There are things that need to be said

If these political pushers can throw a man like John Murtha under the bus, they can do it to anyone.

This is what it's come to, a decorated Marine pilloried for political points by a nitwit freshman congresswoman, a draft-dodger VP and a TANG playboy. Not to mention the bread-and-circuses resolution the GOP floated to discredit Murtha's proposal. Will the last to leave this madhouse please turn out the lights? The inmates are willfully living in the dark already.

Everyone who voted Republican, I hope you're happy. Everyone who let the long lines, lack of voting machines, poll watchers/inimidators, crappy weather, work schedule, whatever keep you from voting, I hope you're happy too. Everyone who couldn't be bothered to vote, or couldn't be bothered to learn enough about the current situation to feel comfortable pulling a lever, touching a screen or anything else, I hope you're happy. Everyone who voted in one of the enabling assholes--of whom Murtha was until recently a member--I hope you're happy.

I sure the fuck hope you're happy, because if you aren't, you helped fuck this up and it'll likely end up that not even the Bush administration and its useful idiots in Congress are going to end up with much to show for it. Hopefully they'll be brought lower than the Nixon gang, low beyond the hope of recall in the shadowy netherworld of talk radio and the "balanced" op-ed pages of dying newspapers. But even if all they face are three years of emasculation and impotence (which, while hard to bear for tough-talking bullies like these, isn't nearly punishment enough; anyone up for a trip to The Hauge?), even if the military and its friends like Murtha convince them to leave Iraq before many more lives are lost, the damage this had done, this five years of incompetance and, frankly, an unwillingness to aim for competence, will be horrendous.

We'll have a symbol--perhaps in the sad husk that was America's most interesting city, New Orleans. We'll have to overcome a mind-boggling deficit held entirely too much by a strategic rival. We'll have to live with generations of poorly educated people unable to adapt to new economies. We'll have the domestic economic, racial and other divides to overcome that have been exacerbated by this pack of morons. We'll get the chance to really understand Britain's post-WWII malaise and the fall of the Roman Empire. Like as not, we won't recover in our lifetimes, nor our childrens', not as a recognizable United States, and hopefully not as what we've become. It's a sorry state to reach where you'd rather see your country cease being than continue in its current path.

I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I really think it's hard to understate the danger the ideal of America is in, really hard to overstate the dire consequences of a descent into autocracy, torture, dictatorship, madness.

Oh, and for those who think "It can't happen here," you're helping it happen. Stop now.

The Death (by Inches) of Journalism

I have rarely read anything I've hated to have to agree with more, but Marty Kaplan accurately describes the current situation in big-time journalism.
Since most of us who are in journalism aren't there, the question becomes (at least in part), what do I aspire for now? How do I make a living doing what I love without selling my soul to the point that I no longer love it? Can I continue to do this in light of the tarnish these idiots have put on my profession, avocation, whatever?
Why isn't Woodruff isn't joining Miller on the unemployment line? Even more so and even quicker, since he's an icon. She was, in many ways, a product of favoritism much like Jayson Blair (and for a similar reason, too; except in her case, it was "see, we do have conservatives" instead of "see, we do have minorities') and her statements as to her perception of her job clearly illustrate her bankruptcy as a journalist. He is, along with Carl Bernstein, the reason many of us got into this business, someone who spoke truth to power and blew the bastard's damned kneecap off. (Bonus points for those recognizing the second reference.) But when the leaders transgress, is it not worse than when the flock does? Aren't they supposed to be somehow elevated, held to a higher standard? (Please don't give me any of the oversimplified democracy crap about how we're all equal unless you're willing to support election to public office by random means; I'm ambivalent and unsure if it would be that much worse.)
If you care at all about journalism and democracy, do something. (I'm writing this, for starters.) Push your paper, station, whatever to cover this, not just repeat the RNC talking points released into the magical media echo chamber. Write something yourself, and send it in. Call, write, fax, moon your representatives and senators, anything to get the message across. (Note: message mooning tends to require the assistance of another person for legibility. Caveat exposor.) Shake the hell out of the next person who says "they're all corrupt"--if we run the corrupt ones out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered, other corrupt ones will be less likely to try and take up residence in the capital. Same thing for the next person who pillories the entire media--there are still some who can read, think and report,, like Keith Olbermann and the K-R DC Bureau. Even Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are worth more to a functioning democracy than a thousand Millers and Woodruffs.

Marty Kaplan
11.17.2005
Journalism: R.I.P.

Mainstream journalism has cancer. The diagnosis – stage three, terminal – was made this week, by anyone with eyes to see.

