just answer the freaking question

from this morning's times:

Both Mr. Edwards and Mr. Kerry voted for the resolution authorizing Mr. Bush to go to war. In the interview, they declined to say whether they agreed with other pro-war Democratic senators who said on Friday that they would have voted against the resolution had they known then what was contained in the Senate Intelligence Committee report.

"I'm not going to go back and answer hypothetical questions about what I would have done had I known this," Mr. Edwards said.

Mr. Kerry said: "The vote is not today and that's it. I completely agree with John Edwards."

kerry and edwards' dodge here is disgraceful. first, if they want the public to elect them into office, its legitimate for the public to ask under what circumstances they would decide to go to war. this is one of (if not the) most important power of the presidency and probably the biggest reason that i cannot support bush is because of his decision to invade iraq. it's important for me to know whether kerry-edwards would be any better

second, this only confirms that kerry and edwards plan to largely ignore the left in their campaign. for whatever reason, the republicans always try to campaign to their base (pandering to the religious right, for example), the democrats always try to campaign to the center. it's pretty clear to me that the republican strategy is more effective in the long term. by rallying their base, they get more of them to the polls and, in the long term, because the debate in each election is about issues that interest the right, the political center in this country moves rightward. when democrats campaign only to the centrists, on the other hand, the liberal base reluctantly goes along, their turnout is lower or they are wooed away by the greens and/or nader. and in the long run because democrats are the one talking about centrist positions (e.g. nafta with toothless labor and environmental side agreements), those centrist positions get characterized as "liberal." this further facilitates a move of the political center to the right.

when i read the above passage, it makes me more sympathetic to what nader is trying to do. only when the democrats realize that they cannot take the left for granted will they abandon their current strategy. i'm still not going to vote for nader, mind you. but i see more value in his project when the dems act like this.

the truly stupid thing is that kerry and edwards blew a perfect opportunity to clarify their position on the war in iraq and to explain their votes to authorize the war last fall. sharing the front page with the article that quotes the democratic candidates was this article summarizing the conclusions of the senate panel on pre-war intelligence. the panel found that american intelligence: (1) discounted evidence that iraq had suspended its weapons programs and exaggerated the value of dubious evidence supporting the continuation of the programs, (2) concluded that ties to al qaeda were "tenuous", and (3) since 1999 the iraqi military was so weakened and demoralized, it was unlikely to be much of a threat to its neighbors. in other words, this report gives kerry and edwards plenty of ammunition to say that, given what we know now, they would not have supported the war. virtually every reason cited by the bush administration to justify the war has been cast into doubt by the report.

why is this too much to hope for from the democratic candidates?

bush implicitly confirms pre-war weapons inspections were a sham

as i read this article in the new york times this morning, something occurred to me. the story reported that despite the senate intelligence committee's report on the failure of u.s. intelligence to report accurately on iraq's weapon's programs (or lack thereof), bush stands by his decision to invade iraq.

But Mr. Bush defended his decision to invade Iraq, referring to his repeated suggestions that Saddam Hussein possessed banned weapons that posed a threat to the United States and other nations. "Listen, we thought there was going to be stockpiles of weapons," he said at an appearance in Kutztown, Pa. "I thought so. The Congress thought so. The U.N. thought so. I'll tell you what we do know. Saddam Hussein had the capacity to make weapons."

Later, in York, Pa., Mr. Bush said, "Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons, I believe we were right to go into Iraq. America is safer today because we did. We removed a declared enemy of America, who had the capability of producing weapons of mass destruction, and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take."

bush's statement is nothing really new. he's being saying stuff like that over the past few months as the promised stockpiles of weapons have not turned up.

but this is what occurred to me: remember back before the u.s. invaded iraq, when the u.n. inspectors went in to find the stockpiles of weapons? at the time the anti-war types were saying that bush was just using u.n. inspections as an excuse to invade iraq--that he was planning to invade regardless of what the inspectors found there.

bush's recent statements standing by the decision to go to war despite the lack of any weapons stockpiles shows that the critics were right. bush confirmed their long-held suspicions. stockpiles of weapons did not matter, only the capacity to build those weapons (i.e. the underlying scientific knowledge necessary to build them--for no one has found the raw materials, like weapon-grade uranium, either). so why exactly did bush send the inspectors in back in early 2002? the weapons inspectors were not looking for scientific knowledge. and besides, scientific knowledge is such a low bar. i wouldn't be surprised if most countries have that the necessary knowledge to produce nuclear, biological or chemical weapons (the theoretical basis for nuclear weapons has been around for about 70 years. for chemical weapons its been over a century. such knowledge is not exactly cutting edge)

the funny thing is, arguing that bush was just "going through the motions" with the weapons inspection process was once considered to be practically treasonous. but now that bush has rewritten history about why we invaded, how many people will notice the change?

nader-dean

i just listened to the nader-dean debate on n.p.r.

as i think i've written before, i am not anti-nader like a lot of my friends on the left. i am not against him being on the ballot (i have a hard time advocating narrowing people's political choices in an election) and i don't hold any grudges against his supporters, either in 2000 or this year. if the democratic candidate want the votes of the nader supporters, its his job to win them over. to the extent gore failed to get more of the nader vote in 2000, that's gore's fault, not nader's. (and not the nader voter either).

now personally, i would not vote for nader under any circumstances this year. but that's my choice. this year i've decided to vote more strategically than ideologically. i probably agree with nader more than kerry, but kerry has my vote because he has a chance of winning. nader does not. there is a time and a place for voting on pure ideology and this year is not it. at least in my opinion

others may disagree. though i may argue with the practical ramifications of their choice, at some level i realize that they have a point. it's always honorable to vote your conscience, even if practically speaking, it probably won't amount to much.

at least that's what i would have argued this morning, before i heard nader and dean debate. nader's stock has fallen a bit with me today. i'm no longer sure that he would be the ideological choice for me.

the interesting thing is that nader seemed to be arguing that his his campaign was not about ideology either. at least not in the short term. nader all but admitted that he is not planning to win this presidential election. instead, he explained that he was running more to support his long-term goals of fostering a third party movement in this country. in other words, nader's pitch, when you get down to it, was also more strategic than ideological. while ideology is important to nader in the long run, in this particular election nader presented as a mere step in a larger goal. "every oak tree begins with only an acorn" he said at one point.

but if nader's campaign is based on the claim that this election is a step in a larger strategy, then it's only fair to evaluate how his run for the presidency furthers that long-term goal of building a leftist third-party movement. i think by running this year, nader is hindering, not furthering his goal. from where i'm sitting, it seems that by running nader is doing little more than pissing off the very people who would be inclined to support that long term goal. i.e. people like me. nader talks about building a grass-root third party movement, but you can't build a grass roots movement when the grass does not support you anymore. by running nader is eroding his support among liberals and thus it is not building support for a third-party movement. his strategy is simply flawed. i came away from the debate more convinced than ever that nader does not deserve my vote.

it also didn't hurt that dean totally kicked ass. he is a far more articulate advocate for kerry than kerry is.

tracking

this week i've been spending a lot of my time tracking things i ordered last weekend. this is why i do not order stuff over the internet very often. many people use the internet to shop to save time. it doesn't work that way for me. the order may not take long, but as soon as i get the confirmation email with the tracking number, i can't help but repeatedly check to see where my package is.

this week was especially exciting because i ordered three things last weekend. i don't know if i've ever had three packages to track at one time. it's so exciting! well, not that exciting. when you track roughly every hour, most of the time you don't see any movement. as the adage says: "a tracked package doesn't move" or something like that. nothing is more disappointing than to see that my package is still in palatine, illinois, just as it was 45 minutes ago when i last looked.

well, i guess some things are more disappointing.

anyway, last weekend i ordered a laptop, a wireless router and a backpack (that was supposed to come with the laptop, but instead shipped separately). the laptop didn't ship until wednesday. or at least that's when my tracking first picked it up. its first scan was actually in the waning hours of tuesday. when i first tracked it wednesday morning, i puzzeled over the location "C.K.S. Airp" it said. for the state it listed "TW." then it came to me: chang kai shek airport in taipei, taiwan. this was not good news. i assumed it was shipping from california or something. especially troubling was the fact that i had opted for "ground" shipping. how exactly was it supposed to get to me from taiwan by ground? damn my cheapness!!! the last log entry remained "C.K.S. Airp" all day wednesday. i imagined the truck circling the island, looking in vain for a bridge to pennsylvania. when i bought a whole new laptop, why didn't i throw in the extra $18 to have it shipped by air?

but the next morning i got a pleasant surprise. between the time i left work wednesday and when i checked in thursday morning my package went from taiwan to ankorage to indianapolis to philadelphia. it was waiting for me when i got back from arabic last night. now i'm glad i didn't pay the 18 bucks.

