The Sideshow
Archive for January 2003
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The SideshowArchive for January 2003 |
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11:13 GMT: Permalink
Friday, 31 January 200313:59 GMT: Permalink
Various people have been giving their thoughts on how Salon can survive, and Atrios adds a good point:13:17 GMT: Permalink
I'm always a bit amused by conservatives who take great glee in the always impending demise of Salon, and mock each new round of funding as throwing good money after bad. It isn't as if any conservative magazine survives without the generosity of donors - The National Review , The Weekly Standard , The Washington Times , along with the various conservative webzines all have generous benefactors. I can't find the figures right now, but if I'm remembering correctly Salon has more annual subscribers than does the Weekly Standard, (and both numbers are exceeded by subscriptions to the Nation). So, judging by that, Salon is surprisingly successful. It's possible they can't survive without donations - either by their readers or by "investors" who aren't expecting to make their money back. But, nor can most political magazines. Given that, it seems obvious that Salon should cater to what the world already thinks is its base - particularly now that their new revenue model lets everyone click-through a few ads to read the content. If that's still in place when my subscription runs out I probably won't renew. Or, if I do I'll consider it a donation - if they're worth donating to.
Seeing the Forest makes a sighting:13:01 GMT: Permalink
SpinesWell, it looks to me like Kennedy is showing his, but Kerry, Edwards and Hillary Clinton are all moving away from him on the Group D bench. Man, just once I would like to not have to hold my nose when I vote in a presidential election. Dean looks better every day. (But still not as good as Gore.)
CNN: Kennedy to seek new measure on war with Iraq.
Senator Kennedy is asking for a new vote."Much has changed in the many months since Congress has debated war with Iraq," the Massachusetts Democrat said in a statement released after President Bush's State of the Union address, in which Bush tried to rally the American people to the need to disarm Iraq.It looks like the Dems are growing spines.
"U.N. inspectors are on the ground and making progress, and their work should continue," Kennedy said. "Osama bin Laden and the Korean nuclear crisis continue to pose far greater threats [than Iraq]."
This has been floating around the blogosphere all week, but for those who missed it, Helen Thomas recently said a few words about a subject she knows well:12:42 GMT: Permalink
Keep in mind that Thomas came up in the bad old days. Unlike Thursday night, when four of five honorees were women, she spent decades proving herself to the male hierarchy.(I would have said, "We've never had a president who had as many faults and as few virtues as George W. Bush." Helen Thomas may have to call him a "president", but I don't, and I refuse to get over it until the Republican Party base gets over the Civil War.)As late as 1972 she was the only woman on the Nixon China trip. Still, she survives in a Washington press corps that she says has gone soft, accepting presidential spin without question.
There was a lot of that in her speech, this talk of devaluation in the character of leadership. Not surprisingly for an admitted liberal, she held her greatest praise for John Kennedy, the only president in her estimation who made Americans look to their higher angels.
Then came Johnson's Great Society and Vietnam. Nixon, she said, was a man who would — when presented two roads — "always choose the wrong one." He was followed by "healing" Ford, well-meaning Carter, Reagan's revolution, Bush Sr.'s self-destruction and Clinton's damaging of the presidential myth.
She seemed to have sympathy and affection for everyone but George W. Bush, a man who she said is rising on a wave of 9-11 fear — fear of looking unpatriotic, fear of asking questions, just fear. "We have," she said, "lost our way."
Thomas believes we have chosen to promote democracy with bombs instead of largess while Congress "defaults," Democrats cower and a president controls all three branches of government in the name of corporations and the religious right.
As she signed my program, I joked, "You sound worried."
"This is the worst president ever," she said. "He is the worst president in all of American history."
The woman who has known eight of them wasn't joking.
[Update: Patrick says James Buchanan is still ahead of GWB, at least until the new Civil War starts.]
Christopher Hitchens and Mark Danner debated invading Iraq.
