I just got around to seeing Bill O’Reilly’s interview with Jon Stewart. Saw both the unedited version and the cut version on the show. What struck me most about the unedited one was how subtle the editing on the shown version was. There were some major skips, but most of the scenes that were cut flowed fairly seamlessly in the edited version.
I’ll be writing the occasional blog post at the blog of Michigan’s Center on International Relations, a part of the Roosevelt Institute. My first speed-written article is here: Humanitarian Aid as Soft Power.
Funny story about this article. I was asked to write it before the IR Center’s meeting tonight. So, at 5:55pm, I sat down and pounded it out; took me an hour. Got to the meeting room at 7:10. That’s when I realized that the IR Center meets at 6. So I fucked up doubly. Ah well…
On Wednesday the 23rd, the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin debating renewing portions of the PATRIOT Act. Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin introduced a bill recently to limit the potential abuses of power and invasions of privacy that characterize the PATRIOT Act as it exists. Feingold and his co-sponsors are looking to safeguard our basic constitutional rights in a way that doesn’t neuter our national security apparatus. Write your senators.
Text of the Bill (S 1686)
About a week ago, Paul Krugman had this to say about the necessity of the public option:
“Remember, to make reform work we have to have an individual mandate. And everything I see says that there will be a major backlash against the idea of forcing people to buy insurance from the existing companies. That backlash was part of what got Obama the nomination! Having the public option offers a defense against that backlash.
What worries me is not so much that the backlash would stop reform from passing, as that it would store up trouble for the not-too-distant future. Imagine that reform passes, but that premiums shoot up (or even keep rising at the rates of the past decade.) Then you could all too easily have many people blaming Obama et al for forcing them into this increasingly unaffordable system.”
—-Why the Public Option Matters
He’s absolutly right. With the idea of an individual mandate the most likely part of the reform package to pass, the public option is the only thing seperating a sensible attempt at healthcare reform from a massive handout to insurance companies. If there is no public option, there is no incentive for insurance companies to become more competitive price-wise, and yet they will still recive an influx of 50,000,000 customers.
If there’s anything you should know about me, it’s that I’m lazy. Dead lazy. I’ll start things and let them hang in the wind until they aren’t relavent anymore. I have 5 saved drafts of articles that I started in April and May that are so out of date that, even if I still felt strongly enough about the topic to actually write them, would be of absolutely zero interest to anyone (as if anyone was interested in anything I had to say to begin with). So, this post is a dump of all the links from those various dead articles, arranged topicaly. (Plus a few other misc links I had lying around).
As you may have been following on the news, now that congress is in recess, and that congressmen are holding “town hall” meetings, trying to figure out their constituent’s wishes vis-a-vis healthcare reform. This could be a good opportunity for an honest back-and-forth between the people and their representatives; for example, congresspeople could make a mass push to put this “elderly euthanasia” nonsense to rest, or find out what the man-on-the-street thinks. Instead, certain groups are acting in bad faith and trying to turn these town-hall gatherings into shouting matches, shutting down actual discourse between the people and their government for the sole purpose of keeping the public in the dark and turning functioning democracy into cheap theater. This is an enormous damn shame and a kick in the pants to the democratic process. Argument in good faith assures that the people will be able to make an informed decision and the best result will result. Argument in bad faith shows that you do not believe your position to be strong enough to survive on its merits, and must resort to tricks and ploys to confuse the masses. Killing rational debate kills democracy.
‘Grassroots Protester’ Actually GOP Official
Todd Akin Jokes About Activists Lynching His Democratic Colleagues
[EDIT 12-August-2009: Added the below]:
There’s something for everyone out there on the internet. You could even, if you knew where to look, find paintings of the President of the United States buck-ass naked on a unicorn. From Dan Lacey, the Painter of Pancakes comes a gallery of paintings of Barack Obama riding this magical mythical beast. His goal: “Bridging Political Divides Through The Appreciation Of Paintings of People With Pancakes On Their Heads and Barack Obama Nude On A Unicorn.” His results: damn creepy.
[Via Wild Ammo]
Yesterday, users of AT&T found that their access to certain 4chan boards had been blocked. As can be expected, this did not sit well with the sort of people who like unrestricted speech. Reddit had an extremely long thread on it, wence the “beginning of the end of the internet” was proclaimed. Of course, AT&T claimed that it was only a mistake and was trying to defend itself against a DDoS attack. The post advertising this on Reddit is far less popular than the one about the original incident (not surprising, considering this is the place that falsely accused someone mildly critical of Obama as a Republican operative paid to smear him on social media sites).