so now i have a new toy, but it's not complete until i get the router. the router shipped before the laptop, but it seemed to sit in illinois forever. as the router hung out with the corn the laptop raced passed it and managed to reach me before the router left the state. today, at least, it finally reached philadelphia. but not until the afternoon, so i don't think it will reach me until monday. i guess that's the shipping i should have splurged on. so much for my dreams of setting up the wireless network this weekend...

edwards' experience

for the past 30 or so hours, starting almost immediately after i learned that edwards was going to be kerry's veep, the right has been parroting the white house's standard criticisms of edwards. one of the main ones is that edwards does not have the experience to be VP.

when i first encountered the argument (i believe it was over at chez echidne), i was surprised that the bush administration would make such a charge. after all, W spent even less time as governor prior to becoming president than edwards has in the senate. given the circumstances, i thought the administration would let that one quietly drop.

that will teach me to assume this administration is capable of recognizing the weaknesses of its own argument. sure enough, president bush himself said today that he does not think edwards has enough experience to be VP.

bush, like all modern presidents, has a series of handlers and political advisors that help him to prepare virtually every public remark he utters each day. so bush himself probably did not write the statement about edwards' inexperience. someone else probably did, bush just delivered it. but as bush rehearsed his line in front of the bathroom mirror this morning, one can only wonder if his criticism sounded a bit familiar. maybe it reminded him of e.j. dionne has pointed out a statement orrin hatch made during the 2000 republican primary debates:

"You've been a great governor," Hatch declared of his rival for the Republican presidential nomination. "My only problem with you, governor, is that you've only had four and going into your fifth year of governorship. . . . Frankly, I really believe that you need more experience before you become president of the United States. That's why I'm thinking of you as a vice presidential candidate."

now that was hatch, this is bush. bush himself never endorsed the idea that inexperienced politicians belong in the vice presidency. but it will be interesting to watch to see if hatch himself ever picks up the edwards is inexperienced line.

meanwhile rude pundit has a good historical run-down of the experience (or lack thereof) of past presidents and vice-presidents.

it strikes me that a single term in the senate is all you need to be vice president. under the constitution, vice presidents have only two things to do: (1) preside over the senate, and (2) wait for the death or incapacity of the president. his single term in the senate will certainly be enough to help him with #1, and anyone can do #2.

in addition to the constitutionally mandated roles the vice president has two other job duties: (3) doing whatever jobs the president assigns to him, and (4) campaigning for the president and otherwise selling the administration's policies to the public. regarding #3, kerry will probably find stuff for edwards to do that are within edwards' abilities. that's how its been done in the past, after all. clinton put gore in charge of the reinventing government program, a role he apparently fulfilled fairly well as government generally shrank during the clinton administration. bush put cheney in charge of the entire country. he hasn't done a good job at that, but it probably was better than the alternative of letting bush make decisions by himself. the point is, history is fairly clear: what presidents choose to assign their vice presidents seems to have more to do with what the vice president (and president) is capable of doing than anything else. there is nothing about edwards' experience in the senate that would suggest kerry couldn't find something to keep him busy.

as for #4, campaigning seems to be edwards real gift. not even edwards' critics say he can't be an effective campaigner.

on balance, therefore, it seems pretty clear that edwards' limited experience should not disqualify him from the job of vice president. and to the extend it raises questions about his ability to serve as president... well, that's a question bush himself should be answering first.

(some of the above links via holden at eschaton)

happening two

hydro doesn't approve of my lame-o post about the weekend. his point in the comments is that a lot happened over the weekend that i didn't mention. that's true. but that's always true. sometimes its hard to blog when nothing happened. but it's even harder to blog when a lot happened and you simply don't feel like telling a long and rather pointless tale. but, just so no one can ever say that we are rubber hose are not thinking of our dear readers, here is a brief incoherent summary of my weekend activities (blame hydro if you don't like it):

there was: drama, pathos, lost keys (NMP), stranded dogs, a complicated move, 2 films, air conditioning, lack of air conditioning, meals with neighbors, friends, a few sisters and a rabbi. there was also baseball, lots of fireworks (in 2 different states), little arabic studying, too many donuts, illicit alcohol, dancing celery, stubborn fires, dying tomatoes, canceled innertubes, and non-canceled innertubes. more lightning than we wanted, but in the end, less than we expected. and last weekend i realized for the very first time that betty boop's real name is elizabeth.

all-in-all a good weekend. i just didn't think about politics much. which was all i was trying to say below.

musings about edwards

i don't have all that much of an opinion of edwards other than he seems to have a real talent to public speaking and talks a more populist talk than most politicians do these days. for a brief period in the primaries i was secretly rooting for him to win the democratic nomination, just to see him run circles around bush in the presidential debates. but other than his speaking ability i never really got that good of a sense of him.

as for what substantive policy priorities he will bring to a kerry administration? who cares. chances are he will be in favor of whatever kerry proposes for the next 4-8 years. vice presidents always have to toe the line for the president. bush senior was pro-choice when he challenged reagan in the republican primaries and coined the phrase "voodoo economics" for reagan's economic plan. he did a 180 on both issues from the moment he accepted his nomination for vice president. if there were any policy differences between kerry and edwards before today, they are probably irrelevant now.

all that vice presidents have to offer is adding to the nominees electibility. cheney was intended to reassure us that the boy-king will be under adult supervision, thus diminishing the public's unease with bush's lack of experience and apparent inability to handle the job. when gore was chosen it was partly to deflect from the draft-dodging charges that had already surfaced about clinton (it may be hard to believe now, but in the early 1990s, senator gore was considered to be a hawk).

what edwards brings to kerry is personality and the south. personality, i can believe. i don't think he's really bringing the south. (i think the south is the most pandered-to region in the entire country. and worse, ineffectively pandered to, because the south doesn't seem to notice the pander) common wisdom holds that it is impossible for a presidential ticket to win without at least one member at least pretending to be from the former confederacy. thus bush senior buried his connecticut roots and pretended to be from texas (claiming a vacant lot he owned in austin to be his home address). texas is a good one to fake too--since it's both south and west. perhaps that's why gephardt stayed on kerry's short list for so long--missouri is both south and mid-west.

but kerry's pick is from the carolinas. both carolinas, it turns out (born in south, now from north), but still strictly an east coast ticket. will this presidential election turn into east vs. west instead of north vs. south?

in any case, i am suspicious of the value of geographical diversity on a presidential ticket. how many people really change their vote based on where someone is from? i can't imagine voting for george bush, even if he were from pennsylvania. or chicago, my favorite place i have ever lived. if W talked like mayor daley, i still wouldn't vote for him. having a familiar zip code is simply no excuse for the war in iraq. i find it hard to believe where a candidate lives would matter enough to anyone to overcome any other reason to love or hate the candidate.

which brings me back to personality. unlike geography, i can believe that actually matters to get election. edwards has it, kerry seems to need it. so edwards is a good thing for the ticket.

happening

i had a fun, yet busy, weekend. not really much blogging though. or following politics much, for that matter. when i step away from politics for a few days i am always amazed when i peek back into the political sites how little i missed. when i'm reading them, it feels like things happen all the time. i suppose they do, but when you leave the swirl of constant posting and updates, you realize that all these baby steps don't always add up to much

i guess this is nothing new, i had a similar revelation last year when i was traveling.

buy! buy! buy!

mrs. noz and i bought several expensive toys today, and it's not even 1:30 yet. i ordered an ibook this morning. this marks my turn back to the mac universe. i used to be a hardcore mac person, but then the games lured me away to p.c. i really like my current desktop, which runs on xp, but i miss the mac operating system. so now i've found the perfect compromise: i will keep this windows-based desktop, but get a mac laptop (and set up a wireless network in our apt, of course). i have been looking for new ways to waste time on the internet. perhaps this is the solution.

meanwhile, we also got a bunch of pieces of furniture. we were going to get three pieces, but while we were in the store one woman literal bought this chair we wanted right out from underneath me. i was sitting on the chair, telling mrs. noz that we should get it when i woman showed up saying "get out of my chair!" the salesman in tow explained that she just bought it and that they didn't have any more in stock. he also added that the manufacturer has stopped making this particular chair and will never ever make anything like it again as the designer has fled to bolivia to avoid the feds. okay, he didn't say that last bit, but it was still bubble bursting to see this random lady cart off what by all rights was our chair

but despite these setbacks, we still managed to dump a wad of money this morning. it's rather frightening how quick and easy it is charge everything. usually we're much more careful and conservative with money. i just hope my wireless network is up and running before the bill comes.

mood swings

i have only been in a blogging mood lately when i happen to be nowhere near a computer.

today i am a little groggy. once a year i stop having caffeine to prove that i'm not addicted. in fact it proves the opposite and today is a perfect example. the coffee was decaf this morning. and so now i have this mild headache and i've been groggy all morning. today is the first day of this year's decafination and the first day is always the worst. by tomorrow i should feel pretty normal again, provided i don't backslide. the next hurdle is next week when i cut out literally everything with even a little caffeine. even chocolate.

why do i do this to myself? i just started writing a long explanation, but then i realized i've done this before. now that i've been posting for more than a year it was pretty much inevitable that i would start repeating myself

word games

the story that buried the supreme court decisions today was the surprise 2 day premature "transfer of sovereignty" in iraq. the transfer was supposed to mean an "end of the occupation" by american forces. but i think they're just playing games.

