absolutism

just riffing off of what mustang bobby said, i think it's quite easy for people to see others to disagree with them as being dogmatic and unreasonable. it's just like how people often think their own views lie in some kind of reasonable middle, no matter how extreme they seem to others.

douthat seems to be falling into that trap. from where i sit, it's hard to see kennedy's pro-choice stance as a form of absolutism. i really don't see how letting people decide on their own whether to have an abortion fits that definition. but from the other camp, i guess that's how it looks.

cheney logic

it's not surprising at all the dick cheney doesn't understand the concept of an independent justice department. but what cheney didn't notice is that his claim that the president is the "chief law enforcement officer" completely undermines his main argument against the holder's appointment of a special prosecutor.

cheney argues against the appointment because he says that the decision was "political" and claims that the torture issue had already been investigated during the bush administration. but if the president were the chief law enforcement officer and holder was just like every other political appointment and not an independent decision-maker on legal issues, then every decision the AG's office ever makes would be "political." if every decision is political, then there's nothing remarkable about calling the choice to appoint an independent prosecutor "political." it's just like every other decision the AG makes.¹

likewise, if we adopt cheney's view of the justice department, the fact that the bush administration's justice department already investigated the bush-era torture regime shouldn't satisfy anyone. if the justice department is just an arm of the administration, it would have a clear conflict of interest in investigating its own administration. cheney is giving us the reason not to take that investigation seriously. if bush were the chief law enforcement officer and attorney general gonzalez was acting as his agent, then gonzalez's investigation of bush administration policies would lack any credibility whatsoever. all the more reason that gonzo should have appointed an independent prosecutor, just as holder is now.

------------------------------
1-to be clear, i don't believe that holder's decision is purely political. in fact, i think he had little choice but to make the appointment. all i'm saying is that if you adopt cheney's world view, where the AG is not independent of the president, then calling a particular decision "political" is completely unremarkable.

skin flute

(via)

catan online world

i am completely addicted to this.

i'm only playing regular vanilla catan, not any of the catan variations or supplements (i.e. what i can play with the free download). depending on kazakh connection issues, i may shell out money for the upgrade at some point in the future. or maybe not. i'm not sure if this is a passing phase or something that will keep me occupied for a while.

in any case, i'm playing as "upyernoz". if anyone out there wants an ass kicking in the basic game feel free to find me.

harry reid and the cult of the private sector

i guess harry doesn't know what the word "public" means.

it kind of bizarre to see the relatively recent and very american ideology that says government is always worse than private. it really is an ideology too. you can't challenge it with evidence. it's like arguing with a true believer in a religion. and it's so pervasive, even moderate democrats like harry reid buy into it, or at least feel pressured to kowtow to it.

it's also interesting that while much of the american right subscribes to the cult of private industry, the opposite cult doesn't really exist on the opposite side of the political spectrum. at least not in any significant way. i personally believe that there are things that government does better than the private sector and things that the private sector does better than government. deciding which is better for a particular problem involves looking at the evidence, how other governments have dealt with it and whether they have been more or less successful. that seems to be how most lefties that i know think. it's more pragmatism than ideology. no doubt there is someone out there who believes that liberalism means the end of all things private, but whoever they are they are so marginal to debate on any issue they'll all but invisible.

except as a straw man in discussions with conservatives, of course. that's another interesting thing. when i argue with conservatives, many imagine a left dominated by a dedication to government that is equal and opposite to their own cult of private industry. they (at least several that i have talked to) seem to believe with all their hearts that liberals are ideologically committed to using government to solve every problem.

as an actual liberal, this strikes me as insane. it's another example of conservatives assuring me that they know more about what i believe than i do. it's also seems to be a deeply rooted belief on the other side. so long as they're not open to considering evidence to the contrary, i'm not sure if they can ever be talked out of it.

tenthers

the rise of the "tentherism" in he u.s. is pretty interesting. i had no idea that ali al-hadi had such a following among american conservatives!