Thursday, 30 January 200313:53 GMT: Permalink
A couple of gorgeous photos at Anger Management Course. I love stuff like that.13:15 GMT: Permalink
Here's a pretty scary item at Talk Left looking at this editorial:12:54 GMT: Permalink
Salvador Magluta, considered one of Miami's most notorious narcotics dealers, was prosecuted in federal court for having witnesses murdered and for laundering millions of dollars in drug proceeds. A federal judge then punished Magluta with a 205-year sentence. Magluta, 48, will live in prison till the day he dies.But Magluta was never convicted of the homicides for which he was sentenced. A jury of his peers found Magluta not guilty of the murders, and guilty only of the nonviolent money-laundering charges -- crimes that carry a maximum sentence of 20 years. The jury's verdict notwithstanding, the judge decided that Magluta was responsible for the homicides and sentenced him accordingly.
In a watershed 1997 opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal judges, in imposing sentence, may ignore jury verdicts of acquittal and determine whether defendants have done wrong. The Herald applauded the punishment, and the new U.S. attorney claimed that such a sentence sends a message about justice. It does indeed: The message is that prosecutors can lose and still win, that a jury no longer stands between an accused American and a life sentence.....
Nick Kessler is trying to figure out what caused The New Republic to make statements like this:12:12 GMT: Permalink
"The real problem with Pickering isn't that he's a racist. (The strong support for him among black Mississippians offers pretty compelling evidence that he's not.)"Nick points out that they are dismissing the public statements from just about every organized black group in the state to create this spin. Moreover, they present no evidence of this "strong support" Pickering is supposed to have from black people - nor have I seen anything more than a mere claim to support it elsewhere. The Mississippi folks who seem to be making this claim appear to be...well, white Republican Party activists. Hm, I wonder what causes this.
MMMM, Valentine's Day will be here soon. (Don't I just wish!)
Wednesday, 29 January 200323:39 GMT: Permalink
State of the Union14:56 GMT: PermalinkI'm sure you can guess what my reaction was to this load of spin and misdirection, so let's move on....
The BBC, at least, was pretty clear that Saddam and Osama are not friends, and they weren't fooled by yet another rehash of trite phrases and claims that range from unproven to manifestly laughable. Maureen Dowd doesn't even seem to think this is a matter for jokes. Josh Marshall was in a trusting mood and started with these words:
A few comments on the speech. Up until the Iraq stuff, it seemed well-delivered but lackluster. It was actually weaker than I'd expected. Not bad, just uninspired.Someone tell Josh that most of them have a fairly short shelf-life. From what I understand, they really shouldn't still be of much use by now. But in any case, his verdict was that basically, Bush hadn't delivered the goods:The Iraq stuff was different. And in the early portions, I thought it was quite good. (The line contrasting 'process' and 'result' was powerful, even if I thought the point he was trying to make was a partly flawed one.) The president made an excellent point: the UN is on record cataloguing great quantities of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq's possession. What happened to it all? The Iraqis say they don't have it. And they've provided no evidence that they destroyed it. Where is it?
But what we're looking for isn't a pretext for war, but a rationale for going to war now. On that count I don't think things look much different than they did few hours ago.David Ehrenstein goes through the entire speech and responds. A good point:
[Bush] Almost three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm. He has shown instead utter contempt for the United Nations and for the opinion of the world.Well, c'mon, you must know it's a joke every time the administration and its supporters whine that Saddam has been violating UN rules, right? Like he's not a piker at this compared to the US?[David E] As have we.
Tapped offers a highlight in their summing up: In the lies and spin department, Tapped notes Bush's meaningless statistic that "92 million Americans will keep -- this year -- an average of almost 1,100 dollars more of their own money." Nancy Pelosi was right to guffaw, live on TV, when Bush mentioned this.
Liberal Oasis dissects the lies in the domestic side of the speech., and asks, If you can't trust the President to tell the truth in the State of the Union Address, when can you trust him?. Well, first you have to have a real President.