Before now, the symptoms were alarming, but there was still hope. Fox’s “liberal media” lie; the reduction of all debates to polarized left/right shouting matches; the triumph of infotainment and missing-white-women-as-news over information we actually need to know; the substitution of he-said/she-said for shoe-leather and fact-finding; the social coziness of reporters and sources; the bottom-line obsession; the consolidation of power in fewer and fewer owners' hands' the politicization of public broadcasting – these, and more, were tumors, but their fatal metastasizing was not inevitable.

But the coverage of the battle between the White House and the Democrats over the use of prewar intelligence, and the reporting on l’affaire Woodward, is the end of the road for the mandarin gatekeepers.

Read the rest at the Huffington Post

Thoughts while reading Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff:

We should not commit lesser evils while attempting to overcome a great evil. It is far too easy to surpass the great evil with the sum of our lesser evils, and then we have not only exceeded the original, but these lesser evils are often ineffective at fighting the great evil and we have turned the tide in its favor.
There is excess in the defense of liberty (and several other worthy abstract nouns): excess that sullies the liberty protected until it is an unrecognizable thing that lay in fetters at the feet of a once-great civilization. We must not spill the blood of innocents to avenge our lost innocence and innocents, or we will sure not just become the dragon we fight, but one far worse than that, a failed saint.

(Un)intelligent design meets the naughty bits

And what comedian designer configured the region between our legs an entertainment complex built around a sewage system?

Neil deGrasse Tyson, "Universe" column in November's Natural History Magazine

Perhaps it has some relationship to the moral-dignity-pants brigade that always wants to, if unable to close them all down, relegate adult entertainment establishments to industrial-zone areas.

Flock blogging test

Nothing to see here. Please move along.

LCD Saver

I saved a very expensive touchscreen monitor (Wacom Cintiq 15S, $1,900 new) today in about five minutes with about $14 worth of plastic polish and cleaner. That’s a good cost-to-benefit if I ever saw one.
My monitor got scratched moving (it was mounted to a heavy-duty monitor arm on my desk, and I figured it would be safer there—with some mover’s pads taped to it—than if I unmounted it and boxed it up. I did not plan on my desk breaking in two, obviously.)
Searching Google for “scratched LCD repair”, I found out that some iPod lovers were using 3M’s Plastic Cleaner 39017 and Plastic Polish 39010 to clean and restore their all-to-easily scratched screens, and figured I should at least try it before contemplating living with a 12” scratch on a 15” monitor.
Standard polishing routine: quarter-sized drop on terry cloth towel, rub until dry. I always follow with a microfiber cloth to get any unseen residue off. First the cleaner, then the polish, and now the screen looks as good as the day I got it. I’m going to go around saving our cell phones, stereo receivers, dashboards, calculators—basically any optical plastic. Great stuff.

Source: I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted at auto parts stores, though they usually have some form of plastic care. Froogle led me to Levine Automotive Supplies, where they had 8 fl. oz. bottles for $6.99.

Here's the message we need to send back

FT.com / In depth / Terror - Text of statement delivered by Mayor Ken Livingstone

“This was a cowardly attack, which has resulted in injury and loss of life. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been injured, or lost loved ones. I want to thank the emergency services for the way they have responded.
Following the al-Qaeda attacks on September 11 in America we conducted a series of exercises in London in order to be prepared for just such an attack. One of the exercises undertaken by the government, my office and the emergency and security services was based on the possibility of multiple explosions on the transport system during the Friday rush hour. The plan that came out of that exercise is being executed today, with remarkable efficiency and courage, and I praise those staff who are involved.
I’d like to thank Londoners for the calm way in which they have responded to this cowardly attack and echo the advice of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair - do everything possible to assist the police and take the advice of the police about getting home today.
I have no doubt whatsoever that this is a terrorist attack. We did hope in the first few minutes after hearing about the events on the Underground that it might simply be a maintenance tragedy. That was not the case. I have been able to stay in touch through the very excellent communications that were established for the eventuality that I might be out of the city at the time of a terrorist attack and they have worked with remarkable effectiveness. I will be in continual contact until I am back in London.
I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.
That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I’m proud to be the mayor of that city.
Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.
I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others - that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.
In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.
They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.”

Saving Fundamentalists from Fundamentalism

Read David James Duncan's "What Fundamentalists Need for Their Salvation". All of it.

I should confess, I almost never read past the jump on a Web page. If it doesn't have a printer-friendly or single-page version (or, in my geekier moments, succumb to disabling style sheets), I don't go past page one, if I even make it to the bottom. I have a much softer heart for those who respect my time and convenience But this is worth reading past the jump, and the first two sentences of the second page is among those I have most identified with in at least a year, maybe five.

Each of these crusader groups has seen itself as fighting to make its own or some other culture "more Christian" even as it tramples the teachings of Christ into a blood-soaked earth. The result, among millions of non-fundamentalists, has been revulsion toward anything that chooses to call itself "Christian."