and when the tenthers make their pilgrimage to the askariyya mosque, it should be fun to watch people like michele bachmann mix it up with a bunch of iranian pilgrims.

eternal earth bound pets

if they're really atheists, i don't see why they would have to be animal lovers. though, i guess, they would have to pretend to be if they wanted a rapture-expecting christian to sign up.

all right, all right, i'll post it

everyone can stop sending me the link to this t-shirt now.

it's true too. maybe i should get one.

oh well

that would have been pretty entertaining.

i guess the world doesn't exist for my amusement after all.

it's all about the binyamins

in a rational world, israeli leaders would be happy with a palestinian effort to build the bureaucratic institutions of a state in the areas they control. those institutions (assuming they take hold) would mean less of the lawlessness where militant groups thrive, defined institutions that the israelis can deal with, and less palestinian dependence on israel.

on the other hand, that last thing is probably what is behind their consternation. on the surface fayyad's two year plan seems to be a perfect compliment to netanyahu's talk about "economic peace before political peace." bibi's pitch is that there is no sense in negotiating a final settlement with the palestinians when the palestinians are not ready for statehood. bibi advocates fostering economic development on the west bank rather than making political concessions. that's the philosophy behind netanyahu's "economic peace plan." but bibi's plan is a bit different from fayyad's. while the fayyad's plan is to decrease palestinian dependence on israel, netanyahu's "economic peace plan" does just the opposite. it's mostly about israeli investments that will make the territories more dependent on israel.

in other words, the concerns that the israelis are voicing about this plan are a crock. they aren't worried because it is a "unilateral action" (rather ironic from the country that is currently unilaterally expanding east jerusalem neighborhoods, unilaterally building a separation barrier, unilaterally imposing a blockade on gaza (after unilaterally pulling out) and unilaterally deciding whether checkpoints appear or disappear across the west bank). they're worried because they don't want to lose their economic domination over the west bank.

poking their noses into myspace

i was listening to monday's planet money podcast this morning, telling the story of the founders of myspace, chris dewolfe and tom anderson. one of the things they created in their pre-myspace days was a small program that would turn your cursor into a little american flag. they sold it right after 9/11, when the surge of patriotism created a huge demand for such things. in fact, the flag program was really spyware. dewolfe and anderson took advantage of people's patriotism to spy on them.

seems like a perfect metaphor for something or other.

walled world

(click image to make bigger)

when was the last time you saw the other side?

(via the black iris @ FB)

reading the afghan tea leaves

i expect we'll never know who really won the afghan election. in any case, i think it will play out like this:

-karzai will claim an outright victory, with no need for a runoff (the idea his people are floating now)

-abdullah abdullah, and a bunch of other opposition people, will cry fraud and try to stir up an iranian style protest.

-it won't work.

-the u.s. will mostly stay out of it, which effectively means karzai will get another term. i don't think the obama administration is as wedded to karzai as the bush administration was. but they also don't seem to mind karzai and to stir the election fraud pot is only going to make obama's afghan troop escalation more complicated. so they'll let any doubts about the election go.

on second thought...

maybe steele should have stuck to his earlier position of not doing policy.

also i stand by my earlier thought that this clown perfectly personifies the modern republican party.

mu'ʕam:aru l‎qa'ð:a:fi

this article is sorta interesting. but man, who picked that photo of qaddafi? (you know which one i mean)

also, i wish the english-language press would come up with a standard spelling of his name. he's been in power for forty years! how much longer do they need?

so close i can almost taste the horse

something to enjoy in my own castle

(via beth via FB)

should i stay or should i stay?

the article starts with this:

Obama administration officials hoped the Afghan election would demonstrate that eight years after the American invasion, the country was stable enough to justify an expanded commitment of money and troops from an increasingly skeptical American public.

