halloween

(via JM by email, a million years ago)

halloween excusion

the golden girls turned a generation of boys gay

the shocking truth. between that show and tofu, it's surprising that there are any heterosexual males left.

off year

i'm not sure what to do about off-year elections. next tuesday is election day. there are important votes various other places, NJ and VA have a governor's race, maine has a same-sex marriage referendum, etc. but the important votes are not, it seems, where i live. there are a few philly races that i am semi-interested (e.g.), but i'm a suburbanite and don't get to vote in those contests.

and yet there is an election in my area, with candidates and everything! but i know almost nothing about them. i met this guy at the train station yesterday. he seemed nice enough and he gave me a pen. but i have no idea what he stands for, other than the platitudes of "safe neighborhoods" and "prudent fiscal management" that are printed on his flier. i'm sure his opponent is not anti-safe neighborhoods, but i have no idea who he/she is. nor do i know what political party liberi is from (neither the flier nor his web site give a political party). he does seem to have the most yard signs.

so what am i supposed to do? vote for the guy because he gave me a pen? even if it were for sale, my vote shouldn't be that cheap. i honestly don't know how local candidates run for election. i'm a total political junkie and still i have no useful information about any of the candidates. how can i vote for anyone? i could do a straight party-line vote. but what's the point of that? the issues that most distinguish the two parties don't always matter much on the local level.

in the past i've skipped elections where i don't know anything about any of the candidates. i'd rather cast no vote than an uninformed one. but i do feel guilty about it. and i wonder how any of these local races can ever be decided on issues.

consequences

brian beutler at TPM says that senator tom harkin is hinting at consequences for lieberman if he supports a filibuster of the health care bill. but when i read harkin's statement (as quote by beutler), i don't see it that way at all. here's what harkin said:

[Lieberman] still wants to be a part of the Democratic Party although he is a registered independent[.] He wants to caucus with us and, of course, he enjoys his chairmanship of the [Homeland Security] committee because of the indulgence of the Democratic Caucus. So, I'm sure all of those things will cross his mind before the final vote.

all i see is harkin saying something along the lines of: i really hope lieberman remembers how nice we've been to him before he screws us on the health care vote. if the democrats are going to threaten lieberman with consequences maybe they should actually threaten lieberman with consequences, not just hint at it. the most effective threats are done in private, not before news cameras. so maybe the dems have already had a serious talk with lieberman in private. then again, it doesn't seem like the senate leadership has it in them.

meanwhile, joe seems determined to see how far he can go while still enjoying the perks of the democratic caucus. he told ABC that he plans to campaign for republicans during the 2010 midterm election.

cobra

the committee in the british cabinet dealing with somali piracy is called cobra. don't those stupid brits know that cobra are the bad guys?!?!?


actually, i think the real story behind the name of that committee is almost as funny: "It is occasionally referred to as COBRA or Cobra, with some media reporting attributing that to an acronym for 'Cabinet Office Briefing Room Alpha', on the basis that meetings are presumed to be held in 'Conference Room A' of the Cabinet Office main building in Whitehall." i guess "conference room A" doesn't sound dramatic enough for a crisis response committee.

meanwhile, here in the u.s., cobra is just about health insurance. but isn't everything these days?

eleven eight

via matthew yglesias i learned that russia is considering eliminating three time zones. it seems to me that any added convenience for those moscow-to-vladivostok commuters would be more than made up for by the inconvenience of everyone else. it also made me think of this:



it's not even funny.

heckling gone viral

someone should try to measure which is the most popular current fad in heckling speakers: throwing shoes, or yelling "you lie!"

eventually someone will think of writing "you lie" on the shoe before flinging it.

memory lane

if i recall correctly, the entire purpose of welcoming joe lieberman into the democratic primary caucus (notwithstanding the fact that democratic voters in his home state rejected him, that he voluntarily quit the party to run as an independent, that he actively campaigned for the republican party presidential candidate and that he spoke at the republican party convention) was the idea that the democrats needed him to be guaranteed a 60-vote filibuster proof majority. the democratic leadership agreed to overlook those recent transgressions, honor joe's seniority and give him the chairmanship of an important committee, all in return for the promise that lieberman wouldn't join the republicans and vote against cloture.

