hey! I'm Back!

 by Jeremy

I seem to have fixed the problem. It turns out it was just a case of uploading cgi files in binary instead of ascii. I don't know why that happened because I used the same FTP software I've always used in the past and I would not have changed the default settings. But, it turns out, once you have uploaded a file in binary, you can't just reupload it in ascii and click "yes" to overwrite it. You've got to delete the first file and then upload it again. And then, of course, you've got to set the permissions to 755 again.

The problem may have had something to do with the fact that I was practically out of server space because there was so much spam email piling up on my server. Spam assassin works great, but it just shoves all that spam into the closet, as it were. There's seems to be no way to tell it to just delete the stuff automatically. But I just went in and deleted over 40 megabytes of spam email. I think that may have contributed to the problem, though I don't understand why.

Anyway...there may still be bugs to fix, but I'm back in action again. I'll give you my review of Movable Type 3.1 after a few days of setting it up and playing with it.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 02, 2004

Ankle-Biting Pajama Blogger Steals From Self

 by Jeremy

I just finished a four article series (technical articles. No you wouldn't; trust me) all taking the same sort of look at the same material. One of the challenges was to avoid plagiarising from my own previously published material. I paraphrased and re-worded, hoping no one will notice the similarities (to my own damn stuff!).

Well, while I'm on this amoral self-exploiting spree, I'm going to take something I posted in the comments of a Jeff Jarvis post the other day, and post it here. The issue is whether legally curtailing campaign contributions can be considered a violation of free speech rights.

I know that many of you will think I'm wrong as hell and I encourage you to comment. I do see this as an issue where there is sense on both sides. Lurking within this debate are some fascinating questions about the role of mass communication in society and all that. So, if anyone is actually reading on the weekend, fire away.

Here's my comment -- I'm putting it in a blockquote box because doing so makes me feel special:

I have a real problem accepting that "free speech" best characterizes the running of a political ad (mnemonic device: it ain't free). A law that forbids this (or sets limits on it) has nothing to do with prohibiting speech. You are perfectly free to say whatever you want to say, on the air or otherwise. What is prohibited is the leveraging of financial power to turn that speech into political influence. So the speech isn't the issue. If you can get your speech on the air without paying for it, then it's perfectly fine. So, again, it's not the speech that's being abridged, it's the use of money to divert a captive audience your way.

There's nothing in the constitution that guarantees a citizen's right to purchase an audience.

If George Soros has enough prestige and influence to command attention merely by holding a press conference or standing on a soapbox in Union Square, then so be it. That's what the first amendment stands to protect. I don't think it was meant to protect the artificial creation of influence on the basis of wealth alone. If the American system does protect one's freedom to purchase influence, it's not the first amendment that does so.

I'm not anti-capitalist, but it's of the utmost importance to draw some lines between capitalism and democracy. And while I admit that this issue encompasses both free speech and the exercise of capital, I feel that the purchase of campaign ad time falls well within the realm of the latter.

Posted by Jeremy at 11:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 01, 2004

Satirical Fun Resumes Next Week

 by Jeremy

The trouble with a weekly feature, of course, is that you have to do it weekly, but you don't anticipate things like all nighters, nightmare deadlines, presidential debates. I'll have to start now on things I want done for next week. I think that's how normal people do things.

So next week it is, and forever after.

Posted by Jeremy at 11:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack