mcgees.org

Could we play Mad Libs for a second?  The Economist on Country’s Elections:

Mr. Politician comes off as a very cautious, pragmatic, vague and increasingly shrewd politician … most can agree that Mr. Politician is hardly the perfect representative of the reformist, liberal nationality who have taken to the streets … “[H]e’s no radical reformer.  But what’s happened is that simply by representing an alternative, Politician became a vehicle for the expression of the hopes of people who are far more radical in their reformist attitudes than anyone in the dominant power structure”…

President of a nation: “[T]he difference between candidate and other candidate in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised.  Either way, we were going to be dealing with a national government that has historically been hostile to another country, that has caused some problems in the neighborhood”

This behind-the-scenes video of President Obama’s cameo on The Colbert Report is glorious.  But it’s also a little disturbing.  I find it funny — presumably many do — but if W. had appeared on, say, Rush Limbaugh’s show to do a bit the premise of which was abusing the office of Commander-in-Chief, I would have had a fit.  So would much of the rest of the blogosphere.  As I said, I like it — but it’s perilous, and I would rather he not buddy-buddy (reference to Palin intended) with liberal humorists.

(OK, who will be first to post that I missed the premise of the humor?)

I’m doing this post without Web searches to help my point, namely, that when one gets 95%+ of one’s news from NPR, not only does one get a skewed selection of stories (I saw a checkstand tabloid and asked my mother “Is Patrick Swayze really dying?”), one never knows how to spell anything.  If I had ever read a story about the man, I might have a vague clue of how to spell the Iranian president’s name.  I think I could utter (the American pronunciation of) the syllables, and I bet it starts with an ‘A’, but even that is a guess.

Sometimes, though, the misconceptions can be more fundamental.  Consider the proposed environmental regulation that I kept hearing as cap in trade.  This made no sense to me, if for no other reason than that politicians are rarely so forthright about the negative consequences of policies.  Toying briefly with Cap’n Trade — presumably a lovable mercantile sailor with a cool hat — I saw on a blog today cap-and-trade.  Oh.  So, that’s like, “An upper limit on allowable discharge of pollutants by corporations, a market in which unused allowances can be auctioned, and a catchy three-short-word moniker”?  That would make sense.  I suppose a quick Wikipedia search would clear that up, but, again: that’s my point.

It is startling, the degree to which President Obama manages to be pitch-perfect all the time (OK, almost.)  Even with great writers, his delivery at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner, linked to above, is impossibly adept.  Compare this with professional comic Wanda Sykes’s sharp-intake-of-breath-inducing material.  If Bush’s slide-show of his failing to find WMDs under tables and behind furniture was nauseating at the time, it is even more stark and hideous when compared to our current President’s remarks.

So while I laughed at the President’s self-effacing lines (”In the next 100 days, I will strongly consider losing my cool”), I thought the point would be over-stretched in Salon’s Obama is Spock — Salon just being Salon.  And while I found the article, at times, wince-inducing with its metaphors, it is hard to resist an article that quotes a famous MIT figure that both are people who can “bitch slap you with [their] brain[s]“, Obama himself as saying “Issues are never simple“, and (OK, this one is pretty sketchy) a comparison of the Obama cabinet to the Enterprise crew.  Read (or plod) through it, though: the payoff involves Leonard Nimoy, a sardonically-Vulcan observation, and a certain famous split-fingered gesture.

I’ve begun, and deleted, my varying comments about this about half a dozen times so far.  I’m giving up.  Here it is:

The [Organization of the Islamic Conference] resolution [proposed in the UN] says “Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism” and calls on U.N. member states “to combat defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general…”  — Reuters

I don’t even know.  This just makes me want to cry.  If the leadership of fifty-six countries can parse that paragraph and interpret the logic as A→B→C, let alone advocate for it, what possible chance is there going to ever be for peace worldwide?

Readers will know I am no friend of the Republicans (this as one of a billion possible links) — and though some attentive reader is going to claim that this is another instance of my thinking that a prominent black man is full of shit, Andrew Breitbart was fucking railroaded on Bill Maher by Michael Eric Dyson, the studio audience, and (to a somewhat lesser degree) by Maher himself.

