random thought of the day

the world would be a cooler place if the people of media, pa spoke median. on the other hand, that would make dave's links as language series pretty incomprehensible to a non-persian like me.

how will NATO deal with this contradiction?

it won't.. it will ignore the fact that NATO's entire involvement is supposedly to protect civilians even as it provides air support to an attack on a civilian enclave.

i actually believe that some concern about "protecting libyan civilians" was one of the original motivations for the NATO campaign. i don't believe such concerns played no role as more cynical people seem to believe. it's just that the humanitarian motivation wasn't the only motivation. the other one was to get rid of a dictator who gave the world plenty of reasons to hate and who had managed to burn his bridges with every state that matters when it comes to these kinds of decisions. (qadhafi was still popular with sub-sahara african leaders, but like i said, every state that matters...)

the initial bombing prevented bengazi from falling probably did prevent a massacre. but then when that city was out of danger, the seige of misurata provided a new threatened civilian massacre that allowed the alliance to continue to work on regime change under the guise of its original mandate. once the misurata seige was broken, the protect civilians mandate was even more openly ignored. if the fall of sirte goes the way i fear it might, then it wouldn't take much for someone to point out the contradiction and give NATO a serious black eye. i just don't think NATO will recognize that in time to do anything differently.

safe

reading dahlia lithwick's piece about dick cheney's memoir, i was struck by the cheney quote that torturing prisoners is "safe, legal and effective." the "legal" and "effective" claims have already been pretty thoroughly debunked, but "safe"?!?!? safe to whom? not to the subject of torture. torture by definition causes harm. even if you call it "harsh interrogation techniques" or by some other euphemism, the part that makes it "harsh" (or sometimes "enhanced") is that it causes pain.

maybe he just means it doesn't kill them. but if someone asked me if throwing a baby in a tub of scalding water is "safe", the answer is "no" even if i was sure that the baby would survive (albeit with serious burns). i don't know how that dude says this stuff with a straight face.

from the folks who brought you the jonestown massacre finger painting set

controversy aside, it is completely crazy that anyone ever thought that a non-satirical/non-ironic september 11th coloring book would be a good idea.

stephenson on fernandez on perry

i agree with matthew yglesias. the problem with rick perry is not hypocrisy, it is extremism. having extremist views on policy issues is a lot worse than merely being a hypocrite. but unfortunately the political press hates delving into policy issues and so hypocrisy is a convenient way to criticize without having to get into messy discussions of the issues on their merits.

which reminds me of a bit from the diamond age by neal stephenson, a science fiction novel i read about 15 years ago. the diamond age takes place decades in the future,in a world dominated by moralizing neo-victorians. in this one scene, a scene that has stuck with me through all these years, one of the characters talks about the role hypocrisy played in the days of his youth, by which he is referring to our own society right now:

You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices,” Finkle-McGraw said. “It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticise others-after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism? … Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticise others’ shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticise another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behaviour-you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy.

(a tip of the hat to the now-inactive blog critically, for posting five years ago exactly the quote i was looking for today)

oh yeah

i guess i should check in and mention that i didn't die. as expected, irene wasn't the end of the world. it rained a lot and was very windy for about 24 hours, and that was it. the power never went out, the basement didn't flood, the water in the tap never stopped flowing. we never had to break out any survival kit or eat the neighbors or anything. on saturday night i actually slept with the window opened just because i thought the winds whipping through my bedroom felt nice.

my lack of posting here over the weekend has more to do with my brother's visit and dealing with a cooped up toddler on a rainy weekend than any non-toddler related destruction.

come on irene

i must admit, i am excited about hurricane irene. philadelphia is about 70 miles from the oceans so it doesn't get hurricanes in the sense that coastal cities like miami (or new york or boston) do. instead we get a storm that has been downgraded before it reaches us, or we get a miss from the main hurricane, with the storm itself centered off the coast of new jersey and with philly getting just the periphery of the real storm. either way what that means is some high winds and a ton of rain. we're not in any serious danger, other than from falling tree limbs. basements may flood, the power may go out for a little while and flights will cancel. but otherwise it will just be a big dramatic rain storm.