that was the deal. but now lieberman has announced that he doesn't intend to honor his end of the bargain.

so fine. fuck lieberman, right? if he's not going to support the party caucus then why should the caucus let him be a member, honor his seniority or let him chair any committees? a deal's a deal. if holy joe isn't offering anything in return, then he should lose at least some of those perks he was given with the understanding that he would be the 60th vote. right?

apparently not.

hey, i have a deal for the democratic leadership! i'll promise to donate a gazillion dollars to every one of your reelection campaigns if you make me chairman of the senate finance committee today. go ahead and appoint me. the check's in the mail.

"didn't you wear that, like, five years ago?"

mal returns!



(via adc on FB)

the turko-islamic empire

strange maps always has good stuff, but this one is particularly interesting:

(click to embiggen)

it depicts a new turkish led empire formed through the unlikely pan-turkic/pan-islamic alliance. and they went the overinclusive route. rather than including all the places that are both turkic and muslim, the mapmakers tried to include everywhere that is either turkic or muslim, although it fudges a few places.

for example, notice how areas with turkic-speaking majorities in russia get included, but areas with russian-speaking majorities in kazakhstan do not get excluded. and the map pushes the boundaries of the turco-islamic superstate liberally into east africa from the muslim majority areas along the indian ocean coast into areas that have clear christian majorities (like central kenya). it also squeezes out the christian majority areas along the atlantic coast of west africa (the southern bits of cote d'ivoire, ghana and nigeria). actually, the map-makers seem to be a little confused about africa in general. ethiopia is mislabeled as kenya, kenya is mislabeled as tanzania and tanzania is mislabeled as malawi. and i guess they didn't get the memo that zaire changed its name back to the democratic republic of congo back in 1997.

meanwhile, the mega-turk caliphate excludes lebanon, presumably because of its christian population, even though "there is general consensus that Muslims constitute a solid majority of the [lebanese] population". and then it doesn't exclude israel, where most of the population is jewish and not turkic speaking. (although no self-respecting caliphate map wouldn't claim all of israel/palestine). likewise, all of the predominantly catholic philippines is included (instead of just including the muslim-majority bits in the south)

the country also grabs all of mongolia even though it's not a muslim country and mongolian isn't a turkic language. it is altaic (the larger language family to which the turkic languages belong). but that's not a satisfying answer because it doesn't include other areas with (non-turkic) altaic languages, like korea, japan and northeastern siberia. it doesn't even include all of the places where mongolian is spoken, like northern china. and that's not because the map-makers are trying to be nice to china. they had no problem snatching the areas of western china where the turkic-speaking uighurs live.

as you can tell, i find maps of imaginary super-states to be pretty entertaining. what i don't find them to be is very threatening. every once in a while people flip out when they find a map of some overly ambitious caliphate, or greater aztlan, or whatever. you have to be pretty detached from reality to think those states are every gonna happen. cue jon stewart.

sign of the times

i just got some spam with the subject line: "FDIC has officially named your bank a failed bank". the email then instructs me to go to this web site and download this program to "check [my] Deposit Insurance Coverage." the email never actually gives the name of my bank.

ousted nigerian dictators are sooooo early 00s.

nail biter in tunis

it's fascinating to see which blatantly fraudulent elections prompt large outcries and which ones don't.

on the other hand, ben ali got only 89.62% of the vote. in the world of sham elections, that's a pretty poor showing. any self respecting dictator should be able to at least break into the 90s.

i don't know if anyone has noticed the trend in tunis, but ben ali has been slipping in the last few fake elections. the tunisian president serves a five year term. he got 99.4% in 1999, the first time that tunisia held an alleged "multi-party election". that percentage fell to 94.5% in the 2004. ben ali is losing about 1% per year/5% per election. if this keeps up, we only have to wait forty years before someone else has a chance of winning!

my chance to lead a productive life is now over

i'm officially doomed.