Did anyone see this bullshit?

Breitbart confronted Maher by asking him to provide references when he accused Rush Limbaugh of racism.  This is not impossible to do, and Dyson did provide some (one of which was even relevant) — but Maher?  He passed the buck, asking if Dyson “wanted to take” that one.  Back up your own fucking claims, man.

Dyson (and, look, I’d say this in a moment about Dershowitz, Paul Kurtz, or any number of other people — this is not a black thing) indeed did try to steamroller Breitbart with ten dollar words (yes, I knew them all, and I would still be a dick if I spoke like that in an argument, which I expect I’ve done); insinuations of speaking in “code words” when it was very clear (to me) that Dyson was doing this very thing; and self-conscious affectation of urban African-American diction at precisely the points one would choose if one were suggesting that Breitbart was himself a racist.

Breitbart was completely right that Social Security is a “box of magic” that needs to be confronted.  Breitbart was completely right that it is disingenuous — he didn’t use these words, I’m speaking for him now — to hold up Obama as a paragon of virtue and call Clarence Thomas a “ventriloquist’s dummy” (yes, Dyson said that — actually, he said “a ventriloquist”, but I think I got what he meant.)  Breitbart was off the map when he laid into “black studies” professors and “post-structuralist” intellectuals, and in a number of other places, but look — ok, don’t look.  I have no idea who is going to jump on this thread, or what accusations they are going to make.  But I will stand to my last breath demanding that someone fights fairly.  What I’m saying:

1. If you make an accusation and you cannot cite references, you are a dick.
2. If you respond to someone’s point, delivered in simple language, by laying in with long words and demanding the other person “let [you] finish” when you did not allot them the same courtesy, you are a dick.
3. If you continue to rework your argument when challeneged, and then claim that that’s what you’ve been saying all along when it is completely clear that you have been doing nothing of the sort, you are a dick.
4. And, yes, I’m a dick.

Oh, and by the way: what the hell is a “talking eTrade baby”?

Beardy has a fascinating graph.  The responses are even more rad.

Stay tuned for a link to the MeFi question I am working on composing, after I make sure I understand a nonzero amount of this problem.  Note: a math degree does nothing to help with all of this.

Let’s see if this shows up for subscribers, or if you’ll have to visit the site:

If you’ve read the authors’ book — Our Kampf — or if you think it’s extreme dickishness to forbid you from reading a site without first reading the book [raises hand] — maybe read the article Bush’s ‘Peace In Our Time’.  It’s bitter.  Excerpt:

Israel’s “policy” (if that’s the word) is clear: Peace with Syria; Gaza is Egypt’s problem; and the West Bank is Jordan’s.  This means a Two-State Solution is dead.  Its funeral is taking so long it even has a name: Peace Process.

The Independent:

United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 … was passed in November 1967, after Israel had occupied Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Sinai and Golan, and it emphasizes “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and calls for “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”.

Readers who know the problem here will be joined by those who will immediately pick it up. The Israelis say that they are not required to withdraw from all the territories — because the word “all” is missing and since the definite article “the” is missing before the word “territories”, its up to Israel to decide which bits of the occupied territories it gives up and which bits it keeps.

In related news, I was just given a parking ticket!  Can you believe it?  Yes, there was a sign that said “No parking”, but I told the cop that I didn’t park there on Wednesdays or Thursdays!  Just Saturday!  When I was not parking on Wednesdays, I was indeed not parking!

Egads.

A group of laborers who refuse to be paid in cash have attacked a community of space robots with purple vacuum cleaner heads.

I’m sure I got some of that right.

Less goofily: in college I read a book called Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Groups that covered, in the chapter with the greatest depth, the Rom community.  Not cool how they’ve been treated.  Their common name, itself an inaccurate slur (inaccurate because they are not from Egypt; slur because it means, in Europe, “y’aint from ’round here, are ya?”), carries connotations of thievery and fraud, and can be used pejoratively in casual conversation, frequently by people who don’t know they are doing it.  They survived persecution, marginalization, and, finally, murder in the gas chambers of the Third Reich, but (AFAIK) no one has built a museum for them yet.

So, please, no riots, OK?  No attacks.  No “gypsy cabs”, nor having someone “gyp” you.  In a sense, they are where Jews were before WWII, an allowed target of hate.  We needn’t hate.