For expressing a single thought each, as all good sentences do, they encapsulate much of the despair I have felt as good Christians, like my mom, get thrown in with Dobson et al.
Everyone, of every faith, even the faithless and the faith-averse, should read this. Even if you don't subscribe to Christian belief, allowing a dangerous group to usurp its words and its power can not but bring suffering into the world.

What he said, and more

From Billmon:

I know that the freest and fairest societies are those with a free press . . . publishing information that the government does not want to reveal. If they can do that, surely I can face prison to defend a free press.
Judith Miller

Even under the best of circumstances, that would have been a repulsive exercise in shameless pandering. But coming from Judy Miller -- the Pentagon's favorite pre-war pipeline for feeding WMD bullshit to the American public -- it's enough to induce projectile vomiting. ...
When I read Miller's little speech, I'm afraid something snapped. Fuck journalistic principles. I was glad Judge Hogan locked the bitch up -- I only wished he'd thrown the key away. And since we're dealing with a critical national security threat here -- after all, there's a traitor running around the White House making things easier for nuclear terrorists -- it occurred to me that a few stress positions might be in order for a high value detainee like Miller, or maybe a little of the Fear Up Harsh approach -- with a nice lemon chicken dinner afterwards, of course.

Pierce says: You know, if I needed any other evidence that this is just another episode of Judith Miller's persecution complex theater, this little speech would be it. But she's dragged far too many journalists on stage with her, and it's time to stop enabling her sad act.
Note to Ms. Miller: I don't know exactly why you're going to jail, whether it's pure obstinance or protecting one of your pimps, but it sure the hell isn't as a staunch defender of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I have a strong feeling it's much more about not being seen as the obvious tool you've been, not to mention part of the fine New York Times tradition of admitting error only when it doesn't do anybody much damned good; and to try to hide behind the soldiers you helped put in harm's way for a shitload of lies is crass beyond measure and unforgivable. If you're a journalist, call me something else; I would hate for anyone to conflate myself and my work with you.
It's a damned shame so many people in journalism, both individually and collectively as professional organizations, feel they must stand by this useless, self-important hack who's using the First Amendment as a damned toreador's cape to distract and distort. I'm all for defending the First Amendment, even on principal alone in cases where the speech (or speaker) is repugnant, but that's not what is happening here. Miller's defenders are merely aiding a serial liar.

Missing the Larger Truth in the search for "Truth" About Iraq

Salon.com has a teaser for its article The "Truth" About Iraq" claiming that right wing talk show hosts "are headed to the war zone to report what they already know: U.S. Troops are winning...."
The problem here is that we're winning our way into a Vietnam-style exit; it's not that our troops can't defeat insurgents in open battle, it's that we can't (or won't, in many cases) protect them from the tactics used by the insurgents, whether with enough armor or enough people. But I suppose they have to bring a straw man to the Green Zone, or it wouldn't be right-wing radio.

An Ode To an Oddly Named Mexican Restaurant

Glasgow's Mexican Cafe, Bentonville, Ark.
Decor like your grandpa's favorite hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint: figured glass chandiliers, stuffed swordfish, sombreros and oil paintings on the wall, red tablecloth and carpet to hide the inevitable salsa spills. This tiny place seast about 100 and doesn't accept reservations. The portions are large, the food good, solid fare. A big tamale that doesn't suffer from the blandness some larger specimens sometimes exhibit. The service is a bit spotty and the place seems a little understaffed, but it tolerates kids well and that can be a boon. An occasional plume floats over from the cancer ward, but this old building was not built with segregation in mind. All in all, a singular experience that, while not authentically Mexican like the Mexican-owned restaurants in the area, a good interpretation of the cuisine.