isn't that completely backwards? isn't afghan stability a reason to consider withdrawal, or at least non-escalation? i mean, if the country is stable, why does it need a ramped up commitment of foreign troops?

for years the lack of stability was cited by the u.s. as the reason for staying. now, the administration hopes that increased stability can be cited as a reason for staying. and so the administration is afraid that the elections may produce less stability.

so maybe the obama administration is adopting a new framework. it's a new administration, they're allowed to do that. but given their new framework of more stability = staying, if afghanistan faces less stability, that must mean leaving, right?

no, of course not. if the country is more stable, we need to stay. (why stop something that's working?) and if the country is less stable, we need to stay. (instability just shows how badly foreign forces are needed to stabilize the place) is there any plausible state of affairs that will lead to the conclusion that it's time to leave? isn't this what no exit strategy look like?

fun with polling

once again, we see that support for the "public option" depends on how you ask the question in the poll. and so:

-opponents of the health care reform will ignore the SurveyUSA poll and continue to cite the NBC poll as definitive (at least until another poll comes along with results they like)

-proponents of health care reform will point to the SurveyUSA poll (by either ignoring the NBC poll or using the SurveyUSA poll to show that the NBC poll was badly worded)

all i think this really proves is that americans like the word "choice".

splitting the bill won't work

i don't understand how splitting the bill would really solve the filibuster problem. the strategy would be obvious to reform opponents and nothing would stop them from filibustering the filibusterable half of health care reform, even if the basis for their objections were in the non-filibusterable half.

of course, the fact that we're even having this discussion illustrates just how absurd senate procedure is.

nothing to be afraid of

Donny: Are these the Nazis, Walter?
Walter Sobchak: No, Donny, these men are nihilists. There's nothing to be afraid of.

shameless pimping of my friend's web site

everyone should go click over to straight2dvdmovies.com. it's my friend dave's new website that focuses on films that don't go the usual movie theater distribution route.

among other things, there's a short piece about the amazon review of "the room", a film that i own. (thanks dan!) actually, all of dave's reviews of reviews are pretty entertaining.

did i mention that you should visit straight2dvdmovies.com? just go.

infotainment without the info

it's not just health care. years ago, another survey showed that fox news viewers were completely misinformed about iraq.

i just don't think it's accurate to call "fox news" a news channel.

finally

science stops the esoteric bullshit and focuses on something practical.

however, like me, this translation is not.

i'm not sure that i like this translation party thing.

dumb wars everywhere

in reading the president's justification his strategy in afghanistan, i couldn't help but think back to this post by marc lynch from last week. quoteth the president yesterday:

This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.

quoteth professor lynch last week:

I have an open mind on these questions, want the U.S. mission to succeed, and have a great deal of confidence in the Obama national security team. I know that there have been a number of policy reviews at all levels of the government on Afghanistan strategy, and that most of the questions I can raise have already been discussed at one or the other. But at the same time, I find the strategic rationale for escalating the war in Afghanistan extremely thin, and the mismatch between avowed aims and available resources frighteningly wide. What are the strategic reasons for expanding the commitment in Afghanistan? Why should the US be committing to a project of armed state building now, in 2009?

I hope that the argument isn't that it's to prevent al-Qaeda from reconstituting itself in the Afghan safe havens. That's a fool's game. It makes sense to keep the pressure on al-Qaeda, but does that require "armed state building"?

Suppose the U.S. succeeded beyond all its wildest expectations, and turned Afghanistan into Nirvana on Earth, an orderly, high GDP nirvana with universal health care and a robust wireless network (and even suppose that it did this without the expense depriving Americans of the same things). So what? Al-Qaeda (or what we call al-Qaeda) could easily migrate to Somalia, to Yemen, deeper into Pakistan, into the Caucasus, into Africa --- into a near infinite potential pool of ungoverned or semi-governed spaces with potentially supportive environments. Are we to commit the United States to bringing effective governance and free wireless to the entire world?

it looks like the president is falling for the fool's game.