but even without much real danger, people like to freak out. and that's what makes it fun. we all get to play emergency. we get to dream up disaster scenarios and then try to be ready for them--batten down the hatches and stock up on food as if civilization itself will collapse this weekend. i love this stuff.

this has happened before. every few years a hurricane comes out way and each time (alas) civilization stubbornly fails to collapse. but this year seems to have a little more tension in the air. we are still coming off from the high of the (no damage/no injury) earthquake that rattled us on tuesday. and do you know what that means? that means we are in the few days between two natural disasters!!!! (how cool is that?) my main regret is that irene won't pass us until sunday, so i won't be in my 51st floor office to feel the swaying (the shaking/bouncing from the earthquake was terrifying, but still an experience)



(why hasn't anyone posted a video for this song?!?! that was my first choice. damn you youtube!!!)

because we all remember how dennis used his enormous clout to prevent the iraq war

if you have any doubts whether qadhafi was or is completely detached from reality, read this article about his plan to avoid an american ground invasion of libya by wooing one of the most marginalized members of congress, dennis kucinich.

good wishes...

...are going out to my friend susie madrak. the good news is she seems to be doing okay.

nobody cares how many flags over delaware

to some extent i sympathize with what amanda marcotte is saying. at the same time i find it remarkable that she is feels threatened that someone might "take away her Texan card" and view her as not a real texan.

let me say here and now that my "pennsylvania card" is up for grabs. anyone who wants it can have it. same my "delaware card", since that is the state where i grew up. i just don't care whether other people recognize me as being authentically from either of those states, or any other state for that matter. i wonder if any pennsylvanian or delawarian would care either.

the texan stereotype is not just that texans are a bunch of ignorant yahoos. another major component is that they are nationalists, or whatever you call the state equivalent (statalists?). for all of marcotte's protests that the texan stereotype is wrong, her post itself is a display of the strong texan identity that seems to be completely absent when it comes to the other states in the union. that, more than anything, is what i find so bewildering about both rick perry and george bush's swagger. not to bust on marcotte here (that's not what i intend to do here) but her posts challenging the texan stereotype itself seems so stereotypically texan to me.

ghosts with shit jobs

a lo-fi sic-fi low-budget mockumentary by jim munroe, a guy i kinda sorta know. (at least we used to have the same bathroom schedule at wiscon years ago). the film will be released on the web in october.

bad things can have silver linings

there has been a small hubbub this morning about an alleged posting by paul krugman on google+. the posting triggered a bunch of* criticism on the right. the post stated: "People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage."

the problem is that krugman doesn't have a google+ account and it didn't take long before the person who created the fake G+ account under krugman's name fessed up. the prankster explained "I do not regret writing it and I hope it will enlighten many on the perverse economic views held by a Nobel winning economist writing for the New York Times who also lectures at Princeton University."

 and yet, was the fake post wrong? the outrage surrounding it is more about how the comment is outrageous per se without advancing a coherent argument that the sentiment is wrong. the statement could be economic growth often follows large natural disasters. just because something terrible happens doesn't mean that all of the consequences are always bad.

i guess i don't understand the purported krugman quote that would be automatically outrageous unless you have an extremely simplistic view of the world, where anything and everything must be completely good or completely evil. i have a hard time believing that anyone can live their life and continue to think that way. counter-examples are everywhere, big and small, from the person i once met whose grandparents met in a displaced persons camp after being freed from concentration camps at the end of WW2 (and thus would not have existed if not for the holocaust), to the ice cream cone i buy with a $5 bill that i found on the street, even though that means that someone out there lost $5.