"occupation" means "control of a nation or territory by foreign armed forces"

so what will post-occupation iraq look like? well, iraq's new prime minister iyad allawi has proposed martial law. president bush just endorsed the idea too.

"martial law" means "Temporary rule by military authorities." but what military is there in iraq today? iraqi forces are still being trained. right now, there is no military to rule if martial law is declared.

except the american military, that is. if a military is called on to enforce martial law in iraq, it will almost certainly be the u.s. military. but if the u.s. military enforces martial law, iraq will still be controlled by foreign armed forces.

in other words, if martial law is declared, iraq is still occupied. indeed, the second definition listed for "martial law" is: " The law imposed on an occupied territory by occupying military forces."

just something to think about

3 court decisions

so i finished reading rumsfeld v. padilla, hamdi v. rumsfeld and rasul v. bush.

by far the most interesting of the three was the hamdi decision. hamdi was a u.s. citizen who was captured in afghanistan on the battlefield or caught up in the turmoil in that country while working for a charitable organization (depending on which side you believe). he was taken captive by the northern alliance, then handed over to the americans, who eventually transferred him to guantanamo. then they discovered he was an american citizen, so they transferred him again to a navy brig in virginia where he is today. so far, he has been held for more than two years incommunicado. initially, at least, he was not even allowed to communicate with his attorney.

the news reports i've seen about hamdi call it a 6-3 decision against the bush administration. it's really not. eight of the justices rejected the administrations arguments. all eight clearly hamdi has the right to an attorney, and cannot be held indefinitely without any right to a hearing. this is an 8-1 defeat for the administration, a landslide in supreme court terms. only thomas agreed with the bush administration, proving once again that he is the worst justice currently on the court.

what's also interesting about the case is where the eight who did not buy the administration's position all stand. the four member plurality (o'conner, rehnquist, kennedy, and breyer) held that while congress gave the president the power to detain hamdi when it passed its authorization for the use of force resolution in september 2001, it nevertheless must give him a chance to prove that he should not be held once he is removed from the area of conflict. note: this stands the normal presumption of innocence on it's head. hamdi, essentially has to prove he is innocent. nevertheless, considering the radical (and dangerous) proposal put forward by the bush administration, the court's assertion that hamdi has the right to a hearing soundly rejects what rumsfeld's pentagon has been pursuing up until now.

souter wrote a concurring opinion which ginsberg joined. as has been reported, souter and ginsberg believe that hamdi should be released immediately because the government has not presented any grounds which justify continuing to hold him. what i have not seen reported in the news accounts of this case is that the dissent written by scalia and joined by stevens also seems to call for hamdi's immediate release. on page 72 of the pdf version of the opinion (which is page 21 of scalia's dissent), scalia writes:

It follows from what I have said that Hamdi is entitled to a habeas decree requiring his release unless: (1) criminal proceedings are promptly brought, or (2) Congress has suspended the writ of habeas corpus.

scalia then looks at the authorization of force resolution and concludes that it did not constitute a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. while he never says it outright, it follows that under the scalia/stevens opinion, hamdi should be released unless he is charged with a crime. which is, in essence, the same ultimate result souter and ginsberg reach. don't be fooled by the fact that one is called a "concurring opinion" and the other a "dissenting opinion." 4 of the 9 justices thought the government has no grounds for holding hamdi at all.

the other two cases are more straightforward. the padilla case was essentially thrown out on a technicality. the court ruled that the lawsuit should not have named donald rumsfeld as the respondent to his habeas petition, but rather melanie marr, the commanding officer in the south carolina navy brig where padilla is currently being held. marr, the court ruled, and not rumsfeld, is padilla's "immediate custodian." because marr has no contacts with the southern district of new york, where padilla's lawsuit was filed, the southern district has no jurisdiction over her. in other words, padilla must refile his case in south carolina naming marr as respondent.

although the court avoided all the meatier issues in the padilla case, the hamdi decision settled some of them. when padilla refiles his case hamdi guarantees that he will have access to an attorney and he is at least entitled to a hearing if the government wants to continue to detain him. furthermore, padilla could argue that the authorization of force resolution that was used to justify the special limited hearing in the hamdi case does not apply to him. the hamdi plurality decision was premised on the notion that hamdi was detained pursuant to the authorization for the use of force which authorized the president to use force abroad. padilla, unlike hamdi, was detained in the united states. thus padilla can still pursue a habeas petition and demand full protections afforded to a criminal defendant. whether he gets it is still not decided. he may end up with a hamdi-style hearing. though that is short of what a criminal defendant would get, it is already better than what the government argued padilla was entitled to prior to today's ruling.

the rasul case concerned a much simpler question: whether the non-u.s. citizens held in guantanamo bay are entitled to access to u.s. courts. the court held that because the u.s. had complete jurisdiction over guantanamo bay under its lease with cuba, the people being held there are entitled to petition u.s. courts for their release. the court divided 6-3 on the issue, with stevens, o'conner, souter, ginsberg and breyer in on the majority opinion and kennedy concurring separately. scalia wrote a dissent arguing that guantanamo is outside the purview of the courts because it is not on u.s. soil. his dissent was joined by rehnquist and thomas.

these three cases are important, not because they blazed new trails concerning the rights of the detained in american jurisprudence. indeed, the hamdi plurality with its guilty-until-proven-innocent hearings is actually a retreat from the rights we traditionally expect here. but the court has finally put the brakes on the outrageous and unprecedented abrogation of well-established rights the bush administration has been pursuing since 9-11. technically speaking, we have actually gone backwards a little bit today in terms of human rights and due process. but considering how bad it could have been, it still feels like a victory.

crappy yahoo headline

i just got back from my lunch break in which i was reading the three supreme court decisions that were handed down today concerning detainees in the "war on terror." they're quite long if you read all of the various concurrences and dissents--at least too long for me to get through all three during lunch. but i'm mostly there and will blog about them tonight.

but what gets me blogging now is when i noticed this crappy yahoo headline: "Supreme Court Deals Blow to War on Terror". the article itself is not much better. in the second paragraph it describes the decisions as "surprising moves" by the court even though it was well-known that the government's lawyers expected to lose the cases. that's because the bush administration's detention policies are completely unprecedented in the history of this country or in the text of the constitution. unfortunately for the bush administration, the court usually bases its decisions on precisely those two things.

UPDATE: i just noticed yahoo changed the headline. it now reads "Supreme Court Deals Blows to Bush's War on Terror" and changed the second paragraph "surprising moves" to "historic moves." in both instances an improvement, in my mind. maybe other people complained. or maybe, just maybe they couldn't resist the massive grassroots power of this blog. i report, you decide

2 random facts

one: this is the funniest thing i read all day

two: when i woke up this morning one of the first things mrs. noz said (with a twinkle in her eye) was "i can't wait to put electrodes on your head."

friendster

go watch this. then drive me to the airport or send me money

(via feministe)

more evidence this is going to be a nasty campaign

via and then, the official bush-cheney campaign site has an advertisement conflating images of al gore, howard dean, michael moore, richard gephardt, and john kerry with images of adolph hitler. the video claims that the hitler images are from a video "sponsored by" groups that support john kerry. after each hitler image, the video reads "sponsored by moveon.org" or "images from moveon.org ad"

the problem is the images were never "sponsored by" moveon.org. instead they come from two videos where were submitted to moveon.org's bush in 30 seconds contest which ran last year. the contest invited submissions of anti-bush political commercials to the organization and submissions were open to the general public. moveon.org members were then allowed to rate their favorites among the various entries. the entries with the highest ratings would become the finalists to be rated by a panel of judges. the judges then would pick the winner from among those finalists. (complete rules are posted here)

the above is all really old news--the contest ended some 6 months ago and made the news several times, most notably when cbs refused to run the winning ad during the superbowl.