i realize why he's doing this politically. afghanistan is a counterpoint to iraq. in his 2002 speech at the chicago anti-war protest, obama said: "I don’t oppose all wars... What I am opposed to is a dumb war." if iraq is the dumb war, he needs afghanistan to be the "smart war". if he doesn't have a smart war, it calls the first half of the 2002 quote into question and he risks being labeled a (shudder) "pacifist." unfortunately afghanistan is currently a conflict in search of a purpose. the clear purpose in 2001 has drifted away with evolving circumstances over the past 8 years. "rooting out havens for al qaeda" may be the best anyone can come up with right now. but, like lynch, i don't think it makes all that much sense.

israeli ambassador implies that we should not trust the netanyahu government

i guess this guy doesn't see the irony in stating that iran isn't rational because its government is not secular when he represents a government that is currently in power only because of the support of religious political parties.

afghan election

the times picks up on the ethnic angle that i was writing about the other day.

mad

yes, i'm hooked.

guano

my recent adventures with bats got me wondering about the word "guano." specifically, why does bat shit have a special word whereas other animal dropping do not?

it turns out, the word isn't just for bats, but rather for the excrement of any kind of sea bird, bats or seals. why those three? because they're high in phosphorus and nitrogen, making those dropping valuable for making both gunpowder and fertilizer.

that brought me to the guano islands act, an act of congress dating from 1856. it empowers any u.s. citizen to claim the possession of any island with guano deposits anywhere in the world, so long as the island isn't under the jurisdiction of any other government. when it is claimed, the island automatically becomes u.s. territory.

the act's overt imperialism seems a little crazy now. but its constitutionality was upheld by the supreme court and it is still on the books today. not that it matters all that much. i doubt if any piece of rock on earth isn't already claimed by some other government nowadays. but during its hey day, the guano islands act was used to claim over one hundred islands. the last use of the act seems to be in 1964, when leicester hemingway (ernest's younger brother) evoked the act to declare the independent island nation of new atlantis. which doesn't really make sense. the guano islands act makes islands part of the u.s., it doesn't make independent countries. then again, hemingway's "island" wasn't really an island. it was a bamboo raft that he anchored off the coast of jamaica with an old ford engine block. i doubt if there was any guano on it either.

the arctic sea, WTF?

so let me get this straight: a ship sets sail from finland to algeria. it's attacked by a bunch of masked men in the baltic sea, off the coast of sweden. the assailants board the ship, beat of the crew and look for drugs. they don't find any and eventually speed away. the crew continues on its journey, but, just after it leaves the english channel, disappears and is now apparently being held for ransom by pirates working in the north atlantic.

the whole story just doesn't add up. what are the chances of it being subject to a freak attack by drug seeking bandits near sweden and being hijacked by pirates operating in the north atlanic? for that matter, when was the last time there were pirates hijacking ships in the north atlantic?

the finns are already denying the ship was carrying nuclear material, which just raises a host of other WTF-like questions.

woo-hoo!

depressing results

the taliban's efforts to disrupt elections in afghanistan, could pose a serious strike against pashtun candidates. these days the taliban are only really active in pashto speaking regions. so if they follow through with their threats, shut down polling places, attack people with purple fingers, etc., that will depress turnout in those regions but give a relative advantage to the non-pashtun areas that don't have a lot of taliban activity.

karzai is a pashtun, while his closest rival, abdullah abdullah is a tajik. i'm not sure if expected voter turnout is included in this poll. but if not, abdullah might end up with even more votes than karzai.

i can't be the only one to think of this, but there really hasn't been much discussion of this in the articles i've read. am i missing something? is ethnic-based voting not a phenomenon in afghanistan? or is it just something that no one likes to talk about?

of course, my theory assumes that the election is actually fair. given how corrupt the karzai government is, it's far from clear that it will be.

benchmarks!

the obama administration unveiled fifty benchmarks to measure success in afghanistan. people like me may obsess about them, but probably few people will remember these benchmarks months or years from now.

that's what happened in iraq. when bush announced the surge he also announced 18 benchmarks for measuring the success of that strategy. most of those benchmarks were never fully met, but it's still common wisdom that the surge worked. no one cares that based on the president's own criteria, the strategy failed.

if americans stop dying in afghanistan, no one will care whether the mission met any benchmarks. if things get worse (for americans, of course), then maybe we'll hear about missed benchmarks.