But, you know, keep your wallet in your front pocket.  Just to be safe.

The book: as of this writing, there’s one for a penny.  It’s a good book.  You can afford a penny:

From the ACLU:

An American man detained in the United Arab Emirates at the behest of the U.S. government was released from State Security custody — where he was detained incommunicado in a secret location — and has been transferred to a prison in Abu Dhabi after suffering severe torture.

Naji Hamdan’s transfer came only one week after lawyers for the ACLU filed a lawsuit alleging that the U.S. government was responsible for his detention.

On December 2nd, Naji Hamdan, who lived in the Los Angeles area for more than two decades, was allowed a phone call to his brother, Hossam Hamdan, a resident of Los Angeles.  Hamdan reported to his brother that officials transferred him to a regular prison on November 26 and that his captors routinely beat him and kept him in a freezing underground room during his months-long detention by State Security forces.  The torturers kicked him with their military boots in the location of his liver, knowing that he has a liver condition.  On some occasions, they beat him so badly that Mr. Hamdan passed out for extended periods of time and believed he would die.  On at least one occasion, they strapped his arms and legs down to an electric chair, while threatening to use it.

Hamdan’s description of the torture and interrogation he endured makes clear that American agents have been involved.  Although blindfolded by his torturers, Hamdan reported that some of the interrogators spoke native American English and were not fluent in Arabic.  In addition, the agents interrogated Hamdan on topics about which only U.S. federal agents could have knowledge, such as a meeting he had with FBI agents.

The news of Hamdan’s transfer comes after the ACLU filed a habeas corpus petition in federal district court in Washington, D.C., alleging that the U.A.E. detained Hamdan at the behest of the U.S. government.  Last week, U.S. District Judge James Robertson ordered the government to respond to the petition.

Hamdan, who was born in Lebanon, lived for more than two decades in the Los Angeles area, where he ran an auto-parts business and helped manage the Islamic Center of Hawthorne, a mosque and community center.  In 2006, he decided to relocate his family and business to the U.A.E

Hamdan’s detention in the U.A.E. was the culmination of years of surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).  This summer FBI agents traveled from Los Angeles to the U.A.E. to question Hamdan further.  Approximately three weeks later he was detained by agents of the U.A.E. state security forces.

Hamdan’s brother and others who know him from his activities at the Islamic Center of Hawthorne have all said that he is a peaceful family man who would never support violence.

I have been exceedingly even-tempered of late.  I relish it.  I just don’t get angry about things, and certainly not the rage that I had for a while.

But my blood is boiling.

Fuck.

Did you read that blockquote?  Read it.  All of it.  Twice.  Rumor is that President Bush is considering preëmptive pardons for top administration officials for their complicity in torture and extraordinary rendition.

Even tempered, yes.  But pardon is a little bit too lax for me, nonetheless.  I’m thinking something more moderate, such as summary execution in the Rose Garden.  Followed by cake.

Fuck.  How did this happen to our country?  The old quote is about good men doing nothing being the only thing necessary for evil to triumph.  But we didn’t do nothing.  We fought with every peaceful means we had available.

On 11^th September 2001, four airliners were hijacked.  On 12^th September, the world’s largest power was hijacked, and flown by people who had no idea how to land, just how to steer into the National Archive building, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are held.

OK, that preceding paragraph was unbelievably corny.  I almost deleted it on preview.  So, more concisely: Fuck.

Fuck.

I thought about sending this to my “Everyone!” email list, but thought better of it.  I owe half of the list members large amounts of money, and two thirds of them I don’t know well enough to bombard with political messages (there is a very interesting overlapping-sixth in there.)

For y’all, though, http://www.fivethirtyeight.com.

You’ll thank me.

I just saw a special-interest election ad on television:

After Massachusetts legalized [interracial] marriage, our son came home and told us the school taught him that [white people] can marry [black people].  He’s in second grade!  We tried to stop public schools from teaching children about [interracial] marriage, but the courts said we had no right to object or pull him out of class.

Do note that these warm-hearted followers of Jesus consider it a mortal sin to detach a bundle of 32 cells from a uterine wall but apparently have no qualms about denying rights to Real Actual Adults.