* post now deleted.

no recess

why is chris coons holding a pro forma senate session? as the article mentions, the sessions are designed to foil president obama's ability to make a recess appointment by keeping the senate from ever technically going on recess during the month that it is, for every other purpose other than that technical sense, in recess. the republicans want to stop obama from making those appointments so, like they did over the memorial day break, they have arranged to hold pro forma sessions throughout the current break.

chris coons, however, is a democrat, a fairly good one too, IMHO. so why is he helping a republican effort to block recess appointments? did someone cut a deal to get democrats to participate in the pro forma sessions? if so, what did the democrats get out of the deal?

the last hooverville

i still am amused by the fact that there is a think tank named after herbert hoover that publishes articles about economic policy.

breaking up is hard to do

paul ryan has has ruled out a 2012 presidential bid, again.

how long do you think this ruling out will hold them? another month? a couple of weeks? it should at least lay the issue to rest until the next issue of the weekly standard, right?

book threshold

i am trying to come up with a rule for deciding when i should give up on a book that i am reading. before this year, i would usually make myself finish any book i started. that rule was supposed to make me stick to books, exposing me to a more diverse set of reading materials by preventing me from giving up on stuff that i found to be challenging. but in practice what usually happened is i would lose interest in a book and stop reading it, which meant i would stop reading altogether as i didn't want to break the rule and start a new book until i was finished with the book i had lost interest in. rather than encouraging me to read more, in practice under the old rule i read less.

which is why i have decided to ditch the old rule. life is too short and there is too much i want to read without having to force myself to slog through a book that isn't grabbing me. but i still don't want to give up on books too easily. some of my favorite books didn't click right away. sometimes it takes a little while before i get into a book. i want to make sure i give it a chance before i toss it overboard.

clearly this calls for a brand new rule! how far into a book is giving the book a fair chance? 100 pages in? twenty percent of the way through? does anyone else have a threshold for deciding whether a book is worth their time? if so, what is it?

blocking

it is strange how suddenly there are a bunch of stories about how kazakhstan is now blocking certain blogging sites. this shouldn't be news. livejournal has been blocked in kazakhstan since at least 2008. blogger-powered sites (including this one) were blocked in kaz for most of the time in 2010 when i was there (except that in late november, just before kaz hosted the OSCE convention, when i suddenly could access my blog in kaz without resorting to an out-of-country proxy). wordpress was blocked periodically in the beginning of 2010, but then wasn't for most of the rest of the year.

so why are blocked blogs in kazakhstan suddenly generating articles now, when i couldn't find any news stories to explain the block in 2010? the difference is this time the block was ordered in a court ruling.

which i guess could be seen as a form of progress. following a judicial process to reach a bad decision is somewhat better than the same decision ordered behind the scenes, unacknowledged, out of the public eye and for reasons unknown.

but in a much bigger sense, the ruling is just idiotic. never mind that the decision is hard to reconcile with article 20, section 1 of the republic's constitution. in issuing the ban, the court cited the fact that blogging sites can be used to promote religious extremism. which is true. but they can also be used to counter religious extremism. they can also be used to talk about stamp collecting, or sing the praises of president nazarbayev. by their nature, blogging sites are content neutral. the court might as well have banned blank sheets of paper. you never know what some extremist could write on one of them!

a tacit acknowledgment of their own party's problem

i wonder how late it will be until the last late-comer decides to come into the race. the 2007-08 primary season is famous for getting started way-early. this time it just keeps getting later and later before all the candidates are in and the real primary can start.

this is both a symptom of the republican perception that president obama is vulnerable and also their tacit acknowledgment that all of the currently declared candidates probably can't win. the president's poll numbers show that he faces a real danger of losing his reelection bid next year, provided he faces the right opponent. and yet the GOP keeps coming up with potential challengers who are likely not up to the task of both surviving the primary and beating this wounded president. so their solution is to repeatedly drum up more challengers, challengers who also probably aren't up to the task of surviving the primary and beating the president. lather, rinse, repeat.

the real problem isn't the challengers per se, it's the party.  the party faithful demand that candidates be so wacky and far to far right, it ruins their electability in ultimate race. getting over the first hurdle probably assures that they won't be able to clear the second. the candidates inevitably try to make their pitch to one or the other (i.e. the GOP primary-goers or the general electorate) because they can't do both. this makes the reasonable talk of huntsman toxic in the primary, just as bachmann or perry will have a horrible time winning much of the country (or even their home states) in the general. mittens tries to address the problem by being everything to everyone, but he has simply pulled that shit too often for anyone to believe him. also he wears funny underwear but no will say that stuff out loud.

they just need a non-mormon chameleon who hasn't yet pulled that shit too often. then they'd be gold!