in any case, during the contest over 1500 commercials were submitted to moveon.org, among them two with hitler imagery (the memory hole archived the ads here). after controversy erupted over the hitler ads, moveon.org took them off its site. neither of the hitler videos were among the 6 winning videos in the contest, nor were they among the 26 finalists voted by moveon.org members, nor was either video among the top 150 chosen by moveon.org. instead, they were simply among some 1350 losing entries submitted in a contest which was open to the general public.

for the bush site to allege that the hitler images were from an ad was "sponsored by" moveon.org or they came from a "moveon.org" ad is a rather shoddy lie. in fact, by using the hitler imagery, the bush-cheney campaign is doing exactly what moveon.org's critics accused it of doing 6 months ago. unlike moveon.org, however, the bush-cheney site is clearly sponsoring its own version of the hitler video.

to say "the other side is doing it too" is no defense. besides, the other side isn't and didn't.

blogrollin again

i just added xx to my blogroll. it's a group blog focusing on women's issues. trish wilson is one of the contributors. and that alone is good enough to get a link from me.

michael and me (aka a rambling review of F/911)

so i saw fahrenheit 9/11 last night. i had to buy my tickets a few days ago. at least at the theaters in philly, the opening day i believe was completely sold out.

and it was a good film too. i used to be a much bigger michael moore fan than i am now. i remember loving roger and me when it came out in the 80s (though i don't think i've seen it again since then), and i was a big fan of tv nation when it was on the air. but when tv nation was resurrected as the awful truth, for some reason i never got around to seeing more than a handful of episodes. that's not to say that i soured on him by that point, i was just less of a t.v. watching person by that time and it was hard to get back into the habit of remembering to watch a show. i was probably one of the few people to see the big one in the theater. i was not even that lucky with canadian bacon. it came and went so soon that i had to rent it later. "canadian" was a real test of loyalty too, it really sucked. on one occasion i defended the film in an argument, purely out of moore fanboyhood. later, i came to terms with the film's suckiness by concluding that moore couldn't do non-documentaries.

so when bowling for columbine came out, i was quite excited and went to a sneak preview weeks before it was officially released. i had assumed, like moore's previous films, it would make a splash among the film-going subculture that followed such things and then disappear with only minor ripples in the wider political world. instead, "bowling" turned into this weird political-cultural phenomenon, becoming the top-grossing documentary of all time (which admittedly is not all that much money) and making moore a political figure who because instantly recognizable to the general public. this caused a kind of conservative backlash that his other films (even "roger and me") never experienced--largely because many conservatives did not previously think he was all that important, if they were aware of his existence at all.

after bowling, which i liked when i saw it, i followed some of the back and forth criticism about some of the facts in the film. it was actually pretty interesting to watch, many of the criticisms were pretty flimsy. a lot of what i read seemed to be based on the underlying assumption of the critic that the film criticized legalized ownership of firearms in the county, when moore pretty clearly is not saying that. so the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument were pretty misguided and i wondered if all of the people making that argument had actually seen the film.

but other criticisms, those that focused on the factual inaccuracies of the film, had merit. moore responded to many of those criticisms on his site, but there were a few that he never responded to and, from what i can tell, that's because moore did get his facts wrong. the infuriating thing about it, is how unnecessary these discrepancies are. moore could have made the same film without, for example, altering the wording of the air force academy plaque he showed in the film. the change was completely superfluous--it would have been just as good of a film without the change. and none of the unrebutted inaccuracies (at least the ones that i have found) with "bowling" are any more necessary to the ultimate point of the film. but they only give unnecessary ammunition to his critics. and in the end, moore's point (a valid one in my opinion) gets lost in a long list of questionable (if tangential) facts.

so when F/911 was first announced, i had a much more mixed view of moore than i used to have in my pre-columbine fanboy days. i guess my view of moore these days are best summed up by this article by roger ebert. but i still wanted to see the film, and i was heartened by the fact that moore may have learned from his "columbine" mistakes. he claims to have carefully fact checked fahrenheit and will respond to any charges of factual inaccuracies on his site. it will be interesting to see how the facts hold up under scrutiny. (the reviews i have seen so far, don't seem to get him on anything other than having an opinion the reviewer doesn't agree with. some critics don't seem to be able to distinguish between fact and opinion, which is more an indictment of the reviewer than anything else. see e.g. these three posts)

as for my opinion of the film, i liked it, but the second half was a lot more powerful than the first. there were bits of the first part that seemed a little muddled. i think atrios was right, moore originally set out to write a film documenting the ties between bush, the bin laden family, and the saudi royal family. and that's what roughly the first half of the film is about. the problem is, those ties are complex and would probably take an entire documentary to sort out (or better yet, a book). while moore was working on F/911, however, the u.s. invaded iraq and that became a much more compelling subject for moore's camera. he simply couldn't resist it. and so the bush-saudi-bin laden bit is compressed into half a film and the compression creates the muddle. rather than drawing clear lines between the different actors, the saudi royals and the bin laden family become a conflated series of images of sinister looking middle eastern men in arab head dresses. in the end, one is left with a general sense of close cooperation without filling in many of the details of how the relations worked. and the details are really where all the important points lay.

so part of me wonders what the film would be like if moore stuck with his original concept and fully fleshed out the tangled bush-saudi-bin laden web. but i'm glad he got distracted by iraq because the second half is really the most compelling part of the film. moore himself mostly disappears in this part of the film, the images alone and the testimony of people who have lost loved ones to the iraqi invasion are compelling enough without moore's hand-holding. the second half alone makes the film.

the bush administration has tried hard and largely succeeded in keeping the dead and wounded in the iraq war, both american and iraqi, from the american public's eye. it's easy to convince people that the cost and benefits justify a war when the most serious cost is hidden from the debate. the images are not always easy to watch (and not because they're gruesome--i'm referring just as much to images of grieving relatives of the dead) but it's pretty shameful low few of these images we have seen so far. if nothing else, moore's film does us a service just for bringing them to our attention and reminding us of the other side of this equation.

f---ing cheney

i am not dead. i just got busy. i've been running around southern jersey at various labor arbitration hearings. when that happens my blogging inevitably falls by the wayside a little. i like hearings. yelling "objection" makes me feel like a real lawyer. on the other hand, doing one after the other starts to wear on me after a while. and then there's the matter of keeping the facts straight from one case to the next and remembering which cast of characters goes with which set of facts.

i generally hate driving to hearings, but one bonus is all the n.p.r. i get to listen to. at least sometimes i like it. this clinton mania is getting a little tiresome. today, at least, i got a break from that to hear about how cheney said "fuck" on the senate floor (whether he said "fuck off" or "go fuck yourself" to patrick leahy is still not entirely clear. i'm sure some future history grad student will get a dissertation out of that issue).

the n.p.r. story i heard today mostly focused on two aspects of the fuck-cheney story: first, they explored how the print-media referred to "the f-word." the washington post actually printed the word that cheney used, breaking new grounds in american journalism. other papers however, went with f--- and a few used f*** or "the f-word". not all that creative, when you think about it. there are plenty of other ways to refer to the word without hitting the "f" through "k" key in a forbidden sequence. but once again, no one asked me.

the other topic in the n.p.r. story was whether the news story would hurt or help cheney politically. first, they wondered whether it would alienated conservative voters, who might be offended by that particular word. personally i doubt that it will. among that brand of conservatives telling a democratic senator to "fuck off" and/or "go fuck yourself" will probably score you points. (who knows? maybe in future republican primaries, candidates will argue over who hasn't sufficiently cussed out senator kennedy)

someone on the n.p.r. story mentioned that cheney's utterance came just hours after the senate (with cheney presiding) voted to increase dramatically the fines for broadcasters guilty of "obscene, indecent or profane language.", which is pretty funny. or it would be if irony weren't dead in the post-911 world.

someone else on the radio argued that the matter might actually improve cheney's image. after all the questions about his shadowing business deals, his secret undisclosed locations, his possible behind-the-scenes control of the presidency and his secret energy task force, many people are beginning to see cheney as a kind of evil robot. having an outburst with profanity, the argument went, at least demonstrates that the guy has feelings. evil nasty vengeful feelings, but feelings nonetheless. "it will humanize him," they guy on the radio added.

what the n.p.r. story did not do, is investigate whether the statement was justified. i suppose that really isn't much of an issue. it may very well be the best comeback you have when someone accuses you of war profiteering.

waiting for the ice cream to congeal

i'm making ice cream now. it's about mid-way through the freeze stage as i write this. i'm trying plum ice cream with dark chocolate chips for the first time tonight. i came up with the flavor because the plums in the market looked particularly good this week. anything that looks good in the market i want to turn into ice cream. with chocolate. chocolate is always good.

but that's not why i got on this to write. it's this: over the last few days, i've noticed i've been getting lots of spam in russian. is this happening to anyone else? i'm wondering if writing about the former soviet union here has gotten me on some list. or maybe its a calling card i bought online at a russian expat site. either way, spam is twice as annoying when i can't even tell whether its for a fake diploma or fake viagra

brooks-religion follow-up

my neighbor emailed me a link to this article about brooks' op-ed piece.

also, tripp left a comment with a link to some polling data about the effects of the evangelical vote in the presidential race.

brooks on religion

it's been a little while since i ranted about brooks, but i guess today's piece touched a nerve:

More than any other leading Democrat, Bill Clinton understands the role religion actually plays in modern politics. He knows Americans want to be able to see their leaders' faith. A recent Pew survey showed that for every American who thinks politicians should talk less about religion, there are two Americans who believe politicians should talk more.