There are two ways the 4chan affair can be viewed. First, one can believe that AT&T is really telling the truth, and this was a giant clusterfuck resulting from a DDoS attack. Or you can believe that this was the Lexington of the War for Internet Neutrality that was valiently won when public opinion turned against AT&T. The latter is complete and utter bullshit; this can reasonably be assumed due to the fact that, when this thing was brought to light, AT&T reversed itself instead of pulling out some bullshit reason having to do with child pornography (as many had suggested). If AT&T had meant to censor 4chan, they would have; the backlash would have been minimal (the average internet user isn’t going to feel any sympathy for the /b/tards; I only care on principle), so no lost revenue, and they would even play up the fact that they’re a “morally responsible” web provider, who will protect your kids from bad things on the internet (so as to free you from doing your jobs as parents).
So, we’re pretty much on the same ground when we say this was an honest mistake on the part of AT&T. But this, coming shortly after the mass deletions of copies of a pirate version of 1984 off of Amazon’s Kindle devices (a very Orwellian move from a company that has apparently never heard of irony), brings the question of internet neutrality to the forefront by showing that the companies have the technical capability to alter/suppress data. The only thing that keeps, say, the government from creating a tiered internet, or censoring “potentially dangerous” sites (always to protect the children!) is to keep public opinion firmly against it. Unfortunately, public opinion among most Americans falls within the “protect the children(!)” camp, not realizing there isn’t neccessarily a contridiction. It would perhaps have been better for the Net Neutrality movement if this had been an attempt by AT&T at censorship that was valliently beaten off by our Scientologist-harassing, pedophile catching “friends*” over at /b/. The media would probably have latched on, and there’s a 50% chance they’d side with Neutrality, a victory would be won, and the politicians would be scared-off of trying any moves at internet censorship (for a short time). But alas, we get this non-issue which raises many concerns but doesn’t lead, in and of itself, to any solution either way.
*Calling them by an accurate name, like “troglodyte,” would have broken the mood and flow of the sentence.
In one of the Reddit posts on this, someone mentioned how mutually interfacing wireless networks could potentially get around the grip of the big telecom companies on internet service provision. I wonder how a system like that would work out? How powerful of a wireless transmitter would you need to give service to a small town? If the actual house-to-house infrastructure wasn’t all controlled by one company, then there would be more competition in the market, and less chance that the actions of a few companies could imperil the entire internet.
The Encyclopedia Dramatica Page
Amazon Secretly Removes “1984″ from the Kindle
House Vote on Illegal Images sweeps in Wi-Fi, web sites
First They Came… (Neat, but unrelated)
Eternal September (Neat, but unrelated)
RNC chairman Michael Steele trots out the newest excuse to deny gays the right to marry: it would cost too much money. Yes, he’s arguing that it would cost too much to small businesses if they had one of their gay employees get married such that they had to put their new man-spouse on the company healthcare plan. Of course, this has great implications. While gays are only 5-7% percent of the population, straights make up significantly more. So, if the government can save small business owners so much money by denying gays the right to marry, why not save them more by abolishing marriage altogether? We’d save so much more in health insurance costs! Enough to get us out of this depression, maybe! BAN MARRIAGE NOW!
Also in the news were the report covers delivered to our former President on war related issues. Apparently, the Department of Defense liked to spruce them up with still images of military things and Bible quotes. This brings forth two reactions:
1. Well, looks like we got ourselves into a Holy War, boys!
2. Why the hell did the Secretary of Defense have to “spice up” reports to the president on the war that he had started? Could they not capture his interest in any other way? Did he start to float away during briefings unless the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made pew-pew sounds when illustrating the newest offensive in Iraq? The man in charge of a country should be able to concentrate on something as vital as a national security document without it being “spruced up.” No wonder the man had “handlers.” (”What is he, a BEAR?” — Lewis Black)
Glenn Greenwald pats Keith Olbermann on the back for calling Obama out on his dangerous continuation of Bush-era policies vis-a-vis secrecy, security(-theater), and military tribunals.
I began this on the 23rd of last month. It’s a little less current, but I still want to put in my two cents.
Everyone remembers when some conservative pundits went absolutely apeshit over the release of a memo detailing the growth of “right wing extremist activity”? How they howled that this new liberal administration was going to crack down and hunt them down? And how that memo was actually commisioned by the Bush Administration? And how there was a corresponding report about liberal extremists?
To be fair, there is some room for criticism all around. While it may be useful for the FBI to compile information on potential domestic terrorist groups, how to determine which groups are simply nuicences, and which are capable of violence can be hard to see. On the one hand, as the commander of the VFW says, “A government that does not assess internal and external security threats would be negligent of a critical public responsibility”; on the other, too broad of investigations can lead to government infiltation of “ groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty, and poverty relief.” The trick is drawing the line between being able to investigate potential terrorists, and engaging in a sort of Orwellian spying on all non-government organizations. Personally, I would err on the side of protecting our rights and not wasting resources by limiting surveilence.