Vignette

I make my living writing and thinking--I know, it's hard to tell from my recent lack of output--because it's the only way to fill this beast inside me that needs. Believe me, there are days I wish my calling was breaking bricks with my skull; it seems it would have to be easier than this, or at least less risky. But while I might be able to make a living doing something else, I find it difficult to live doing anything else; this is what I do, what I feel I must do, and every day I don't do it is painful. So you can imagine I've been hurting a lot. I wish I could say I have the end in sight, but I'm none too sure of my vision anymore.
There is a mass gestating inside me, a gestalt fancied mass that feeds on my daily input of reading and listening, that's building (I hope) to some conclusion that will eclipse its seeds and become a wondrous flower. I can feel it, I can get a sense of its outlines and some of its texture, pieces of the puzzle. And it's frustrating. Not that it's building. Next to the epiphanic moment when it comes to fruition, the building-up is the best part, and that normally would make me almost ecstatic with anticipation. (Yes, I fully realize the sexual overtones in the above, and they're there for a reason: it's tantric, plain and simple. Or at least, it's my image of a Tantric process, and that's all anyone really has.)
But it's not a joyous occasion. I'm blocked. Blocked like I've never been blocked before. Desperate to find the rope that will get me out of this damned sinkhole but finding my fingers and brain too numb and dumb to get ahold of the thing. I'm trying everything--including this masturbatory bit of self-therapy--to get out of my predicament. New things, old things, organizational strategies, mind games, emotional outbursts and whatever else seems to hold any hope.
On top of that, I'm having serious mental and neurological difficulties: failing memory, coordination difficulties, hand and wrist pain. It's apparently not carpel tunnel; examination has revealed no nerve or bone/tendon/muscle damage.
To illustrate how down this has made me fell, the following: I have what has been determined to be strep throat, or at least that's what the doctor's treating me for and I don't think a week of partial penicillin therapy has quite killed it. I woke up last Monday feeling OK, a little scratch in the throat. Everything went fine until the afternoon, when I went from perfectly fine to freezing, aching, a 104-degree fever and shivering-while-wearing-sweatpants-and-a-long-sleeve-shirt-on-an-Arkansas-summer's-day within 30 minutes. I tried to soldier (or perhaps in my case the verb should be Marine) through, to the point of trying to cook dinner for the wife and kids.
I dropped something during cooking. It's been happening a lot, to the point where it's impossible to ignore and I can't pretend that I just misjudged how things would react to my actions, instead facing the fact that whatever control I have of my body is slipping. My wife seems to think I've always been clumsy, despite the evidence she has from living with me for years before this started. She is Zen; nothing occurs but the now, now is forever; it's pretty annoying when she insists she can't see any differences when I damned well know I didn't drop things, didn't forget things, didn't blow up at the frustration of a mind-body split that widens by the day. Maybe she thinks ignoring it is supportive, like rushing to soothe our son just as soon as he makes a peep while sleeping; maybe she's clueless and it's another case of me noticing things in myself that no one else does (hyper-awareness or hypochondria, you make the call; I'm in no condition to judge).
But I dropped something, and I got enraged (though that seems far too pathetic a term for the red bolt that shot through me), and the next thing I know, I lying in bed in the fetal position, shaking like a leaf from fever both physical and emotional, and thinking about how I don't want to live like this. Don't want to drop things, don't want to blow up over nothing, don't want to have my emotions twisted beyond all recognition by a battery commercial while I can't seem to connect with the feelings in the three people closest to me, don't want to have to put up with the tube blowing air into my nose every night so the four hours I can stand to keep the machine on gives me the rest I could have in 10 hours without for a net gain of zero, don't want to have to lay in bed worrying about whether the thoughts I'm having in my barrier-free mind are warning signs or just the product of too much heat in the noggin.
I have a very confused relationship with suicide, the concept of my own, the concept and the reality of others', the general idea and specific applications. It can be the most tragic waste of life, a permanent solution to problems that only become permanent when you kill yourself and remove all possibility of resolution. But I also see Anthony Swofford's point: the suicide does something and no longer allows it to be done to him. I can see times where the taking, or giving, of one's life can be the greatest good possible. (This, for those who are interested, is surely an "If by whiskey" speech.¹) This sort of ambivalence makes it very hard to distinguish thinking about suicide and thinking about suiciding, and as I don't want to worry people (or visit any padded rooms) unnecessarily, I tend not to discuss this sort of thing outside of masturbatory self-help attempts, which may be a mistake. No, this is not a note, don't call anyone. And as in most of these intractable philisophical questions, I fall to the side of "it's up to individual mores, greatest good should be sought, and the balancing of rights and responsibilities is the only sign of civilization." But this time the individual is me, the classic untrustworthy narrator, the greatest good is, as always, almost impossible to calculate from the inside as things unfold, and that last bit makes for wonderfully flexible political science but doesn't apply that well to personal questions.
The hell of it is, I don't know that this does any good. A 1,100-word-plus diatribe on how I feel may be more than I've written outside of any academic papers here lately (and they haven't been very good), and it definitely feels good to get this off my chest, I don't have any confidence that it'll be more than a flash in the pan.

¹ From Mississippi lawyer Noah S. "Soggy" Sweat Jr. (if that isn't the all-time greatest name-nickname combination, I don't know what is) on prohibition: "If by whiskey, you mean the water of life that cheers men's souls, that smooths out the tensions of the day, that gives gentle perspective to one's view of life, then put my name on the list of the fervent wets. But if by whiskey, you mean the devil's brew that rends families, destroys careers and ruins one's ability to work, then count me in the ranks of the dries." Maybe Soggy was wiser than we think; surely effect must be counted into any equation of good and evil.