UPDATE: never mind. the app isn't free. saved by my tight-fisted won't-pay-for-iphone-apps policy! at least until i talk myself into paying for an app just this once...

(via EM, who, i think, doesn't know this site exists)

who says that piracy can't be educational?

today i learned what "muxing" means.

the cost of not considering the costs

stephen walt argues that the u.s. should pull out of afghanistan because the cost of staying is high and the likelihood of success is low. these kind of cost-benefit analyses are far too rare among the articles about foreign policy that i read, especially cases involving armed conflict. in my mind, they're all about "is it worth it" type questions and not absolutes.

of course, when it comes to war, the answer to the "is it worth it?" question is often "no". war is expensive, in terms of money, lives, general risk, and everything. that's probably why people inclined to military solutions don't like asking the question. and it's also why the most warmongering people are the ones least willing to see the world in terms of trade-offs rather than absolutes.

uzbekistan?

As of Thursday, at least 806 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department.

u.s. soldier(s) died in uzbekistan? when did that happen?

UPDATE: never mind, i found the soldier. it was a "non-combat weapons discharge" in november 2001. i guess it happened early enough in the operation that casualties ever since then have been listed as being from "afghanistan, pakistan and uzbekistan" even though there really hasn't been any casualties in uzbekistan since that date.

israeli supreme court rules against segregated road

i don't know much about israeli jurisprudence, but i wonder how any of the other israeli-only roads that criss-cross the west bank can survive this ruling. if the system of segregated roads were to end, it would mean settlers would have to pass through the same checkpoints as palestinians. even with the easy treatment that cars with israeli plates will get at the checkpoints, just being in the same traffic stream would ruin their commute and substantially reduce the desirability of living in the settlements that serve as bedroom communities for other israeli cities.

which is why an end to "apartheid roads" would represent a large setback for the settler movement, a movement that is strongly supported by the current israeli government. which is why i expect the ruling will not go anywhere. either the netanyahu government will drag its feet in opening up the settlers-only roads or it will find a loophole to keep the ethnic-based segregation in place.

cell phones are killing my hobby

i ran some errands during lunch today and in doing so i got to walk by this place that used to be a good spot for finding chick tracts. i've been collecting the comic book tracts for more than a decade. the religious zealots who leave them to be found like to leave them on top of pay phones. the spot i walked past today used to have this bank of pay phones and there always seemed to be at least one tract on at least one phone.

i'm not sure why chick tracts are often left on top of pay phones. they're not that big, they could be left almost anywhere. but pay phones seem to be the main place they're left. it's not just philly either. i've found them on phones in new york, D.C. and chicago.

of course, i don't just need to find one to get one. these days i can order tracts online, either through ebay or from mr. chick himself (though chick only does bulk orders because he wants you to give most of them away, spreading the word of god, or whatever). but ordering specific tracts just doesn't produce the same thrill as finding one by accident.

that thrill is mostly gone. pay phones are disappearing from public spaces. the ones that used to be in the spot i walked by today were gone. there were no chick tracts to be found there. i don't remember the last time i found a tract by accident. with their natural habitat vanishing, free-range tracts are vanishing as well. maybe the zealots who distribute them have started leaving them somewhere else. but if so, i haven't found where that place is yet.

war!

i'm having a hard time giving a shit about the so-called war between the white house and fox news. the obama administration dared to state the obvious, that fox news really isn't a news source. that prompted a media wide hissy fit (which seems largely comprised of media personalities accusing the white house of throwing a hissy fit)

i guess i shouldn't be surprised. the media likes to talk about itself. but that just explains why it's getting so much attention, not why i should care. and nothing in the current kerfuffle is doing anything to convince me that fox is a real news source. it's not like any of fox's defenders are addressing the substance of the charge. they're just flipping out about the idea of the president questioning the credibility of an (alleged) news source, as if that hasn't happened many times before.

gitmo soundtrack

while i support their opposition to the interrogation practices, it's an odd strategy to attack torture by way of musicians' intellectual property rights. copyright isn't mentioned in the article, but the only reason that (for example) R.E.M. would have an interest in determining whether it's music was used to torture detainees is if the band had some kind of right to dictate how their music gets used.