An another note, I object to Greenwald’s tone in this article. He almost seems to be defending the spying on right-wing groups as their just deserts after the excesses and abuses of the Bush years. It is ironic that the same people who applauded, say, domestic wiretapping threw a shitstorm when they thought they were in the crosshairs. Nonetheless, it has been used as political cannon-fodder by the right, with talking heads claiming that they are being targeted, when any moron can see that they were not the intended target. They thrive on their persecution complexes, or so it seems. Nobody deserves to be spied on by their own government, by their representitives and guardians. Wishing it on someone as a kind of poetic justice is, in fact, unjust. While it may reveal the depths of the pimping out of truth to “spin” in politics, I hope that we can, in the course of the next four years, move out of this surveilence society we seem to be inching toward.
I’m a bit behind the curve when it comes to blogging about current events. I got out of school a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been suffering a difficult transition to living in this hell-hole again. Anyway, I saved this draft article on 17-April, after the peak of the media frenzy over that Tea Party nonsense. I mean, they absolutely have the right to protest (about whateverthehell they want); but these people seem to be either willfully ignorant of the true meaning of hte Boston Tea Party, or outright manipulating through dubious association (the truth is probably somewhat of a mixture, especially if hte astroturfing allegations are true). The only things these protests have in common with the Boston Tea Party are 1) anger and 2) the involvement of tea. The difference here being that there is no “taxation without representation” (unlesss you live in D.C., in which case I totally support you). It seems to me like it’s manufactured outrage; this guy and his fine suit say it all: “A 3% tax hike for 5% of the wealthiest is 100% TYRANNY!”
But this whole thing seems to have blown over, so I’ll just leave you with a list of links I found while researching this story a month ago*:
10 Most Offensive Tea Party Signs (Huffington Post): I am particularly stuck by the children with signs.
Fox News Teabagging Bias Montage (Democratic Underground)
Freedom Works’ Long History of Teabagging (Talking Points Memo): The source of the astroturfing allegations.
Death and Taxes: A guide to where your tax dollars go
Nationwide Chicago Tea Party (Wikipedia)
Tea Party Protests (Wikipedia)
*Why does a month seem like a million years when you’re dealing with politics? A buzzword enters the lexicon and everyone raves about how this will be the next big thing or this is the current defining reality, and then a month later it’s dead. After the 2004 elections, the Democratic Party was “dead;” then they won the next midterm election and won the White House. Now the Republicans are “dead.” No one in the media seems to take much of a look at history, everything will always be defined by today’s talking points or hype.
While this is a gross oversimplification, glosses over perfectly reasonable debate that can be had, and uses some prejudiced language, it is also a very powerful summary of the Bush years:
“Let’s say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.
There’s a word for this: it’s evil.”
–Paul Krugman
I had the misfortune of coming accross this turd of an ad against same-sex marriage by the National Organization for Marriage. They try to defend their interference with other people’s lives by claiming those other people are going to interfere with them! In what fucked up world does that make sense? It’s not like Obama’s Gay Liberal Stormtroopers aren’t going to pull straight men away from their families and make them bugger each other. It’s giving our fellow citizens equal rights, which horrifies these NOM creeps to no end.
At 0:16, a woman says she’s “a California doctor who must choose between [her] faith and [her] job.” Now, I can see that being anywhere near valid in a debate about abortion or birth control or something like that. But what does this have to do with gay marriage? Does she want the right to refuse treatment to gays? That’s what it sounds like.
New Jersey church guy at 0:22 is being “punished” by the government because they don’t want to perform gay marriages. “Punish” in N.J. Fundie speak meaning “voluntarily complying with New Jersey’s anti-discrimination statute in order to retain tax exempt status for their catering-hall.”
Massachusetts Parent is afraid of her child being exposed to *gasp* differing views!
The parade of people at the end are saying that “those advocates want to change the way I live” and “I will have no choice.” Yet they offer no evidence, and are in fact advocating that we interfere with how other people are living their lives. This is nothing but a bald-faced attempt to prey on people’s bigotry and claim that they are being oppressed because they can’t discriminate against gays anymore. These people are fear mongering, distorting the truth to make it look like some sort of shadowy cabal is out to get the God-Fearing Christian Minority (fear-mongering of this type tends to be a characteristic of the right-wing in this country; I wonder if it’s something about the fearful mindset that drives them in that direction, or if they’re all reading out of the same playbook).
(The Rainbow Coalition part in the title comes from that part at 0:47 where the guy tries to not make his group look like a buch of bigots.)
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