يوم الخميس

it's day five of being a bat refugee.

i'm getting pretty tired of this.

district 9

celluloid geekazoid generously gave me his extra ticket to an advance screening of district 9 tonight. "district 9" takes place twenty years after large space ship appears and hovers over johannesburg. inside the ship were a bunch of starving aliens. they are taken to the surface as a humanitarian gesture, put in a refugee camp and fed. after the aliens clash with humans, a wall is built around the camp and by the beginning of our story, the camp had developed into a crime-infested slum. a slum that is effectively under military occupation by the MNU, a multinational corporation formed to deal with the aliens.

from this premise an action film follows. i'm not really a fan of most action films, and it had some of those annoying action film clichés, like the one where someone has a gun to his head and is about to be shot, when just at the last second the would-be shooter is shot. that happens four or five times in this film.

but if you can get beyond that, and beyond the fair amount of exploding bodies gore, the film does have a remarkably original premise. a premise charged with political implications and yet the film never resorts to speechifying. the political issues are open and obvious, but people rarely talk about them overtly. just like in real life. with nods to other sci-fi films like "V", "independence day" and "the fly" (and some non-sci-fi non-films like "the office"), "district 9" still came across as original, breaking with science fiction conventions as often as not, and sometimes flipping them on their head. i think it's worth seeing.

(one very minor criticism that probably only i noticed: why would a nigerian living in south africa use the word muzungu?)

UPDATE: cg's write up of the film is here.

anwar sadat's daughter sues the egyptian minister of information because of what paul rudd named a dog in "i love you man"

seriously.

drinking liberally: bat-related absence edition

i'm on bat watching duty tonight, so i can't make it. if you've been thinking of going, but won't because that annoying noz guy is always there, this is your big chance:

triumph brewing company
117 chestnut street
philadelphia, PA
6 p.m. until everyone leaves.

dispatch from the bat wars

our first POW:

like chicken man

these things are suddenly everywhere. they appeared in the lobby of my office building several weeks ago and i soon noticed that it wasn't just my building. now i see them in courthouses and train stations, like the one pictured here from 30th street station this morning.

they're still around even though the mania about swine flu has largely subsided (though the flu itself has not). i wonder whether these hand sanitizer will still be around after everyone has forgotten about H1N1. maybe they'll just become one of those things we expect to see in public spaces.

bat story

i went to sleep last night at around 12:30. two hours later mrs. noz woke me up saying she heard some noises and thought there was an animal in our bedroom. this is something that mrs. noz does every now and then. i was mumbling my usual "it's probably nothing" when she said she heard it again. i didn't hear anything, which in retrospect was probably because i was mumbling my usual. but at the time i thought that meant it was actually nothing.

before i finished my "i didn't hear anything" mumble, mrs. noz said "it's a bat! i saw it." the word "saw" got me to open my eyes. and then i saw it too: some dark shape whoosh by in the air. i sat up and we both popped on our bedside lights. a bat was swooping and diving around the room. i ducked under the covers. mrs. noz ran out of the room and slammed the door shut behind her. i was alone in the room with the bat. it flew in a circle, seemingly diving right at me every time it was over on my side of the room. it came really close, only an inch or two from my head. i was terrified, even though if i thought rationally i would realize that it wouldn't hurt me. it's hard to regain your composure when a bat is dive-bombing your head every second.