Daily Kos :: Operation: Golden Shower

From Daily Kos :: Operation: Golden Shower:

"If our solution is to throw money at the problem, let's throw some f*cking money at the problem and stop dicking around about it."

This beats the hell out of mismanaging the war out of D.C.

Atrios' best idea EVER

I'd pay $50 for a Fox Fuckup of the Day segment. Crazy, Untrue Shit People Are Hearing on Radio would be priceless.

Moment of Brian Eno Zen

"The advantage the popular arts have is that they are not ideologically proud."

Oh, the vanities of ideological pride and the damage done.
[Stolen from Boing Boing]: A link to the 10-year-old interview from which this [quotation] was snipped. (via Warren Ellis)

Aaaaarrrrggghh!

Okay, I think I've had quite enough of this. I'm getting frustrated. Hitting the bottle hard frustrated. Smoking again frustrated. Running around naked screaming in the Wal-Mart parking lot frustrated.
First there were the computer problems: Right before the semester started, my desktop computer decided it was time to succumb to the trials and arrows of time, static and living with me. And succame¹ it did.
"No problem," I thought. "I have this supercool laptop that weighs a ton, but has a desktop processor and a gigabyte of RAM. I can survive the semester from Hell²"
If you listened close (and believed in such things), you could hear God chuckling mordantly.
So I set up the big laptop (more on the little laptop later) as the main machine, complete with USB-hub-and-device spiderweb and ergonomically correct keyboard and trackball. Hell, I even got the thing a riser so I wouldn't turn into Quasimodo trying to read a screen that seems to be at around knee level.
And I discovered something: Laptops, and certainly those that cram superhot desktop chips into their carcasses to get around the limitations of mobile chips (which, it turns out, have those limitations for very good reason), don't do well as the sole computer in a computing environment like mine: always on, always doing something. Other shortcomings directly related to my project, my reasearch and my classes soon showed. It couldn't run database applications at anything other than a glacial crawl. It didn't play nice with some of my peripherals. It took four times to install the printer software for my laser (I'm still not sure what, if anything distiguished the fourth time from any of the others). Then the main keyboard started having problems, like the escape key turning itself on for minutes at a time, or the alt key not working at all. I decided I could do without keyboard shortcuts for a while.
During this time, I was in negotiations with the VA for a replacement desktop. I set the bar pretty high: Athlon 64, lots of ram, lots of hard drive space; but I had my reasons, mostly that I was going to have to do six months worth of database and statistical work in two. Finally, I said to Hell with it and ordered the parts on my own. Hopefully the VA'll pay me back.
Everything came in. The boot drive was damaged, so I decided to do without until I could get it replaced. Then one of the two IDE PATA (for hard disk and optical drives) slots doesn't work. This can't be bourn, and I send the motherboard and drive back, and now I have a pretty case filled with parts. (The good news is, they're sending my boot drive today; the bad news is that without a motherboard it's just another part in the box; cue Pink Floyd.)
"Still," I thought, "I can get a lot done on the big laptop while I wait."
Then the AC adapter went out.
This leaves me with the little laptop, one that my dad got me in 1999 and that had been relegated to my daughter to run Winnie the Pooh Teaches Sex Education and other fine programs. Now it's in my office and it can't even handle running my Web browser and word processor at the same time. So I'm screwed, computationally speaking, until NewEgg gets me a motherboard.
So, that's the computer saga.
Then, today as I was answering nature's call and reading one of the several magazines that have been piling up in the last few months, I leaned to one side to begin the cleansing ritual. There was a loud pop and the toilet lurched to the left; if I hadn't been hemmed in by walls barely far enough apart to fit my shoulders, I'd have been spilled onto my face with the toilet following after.
Now, I have trouble with procrastination anyway; I like to say that I do my best work surrounded by the stench of absolute terror and the bracing effects of a shitload of stress. But I can resist the urge to become an amateur plumber³ enough to get some of my other work done. Often it takes an odious (pun? what pun?) task outside of my main responsibilities to get me to work on them. So off I go.

¹ I know this is wrong, and in fact when my friend Asya told me about the rapper who decided this word was the best way to flaunt his vocabulary, I laughed myself silly. But I digest.
² Perhaps nine graduate-level hours isn't hell for you, but it's certainly kicking my butt.
³ I do have a natural advantage here, having suffered from plumber's butt for many years.