i'm assuming that the u.s. government purchased the music legally and didn't make any money by playing it to the detainees. if that's true, then the bands really shouldn't have any say on how their music was used. that doesn't make using music for torture okay. i'm just saying that it's not okay because it's torture, not because it's using the music in a way that the musician wouldn't approve of. torturing people using the music of pro-torture musicians is just as wrong as torturing people with the music of anti-torture musicians. the musician's position on torture isn't the problem with musical torture.

the best movies that no one has seen

as part of my ongoing project to hunt down things to watch during our hypothetical stay in siberia, i was googling up lists of the best movies that no one has seen. on almost every list i found, i had seen at least one. and the ones that i have seen usually weren't that good. i checked the rotten tomatoes ratings of some of the ones i haven't seen and i don't think the ones i saw were outliers.

surely somewhere in the vast interwebs there is a better list than any i've been able to find.

nozette

every time i see this guy's name, i think they're talking about a short blue female version of me.

king james version

i'm not sure why that translation of the bible got to be the one that so many people think is the original.

when i lived in chicago, i was riding the bus home one day and one of those crazy bus people sat down next to me. the crazy bus person was ranting about religion. they all seem to eventually if you listen to them long enough. anyway, this crazy bus person's beef was that they were coming out with all these new versions of the bible that were different from king james. some other passenger made the mistake of trying to engage the guy, saying something about how there were multiple translations of the bible, the crazy man flipped out. apparently the crazy bus person thought the bible was originally written in english and that king james was that original version.

the reason why i'm bringing up the parable of the crazy bus person is this: sometimes i wonder whether the crazy bus person is any more misinformed about bible versions than a lot of other people in the u.s. they may not be the crazy ranting-in-public type, but the idea that the king james version of the bible is the real bible seems to be fairly widespread.

ajami and fish bowl

over the weekend i saw ajami (imdb) and fish tank (imdb) at the PFF 18 1/2 mini-fest thingy that i mentioned before. i was gonna write a post about them both, i even started writing the posts. but now i don't feel like it and i feel like enthusiasm to write has passed.

i guess my personal commitment to write up every film festival film that i see doesn't extend to this mini-fest. who knew?

i did liked them both though.

more

i'm still trying to scrounge up movies and/or tv shows to keep us entertained if we ever get to siberia. i've gotten almost every film/show i could think of in my initial brainstorm and that only added up to about 20% of my total capacity.

of you have any other suggestions are welcome, leave them in the comments (again, ideally stuff i haven't seen. if you happen to know i've seen it, leave it off. but if you're not sure leave it in the comments anyway)

there's a parody for that

this video has been bouncing around FB over the past few days:



putting aside the video's point about the current republican party, any commercial that gets parodied as much as that iphone commercial does must be a phenomenally successful ad campaign. i already have an iphone and the ad still draws my attention because i want to see what apps i might want to download.

not a real news source

it's completely unsurprising that fox news has no idea what the term "nuclear option" refers to and thus misleads its audience.

not that fox hasn't repeatedly made this same mistake before...

coming soon: more exciting vote-stealing opportunities!

it looks like there will be a runoff in afghanistan.

our capitalist masters

i've heard a lot of jokes that the u.s. treasury is a wholly-owned subsidiary of goldman sacks. i don't know how much influence goldman has over the u.s. government but i think it has gotten to the point where they need to stop hiring people from goldman for influential regulatory positions.

maybe 29 year old adam storch would be a super-talented COO of the bank intelligence unit. but it's not just about talent, it's about credibility. i just don't get why anyone (other than the folks at goldman) would think this appointment is a good idea. i'd be more suspicious of the conspiracy theory if the government stopped working so hard to make it look true.

the SCO solution

steve hynd notes that the taliban is appealing to the shanghai cooperation organization to resolve the afghan conflict.

it's an interesting move in that the SCO is dominated by china and russia. it's not a muslim organization or an organization of muslim countries as one would expect islamic fundamentalists to favor. although it was created to be a counterweight to NATO, the SCO hasn't done much more than hold summits and issue joint communiques. if it does take up the taliban's offer and try to mediate, this will be the first time that the SCO does anything significant about an issue beyond its member-states' borders.