Fine print on the bottom of these pesky California election ads is insufficient.  It needs to have a pathetic, hateful, and ideally terminally ill old man come on and say “I’m James Dobson, and I approve — and funded — this message.”  I am willing to negotiate about whether he should be forced to wear an SS uniform while reciting the sentence.

It’s rather a good thing that I didn’t get to write the No on Prop 8 tagline, because “Don’t be a fucking Nazi, asshole” is probably not the most even-handed approach to this issue.

A former colleague of mine had once written an expert program to help physicians diagnose different sleep disorders.  He thought the coolest (his word) occurred most frequently in otherwise healthy young men from Southeast Asia.  I don’t remember the name, but by his description, it is a degenerative neurological condition in which the sleep center of the brain is slowly destroyed.  One gets progressively more severe insomnia until the sleep center is gone, then is incapable of sleeping and dies (from lack of sleep) within a week.

The only sleep disorder I’ve found in Google that is correlated with being a young Southeast Asian man is SUNDS, but the details don’t match up.

SUNDS, though: “Sudden unexpected nocturnal death syndrome”.  That has been associated with an extension of the heart’s QT interval.  And I’m on medication that can cause lengthening of the QT interval, such that I have to have regular EKGs.

So yeah, panicked insomnia is fun.  I think, “Oh my God.  I am never going to be able to sleep, and I’m going to die.”  Completely rational, right?

Thought so.

I just knew that there had to be another reason for resenting being Southeast Asian — something other than Henry Kissinger alone.

Think the United States will start supporting the ICC when that fuck dies?

Thought not.

Wikipedia’s list of war crimes.  I think they forgot to list one of the possible crimes against peace: WAR.  Damn.  Am I missing something?  Isn’t war by definition a crime against peace?

Yeah, yeah, blah blah blah, aggression, treaties, blah blah.  Can a country (the U.S., to pick one at random) really sidestep this by claiming that another nation (pick one) is trying to weaponize a particular metal?  A metal of which the first nation has already weaponized and deployed approximately 1.86 trillion times as much?  And actually fucking used those weapons on Real Live People?

I did finally get to sleep yesterday, and slept my normal 3.5 hours.  You know how you can cut your foot on a piece of broken glass, and only then realize just how many steps you take in a day? Insomnia is like that.  We tend to take sleep absolutely for granted, like breathing.  And then we forget how to.  Fun stuff.

The ACLU will be running a Vietnam Memorial-style ad in the New York Times, protesting FISA.  They will try to print thousands and thousands of names of supporters, presumably in really tiny print.

Get your name on the ad by visiting the ACLU FISA Action site.

Don’t wait on this one, their submission deadline is less than 24 hours away.

I am being bombarded with a new spam campaign.  A typical email contains the following text:

Furthermore, safety, privacy, discretion, and time are all major factors.

It is then followed by a URL.  The software generating the messages, though, is smart enough to shuffle the order of the “factor” words around, and sometimes omit one of them.  So I tried creating a “Delete It” filter in Gmail that matches all email with the words “safety”, “privacy”, and “discretion”.  That would eliminate 80% of spam from this campaign.  However, according to a test search, I would miss quite a few messages from the ACLU….

Stories about the rigors of life in Germany are plentiful.  Economic disaster ensued when the Allied Reparation Commission required Germany to pay a whopping 132 billion gold marks in reparations for World War 1 — Janet Klug, Linn’s Stamp News, 25 February 2008.

Whopping?  132 billion gold marks sounds like a lot, but so does 132 billion Turkish “old” Lira.  This is an example of the type of  information searches philately spurs:

What’s was the buying power of 132 billion gold marks in 1921?  A thousand homes?  The Louvre?  All of Liechtenstein?

Let’s start with a Google search for germany inflation 1923 wikipedia and look at the first match:

The total reparations demanded was 132,000,000,000 gold marks which was far more than the total German gold or foreign exchange.  An attempt was made by Germany to buy foreign exchange, but that was paid in treasury bills and commercial debts for Marks which only increased the speed of devaluation.