And Clinton seems to understand, as many Democrats do not, that a politician's faith isn't just about litmus test issues like abortion or gay marriage. Many people just want to know that their leader, like them, is in the fellowship of believers. Their president doesn't have to be a saint, but he does have to be a pilgrim. He does have to be engaged, as they are, in a personal voyage toward God.

Clinton made this sort of faith-based connection, at least until he sullied himself with the Lewinsky affair. He won the evangelical vote in 1992, and won it again in 1996. He understood that if Democrats are not seen as religious, they will be seen as secular Ivy League liberals, and they will lose.

John Kerry doesn't seem to get this. Many of the people running the Democratic Party don't get it either.

A recent Time magazine survey revealed that only 7 percent of Americans feel that Kerry is a man of strong religious faith. That's a catastrophic number. That number should be the first thing Kerry strategists think about when they wake up in the morning and it should be the last thing on their lips when they go to sleep at night. They should be doing everything they can to change that perception, because unless more people get a sense of Kerry's faith, they will feel no bond with him and they will be loath to trust him with their vote.

Yet his campaign does nothing. Kerry talks about jobs one week and the minimum wage the next, going about his wonky way, each day as secular as the last.

when reading this i really wonder if brooks is the one who doesn't get it. is faith anything other than a marketing tool for him?

this is a very religious country. as an atheist, i am made aware of that fact virtually every day, especially when i see politicians of virtually all stripes endlessly pander to religion. but i don't think i am the only one who is annoyed by such pandering. i expect that many religious people see politicians who overtly wear their faith on their sleeve as disingenuous.

brooks' column rests on the assumption that public expressions of faith is the only path to the white house. but the facts seem to say otherwise. while only 7 percent of americans may "feel that Kerry is a man of strong religious faith," kerry has either been ahead or in a statistical tie with the president in recent polls, a fact brooks mentions in passing at the end of the column. so how is the 7 percent a "catastrophe" for kerry? if anything, it suggests exactly the opposite point than the one brooks is trying to make; that contrary to popular punditry, constant mention of god is not a sure fire path to the white house.

i'm not saying that brooks is totally wrong. there is certainly a segment of the population who will not vote for anyone who doesn't have a close personal relationship with god and who likes to talk about that relationship at every possible opportunity. but i, for one, would prefer that kerry continue to focus on issues like jobs and the minimum wage and i suspect many religious people would too. we're not voting for pope here and bush probably already has the lock on a most of the people who would use the number of jesus-mentions in a speech as a litmus test for election.

upyernoz's monday question

why didn't david have any questions on friday?

helium!

this week ended up keeping me more busy than i thought it would. on friday, i saw that harry potter flick but since i am probably the last person in the universe to see it, there's no need to review it here. i might add, however, that seeing it in an imax theater was pretty great. all movies should be on a five story tall screen.

my political blogging has dropped off lately. at least it feels like it has. recently, whenever i feel a big political rant coming on, i manage to find someone else posting about it before i get my thoughts out into blogger. once i see someone else write what i was thinking, my will to rant dissipates and i can get on with other more productive activities, like buying the new simpsons dvd set. i guess i could still post on the topic--something short that amounts to a "look at this" line and link to the page that wrote my idea first, but why bother? you people have just got to take responsibility now and then and find your own damn links.

in other news, look at this! via mr. corey i found these videos starring the 19th century swedish playwrite and novelist august strindberg and a helium balloon. (i like "with sulphur and iron" the best)

payees dogon

the new york times travel section this weekend has an article able trekking in dogon territory, something i did when i visited mali in 2001 which i highly recommend. as it happens one year ago this week i posted about my trek in dogon territory in what i now consider to be this blog's first real post. it really is an amazing experience, walking from mud village to mud village along (and sometimes up) the jagged escarpment, sleeping on the roof under the stars, and enjoying the warm hospitality of the dogon people. i went to mali to see timbuktu, but hiking in dogon territory was what made the trip.

giant fish

my old friend from norway that i mentioned here two weeks ago, has started his own blog giant fish. luckily, he seems to be writing in english (and embarrassingly enough, better english than i use here. but i'm doing it for ironic reasons. got that? this is not sloppy. it's ironic).

anyway, i've put up a link, go check his site out.

at least give them credit for thinking outside the box

israel is soliciting bids from contractors to dig a moat between egypt and the gaza strip. as the article explains: "It was not clear whether the moat would be filled with water, as Israeli military sources had suggested last month, or would be a dry moat." although a dry moat, technically speaking, is not a moat, but a ditch. i guess the "ditch plan" just didn't have the same ring to it.

if successful, perhaps israel will explore other exciting technical breakthroughs from the middle ages, like big vats of boiling oil.

(article via the agonist (check out their spiffy new site!))

bitchin' 'bout arabic

i've been banging my head against the wall trying to translate this article all week. i feel like reagan is tormenting me from beyond the grave. the translation is painfully slow. i simply didn't have much of the critical vocabulary--words like "shayuu'iya" ("communism") somehow never came up on the vocab lists of my text books. printed out, the article is 3 and a half pages long. that doesn't seem like much but i've only gotten through the first page and it took me hours.

many of those hours were spent sitting in a cafe because they tend to be air conditioned and most of my apartment is not. whenever i do arabic homework in a public place, the arabs come out of the woodwork. they're always extremely nice and very happy to see someone trying to learn their language. sometimes they even offer to do my homework for me. yesterday this syrian guy offered to help me with my translation. it was tempting, but i had to tell him it's better for me to do it myself. the goal is to learn this damn language, not learn reagan's biography.

the problem is not the arabs i meet, i generally enjoy the opportunity to practice with them, it's the crazy anglos. they also come out of the woodwork. one time i was working on arabic on the train home and this woman sitting next to me started talking about welsh. somehow, she thought because i was studying a foreign language, i would know all languages (i don't even know arabic!) she then asked me a slew of questions about the differences between welsh and arabic, none of which i could answer because i know nothing about welsh except whatever stuck in my brain from reading the black cauldron 2 decades ago. it really didn't matter how many times i explained that i didn't know anything about welsh, she just kept asking.

okay, i'm done. it was nice to get that off my chest. i'm off to meet my tutor.

updated my links

i took out some ones that don't work anymore and updated some of the sites that switched addresses. for a few of the links of blogs on hiatus, i decided to leave the link on the list, in the hopes that they will come back eventually. but mostly i was pretty heartless.

i've been meaning to post this for a while

while watching the daily show last week my friend sarah had the same thought as i did when i watched the same show. we both went to school with them biden boys

the small pleasures of the legal profession

i've spent most of today rattling around caselaw databases trying to sink my teeth into this research project on my desk. the facts are rather unusual and unfortunately cannot be described in words that lend themselves to easy lexis searches. so i've been pulling and reading cases rather fruitlessly all day, occasionally finding something that--while not being what i need--at least is close enough for me to use. but as the day winds down, i'm pretty surprised by how little i got accomplished. i have hearings both tomorrow and friday so this was the only full day i could devote to the project. what a mostly waste of a day this was. (not a total waste, mind you, i did gather a small pile of barely-relevant cases. if i string them together, i might even be able to somewhat address the issue). maybe i just need to sleep on it.

in other news, i was assigned a case today that will go to a hearing in my home town. it's the first time that i have ever gone to one there. (i'm not licensed in the state, but i'll be "pro hoced"). i just got the file today and as i reviewed it i noticed that i know the attorney on the other side. he's a friend of my parents and i once went to school with his daughter (though she was a grade or two older than me). that will be odd

uzbek ramblings

last week, while all the hoopla about reagan's death was going on, i asked a friend in uzbekistan what she thought of him. it started an fairly interesting back and forth over email.