meanwhile, mrs. noz, from the presumed position of safety on the other side of the door, would yell helpful suggestions like "open the window!" "you open the window!" i suggested back. (i think i was a little resentful that she had shut me in with the bat, although if i had the guts to move i might have done the same thing). "you're two feet from the window and i'm all the way out here!" she replied. which was true. her being all the way out there was precisely why i thought she should help me out and open the window.

eventually, i managed to ignore the dive bombing enough to shimmy over to the side of the bed closest to the window, creep out, open the screen and jump back under the covers. but the stupid bat just kept diving at my head. it didn't seem interested in the window at all. every once in a while it would disappear from my sight and i'd wonder if it had flown out of the house. but then it would reappear and go back to diving at my head.

it's around then that mrs. noz started yelling that there was another bat out in the hall with her. then i didn't hear her say anything. i later learned that she had run out to the porch.

at some point bat #1 did find the window and fly out of the bedroom... or at least i was pretty sure it had. the problem was that i didn't actually see it go out the window. i just thought i saw the blur near the window for an instant and then the dive bombing stopped. i sat up, no dive bombing. i stood up, no dive bombing. i made some noise, no dive bombing. as i closed the window (i didn't want any more bats coming in), i noticed two college security vehicles in front of our house.

we live on a college campus. i'm pretty sure i mentioned that before at some point. the college has security and mrs. noz called them for lack of a better idea. so then two former philly cops chased the second bat around our house while me and mrs. noz stood on the porch, holding open the front door. after some chasing, bat #2 took the hint and went out the door.

it was 3:00 am when security left. so we went back to bed. mrs. noz wanted to leave the light on, she was convinced there would be another bat invasion. i just wanted to sleep. the adrenaline from being dive bombed had worn off. i felt exhausted and what was the odds of getting 3 bats in one night? i put on one of those eyemasks i had taken from an international airline flight and tried to sleep. it didn't really work. i got maybe 1/2 hour of light dozing in. the light and the vigilant mrs. noz staring at the fireplace kept me awake.

yes, we have a fireplace in our bedroom. these old houses are like that. when mrs. noz first heard the noises she thought they were coming from the direction of the fireplace. so we had decided that the bats might have come down the chimney. based on that theory mrs. noz laid in bed staring at the fireplace. periodically, i'd complain that i needed to sleep, that the bats were gone and that we should turn out the lights so i could get my rest. it didn't work. mrs. noz was unconvinceable.

at about 5:30 i was in a half sleep when mrs. noz yelled "another bat!" and i heard the bedroom door slam. i ripped off my mask, and found myself exactly where i was 3 hours earlier: alone in my bed, with mrs. noz out in the hallway, the door closed, and a bat dive-bombing my head. this time, i didn't bother with the window, i just followed mrs. noz's lead, ran out of the room and shut the door behind me.

security came again, this time looking even less amused. mrs. noz told them that she saw bat #3 come out of the fireplace, you know, since she was staring right at it when the bat arrived. the officers went into the bedroom and looked around, finding no bat. maybe they would have thought us crazy if they hadn't seen bat #2 on their prior visit. instead, they concluded that the bat probably went back up the chimney and said they would talk to maintenance about dealing with the problem. this being a sunday in august (when much of the campus is shut down), they admitted that probably no one would see the work order until monday.

now it's morning. the bedroom door is closed. who knows how many bats are in there now? i'm dead-tired, the day is just beginning and the prospect of doing this all again tonight is not very appealing. looks like i picked the wrong week to give up caffeine.

it probably ate his homework too

nice try.

albania plans to legalize gay marriage

i think this would be the first predominantly muslim country to do it.