Um, OK.  You bill the country more than its entire net worth?  Had no idea.  Yikes.  The article also states:

The German currency was relatively stable at about 60 Marks per US Dollar during the first half of 1921.

Have I mentioned I love Google?  People were talking about the “Information Age” decades ago, but Google has gotta define it.  Anyway, a search for dollar historical buying power in Google, and, again, the first match: Historical Currency Conversions.  A little division, and we put “2 billion 200 million” into the form, and choose “dollars” (yes, you can spell out your amounts like that.)  The answer: 4.7 x 10¹⁸ (4.7E18) dollars in today’s buying power!

This post will be useful for students, so I will avoid profanity at this moment.  But, man!  That’s almost 5 sextillion dollars!  The U.S. GDP (thanks, Google!) was 13 trillion in 2006.  That’s 350,000 years’ worth of the U.S. economy!

Someone please tell me I made a decimal point error somewhere, or that the people at Historical Currency Conversions are full of it.  Sextillions of dollars?

Forget Liechtenstein!  There’s not a continent you couldn’t buy for that kind of money!

What were “we” thinking?  Did we really think this wouldn’t trigger another, worse war?

Ooh, burn!  The Post Office claims overnight Express Mail service to “most areas”.  I could understand it not being available from small town to small town, but not between two major U.S. city ZIP Codes, 99775 and 96815!  They’re even both in the high 90,000s!  Sure, you can drop off your package at the origin until 7:00 p.m., but it won’t end up at the destination until 10:00 a.m., two whole days later!

Actually, that’s really frakking amazing, when you look it up.  Wow.

(What, the government-kinda?  Really, they can do that?  I’ll let you in on a little GAO secret: the USPS’s biggest contractor is FedEx.  No kidding.  FedEx planes fly Express Mail.)

(USPS Web Apps: Express Mail Commitments)

<rant>

Shit.  I just heard Obama say in a stump speech that we need a “common sense” government.  SHIT.

This has to be shoved down his throat by an advisor, right?  Right?  I hope.  God, I hope!

The man is smart enough to know that we need uncommon sense in government.  I want my President to be smarter than I.  That’s OK.  That’s right.  If “common sense” were good enough, we wouldn’t be having the problems with George Bush — common sense says that the ends justify the means, that we should do things as we’ve always done them, that “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”  Fuck that.  Things need fixing.  Fuck common sense.

</rant>

The ACLU are trying to run a full-page ad in USA Today, congratulating Congress and urging them not to back down in the fight against Bush’s warantless wiretaps.

They need $28,000.  If you can’t afford $28,000, give $10.  If you can’t afford $10, give $5.  If you can’t afford $5, email me and I’ll send you a check (you’re worse off than I am!)

Note: Not tax-deductible.

The ONE campaign has been campaigning against global poverty for years now.  Please add your voice to the thousands and sign the petition urging the next President — whoever he or she may be — to make global poverty and Africa top priorities while in office.  All it takes is one click.

East Timor president José Ramos-Horta has been the subject of a violent coup attempt.  He has been shot in the stomach.  He has been upgraded from “critical” to “serious but stable” condition.

Why the upgrade?  He was flown to Australia, at presumably some government’s expense, to undergo first-world lifesaving surgery and medical treatment.

Ramos-Horta is 58 years old.  The average male lifespan in East Timor is 64 years.  Why the low mortality age?  I’m not sure what proportion is war and insurrection, what percentage is tropical diseases, and what percentage is lousy medical care, but the latter has to figure in, doesn’t it?

I’m kind of thinking that when a president is shot, he needs to be rushed to the nearest public clinic.  I’d go so far as to say he or she could go to the front of the line, get the best surgeon, and have the government pay the bill.  But to be flown to Australia while your citizens drop like tsetse flies?  Defies belief.

Of course, in this case, that course of action would have been a death sentence.  Which is really the point, when you think about it.

I got my twelve gauge sawed off.
I got my headlights turned off.
I’m ’bout to bust some shots off.
I’m ’bout to dust some cops off.
…
I got my brain on hype.
Tonight’ll be your night.
I got this long-assed knife,
and your neck looks just right.
My adrenaline’s pumpin’.
I got my stereo bumpin’.
I’m ’bout to kill me somethin’
A pig stopped me for nuthin’!