no more smiles

(via NYT the lede)

is this it?

this really is starting to look like the endgame.

the al-jazeera liveblog has a lot of unconfirmed info, so you can read it and feel really informed even though you probably won't know much more than anyone else.

huntsman

i keep reading that jon huntsman is "crazy" for refusing to deny climate change and for saying that he believes in evolution. they are calling it "crazy" because everyone knows that the GOP primary is dominated by crazy people who deny the prevailing scientific consensus. but if huntsman is challenging the crazy, doesn't that make him not-crazy?

sure, this means he probably can't win the GOP primary. on the other hand, have you seen the polls? huntsman didn't stand much of a chance before he started saying stuff like this. he really has nothing to lose and challenging the prevailing orthodoxy at least is likely to generate him some press--something the bottom-tier candidates are always desperate for. given how his candidacy hasn't taken off, his best, perhaps only, chance is to call the party base on its bullshit and hope the bulworth strategy can actually work. i don't think it will. but it would be really interesting if it did.

away on business

watch the skies!

i'm all for reducing greenhouse gasses, but this has got to be one of the stupidest reasons for doing it.

it is true that an alien civilization might notice out greenhouse emissions, decide we are a potential threat and destroy the earth. it's also true that they might be looking for allies and come to give us all kinds of cool science fiction-style technology instead. we have no idea what aliens who we have never met might do, so you can always make up a story about what is possible. it's ridiculous to make policy decisions based on some completely made-up idea about what aliens who might not even exist might do.

besides, isn't it more likely that aliens would notice all the radio and tv broadcasts we have been shooting out into space over the past 100 years than the content of our atmosphere? if this were a serious threat, maybe we should ban all broadcasts?

he does know treason!

rick perry seems to be getting shit from all corners about his bernake-treason comment. as for me, i'm just amused when a secessionist starts accusing other people of treason.

how low can they go?

more americans believe that the sun revolves around the earth (20%) than approve of congress right now (13%), and the arrow seems to be pointing down.

at this rate it won't be long before congressional approval reaches the percentage of americans who believe that elvis is still alive (7%).

hey, remember that libya place?

the libyan civil war has been overshadowed by domestic ridiculousness, but it really does look like qadhafi's position is slowly but steadily eroding. it's unfortunate that most of the articles i read in the american press don't include maps. without knowing libyan geography, it would not be clear that the rebels have captured a lot of the country, except the oil producing region in the central coast and tripoli, and that they are pretty close to surrounding the capital, cutting off qadhafi's remaining supply lines. it's also pretty confusing because there are basically two different rebellions (one based in benghazi dominated by libyan arabs, and the other dominated by berbers and centered in the mountains to the south of tripoli) though the two are allied with one another.

today's news brings the fact that libya's interior minister has defected and fled to cairo. he fled to egypt from eastern tunisia, which strikes me as a little odd that he had to go to egypt to defect when he was already in tunisia. aren't they both "liberated" these days?

here's another clue for you all

the really fascinating thing about the ames straw poll is the press' reaction to the results. it's not just that they take the poll more seriously than i think it is worth, it's the way that the media only selectively treats it as serious. here are the full results as released by the iowa republican party (the organization that runs the poll):

2011 Straw Poll Full Results (Votes, %)
1. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (4823, 28.55%)
2. Congressman Ron Paul (4671, 27.65%)
3. Governor Tim Pawlenty (2293, 13.57%)
4. Senator Rick Santorum (1657, 9.81%)
5. Herman Cain(1456, 8.62%)
6. Governor Rick Perry (718, 3.62%) write-in
7. Governor Mitt Romney (567, 3.36%)
8. Speaker Newt Gingrich (385, 2.28%)
9. Governor Jon Huntsman (69, 0.41%)
10. Congressman Thad McCotter (35, 0.21%)
Scattering (218, 1.3 %) Includes all those receiving votes at less than one-percent that were not on the ballot.

what political reporters have concluded from these results is that bachmann, perry and romney are now the frontrunners for the GOP nomination. which would be a pretty weird conclusion to reach if you just looked at the vote numbers from ames. of course, political reporters are not just looking at the vote numbers from ames. they are putting those results in the context of other assumptions they bring to the race. among them, the idea that ron paul can never be considered a front runner.