like virtually everyone i met in uzbekistan, my friend wishes the soviet union was still around. when i was in uzbekistan the first couple of times i heard a local talk about the soviet union it surprised me. for years i had assumed (like most people in the u.s.) that the collapse of the soviet state was a good thing for the people who lived in there. but in uzbekistan, at least, i was hard pressed to find anyone who was happy to see the soviet union go. and these were not the old-school communist or russian nationalists you see photos of parading around moscow on may day. in fact, most of the people i spoke to about the issue were neither russian nor communists. their concern was less ideological than practical--with the fall of the soviet union came the collapse of their economy and a significant drop in their standard of living. in russia, one can argue that the economic collapse was at least in exchange for gains in political freedom (even though modern russia is not really a real democracy, one can still make that argument). in uzbekistan, on the other hand, their living standard dropped but they got no political liberalization in return. in fact, the people of uzbekistan probably have less freedom today than they did in the final decade of the soviet union.

so anyway, before i wrote my email last week i knew that my friend hated mikhail gorbachev and blamed him for the collapse of the soviet union. because in the u.s. many credited reagan for causing the collapse, i was curious what she would think of him. surprisingly, she had almost entirely positive views of reagan. although she didn't cite any specific examples, she thought he was "peaceful." not a word even reagan's fans in the u.s. often use about him. she also did not think reagan caused the collapse of the soviet union. she blamed gorbachev, not reagan. as she put it: "If Putin had been President then, there would still be a Soviet Union." (i edited her quote for grammar)

my friend's views reflect a largely positive view of the u.s. that prevails in uzbekistan. when i was there i met a few people who were critical of the u.s' role in the iraq war, but mostly i experienced apolitical good will towards anything american.

so i was thinking about that when i came across this post by chris at explanda, including nathan's comment to that post. chris' point seems to be that if the u.s. supports autocratic regimes like the karimov government in uzbekistan, it will ultimately backfire, damaging american credibility with the uzbek people. nathan (at least partly) disagrees, noting the general good will towards americans among uzbeks and the fact that most americans they come into contact with seem to be working against their government. is it possible that both are right? nathan, it seems, is talking about the present. chris, the future (i.e. the long term dangers in supporting the karimov regime). whatever good will exists in the present among uzbeks can change over time

but the original question chris sought to address was whether the u.s. should cut off aid to uzbekistan. and to that question i have decidedly mixed feelings. the friend i mentioned at the beginning of this post works for an NGO that depends largely on aid money. an aid cut-off might make her lose her job. will that accomplish anything positive for uzbekistan? it's hard to imagine that will do anything but poison the feelings of good-will most uzbeks have towards america.

it's not clear to me how much of the proposed aid cut off is aid directly to the uzbek government (like military aid) and how much ends up in craftmaking co-ops like the one in lyab-i-hauz in bukhara. i just googled around a little but couldn't figure out what specifically is being proposed. does anyone know?

mood sit-coms and dictators

blogging is a moody thing with me. the last few days i just haven't felt like writing much. i still don't, actually. it's funny how sometimes a rant is just bursting to get out. but not right now. maybe later.

if you want something to do, go play with the guess the dictator or sit-com character thing that i found via trish wilson. it managed to correctly guess islam karimov so i wholeheartedly endorse the site (on the other hand, when my wife did it, it couldn't guess her natalie from "the facts of life." it guessed blaire instead. so while we probably will all be replaced by machines eventually, we've at least still got a few months left)

the control room

last night we saw the control room. i missed the film when it premiered at the philadelphia film festival and i've been waiting for it to come out ever since. i wasn't disappointed.

the film profiles the arab news network al-jazeera and the film record the events in the network's control room during the two months of "major combat operations" in the iraq war. as you get to know the personalities behind the cameras from the network, it is interspersed with scenes from the war itself and american military personnel who are clearly (and with great success) trying to manipulate the coverage of the conflict.

the film also occasionally cuts to clips of donald rumsfeld stating that al-jazeera is biased and that no one should believe anything they see on the network. the irony is that the rumsfeld clips themselves were broadcast by al-jazeera (you can clearly see the networks logo in the lower corner of the screen and an al-jazeera microphone at rumsfeld's mouth). rumsfeld's statements therefore create a version of the liar's paradox. as rumsfeld himself says on the screen "once someone starts lying, how can you ever take them seriously." indeed.

one truly striking bit is when a bunch of al-jazeera staff members are arguing about when the u.s.' dominance of the world will end. some were arguing that eventually a new power will emerge to challenge the u.s. but hassan ibrahim, an al-jazeera reporter, disagreed. "the americans will put an end to america's domination. i believe in the u.s. constitution, the american people will check themselves."

when i saw that scene i thought of a news story from just the past week. a few days ago, the u.s. refused to invite the emir of qatar to a meeting about democracy in the muslim world because the country (which hosts al-jazeera) will not clamp down on the network's content. qatar is probably the biggest supporter of the free press in the region. al-jazeera is based in its territory but freely criticizes all of the regimes in the arab world, even the leadership of qatar. when i heard mr. ibrahim's moving statement about his faith in the u.s. constitution, it struck me that these people who the bush administration has dismissed as "anti-american" understand the u.s. constitution better than the administration does.

nathan newman also saw the film a few weeks ago and his take is also worth reading.

excuses excuses

blogging was ligher this last week because i suddenly got busy with visitors, playing boardgames, arabic sessions, and out-of-town hearings. these things happen sometime just not all the time.

meanwhile, in my head i drafted all kinds of hilarious thought-provoking brilliant posts, but it's now pretty clear that i will never actually type them into blogger. you're just gonna have to take my word for it that they were so very witty though-provoking and brilliant. 'cause they were. i've seen them, you haven't. so there.

luckily, it turned out to be a good week to be busy. after all, absolutely nothing of consequence happened all week while the nation mourned uncle ron.

don't hold your breath

last april, the bush administration released a "patterns of global terrorism" report. the report stated that the number of terrorist attacks world-wide dropped significantly in 2003 and reached its lowest level in 35 years.

the bush administration, of course, pointed to the report as evidence that it was winning the war on terror, and specifically to rebut the claim by war opponents that invading iraq had increased not decreased the threat of terrorism.

but right away, people who read the report thought the numbers didn't look right. bloggers also pointed out a few of the methodological problems with the report (e.g. here and here)

so now it turns out the critics were right. the state department has acknowledged that its methodology in the original report was flawed. 2003 was marked by a sharp increase, not decrease, in acts of terrorism. indeed, the revised report is expected to show that the number of acts of terrorism in 2003 was "perhaps to its highest level in 20 years."

so here's my question: since the bush administration used the original report showing a drop in acts of terrorism to claim that it was winning the war on terror, after the numbers are revised to show a sharp increase in attacks, logically shouldn't they concede they are losing?

(some of the above links via cursor and the bitter shack)


an aside: i actually suspect that the revised report will still have methodological problems. the main one is that there is no good truly neutral and objective definition of terrorism and that ambiguity allows the u.s. to exclude actions that it doesn't want to count. for example, some u.s. soldiers have reported that they intentionally killed civilians in iraq. if iraqi insurgents did the same thing, it would count as terrorism. but implicit in the u.s.' definition of terrorism is that violence caused by the u.s. is not terror. while such actions get little coverage in the u.s., foreign sources sometimes report them. thus the state department report, even when revised, will probably still be seen as undercounting worldwide terrorism by people outside the u.s.

uncle ron

this whole reagan lying in state--with pictures of people lining up to see his body--reminds me of seeing the lines of people outside the ho chi mihn mausoleum in hanoi. when i braved the line to see "uncle ho" (as he's called in vietnam) i was kind of disgusted by the whole concept. maybe it's because i come from a jewish family where even an open casket viewing is forbidden. lining up to view a dead person seems odd to me, and even a little disrespectful and gross. when i reached the front of the line in hanoi and finally saw the pickled body of ho, the canadian woman next to me said "if i ever become a dictator of a country, don't ever let them do this to me after i die."

so it seems ironic that reagan, like ho and lenin, lies in state today. especially considering who reagan was and what he is credited with doing. i wonder if reagan himself would have wanted to be on display like that? uncle ho stated specifically that he never wanted to be leninized after death, but his well-publicized wishes were completely ignored by the vietnamese government. for political reasons the people needed a body to revere. not for who he was, but for what he later came to symbolize.

tired

i've very tired today. last night, at around 1:15 a.m. the phone rang. mrs. noz and i were both asleep and both woke up totally disoriented. mrs. noz turned off the alarm clock to stop the ringing, but it didn't work. eventually, the answering machine picked up and we realized it was the telephone. we could hear the caller's voice as he left a message and my wife decided it sounded like my brother. "get the phone, it's your brother" she said. conveniently, she got to stay in bed.

so i jumped out of bed and for some reason ran across the apartment to pick up the phone. never mind that there is another phone right by our bed. i was still half-asleep and because the answering machine was what was making the noise that seemed to be the place to go to stop it. i picked up and it was JL, a real voice from my past.