That’s rapper Ice-T, from the original version of album Body Count (1992) before the track was removed, under pressure, by their label, and the artist was likewise dropped.  T, when quoted, said “I’m singing in the first person as a character who is fed up with police brutality.  I ain’t never killed no cop.  I felt like it a lot of times.  But I never did it.”

So art, yeah?  It’s really jarring, though, and seems more provocative than when Fred Durst sang Break Shit to a crowd of intoxicated vandals.

OK, same year.  Grunge vocalist Scott Weiland (white) pens and records these lyrics:

I am, I am, I am
I said I wanna get next to you
I said I gonna get close to you
You wouldnt want me have to hurt you too, hurt you too?
…
I am a man, a man
Ill give ya somethin that ya wont forget
I said ya shouldnt have worn that dress
…
Here I come, I come, I come
Here I come, I come, I come
Here I come, I come, I come
Here I come, I come, I come
Here I come, I come, I come
Here I come, I come, I come
Here I come, I come, I come
Here I come, I come, I come
Here I come, I come, I come

As far as I know, Weiland never justified that one.  Sober band-mate Robert DeLeo explained that Weiland was singing in the first person of an “idiot” who would rape a woman, and that it was fictional and not misogynist.  Idiot?  Idiot?  That’s like my moron doctor telling me, when I was educating her about the possibility of modifying her triplicate prescriptions, that someone could do that “If they wanted to be mean.”  Don’t worry, that will get its own post.  But  Idiot?

So me?  I went so far as to skip the Weiland song sometimes on the CD, if I wasn’t too distracted, and it wasn’t the great! acoustic version.  Ice-T?  I loathed and boycotted him, and I still haven’t heard the fucking song.  Years later.  No clue.  Heavy metal beat or what?

I was raised in a very conservative Christian suburb of San Diego with deep racial tensions — honors kids at the high school were being arrested for forming KKK factions, and, as a first-order approximation, all Mexican kids were gang wannabes.  (Seriously, if I were under the kind of social pressure the poor Hispanic kids were under, I’d play the part, too.  I’d like to talk to some of them now, the bullied ones — but, oddly, they don’t show up at reunions.)

Why the double standard?  Because Weiland’s lyrics rhyme slightly better?  No, La Mesa, baby!  Or, more honestly, because I was a poser pastor’s kid in La Mesa who always wanted to be “the good kid”.  That act didn’t stick very far into college, by the way.

OK, Richard Belzer.  Whoa, huge turn, right?  Stay with me please.  My good friend Nathan (hi!) and I watched an anthology of comedy club performances, from comedians and comediennes who later became stars, that somehow some two-bit production company got the repro rights to.  Belzer’s doing his routine — and fucking drunk?  Not sure, but Nathan and I both looked at each other wondering the same thing.  Did he do drunken rants onstage?  Anyone know?

Anyway, Belzer tells a “Pollock” joke, and when the audience boos, he quips, “Yeah, like they’re the smartest people on the planet.  Like there’s no reason for the stereotype.”

OK, the tie-in.  Marcia Gay Harden guest-stars on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, playing a white supremacist.  Really great role and great performance.  She is interviewed one-on-one by Fin and Munch — that is, Ice-T and Belzer.  She’s spewing white supremacist hatred at them that I was flabbergasted got by the censors.  They sit there, stoically taking it.  The twist?  Harden is a federal agent undercover, and later, after killing one of the real supremacists, she apologies to Munch and Fin.  I guess that’s why she was willing to take the role.  Fin nods, shakes her hand, and says, “We’re good.”

So, Law & Order: SVU?  Somehow they never went with the slogan Where the black cops are cop killers, the Jewish cops are racists, and the white supremacists are U.S. Marshals!  Funny, that.

I’ve been reconsidering my positions on a few posts:

First, I made too big of a deal about a little girl wanting to go to heaven to be with her hamster.  While I’ve run this by atheists who agree with my premise, I should never have done so in a way that it would get back to Poppy or her mother.  I think belief in an afterlife is dangerous, but probably benign in a first-world well-off small child raised by a loving mother (and maybe a father) with plans to dispel the myth to her in a few years.