Notes on a friend's questioning of media ignoring the ANWR vote in favor of steroids hearings

First, major league baseball isn't the only legal monopoly; there's still the other pro sports, almost everyone's cable service, and the emerging media megaliths. And the last two are far more pernicious than the sports monopolies. That said, I want my kids to play sports someday because I think they teach important lessons--but I've had to think hard about whether I want to encourage my kids' participation in activities where they might feel they have to use drugs to get by, fit in, level the playing field, whatever. Especially ones as powerful as steroids. So while I don't think the congressional hearings on the issue were all that great, they were appropriate: steriods is far from an athletes-only issue and as Congress has specifically exempted MLB from antitrust statutes, it has an interest in monitoring how it conducts business. Of course, per Crystal, it is an easy sell; if there's one thing the last decade of news has shown us, it's that covering millionaires is far more rewarding (in a fiduciary sense) than covering those below the poverty line.

Second, the only reason ANWR should matter to Joe and Jane Sixpack is that the pressure of public opinion is the only thing with a ghost of a chance at swaying our representatives from their ideological idiocy, and if we had public servants who took stewardship seriously we likely wouldn't have this problem. (Oh, well, shit in one hand and wish in the other and see which one fills first.) But Joe and Jane have the Congress and Administration madly waving Social Security "reform" while they dismantle bankruptcy protection, cap tort awards and practice piss-poor medicine on a woman whose situation has been throguht the courts more times than a law clerk with diarrhea. I want ANWR preserved as much as the next person who's not strapping themself to a grizzly bear as a form of protest, but it's way down on my priority list. (And we all know that list is infallable.) So the inattention, on the public and news media's part, is somewhat understandable.

Finally, some words on "objectivity" and a news media gone horribly wrong. First, as I agree mostly with NYU's Jay Rosen that journalism is very similar to a religion (though I might expand it to include most of the "reason-based community"--and if you don't read Rosen's blog, PressThink, you really should), I am hopeful that we will look back in a hundred years and see this he-said-she-said bullshit masquerading as objectivity--or as our true goal, fairness--as the indulgences of our time. Sadly, Kevin's expectation that the audience will be able to tell a crackpot from an expert in the age of the soundbite is naive and mistaken. Much like juries accept anyone who sounds reasonable when he says the Earth is flat, viewers, listeners, and increasingly even readers think that because someone's quoted that they know what they're talking about and if there is an equal number of quotes, the issue is a tie and we can all go home now. If I could open up a bullshit-detector repair shop (and convince people they need such a service), I could do one hell of a lot of business, but until that happy day perhaps we journalists should stop taking the easy way out and start remembering that we're not in this to shmooze with bigwigs or to sleep late or whatever, we're in this to tell stories, inform the public, improve lives and watch over government and business and all the other things in the world that, unlike the majority of our audience, can damned well afford to protect themselves. Of course, I think the first thing the news media need to do is learn that they are not just another business, so one might question my sanity.

Nutter cred

There are days I feel like entering the town square, mounting my soapbox and screaming at passersby "Nothing is real! All is illusory!", just to establish my nutter cred, my madman's bona fides, but there are so few people in town squares today that I doubt my message would be heard.

Questions

The questions are always the same:

1. What do I know?
2. What do I want to know?

The latter, that infernal subset of the remainder of the former, is the devil that you don't know, and I can attest that while it is worse than the one you do know, the satisfaction of conquering it is worth many a trial, sling and arrow.

Consumers Union:

This is perhaps the best advocacy video ever made. Go take a look, and then send Congress a love note.

Release the hounds!

Okay, I'm selling a ton of stuff on eBay (username "piercepresley"; inventive, I know), lots of software and various tech items, figuring I'll get a better price that way than putting them on a table at our next garage sale (tentatively scheduled for the turn of the next millenium—we're still recovering from the last one). One of the items was a copy of Microsoft Office 2000 Professional, which someone representing themselves as representing a church bought (of course, online, no one knows you're a dog) bought using the "buy it now" thing where you pay a set price on an item that as yet has no bids.
Now, I know I like promptness when I buy something, so I did the golden-rule thing and printed out a shipping label and packing slip (sometime I'll wax eloquent in praise of the eBay-PayPal marriage made in heaven), put everything in a bubble envelope and took it to the post office this afternoon to get it right off ASAP.
After dinner, I took a peek at eBay and noticed that the items sold list was down one. In my e-mail was a letter from eBay saying they had removed the listing because, basically, Microsoft had asked them to because the latter thought I was selling a version of the software that is discounted and to be sold as part of a premade computer (or with significant hardware, like a processor or hard drive). It's called an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) version.
Now, someone had asked me whether the software was new or used, OEM or retail. I answered honestly, and I think I said that while I believed it to be a retail version, it was possible that I bought it as OEM with the approprate hardware. (EBay has pulled the listing altogether, so I can't check what exactly I said.) But I also made it clear that I was not selling it as new, and that I had used it myself.
While I think the "licensing" of software is a travesty almost on a par with "business method" patents, I can understand that Microsoft doesn't want people buying up discounted software under certain rules then reselling it without continuing to follow those rules; that's fraud, any way you slice it, and I hate fraud. But we're not talking about Lucky's Pawn and Software, we're talking about Pierce Presley, individual, selling a CD-ROM and manual from a piece of software that's no longer on any of my computers and that I have even purchased an upgrade to (and I was planning on using some of the proceeds from the eBay sales to upgrade yet again).
I've shot a letter to eBay and Microsoft explaining my position. I don't know that it'll do anything for me, and I expect that as the product has already been paid for and shipped that the transaction will stand. But I got to wonder, how much of the price of a Microsoft product goes into preventing that man, Pierce Presley, from selling Office 2000 Pro?
Just to cover my ass, all trademarks used in this post are used in an editorial, good-faith sense and are not intended to infringe upon the rights of the holders. Your mileage may vary. Caution! Coffee may be hot. This is not a lifesaving device.