(via ciarán via email)

dissociative state

steven pearlstein says that "the recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage." pearlstein continues:

There are lots of valid criticisms that can be made against the health reform plans moving through Congress -- I've made a few myself. But there is no credible way to look at what has been proposed by the president or any congressional committee and conclude that these will result in a government takeover of the health-care system. That is a flat-out lie whose only purpose is to scare the public and stop political conversation.

i engaged the other side quite a bit online over the last few weeks and i've found it quite hard to find any die-hard conservative opponents of health reform who have even a passing familiarity with any of the actual proposals in congress. instead, what i get from them are buzz-words like "socialism", comparisons to health systems that are completely different from the system in any version of the health reform bills, and the weird persistent inability to distinguish between health care and health insurance. the latter is what i really find the most odd.

as for pearlstein's lying charge, i think you have to make a distinction between the republican leadership and health insurance industry lobbyists on one hand, and conservatives in general on the other. the conservatives who i have been arguing with are not lying. they don't think they're misleading anyone, they're just repeating what they think is true, even though it comes across as nuts to anyone who has tried to follow the legislation. their seeming detachment from the real debate is more of a byproduct of the alternate universe that the conservative media has built for itself. if you get you information from fox news, rightwing blogs and talk radio, you're probably unfamiliar with any of the basics that are necessary to participate in any substantive discussion of the real policy issues.

the wingnut media has essentially excluded its audience from the real health care debate. so instead all they're left with is railing about imaginary demons to each other and throwing their bad information around in public demonstrations. that's all that's going on here.

so very tired

just in case you thought the blog looked a little more droopy than usual, i arbitrarily decided to start my annual decaffeination two days ago. this is still the transition week (cold turkey starts next tuesday), but every year this seems to get a little easier.

the only thing that's worse this time around is that i stopped having caffeinated coffee in the first morning after mrs. noz went out of town. whenever she goes away, my sleep schedule gets all messed up as i tend to stay up really late for no reason. i have a remarkable ability to goof around endlessly. then suddenly its 1:30 a.m. and i think, "holy shit! i work tomorrow. my alarm will ring in only 5-1/2 hours!" without mrs. noz to remind me to sleep, i often get preoccupied with whatever i'm doing and forget. usually when she's away, i make up for it, by upping the morning coffee dosage. but with me going off the sauce this week, i've just been slogging my way through. luckily, mrs. noz returns today. it looks like i'll make it without completely falling apart.

rattling around crawford

bill clinton's trip to north korea got me wondering about what will happen to former president george w. bush. i can't imagine bush (jr.) being an effective envoy to anywhere, or any sort of "elder statesman." but that's the kind of thing that former presidents do after they leave office. aside from W, the only recent example of a non-statesman former president is ronald reagan. he pretty much vanished from public view. but reagan, it turned out, was suffering from alzheimer's. bush doesn't have that excuse.

i guess it might be a little early to tell. bush seems to be trying to avoid openly criticizing his successor, an ethic that his dad championed. despite his one slip, he has basically stayed out of the fray (in stark contrast to his vice president). so maybe it will be another few years before we see an attempt to be W the statesman. but i just can't see it happening. and i wonder what he will end up doing instead.

the buffoon we used to have as an ambassador

this is pretty classic bolton: equate talking with giving in and never ever change your position no matter what happens. so clinton's visit is a mistake, even though it worked.

bolton says the successful visit is a classic case of "rewarding bad behavior" but what exactly is the north korean's reward? clinton didn't go in any official capacity, he didn't have the power to negotiate on behalf of the u.s. or promise any concessions. the north koreans gave in and didn't get anything in return.

it also makes me wonder what bolton's solution would be. i bet it involves bombing iran.

south ossetia, the movie!

i predict that this film stirs up a bit of controversy when it comes out, but not enough controversy to not bomb at the box office. i also predict that it will not be a good movie.

not that the georgia-russia war (or any war) can't be the basis for a good film. but the director's track record doesn't suggest he's up to the task.