[cue wavy flashback lines]

JL and i were extremely close friends for about a decade during our childhood. there was a period of time when virtually every day after school i went straight for his house to watch starblazers and play dungeons and dragons. during the summer i would spend the entire day at his place. he and his brother would be home alone while his parents worked and they weren't supposed to have friends over. sometimes his parents would come home for lunch and when the car pulled up i would go down to their basement to hide. i remember sitting in a box in their basement, waiting for the voice of their father to leave so i could re-emerge. sometimes JL or his brother would sneak food down to me as i hid.

anyway, for a long time we were very close. our friendship even survived when i switched to a different school in 5th grade and moved out of the neighborhood in 8th grade. in 9th grade however, we had a big fight. while i remember the fight pretty well, the passion behind it makes little sense to me looking back. from my perspective now it seems strange that i would throw away such a well-established friendship over something so stupid. then again, we were 15 at the time. i didn't see JL again for several years.

but then i did. by coincidence, we ended up going to the same college. in fact, JL was the only other person from my home town in my entire graduating class. during the first week, when neither of us knew anyone else, we hung around together a little bit, but soon we each assembled our own separate groups of friends. by the end we were friendly enough when we ran into each other, but only called when we were looking for a ride home after exams or for spring break. the last time i saw him was graduation day in 1992.

over the past few years, i've occasionally wondered what happened to JL. on november 13, 1999 i was walking into a friends apartment in brooklyn when someone mentioned the date. it was JL's 30th birthday and i suddenly remembered this pact we made when we were kids. my birthday is exactly 15 days after JLs and so JL made me swear that, no matter where we were in our lives, we would meet in paris when JL turned 30 and spend the two weeks until my birthday in the city. we even set a meeting place: a cafe. so anyway, as my friend utter the date, i realized i had stood JL up. later i wrote a birthday card/apology letter and sent it to his parent's old address. then i completely forgot about it.

[cue end-of-flashback wavy lines]

so last night, out of the blue, i heard JL's voice again over the phone. i guess the conversation was awkward, i was still semi-conscious. i somehow managed to hold together some semblence of a conversation. JL said "i got your birthday card" and told me a little about himself. in his attempts to find me, he managed to find and read this site, and a profile of my wife in the alumni magazine at the school where she teaches. the rest of our conversation is a dreamlike haze. i'm not sure how long we spoke, but JL probably noticed that i wasn't all that coherent. we agreed to continue our conversation by email and i went back to bed.

meanwhile, mrs. noz had noticed that i was on the phone long enough to establish that it wasn't a wrong number. and because she thought it was my brother on the phone and the only reason my brother would call us at 1:15 in the morning is if someone died, she had developed a nice sense of dread for what news i would bring back to her. i told her it was JL and at first she didn't believe me.

it was an odd night. strangely, it was only after the phone call had ended that i finally wide awake, just as i wanted to go back to sleep again. eventually i did. when i woke up i wondered if i had dreamed the whole thing. but it was real. a half-recorded message on the answering machine proves it. as does JL's email i got when i arrived at work.

i guess one reason for this post is one long explanation why i was so weird on the phone last night and why i am so tired this morning.

in other news, someone found this site by searching for "studded codpiece". yet another unexpected surprise

mourning in america

everywhere i look, both inside and outside the blogisphere, people are talking about reagan. for his fans, what to do is easy, they can speak honestly about how they feel about him. for those who didn't like him, it gets more difficult.

the general consensus seems to be that you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead. and why is that, exactly? wouldn't it make more sense to not speak ill of the living? it seems worse to me to talk badly about someone when they can still hear you. i guess the theory is you keep quiet out of respect for the family. i suspect, however, that none of the reagans read this modern world. (note: i used this link because it's the one cited by tacitus in his post that i reference below even though the post was written more than 6 months ago. apparently some think the inappropriateness of criticizing someone after their death applies retroactively)

another thing i wonder about is how long are critics of the former president expected to keep their mouths shut? juan cole seems to have concluded that criticism is inappropriate only on the very day of death. that seems to be a reasonable compromise to me. the period of silence must end at some point. otherwise, how can historians ever really study the reagan era. and, let's face it, there was plenty to dislike about reagan (oops! did i cross the line with that?) i simply see no reason why people who disagreed with him have to lie at the same time that people who idolized him get to speak openly about their feelings.

as i look around and see different people talk about reagan in different ways, none of it bothers me. praise and criticism is all part of the process of reflecting on a life after it has passed. when i remember reagan i want to remember his rousing speeches and iran-contra; his tough negotiations with the soviet union and the ballooning debt that we are still saddled with; his wide-eyed love of america, and his shameless pandering to the christian right. it's all part of the package that was his presidency. to remember only half the story crosses the line from retrospective to propaganda

the only thing i have read since reagan's death that has crossed the line with me (and granted, i have not been looking very hard) is this post by tacitus. he starts by decrying people on the left for using reagans death as an opportunity to score political points and then launches into his own political attack against kerry. i've never totally understood the canonization of reagan by the people on the right. i haven't read enough of tacitus to know whether he is a full member of the reagan cult, but i wonder what exactly he thinks kerry should have done when news of reagan's death broke. some people, it seems, are not satisfied with polite praise during a period of mourning. they are only satisfied if all of reagan's opponents get on their knees, confess that they actually disagreed with such a great man and beg for the country';s forgiveness.

but if his rationale for the invasion of grenada (for example) was unconvincing during reagan's life--when he was able to put his best arguments forward in favor of that action--why would the fact of his death convince any of his critics to change their minds?

weeding through google

via another google hit registering on my sitemeter, today i learned that i am not the only one who refers to the anniversary of my marriage as a "weeding anniversary"

osama, casa, and a long story about a crib

we saw two movies yesterday. osama is the first film shot in post-taliban afghanistan and was quite sad. it takes place during the rule of the taliban and is about a little girl in a family where all the men have been killed by various wars. because of the taliban restrictions on women working, the family is starving and in desperation dresses their little girl as a boy so she can provide for the family. i don't want to spoil it, but it is not exactly a happy uplifting tale. its a good, perhaps too realistic, film. but skip it if you like happy endings

the second film we saw (which was actually the first one we watched) was casa de los babys. i am a huge fan of john sayles even though in many of his more recent films not all that much actually happens. it's not about the plot as much as the characters. his movies always have a political undercurrent lurking in the background. but politics is rarely the focus. the situation is what it is, effecting the characters in different ways without ever really resolving the underlying political issue. just like in real life, those things never really get resolved. i actually like the fact that most (if not all) of the subplots are left dangling. it's strangely refreshing and gives a much stronger sense of reality than you get from films with neat story arcs.

casa is a 24 hour snapshot of a bunch of american women in a hotel somewhere in latin america waiting to pick up a baby that they have adopted. around them is the poverty and desperation that makes the babies available for them. but these privileged women themselves are desperate for the child they cannot have. the film meanders around exploring the reasons the locals are giving up their children, resentment of that fact by some locals, the people who profit off of the americans waiting in a hotel for a baby, and the conflicting personalities of the women themselves.

another reason i found the film so interesting is because my sister-in-law is currently trying to adopt a child from china. said sister-in-law is mrs. noz's twin. (perhaps evil twin, i'll let others decide that) for simplicity sake, let's call my wife's twin "mrs. zon."

mrs. zon visited about 6 weeks ago and i heard a lot about the trials and tribulations of doing a foreign adoption. one of the things they have to submit with their application is a photo of a baby's room with a crib in it. the problem is that the whole process takes so long that they have to submit a photo about a year before they will come home with a child. psychologically it can be hard to have an empty nursery and crib set up in your house for a whole year when you are waiting for a child. so the adoption agency suggested that mrs. zon and her husband just take a snapshot of a friend's nursery for the crib photo. it's a bit of a sham, theoretically the crib in the photo is supposed to be the baby's crib, but the agency noted that no one will ever know the difference. the zons, however, recently moved to a new city so they don't know many people in their area with a baby. but their neighbor had a small child and mrs. zon talked the neighbors into letting them take a snapshot of the neighbor's crib.

unfortunately the neighbors had a boy and virtually all chinese adoptees are girls. because the crib had pictures of helicopters on it, it was deemed to be too masculine. so the agency rejected the photo--quite infuriating for a women-studies minor like mrs. zon, but what could she do?