Prayer letters

I got the damnedest (pun intended) thing in the mail today: A prayer "rug" of paper, a letter telling me to use it immediately and return it, and a form to check off my needs so this church can pray for me; when it's not busy innundating me with pleas for cash, check, money order or, let a thousand angels sing, a credit card number.
Apparently I got the version with pictures of black women in the testimonial letter, but the image of Jesus on the "rug" looks pretty caucasian, as usual. If you take it as a given that Jesus was in Palestine during the time in question, don't you think somebody would have commented on there being this strange, pasty white dude running around with Jews and Greeks and Samarians? None of whom needed a tanning booth for beautiful golden skin, a la George Hamilton. The letter advises the recipient to look into Jesus' closed eyes, which will open when you've prayed enough for them to do so.
It's not that I'm against prayer. Prayer, good thoughts, psychic karma love power or whatever is generally one of the most benign (and even alimentary) things in religion or spiritualism. (A big exception is when one prays only to hear what they want to hear: that they're a good person or doing God's will; see Bush, George W.) One of the amazing things about humans is our ability to do things that aren't easily explained, and the last thing I want to do, secular though I may mostly be, is to kill the sense of wonder one rightly feels when observing human beings or our mother, Nature.
Then again, I'm not so sure that religions, especially those on the fundamental side of things, want us to feel wonder. Shock and awe, fear of an angry God, terror that one might be having too much fun in this world and won't get to rise up out of one's clothes when the Raputre comes; these are okay by them. Was it Mencken that said something about Puritanism (and God knows we've got a heaping helping of that crap running around) being the fear that someone, somewhere might be having a good time? Or Ben Jonson? Mark Twain?
Thing is, it's one of those phrases that people repeat, misquote, paraphrase and twist so often that it's hard to know whether you've got the right citation or not. (Another is the germ of the phrase, "Today's trade, tomorrow's competition". I know I've read several versions of it, and that may just be the version that stuck in my head, but finding the source is beyond me.)
One thing I will give St. Matthew's Churches of Tulsa, Okla.: There was nary a mention of the hellfire and damnation that I might suffer if I didn't pray on the thing. To support the positivity, I would send it back, for the next recipient to use and find benefit from, but they've put identifying marks on the return envelope. I suppose Matt. 6:3 doesn't apply to prayer rugs by mail.

FilmForce: Audio Clip: Robin Williams Sings Pixar's Freedom

I will admit that sometimes Robin William's riffs just don't seem as funny as I remember him being back in the comedy club days. That being said, this is one of his better recent ones, and it's on the Disney-Pixar deal ending. "That's like Apple saying, 'Fuck the iPod!'"
FilmForce: Audio Clip: Robin Williams Sings Pixar's Freedom

And now for something completely different ...

After all that political stuff, maybe you feel like making a killer bumper sticker that uses fonts based on rock band's logos, or maybe just a mock up of that Concert T-Shirt you were too broke, lame or young to go and get yourself. If so, I got ya covered. (Via Boing Boing, probably the best damned nonspecific geek blog on the planet.)

The "World's Smallest Political Quiz"

The Advocates for Self-Government (a self-proclaimed non-profit, non-partisan libertarian educational organization) has what it's calling the world's smallest political quiz, and while the current crop of Republicans' quiz could be constructed in a single question--"Will you drink the kool-aid?"--five personal and five economic ain't that bad. In the single-point anecdotal data of my own results, it seemed accurate.

Ja, ja, left of center, high on the personal side, low on the economic, verry interrestiing. Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about... your mother. Ten points to the first to respond with the movie referenced in the previous line. Redeemable wherever PiercePoints^TM are accepted.)