if the SCO really is to be a world player instead of just a regional cooperation group, it will take the taliban up on its offer. but that only works if it's member states can agree to get involved. all of the member states (except, i think, kazakhstan) have had problems with militants that trained with al qaeda in taliban-ruled afghanistan. i don't know how the taliban can get around that.

it's gaza

while i agree with stephan walt's basic point that israeli policies are harming its own interest on the international stage, it's not really the occupation that's causing their current headaches. the occupation has been around for decades. israel was an occupying power when it built its alliance with turkey. occupation alone can't explain the recent tension in that relationship.

it's gaza, not the occupation, that is causing the current problems with turkey (and other countries as well). operation cast lead was a strategic debacle for israel. the military campaign itself (with its one hundred-to-one kill ratio), the spotlight it cast on the blockade of gaza (which prior to the military operation hadn't gotten much international attention at all) and the release of the goldstone report are what is causing the current problems. the operation and its fallout also seemed to do what decades of occupation alone never did, caused some of the people who otherwise gave israel the benefit of the doubt to question that assumption. that may not seem like much, but israel has benefited enormously from the assumption of good will for most of its existence.

israel's current internal politics prevents that country from having a serious assessment of whether the gaza war was worth it. the international backlash is making israel more defensive about what it did, which means it will continue to support its gaza policies, even as the rest of the world is seeing it as increasingly indefensible. unless that dynamic is broken, i don't see how anything can get better, whether it be relations with turkey, the situation in gaza, or the peace process overall.

a serious man

i saw "a serious man" with dave tonight and afterwards we talked about the stories that i associate with rabbis. the kind of story seems to be missing its ending. the end is where the moral of the story lives, that's the thing you have to fill in yourself. as dave pointed out, that's basically this movie: the dybbuk, the goy with the letters on his teeth, the everything.

others have compared "a serious man" to job. but there's no real theodicy here. it's not even clear if there is a god. is it really about religion? or is it an atheist parable dressed up in orthodox clothing?

thumbs up!

erikson's snowe job

another mind blowingly stupid idea from one of the bright lights of right blogistan. putting aside the fact that erik's readers are inviting a visit from the department of homeland security, they don't seem to get that snowe's vote yesterday actually helps their cause if they are opposed to a more progressive form of health care reform. as paul waldman points out, if snowe had voted "no", no one would have paid any attention to her anymore. health care reform would proceed to the full senate without any input from the GOP. her "yes" vote guarantees that when the finance committee bill gets combined with the others, every more progressive change will be floated by senator snowe first to scope out how far she is willing to go before her "yes' turns to a "no."

put another way, if snowe had voted "no" in the finance committee, the democratic leadership would give up on trying to woo any republicans and there would almost certainly be a public option in the final bill. with snowe's "yes" vote, suddenly her opposition to the public option makes it less likely that there will be a public option at the end of the day. or maybe snowe will go for it if there's some kind of trigger or maybe they'll make a public option that is intentionally hobbled to give private insurance the competitive advantage. whatever it is that snowe wants, she now has a chance to get. only because of her "yes" vote does she have the opportunity to water down the legislation.

erikson's commitment to ideological purity is bad legislative strategy. not that i'm complaining about that.

swastikaFAIL

Police believe the vandals meant to carve a swastika next to President Barack Obama's name on the 18th hole; however, the symbol was backwards and means hope and peace in some Eastern countries.

(not to take away from the funny line, but i think the unbackwards swastika also means positive things in some eastern countries)

garrison

why does every article i see involving rawalpindi, pakistan refer to it as a "garrison city" or "garrison town"?

"garrison city" seems to be twice as popular as "garrison town" but it is really odd that almost every news article uses one or the other. is there any other city or town in the world that is that garrisony? is "the garrison city" rawalpindi's official motto? if so, they forgot to put it on the city's official web site.

maybe it's more of an unofficial nickname, like "the windy apple".

the mooslims! they're heeere!

i just discovered loonwatch.com, a repository for anti-muslim lunacy on the web. those folks have their work cut out for them!

like me, they seem to have a special place in their heart for the looniest blogger ever. they even have a weekly feature highlighting her craziest quotes of the week. loonwatch is only six months old, but i still can't believe it took me this long to find it.