the numbers say that paul came about 150 votes from winning the straw poll, less than 1 percentage point behind bachmann. that's pretty amazing for a guy who is seemingly dismissed as a fringe candidate. gingrich, cain and huntsman get far more serious media attention than ron paul ever does. it's hard to imagine the "fringe candidates" on the democratic side, someone like dennis kucinich or mike gravel, pulling in those kind of numbers in some equivalent media-fixated contest without generating some buzz. and yet, as far as i can see, ron paul almost winning hasn't received much attention at all. paul's numbers are close enough to bachmann's that a few flukes (like an accident with some of bachmann's bussed-in supporters or a storm that depressed turnout) could have resulted in paul winning the thing. if that had happened, could they have ignored him?

UPDATE: see also roger simon.

the colbert effect

the ames straw poll is a ridiculous thing, little more than a fund raiser disguised pretending to be a poll, and an unscientific poll at that (okay, so it may be predictive of the iowa caucuses. but that's only because the iowa caucuses are also pretty ridiculous). the press is fixated on it and treats it like a big deal. but i think that says more about how bored campaign reporters get of covering retail politics. this is at least something new to write about.

aside from bachmann winning, the big news seems to be that rick perry got more votes as a write-in candidate than mitt romney. ^* what i want to know is how many votes rick parry (with an "a") got. were they counted as part of perry's 718? if they were, how many of those write-ins were really for "parry"? and if they weren't counted with "perry", what place did "rick parry" come in? does anyone know?

* just after i published this post, i heard that T-Paw dropped out. so i guess that is a third piece of big news coming out of ames. at least it would be if anyone still thought that tim still had a chance of getting the nomination.

i was half wrong

as steve benen says, the NYT broke the trend. its story about the eleventh circuit decision is on page A11, contrary to my prediction. but i was at least right about the WaPo. i wonder of the NYT editors noticed bloggers whining about this (particularly benen, he blogs for a real publication) and made a conscious decision to buck the trend.

i'm betting page one for both

i understand the 11th circuit struck down the individual mandate of the PPACA. the matter was going to the supreme court anyway, but my main question at this point is what page the WaPo and NYC put the story on in tomorrow's paper.

current score: 3-2 in favor of the ACA in the district courts, a 1-1 tie in the courts of appeals.

that's a relief!

for years, michele bachmann has been a source of amusement for me, as i was convinced that she is perhaps the stupidest craziest member of congress. then she ran for president and, while she is still just as crazy as always, she suddenly doesn't seem quite as stupid. which is a scary thing since we're talking about a presidential candidate in a terrible economy with a weak incumbent president.

then this morning i read about last night's debate and how bachmann went all ninja on poor tim pawlenty, a guy who doesn't seem to have much of a chance anymore in this race. she has apparently been targeting tim behind the scenes as well.

so now i'm back to thinking she's stupid.

cairo on the thames

that worked so well for hosni.

once more, with feeling

it's a turd, it's so lame...

it doesn't really matter that xavier bocerra "will likely be progressives' main ally on the Super Committee." this isn't a committee of quakers. the supers are going to work on a majority vote. the six republicans are going to vote in lock-step with whatever crazy plan grover norquist writes for them. the main question is whether all six democrats stand together and oppose the plan, forcing the GOPers to either come up with something better or face cuts to their beloved military industrial complex, or whether one of them will give in to the republicans and sell out the democratic constituency.

considering that harry reid already named max baucus to the committee, i think that battle is already lost.

it's all about momentum

the democrats successfully recalled two of the six republicans last night. not bad, but not good enough to gain control of the state senate. at this point the important thing will be how the post-election spin plays out. taking the senate would have been nice, it would have meant that the democrats could block any more crazy rightwing shit that governor walker tried to shove through. but the republicans saw this coming and have already rushed through most, if not all, of their agenda. on the very day of the recall vote, governor walker signed a redistricting bill that never would have passed if the democrats had any power to block legislation. walker's program is already the law of the land in wisconsin and would remain so even if the senate turned blue.