Then again, it seems that political revelation is in the air. Just before the election, an acquaintance who routinely tossed her votes away on Republican candidates when she lived in Pulaski County, Ark., for several years said the Bush lies on Iraq, the economy, etc. were going to force her to vote for John Kerry; lately, my best friend, who enlisted in the Ark. National Guard at 32 , basically said, "Wait a minute! I'm a Teddy Rooservelt Republican! What the nether hell am I doing supporting this bunch of thieves?" These aren't complete reversals, or even that much of a movement toward sanity (both still blame Clinton for everything from psoriasis to heartbreak), but rather an epiphany that the current White House gang and its enablers, facilitators and funders couldn't care less about them (and the "them in this case is those making less than a cool 10 million a year). Most on my side of things are wondering "where have they been", but we have our own blind spots, so do be hatin'.

Cutest damned kids ever.

As I sit here, not sleeping, not finishing my project proposal so I can get my damned master's and stop adding to my pile of student-loan debt, I wonder why I do this, why I'm so damned hooked on journalism that I'd kill my grandmother (had she not already rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible) for a byline or, a concept that makes me shudder with excitement, a "scoop." Why I despise the local paper as mostly hacks and fume that it won't just send the publisher, editor and a chorus line over the entice me to deign to join the staff.
So that one day I might stand amongst the wreckage in Bandu Aceh or Bagdad or Birmingham, Ala., with my lack of knowledge about the intriguing indigeonous culture and tell the folks back home in red state heaven all about the unwashed and the unlucky and the wall of water? To flap my gums or my fingers about the latest crisis this administration non intelligencium has concocted to convince rednecks and racists and robber barons that by golly, food stamps is going under, the British Virgin Islands may be chaste, but they have nukes we hear? Or that Geo. W. Bush killed every Vietnamese person over the age of 12 during the Vietnam Conflict but has been too damned humble to admit it? To turn from the death of 150,000 in a ameliorable natural disaster to provide wall-to-wall coverage of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's breakup?
Gosh, I want to be a player, to get to talk to powerful people who despise me and pretend I'm their friend like that stupid ass in the Dodge commercial. To whore myself for 240 thousand dollars by knocking my own teeth out and giving Rod Paige a gum job on my radio program. To put an attorney general under 41 and the AP boss who presided over the co-op's transformation from news wire service to scandalmongers in charge of vetting the small error in the midst of a lackluster and zeal-less "scoop" (of what ... shit?) on a story that's been beaten to death and repeatedly proven to at least a preponderance of the evidence, if not beyond a reasonable doubt. That's sure to improve the news and turn around its steady march into entertainment, obsolescence and irrelevance.
But no one has a taste for truth anymore. No one wants to be told what happened back then, or what happened in Ohio last year. John Kerry talked about the thousands who were disenfranchised in that state ... then said he didn't dispute the results. Christ, that's like saying the Constitution doesn't limit liberty but that you won't oppose slavery. Widely respected reporters at national newspapers write balanced stories pitting the president's version of Social Security's status against the agency and congress and independent numbers, identifying the latter as "the president's critics" because someone not on board mentioned the data. Judith Miller still has a job. Osama bin Laden lives and is free. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is a done deal. Donald "not the army you would like to have" Rumsfeld is still Secretary of Defense.
I don't believe journalists are not capable of affecting these things; I just think we have chosen not to, that even many of the best of us stare at the juggernaught of lies and cower lest we lose our jobs, our reputations, our faith in ourselves, our happiness. And now we're part of the problem.
Sadly, after almost 75 grand plus nine years and counting of moving toward this goal of being a great journalist, of speaking truth to power and empowering democracy, of having a career in one of the few things I've genuinely loved doing, I don't have any reason ... save a tottering momentum and the glistening hope that somehow I can change things, if just a little, for the better, if I keep trying, if I keep moving.
But sometimes momentum is all I have.

Inspiration: Jon Carroll on SFGate.com

Time to make stepladders out of some bones

The Rude Pundit
The Rude Pundit hits the nail on the proverbial head here. Too many times oppositions have tried to imitate or emulate the powerful in an attempt to draw support. But coming alongside is not the path to victory&emdash;you gotta get the hell out in front of people and lead, say clearly "Here is where I stand, here is what I'm for, here is how I want to help you," stop trying to be liked and start trying to be right.
Another thing it's clearly time to do is to stop surrendering the initiative and the very language of debate to the other side. We must fearlessly call the powerful when they try to smear and elide over facts with spin, we must stop trying to play the balancing game and start recognizing that a lie and a lie a thousand time worse than the first are NOT equal. Hiding behind the disingenuous stance that both sides lie only lets those willing to tell the biggest lie rape you.

Boing Boing: ClearChannel stations gave away boob-jobs for Xmas

Boing Boing: ClearChannel stations gave away boob-jobs for Xmas
yet another example of the right-wing and of course its corporate minions finding a way to profit off sex, prurience and objectifying women.

But then again what you expect from a political persuasion and include such wonderful people as, say, Newt Gingrich?