(via the arabist)

"radical"

i'm not sure that liz cheney knows what that word means.

AARP

rather than whining repeatedly about the evils of acronym repetition, i think i should found an advocacy group to take on the issue.

all i need is a catchy name. so how about: the Anti-Acronym Repetition Project?

the stupidest argument argument

paul at explananda wrote a response to my "stupidest argument" post.

"let a thousand flowers bloom"

surely, i'm not the only one who chuckled when mccain used that phrase, best remembered (or misremembered) in the u.s. as an "alleged deliberate attempts to flush out dissidents by encouraging them to show themselves as critical of the regime, before wiping them out."

this from a guy whose campaign revived the practice of red baiting for the post-cold war era.

HRC redux

on the occasion of obama's speech before the human rights campaign yesterday, let me reiterate my annoyance with the overuse of the HRC abbreviation.

it's even more confusing these days. not only do we have the secretary of state and the gay rights organization, but recently i've seen people refer to "health care reform" as "HCR". doesn't anyone care about the dyslexics?!?!?!

interesting theory of why obama really won the nobel prize

to get him to attend the COP15 conference.

seems like overkill to me. but who knows?

U.S. of E.

i haven't been following it too closely, but i must admit, i didn't think the lisbon treaty would ever go through. and now it looks like it just might.

there really was no better example of why the EU needed to streamline its decision-making process than witnessing the convoluted process that the lisbon treaty had to go through to be ratified. because it depended on the approval of every constituent government there were just too many choke points in the process. but through what seems to be a combination of pre-economic meltdown optimism plus post-economic meltdown self-interest, it looks like they've managed to clear all but one.

so now it's coming down to the czechs. they don't even have a real government, which means it will probably pass. if the current caretakers say "no", brussels can just try again after a permanent government takes over.

which means a tony blair comeback might be just around the next bend.

shock and awe

didn't work this time either.

bask in the pandering glow

for years i've been whining about how the republicans tend to pander to their party's right wing while the democrats tend to pander to their party's right wing (i.e. the conservative democrats sometimes called "moderates"). why can't democrats pander to their left for once? i want to be pandered to, dammit!!!

and now it actually seems to be happening. in my own state, no less!

even if sestak's challenge ultimately fails it would have done the job just by getting arlen to flip-flop on all these issues. i still want specter to lose the nomination, mostly because i think he'll probably flop right back when he faces pat toomey in the general. but i guess i should enjoy the new specter while he lasts.

stating the obvious

obama won not because of anything he did, but rather because he represents the end of the bush presidency.

on that level, the award makes some sense. but it's still not a good idea. obama isn't a symbol, he's a person. and there are a whole lot of persons out there who are much more deserving than the president currently is.

besides, it's possible that obama will somehow pull off something that is deserving of the peace prize later on. by virtue of being president, he has more opportunity to advance the cause of peace in the world than most people. what if he, for example, brokers a treaty that leads to the creation of a palestinian state? i don't think it will happen, but it might. and if it does, will the nobel committee give him another prize? if they really wanted to give him a bullshit nobel, they could have done it later. at the very least, they should have waited to see if he deserves a real one first.

as a nobel peace prize nominee myself, i know everyone was waiting for my comments about this.