the main effect of last night's election will not be legislative, but rather who will win the spin war that comes out of it. a recall of two sitting senators is unprecedented. but because expectations were raised that the dems might be able to flip the senate, the right is trying to spin it as a major loss. maybe that spin will take hold with the general public or maybe not. which way the prevailing spin goes will affect the chances of knocking out governor walker when he is eligible for recall early next year. more than who has control of the senate, that is what really matters.

newsweek's insanity defense

michele bachman is on the cover of the august 15th issue of newsweek with the tag line: "The Queen of Rage." conservatives went nuts about the cover, claiming that the cover photo was designed to make michele look crazy by giving her "crazy eyes."

now newsweek is striking back. the magazine is releasing its other photos of bachmann, the ones it decided not to use for the cover, to show that bachmann always has that crazy eye look. no cherry picking or photo shopping was necessary. she's a natural crazy.

қазақ рэп

extra police

when i read this headline i can't help but wonder how many police officers they have in the UK. i mean, the riots are spreading to other cities, its not just london anymore. cameron can't call in cops from other towns without risking those towns fall into chaos. so where did he find another ten thousand police officers? that's a lot! is there some sort of police reserve he can tap, or are there thousands of them lounging around scotland yard waiting for an emergency?

apples aren't from england

how the UK riots would be reported if britain were in central asia.

it's not just for swarthy mediterraneans anymore!

now that people are rioting in the allegedly civilized part of the world, i predict that everyone will start explaining how these riots prove that their personal theory about economics, politics and everything is fucking right and how this finally discredits all those other theories once and for all.

including probably me. aren't i part of "everyone"?

recall day in WI

(via susie from last week)

hungry high up

i've often wondered if the rich people who live in the burj dubai khalifa think it's worth it. sure, they get to live in the tallest building in the world. the building is really beautiful and no doubt their views are spectacular. but can you imagine all the hassles that must come from living 0.6 km in the air? how many times have you stepped outside and realized you forgot something? when that happens to me, just the idea of running inside and up a single flight of stairs seems like a big deal.

and now, on top of everything else, they need to fast longer. okay, only by a few minutes. but those last few minutes must really feel like a big deal. i guess they can solve the problem by having iftar on the ground.

i sometimes try to avoid the blame game, but the fact is the game is popular because it's fun

memory lane

clearly they should never go away again

when mrs. noz and noz jr. left town, we lived in a AAA rated country. they come back today and it's a AA+ rated country.

just saying.

boneshaker

i read boneshaker. though i liked it well enough, it was a fairly typical alternate civil war history steampunk zombie novel.

truth be told, i've got a slight prejudice against steampunk because the name i favored for the genre (back in the day), "cyberclunk", never caught on. but i guess i shouldn't hold that against this book.

i'm waiting for this fox news headline

ramadan killing of tourist in norway
sources say jihadist polar group growls out claim of responsibility

smarter than he looks?

maybe the political drama of the past 8 months was just governor walkers' super-secret plan to stimulate the wisconsin economy?

more wishes!

the worst thing about the recent debt ceiling extension was the fact that it set the country up for another hostage situation later this year. under the extension deal our new super congress will present yet another deficit reduction plan to regular congress before the end of 2011, telling members of regular congress that unless they pass whatever unpopular bad idea they have come up with, the automatic trigger will pull and their political opponents will run advertisements saying they hate the troops.

in other words, its a set-up. just like it was a set up to not include a rise in the debt ceiling when congress negotiated the two year extension of the bush tax cuts at the end of 2010. republican negotiators keep finding a way to resolve the crisis of the day in a way that sets us up the next crisis. they're like the guy who rubs the magic lamp, makes two wishes for stuff he wants and then uses his last wish to wish for three more wishes.