Second, I’ve reconsidered my claim that Kill Bill vols. 1 and 2 should have received NC-17s.  I think R is appropriate for the films.

Third, regarding the my quote of the article from The Guardian about George W. in early 2002 that said:

Sooner or later, Mr Bush, self-styled universal soldier for truth, will have to stop pretending that tragedy gave him a free hand to remake America and the world to fit his simplistic, narrow vision — or risk having voters and US allies end the pretence for him.

Turns out, there was an insufficient allotment of brains and balls worldwide, and Bush has been unnervingly and nauseating successful in remaking America.  So the paper and I were wrong.

Fourth, something really funny to lighten the mood.

What???  There’s an “Ideological Exclusion” clause in the PATRIOT Act?  Seriously?  We can apparently revoke someone’s visa because of ideas and beliefs he holds.  Isn’t this the definition of McCarthyism?

… The government originally revoked Ramadan’s visa in 2004 based on the so-called “ideological exclusion” provision of the Patriot Act, a provision that applies to individuals who have “endorsed or espoused” terrorism, because he made small donations to a Swiss charity that provides aid to the Palestinians. … — http://action.aclu.org/exclusion

I received an email from my former Congressman (who still thinks I’m one of his constituents) today, with a tiny survey (push poll?) attached.  As a devotee of logic, I hate false dichotomies.  I hate them almost as much as I hate non-exhaustive multiple-choice surveys.

OK, the first one: Should Congress allow warrantless wiretaps of terrorism suspects, including American citizens?  Here are the options he gives:

* Yes, these actions are necessary to protect our security.
* No, these actions overstepped the law.
* Undecided.

Although a slightly leading question, there is ton left that wouldn’t be left if the answers were simply “Yes”, “No”, “It’s more complicated than that”, and “Undecided”.  It goes on to give reasons that are, I guess, supposed to be your reasons if you take that position.

What about?:

1.  These actions are necessary to protect our national security, but are illegal and should not be done
2.  These actions are necessary to protect our national security, are illegal, but should be done anyway
3.  Congress should outlaw it, but it should happen anyway and should not be a crime if the President authorizes it (I actually know a dipshit with this position.)
…and on, and on…

Next: Which of the following best describes your view on abortion?

* I strongly believe abortion should be legal for all women.
* There should be some limits on abortion; girls under 18 should need parental consent.
* Abortion should be illegal, except to save the life of the mother.
* Undecided.

What the hell?!?  The first and the second are not incompatible!  You can easily believe that all women should have access to abortion on demand, but that no girl should.  But what if you think there should some limits, but not this limit, or not only this limit?  Then the second and third become indistinguishable, because three suffers from the same problems: if some abortions are legal and some illegal, it’s a meaningless difference whether we consider the baseline to be legal with “some limits” or illegal with “some exceptions”.  What are we supposed to do, count up the cases and see which side wins?  This is ludicrous.  Note that many Christians would fall into the third camp, but might add “or in cases of rape and incest”.  What’s the Christian supposed to answer?  Undecided?  Hardly.

I know I’m preaching mostly to the choir here (my readers, or at least commentators, are, in general, much more astute than the average person), but there’s just one more question, and it’s so ludicrous that I cannot skip it, much as I want to: Which of the following best describes your views on the Middle East conflict?

* We should strongly support Israel.
* We should support Palestinians at least as much as we support Israel.
* We should just stay out of the conflict.
* Undecided.

Again, one and two are not incompatible, unless you’re supposed to read the subtext in the first as “We should strongly support Israel and strongly oppose the Palestinians.”  But if this was implied, where’s the “We should strongly support the Palestinians and strongly oppose Israel”?  Where’s “We should work through an international body, such as the UN, to decide the world’s collective position democratically”?  Where’s “Give everyone a year’s notice to move out, then nuke the fucking area back to a cindery Stone-Age nuclear hot zone so that these fucking morons stop squabbling over a few thousand hectares of barren rock”?  (I know, there are tons more options again, but you can write about them if you wish.  I’m done.)

And — AND — WORST OF ALL — there is no “Other” on any of these questions!  Fucking slimebag.  Is he saying that we have to bin our answers into one of his statements, otherwise it’s not a position worth having?