18 1/2

the philadelphia film festival 181/2 mini-fest opens next week. at one point i thought i wouldn't be around to see it. but now it's pretty clear that i'll be around, so i'm gonna see it. but what should i see?

this mini-fest is part of the fallout from the PFS-TLA split. historically, the philadelphia film festival was in the spring. but because the two sponsoring organizations split up, there will be two big film festivals in philadelphia each year: the "cinefest" in the spring and the "philadelphia film festival" in the fall. (there will also be the "q-fest," which used to be called the "gay and lesbian film festival" in the summer). this year is the transition year. last spring, the PFS and TLA jointly sponsored the combined philadelphia film fest #18/cinefest #1.

and now the PFS has decided to do a five day mini-fest in its future fall slot. one disadvantage with having the philly film festival in the spring is that a lot of higher profile films wouldn't be seen at our festival because the filmmaker wanted the premier to be at a more prestigious fest, like toronto. by having a festival that's after other more high-profile fests, we might end up getting some of those more selective films. i guess they're trying out that theory with this mini-fest.

anyway, the list of films in the mini-fest are here. if anyone has seen any, or just heard stuff about any of them, leave your recommendations in the comments. i've heard a lot about antichrist, but nothing that makes me want to see it. last year, we blundered onto the set of tenure when it was being filmed near where we live, but i'm not sure if seeing those buildings on the big screen will be enough of a draw. this one seems more up my alley, but the show time is terrible for someone who works full time. is there anything else that i should consider?

2013?

why are they delaying the implementation of key elements of health care reform, like the public option, until 2013? it makes no sense. health care reform, assuming a non-bullshit reform actually passes, will be a major accomplishment of the obama administration. but if people are still going bankrupt from medical expenses when the 2012 election rolls around, they're not likely to notice any changes coming down the pike.

it doesn't make any political sense to delay the benefits of the legislation until the next presidential term. is there any practical reason health care reform will take that long to effectuate? is there something i'm missing or are the democrats just being politically inept for its own sake?

UPDATE: paul points me to the answer. it's not political ineptness for its own sake after all. it's catering to arbitrary budgetary targets that, in turn, lead to politically inept decisions. i'm glad that's cleared up.

oops

somali pirates attack a french warship after mistaking it for a (presumably unarmed) cargo ship.

zeitoun

hurricane katrina and the country of syria will always be linked in my mind. i left for my visit to syria in early september 2005, about 10 days after katrina hit new orleans. when i left that city was still very much dominating the news. throughout my travels in syria and lebanon, i was asked repeatedly about the hurricane, whether my family was safe, et cetera by the people i met. a few weeks ago, i was looking through a pile of stuff and found the notebook i carried with me on that trip. one page had a crude drawing of the united states that i must have used to show some syrian just how far away my home was from new orleans. the drawing had a dot for new orleans and an arrow for philadelphia, with a big spiral centered over the new orleans dot. i also remember returning to damascus at the end of my trip and hanging around with john, an american from new orleans. john had been traveling around the world for more than a year, but was being called home by his parents to help them salvage their house.

but while syria and katrina go together for me, i didn't think they did for anyone else. then i read zeitoun, the true story of a syrian immigrant and his family who lived in NOLA and what happened to them when the storm came, tracing the breakdown of society that follows the storm and the crazy kafkaesque traps faced by arabs in post-911 america. it's one of those nonfiction books that reads like a novel and is a real page turner. i highly recommend it.

capitalism: a love story

michael moore's latest is probably his worst film. okay, i guess i should say his worst documentary.

in his last few movies, moore has had an increasingly hard time staying focused on his original point. fahrenheit 911 started as a film about 9/11, but then it gets distracted by the iraq war and goes off on that instead. sicko is mostly a critique of the american health insurance industry, but then literally sails off course to cuba. but while those two still manage to get across a basic thesis, "capitalism" feels more like a collection of distractions.

the individual anecdotes that make up the film are entertaining enough, those stories are just strung together. they spiral around moore's basic critique of capitalism rather than build into a coherent argument. i think that's because moore doesn't have an argument. what he does have are a bunch of examples of people suffering because of the profit motive. they do highlight some serious problems and some of those examples could potentially be used to build a coherent critique, but moore lacks a coherent critique to hang them on. so instead we have a big muddle. a sometimes entertaining muddle, but a muddle nonetheless.

if you want a documentary that is a sharp critique of the prevailing economic system, the corporation does a far better job. if you want to understand the circumstances behind the current economic crisis, you're better off listening to these three episodes of "this american life." there probably is a potential documentary that probes the origins of the economic crisis and builds that into a strong critique of capitalism. unfortunately, "capitalism: a love story" isn't it.

not exactly a hypothetical question

say you're going to spend 2 months in siberia. you have something to do for three hours of your day, but the rest of the time that you're there, you're basically on your own. if you could bring, say, 20 movies or tv shows with you, what would they be? leave your recommendations in the comments.

i'm less interested in suggestions of things i've already seen. then again, how are you supposed to know what i've already seen? i guess if you know i've seen it, leave it off. but if in doubt, suggest away...

the stupidest argument against health care reform

the objection to paying for someone else.