"Israel raids Gaza, no victims: Palestinians"

sometimes the headlines are trying so hard to be so terse, they come across like a bad attempt to write an avant guard poem.

even after reading the article, i'm still not sure what the colon-palestinians bit at the end is supposed to mean.

jeopardy?

the third sentence in this is really the key. after proclaiming in the headline: "Media Matters Puts Tax-Exempt Status in Jeopardy", the reporter acknowledges that "[t]here is no indication the IRS is auditing or probing Media Matters for these alleged violations." so you have to read a few sentences under the headline proclaiming that MMA is in jeopardy to learn that it is not, in fact, in jeopardy.

thus begins fox business's new three part jihad against media matters for america. and i can't say i'm surprised. media matters for america is "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." fox news is a political propaganda posing as a news channel. it is exactly the kind of organization that MMA was created to monitor and correct. so of course they have gone after fox news. and of course fox news is going to run a bunch of misleading attacks on the organization. that's what fox news does. and that is media matter's point.

(via memeorandum)

tabloid

i saw tabloid, errol morris' latest, tonight. it tells the bizarre true story of joyce mckinney, a woman who followed her boyfriend, or maybe just followed a guy she was stalking, to england and then kidnapped him and raped him, or maybe just ran off with him for a tryst, and the british tabloid sensation that followed. the story touches upon such diverse topics as mormonism, male rape, obsession, the media and, out of nowhere, cloning. it's never made completely clear what actually happened. we are just presented with alternative stories told by clearly biased narrators. a week or two ago i heard an interview of morris about the film on npr's on the media. in the interview, morris joked that he wanted to call the film "rashomormon."

but it's not exactly rashomon. what drives the movie is not the question of what really happened, although there is some of that. it's just that whatever the truth may be, this is too crazy a story to not be compelling.

still, there were some problem. i wish it had dug deeper into the culture and phenomenon of the tabloid press. there also was an implicit critique of mormonism that seemed to rely on this video, the same video i wrote about and criticized relying upon here. none of those problems are big enough to stop me from recommending the film. but i tend to like morris' films, at least his more recent ones.

a thousand words

no one wants to own this one.

(via)

putin his place

how come our president doesn't try to bend a frying pan with his bare hands?

killing jobs and wasting money to save money

nice job folks! really nice! brilliant even!

and, as always, the past is prologue. i can't wait to see how they can top this one next time!

drinking liberally

hey remember when i used to do these DL posts every freaking week? it's a freaking week again this week, so i'll be there tonight:

jose pistolas (upstairs bar)
263 S. 15th street
philadelphia, pa 19102
6pm until later.

don't miss this rare chance to buy me a drink!

disclaimer: use of the above video is not intended to create a promise, express or implied, that shymkent beer will be available at DL tonight.

stealing the banana idea (but not the banana, because that would be wrong)

i'm going to have to do this the next time i'm in the grocery store.

(via cabingirl on FB)

shift?

i'm wondering if the debt ceiling debacle will represent a major turning point in barak obama's reelection chances. it feels like one. a week ago i was fairly confident that, despite everything, obama would probably cruise to reelection. if nothing else because of the assortment of clowns the republicans have come up with to challenge him.

the clowns remain, but now i don't know. the people i talk to are probably far from a scientific sample, but even the ones who weren't pissed off at the president before are pretty disgusted now. it seems like there's a new wind blowing. after selling out his base again and again, i feel like his base has kind of had enough. or at least the very small non-representative members of his base that i communicate with.

of course, even if i'm right about the breadth of current dissatisfaction, sometimes these political winds have as short an attention span as noz jr. next week this may feel like ancient history and we'll all be obsessing over some other stupid story. unless, of course, your livelihood is threatened by the tranche of cuts that go into effect right away. i really wish people would stop saying "one trillion dollars" and start giving specifics of where the cuts are. who isn't going to be able to eat because the GOP got to preserve their precious private plane tax deduction? i don't understand why political reporters shy away from presenting this information in clear personal terms instead of hiding behind abstractions and numbers.

for the rest of the week

previously on rubber hose...

when i disappeared into the lands of the decapitated (dedigitated?) watery fingers the other day, america was poised to eat a massive shit sandwich of draconian cuts all for the sake of protecting massive tax breaks for very rich people. now i'm back, and america is poised to eat a sightly bigger shit sandwich of draconian cuts for the cause of protecting massive tax breaks for very rich people.

is it too late to hope that this whole thing somehow falls apart, the titans of industry panic and call their congressmen, so we end up getting a clean bill whizzed through at the last minute? it probably is. it would just make congress and the president look even worse.