I’m sending this link to him.  If only he’d have the balls to post on this blog and back up his intentions, or at least instruct a staffer to do so.  Otherwise, he’s just a manipulative, logicless sonofabitch.

Ooh ooh ooh — sneaky!

There is a TV spot running now to “help” consumers.  It’s paid for by the Cable Television industry.  It tells consumers that beginning 17 February 2009, all broadcast stations will stop broadcasting in analog, and only broadcast in digital.  It tells the viewer that all televisions hooked up to cable service will continue to work.  In a slightly-overplayed “reasonable” tone, it tells the viewer that “If you receive your television through an antenna, your television can still work with a converter box.”  It directs you to dtv2009.gov, and tells you you can “apply for a coupon” there.  Then the guy folds his arms, looks smug, and the cable logo comes out.

A bit more background: the man is walking across salt flats as he speaks.  He passes a 1960s furniture-size television with a flickering picture that finally resolves.

Implied:  Broadcast TV is a barren landscape
Implied:  Broadcast TV is antiquated
Implied:  Broadcast TV flickers
Implied:  Satellite won’t work either
Implied:  Applying for the coupons is a government program, and as much of a hassle as going to the DMV
Implied:  You will still have to buy something, it will just be a little cheaper with the coupon

OK, the facts.  Yes, on 17 February 2009, analog TVs will not be able to receive broadcasts without the intercession of a converter box.  But:

Satellite works just as well as Cable during the transition
The coupon application process is simple, and can be accessed online, by phone, or by mail
The coupons are for $40 apiece, and every household is entitled to two for free
Converter boxes are expected to cost no more than $50, and I’d bet anyone that ten dollar difference that Walmart will have one for $39.99 before the switchover date

This is, essentially, a push-poll in television advertising format.  It pretends to be benign or even helpful, while in fact it is intensely devious.  Shame on the cable industry, preying upon one of the least-empowered sections of society: those who generally cannot reasonably afford cable or satellite television.

Chain Link 2.  You are reading this bottom-up, right?

This, too, was going to be one sentence in the following post, but it also grew out of hand.

It’s reasonable, I think, for people to be able to choose the words applied to them.

I grew up a gaijin.  That’s a Japanese derogatory racial epithet for foreigners.  What would I have preferred?  Well, I don’t really like American, as I don’t think one nation should get to claim the name of two continents containing 22 countries.  Westerner would have been OK.  Something descriptive, like he’s a U.S. Citizen would probably be best.

I weigh close to three bills.  That’s 21 stones if you’re British, 133 kilos if you’re from anywhere else, and two million grains if I’m fated to encounter an ungloved Midas.  Obese is unpleasant.  Morbidly obese especially so.  “Big Guy” is not a charming nickname (Bob Mike, do people call you “Slim”?  Do you like it?)  I prefer large.

I’m an atheist.  Calling me agnostic is likely to get you sneered at.  Calling me a Bright is liable to get you bitch-slapped.  Naturalist is comfortable.  Rationalist and Freethinker feel nice, but I imagine are offensive to many people, because they imply that if you rationally and freely thought about things you’d completely agree with me.  So I stick with atheist.

Now I’m venturing into unknown territory.  If I had very dark skin, I think I would still hate African-American.  It’s clunky.  It wrongfully suggests that all dark-skinned people are from Africa, which has to annoy Australians, yes?  And aren’t all Americans really, originally, African?  I think I’d like black, or even Negroe, with an e and capitalized.

I’m heterosexual.  That’s a fine term as far as I’m concerned.  I loathe straight (what’s the opposite of that?)  But if I were homosexual, I think I’d prefer gay (whether a man or woman.)  I know several practicing bisexuals, at least one of which self-describes as queer.  I think that’s mostly affect, but egads.  You’ve got to help me, people.  It this one of those rescued epithets, like nigger, that the “in” crowd is allowed to flaunt and outsiders can be murdered over?

But most sincerely — and this is my ultimate point — if I were significantly shorter in stature than the average person, I strongly believe I would like almost anything more than little person.  That sounds so bloody condescending to me.  Maybe not midget, but what — what? — is wrong with dwarf?

This will be relevant in Chain Link 3.

Follow the link: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/closeguantanamo.html