...there are too many nots in this post.

mom-ba-SA

i realize the birthers are crazy, so i almost hesitate to ask, but i can't stop wondering: why are the birthers convinced that obama was born in mombasa? mombasa keeps coming up as the president's alleged birthplace in almost every version of birtherism, it's even on the latest ridiculous forgery.

the president's father is from nyang’oma kogelo, a town near lake victoria and the ugandan border. mombasa, on the other hand, is on the indian ocean, literally the other end of the country.

i understand why they might theorize that the president was born in kenya, his father was kenyan after all. but why are they naming a particular city that far from where obama's family is from, in a place that has very few luo (the father's ethnic group)? and while obama sr. lived (and died) in nairobi, i can't find any credible (i.e. non-birther) indication that he ever lived in mombasa.

so where does this mombasa thing come from?

UPDATE: this doesn't clear up where the mombasa thing came from, but kos quotes a comment by CatM that notes "Mombasa belonged to Zanzibar when Obama was born, not Kenya." wiki agrees: "Mombasa was part of the state of Zanzibar until 12 December 1963 when it was ceded to be incorporated into the newly independent state of Kenya."

it still doesn't answer my question "why mombasa?" but it does illustrate another reason why hitching their wagon onto that particular city was a bad choice.

"captured" vs. "arrested"

this stuff drives me crazy. there's a major double standard for the way the press describes the actions of a lot of different countries, but iran seems to get it worse than most. not that the iranian regime doesn't actually do all kinds of horrible stuff. but when they do ordinary things--stuff that wouldn't be considered wrong if any other country did it--like arresting people who illegally cross their border, their actions are inevitably described in the american press in language suggesting their actions are criminal.

hate crime

i'm not sure what they mean by this:

Leaders of the local gay and lesbian community say the attack on Saturday night at the center on Nahmani Street in Tel Aviv should be considered a hate crime against the community - regardless of the real motive of the gunman.

isn't the motive what makes it a hate crime?

out

i guess this is what passes for being a "thinker" over there

check out this classic case of projection!

it's pretty funny to read. if nothing else, just try counting all the bizarro interpretations mr. lifson draws from an otherwise innocuous photo. naturally, the chuckle heads of right blogistan are eating it up.

is it possible to out-absurd the wingnut-o-sphere?

voice!

two days ago, i got my google voice invite. woo-hoo! i had requested one a few weeks ago and then promptly forgot about it.

so i clicked to accept link and then it asked me what phone number i wanted. you could put in numbers or letters, so i tried to spell something catchy. i fed phrase after phrase into the window, but selection after selection was unavailable. i even tried dorcky-0, which is what mrs. noz's phone number used to be back in the late 1990s, but it had been taken too. the more i tried, the more pressure i felt. google voice accounts were being activated across the country (not to mention numbers handed out to new phone customers). with each moment the pool of available numbers got a little smaller.

eventually i came up with ax-4-noz, which actually worked. sure, it was pretty lame, it had a number after the "z", and was in an area code that had no connection to anything in my life. but it was the best i could come up with on the spot. (when i clicked to accept the invitation, i wasn't expecting to have to make up a phone number). and now i have a hotly coveted google voice account.

if only apple/AT&T weren't being such a dick about it, it would be even cooler. (see also dave's 90 second tech video)

spring summer cleaning

i deleted a whole mess of posts that i had "saved as draft" over the years--about 65 in all going back to 2004. you'll never see them, but it was a fun trip down memory lane for me, looking at so many half-completed thoughts from the past. actually, the number of saved drafts increased dramatically beginning around april 2007, when i got an iphone. i think a lot of them are just earlier versions of posts that i did eventually publish. bloggers automatic save function combined with spotty cell phone connections may have fooled blogger into thinking that subsequent saves were different posts. i may have published one, but an earlier draft remained.

but still, there were a lot that predated april 2007. almost all of them were movie reviews, book reviews, or obscure references to my personal life. i guess i hesitate to hit publish for that stuff more than other kinds of posts. i do see a lot of movies that never get mentioned here. actually, other than film festival films, i don't do film reviews very often anymore. book reviews are even more rare. i doubt if anyone cares, myself included.