"paying for someone else" is the whole concept behind insurance. the idea of insurance is that there are certain things (floods, catastrophic medical costs, car crashes) which can be so economically devastating that individuals would be ruined if they had to pay the entire thing out of their own pocket. insurance is a way of pooling risk, everyone pays in, only the unlucky ones draw out. but then everyone can feel more secure knowing they have insurance to fall back on if disaster hits.

in other words, all insurance involves you paying other people's bills (or other people paying your bills). that's what insurance is all about. you can call it "socialism" if you want, that's not an argument, that's just slapping a label on something. but if you happen to believe it's evil to pay for other people, then cancel all your insurance policies.

(this post is a cut and paste job from what i just wrote in the comments, but this particular point has been rattling around in my head for months. thanks to FE for finally getting me to post it, with minor edits)

mad libs

i guess after these two, i am obligated to post every madmen parody i ever find.

ADDING: meshugene men, mad women, mad men vs. 2 assholes, mad toys, mad men in 60 seconds...

okay, i'm stopping now.

crazy thought

mahmoud ahmadinejad should make aliyah.

it would stir things up a bit. if there's one thing that region needs it's more stirring.

the rank of despots

why is captain moussa dadis camara still a captain? once he seized absolute power in guinea, i would have thought he would give himself a promotion.

i've wondered the same thing about colonel moammar qaddafi. in all these years he still hasn't thought of making himself a general.

they're like a bunch of twelve year olds

i don't know why the right wing going completely ga-ga over this should surprise me.

several ago, another blogger (who shall remain nameless) told me that he didn't think the modern right had a coherent philosophy or any grasp of policy. all they care about is pissing off the left. the funny thing is that quite a lot of them have no idea what members of "the left" actually think. and so we are occasionally treated to these bizarre moments when i see them revel over "the left's defeat" when i, at least, don't care at all about the thing they are crowing about.

i'm not the only one either. in left blogistan today there's puzzlement at the right's reaction, with some outright mockery of them. no actual tears.

the proof is in the paper

it looks like he really is alive. i didn't think there was much chance he survived operation cast lead, even assuming he had made it for that long. his family must be incredibly relieved.

here's my question: we only know that shalit was alive (at least as of september 14, 2009) because of the newspaper in the video. what will happen to the kidnapping industry when the inevitable death of print newspapers finally arrives? sure, electronic news sources have their advantages. but without newsprint how will kidnappers ever be able to prove that their hostages are still breathing?

100 and 7

today is the 100th day following the date that we were told we would have a 60 day wait. we're still waiting.

today is also the day of our seventh fingerprinting appointment. this is really just a re-fingerprinting of the one we did in august 2008. they tell us those fingerprints have expired. apparently the department of homeland security thinks that our fingerprints change every year or so. actually, the whole reason that fingerprints are useful at all is the fact that they don't change. if they really did change every year, i don't think anyone would care about the whirls and loops that our fingers leave behind.

the wikipedia knowledge dump

via boing boing i discovered the wikipedia knowledge dump, a site that catalogues wikipedia articles that have been deleted or are flagged for possible deletion.

i think the world is a sadder place without the entries for mayonnaise rubbing, prairie muffins, the list of people who have died in the bathroom or the beard theorum [sic]. and i can't believe that wiki deleted the entry for wikiturfing, that entry practically proves itself!

meanwhile, the list of fictional worms lives on. is there no justice?

still mad

i've already linked to the one from the simpsons. here's a different one:


i guess there's something about the mad men and/or their opening sequence that is just begging for parody. i expect there will be a lot more.