mrs. zon asked my wife to help them find an appropriately froofy feminine crib to photograph to appease the sexist adoption agency and chinese government. again, the agency knew this was all a sham--it wasn't gonna be a picture of the actual crib the adopted baby would be sleeping in. but even sham photos had to comply with appropriate gender rules.

my wife started asking around on her sister's behalf for a girly crib photos. meanwhile mrs. zon made a lucky discovery. she and her husband bought a house several months earlier. when they were looking around they took photos of the rooms of the houses they were interested in buying. when they looked at the house they eventually bought, they took a photo of the room which they now intend to use as the nursery. as it happens the prior owners had a crib in the room when they took the photo. the crib was not overtly feminine, but it wasn't too masculine either--no helicopters or any other military vehicles to offend the sensibilities of the people at the agency. plus, it had pandas. pandas!!! the chinese will love that.

they submitted the panda crib photos and just heard that their application was accepted by the agency. now its being translated into chinese so they can advance to the next round of bureaucracy.

and they lived happily ever after. well, not quite. they're still waiting for a baby, but at least their application is back on track.

ray bradbury

from defective yeti:

In a recent interview, Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, ripped filmmaker Michael Moore for his appropriation of the science-fiction novel's title. "Michael Moore is a screwed asshole, that is what I think about that case," said the 84-year-old writer. "He is a horrible human being -- horrible human!"

In other news, the latest issue of Rolling Stone features an interview with William Shakespeare, in which the Bard of Avon decries Bradbury's use of the phrase "something wicked this way comes." "That mewling cutpurse plucked the title from the pages of my MacBeth direct," carped the long dead poet and playwright, who later went on to describe Bradbury as "sick in the world's regard, wretched and low, a poor unminded outlaw sneaking home."

question for the day

between now and whenever all the gushing ronald reagan retrospectives finally die down, how many federal buildings, national parks, monuments and roads will be named after him?

b4b, one more time

i feel like i've been neglecting this place over the last few days. i've been busy with real life stuff (unemployment hearing yesterday out in bucks county, blah blah blah) and the blogs for bush rebutted site is sucking up whatever internet time i manage to find.

actually the b4b site is really pissing me off. i don't mean to go on and on about this, but they deleted my post even though it did not meet any of the grounds for deleting according to the site's own policy. also after leaving my single comment, they banned me even though their policy states that they will only ban people who "repeatedly displays behavior showing a lack of interest in reasonable discussion, or repeated offenses of any of the criteria [for deleting a post]." (emphasis added). whatever you think about my one comment, it was not a "repeated" offense.

so we started the rebuttal site as an attempt to get around their censorship and (hopefully) engage in an honest debate with the people who run the site. our first comment from one of the b4b writers "Jattison" seemed hopeful he wrote:

Hey! Neat, a whole counter blog. I feel special now. I hope you won't just be focusing on ol' Noonan. Cause that would be boring. :/

Anyways, I'll try to visit yer blog, as long as it doesn't result to personal attacks.

but actions speak louder than words. b4b has now banned all of the contributors to the rebuttal site who have identified themselves. they have also removed any trackbacks we have sent their way and banned us from sending any more. while our site repeatedly links to them, they have never linked to us or acknowledged our presence in their blog. instead, through their deleting and banning they have done everything they can to hide our presence from their readers. me and my rebuttal cohorts have bent over backwards to maintain a civil tone on our site and keep up a rational level of discourse. b4b's actions only indicate that they are either not interested in rational discussion or are unable to answer any of our rebuttals. in a sense it only personifies the paternalistic tone that their idol's administration has adopted throughout its tenure.

so if anyone out there (who has not been banned by them yet) wants to help us out, put a link to our site in the b4b comments. if you're on dial-up it might be harder for them to ban you because you get a unique i.p. every time you dial in. i'm working on other guerrilla methods of getting the fact that there is another side to the story to their readers, but any additional help will be welcome.

okay, i hereby declare this rant over. i would promise not to bring it up again, but what's the point? i know i'll do it if i feel ranty enough later. but i'll at least try to give it a break for a while. how's that?

we now return you to your regularly scheduled program

anecdote about the media

i just came back from lunch with hydro, an occasional participant in the comments of this site. hydro works for a local environmental group and he deals mostly with air pollution issues. hydro occasionally is interviewed by the media about those issues. he told me a story today that really illuminated how the press works.

today hydro was contacted a reporter from the local news station who wanted to interview him about the high gas prices. as they went over the pre-interview interview, it became pretty clear to hydro that the reporter wanted hydro, as a local representative of the environmental movement, to say that high gas prices were “good” because it would get people to consume less oil. instead, hydro said that gas prices were high, but consumers can do something about it by buying more fuel efficient vehicles. while the two statements are close, hydro’s did not include any normative statement but was rather prescriptive (i.e. he didn’t say whether the gas prices are good or bad, only what people could do about it)

the reporter didn’t like that. she pressed him to call high gas prices “good” but hydro wouldn’t do it. he stuck to his guns until the reporter told him to think about it and she would call him back later in the day.

once he was off the phone hydro and other members of his organization drafted a statement of their official position on the issue. the statement included no conclusive answer whether the current price at the pump was bad or good, but again, focused instead on what the public could do because gas prices were high.

hydro gave the reporter the statement and she informed him that they would not be interviewing any representative of his organization about the story. presumably she will try to find someone who gives the answers that fit better with the line they wanted in their report (i.e. that environmentalists want to make everyone pay more to fill their tank) instead of reporting what the environmentalists themselves have to say.

my first rebuttal

is up blogs for bush rebutted

that took friggin forever to write

ta-dah!

a few days ago i hinted at a new project i was working on with a few other bloggers. well, today i am happy to unveil blogs for bush rebutted. as you may recall, last week i posted a comment on blogs for bush. my comment, however, was deleted and my IP banned from posting subsequent comments. i reprinted the deleted comment here (you can decide for yourself whether the deletion violates the blog's own policy)

anyway, shortly after i was banned, i was invited to participate in creating a site to respond to the "blogs for bush" site. diogenes laid most of the groundwork. although we're still adding some of the bells and whistles, blogs for bush rebutted is officially open. in fact, the blogs for bush people have already discovered the site and started to argue with us in the comments to the introductory post. feel free to join in. everyone is welcome and, unlike the "blogs for bush" people, we will not ever delete a comment solely because of its content.

yikes!

when i saw the title to this post, my first thought was that atrios was calling to have me killed.

go read this

adam felber got his hands on the transcript of the first session of the iraqi transitional government.

temporary

the washington post's article "Iraqi Caretaker Government Takes Temporary Authority" starts with the following sentences:

A new caretaker government, carefully apportioned among Iraq's religious and ethnic groups, assumed temporary authority from the Iraqi Governing Council Tuesday after a month of wrangling.

The U.S. appointed council then dissolved itself.

let's review: after saddam's government was removed, the u.s. created the iraqi governing council (IGC) to have temporary authority over iraq. today, the IGC dissolved, to make room for the "caretaker government." the caretaker government will only have authority for the month of june 2004, until the transition to the "fully sovereign" government on june 30th. of course, the post-june 30th government itself will only temporarily hold power until another government can be elected in january 2005.

put another way, the u.s. established a temporary iraqi government last year, which has now dissolved and turned over power to a second temporary government, which was formed to be in charge over the next month before it can hand authority to the third temporary government that will form on june 30th. that temporary government will only hold power until elections are held next year.

3 temporary unelected governments in a year? who comes up with this stuff?

busted!

a pentagon email says cheney's office personally coordinated the contracts awarded to halliburton for iraqi reconstruction. the vice president previously claimed that he had "absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government."

because cheney is still on the halliburton payroll (he receives a six figure salary from them as "deferred compensation" even though he officially left the company in 2000 to run for vice president) i've long thought that all of the contracts awarded to the company at the very least raise the appearance of impropriety. this email suggests instead that it's more traditional out-and-out corruption.

i'm not holding my breath for an investigation, much less prosecution.

UPDATE: scout noticed that the email about cheney's office and the halliburton contracts was sent march 5, 2003. the war in iraq didn't start until march 20th. meanwhile hans blix and the UN inspectors (great name for a band, by the way) were in iraq until march 18th. so, to add a new wrinkle to this whole mess, cheney was illegally assigning contracts to rebuild iraq before we even trashed the place. indeed, at that point, the bush administration still claimed to be trying to avert war.

thought of the day

if i had smashed a mirror on the day i got married, the bad luck would finally be over today.

...upon further reading of this thought and after reading the comments, i realize that i may have implied that my marriage has been bad luck. on the contrary, i think marrying mrs. noz is the best thing i have ever done. i really never meant to imply otherwise