The Daily Kos says the Gallup figures for the speech indicate a positive reception, but then a reader catches a little problem with that:
Gallup is diddling us again. Their poll last night (printed in this morning's USA Today) was, as you say, only of speech watchers, and in the fine print they offer a partisan breakdown -- 40% GOP, 31% IND, only 28% DEM. No wonder the numbers skew better for Bush. And to compare the results this group gave out for Iraq to the 47-47 division in yesterday's real poll, suggesting an overnight groundswell of new approval, is dishonest in the extreme. George Gallup must be turning in his grave.The Agora thinks the speech was mostly a washout on the economy, and Seeing the Forest makes this diagnosis:
I really think that Bush is surrounded by people who are afraid to contradict him or bring him bad news. I think he isn't aware of events outside of the good news that is brought to him. "Yes sir, you are the chosen one, sir. GOD has chosen you, sir."Atrios doesn't give him the benefit of the doubt, though:No one even told him that the aluminum tubes story turned out to be phony. No one even dares tell him it's pronounced "nuclear."
I turned it to Happy Gilmore awhile ago - it was a bit more intelligent. But, apparently the "aluminum tubes" were mentioned in the SOTU speech. Complete ethical bankruptcy while pushing for an invasion.Neal Pollack isn't in at the moment, but his guest writer was so impressed that he has written erotic poetry in honor of the occasion - which I'm not gonna quote, but here's the intro:
Hello Americans and other people not from America, I'm Christopher Monks and I'm with you once again while Neal is away. I'm still coming down from last night's brilliant display of Patriotism and topnotch teleprompter reading. President Bush outlined his vision for America last night, and I was incredibly revved up afterwards. I never get tired of hearing how much better we are than everybody. Why that was what was so great about high school, when the cool, but mean kids let me hang out with them every so often in the cafeteria. We'd sit around in our Member's Only jackets and multiple layers of Oxford shirts, making fun of all the ugly and retarded kids. Oh, the power I felt! Yes, some of the glory wore off after I finished helping them with their homework and they stuffed me in a gym locker, but it was simply a show of their tough love for me. And from the eighteenth time on I stopped crying, thus earning their respect. But enough about my sordid past, I want to display my admiration for our President's leadership in the best way I know how to: through my gift for writing erotic poetry. Here then is some fresh, sexy, and scintillating erotic poetry ("poésie érotique," if you will) inspired by President Bush's State of the Union Speech.Okay, I can't resist. Just two lines:
God Bless America
Let's go have some hot sex
Hesiod is running a little game:14:03 GMT: Permalink
GLENN REYNOLDS SUCK UP WATCH: I'm starting a new recurring feature here at Counterspin Central. The title is, well, self-explanatory. Each week I'll post the most egregious Instapundit suck up post by a blogger.On a perverse whim, I briefly considered trying to write a post that really sucked up to Glenn, but after a quick scan of Instapundit I couldn't find any hooks to work from. Oh, well, I guess I won't be able to be the Glenn Reynolds Suck Up of the Week.But, in order to do this, I need your assistance. Please submit nominations for the "honor" via e-mail, and I'll select the most...er...deserving candidate on the following Sunday.
Perhaps more usefully, Hesiod has checked out the proposed RNC spin on the Democratic candidates and done a quick summing up. Two examples:
1. Howard Dean.No, actually, Ted Kennedy did not vote for Bush's use of force resolution. Kennedy has actually been good on these issues (Hillary hasn't).Highlight: If he's the nominee expect to hear the phrase "civil unions" or "gay marriage" until you want to smear your self with Andrew Sullivan's testoster-grease, and jump off a giant inflatable beer can.
2. John Edwards.
Highlight: If Senator Edwards makes the cut, expect his name to change [in the "liberal media"] from "John" Edwards to "Former Personal Injury Attorney" John Edwards. Although, I think "trial lawyer" sounds a tad bit less sympathetic than "personal injury attorney." But maybe the GOP had Frank Luntz do some polling for them?
Also expect to hear about how often he voted with Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton. [about 90% of the time] as if that meant anything without seeing the actual substance of the things they voted on. They all voted in favor of Bush's use of force resolution on Iraq, so does that count?
I have to agree that they nailed Lieberman, though.
Cursor says: Appearing at the National Press Club, Sen. Tom Daschle and Rep. Nancy Pelosi accuse President Bush of creating a "credibility gap," by promising things that he has no intention of delivering.13:15 GMT: PermalinkCourting Disaster is a blog new to me and full of chewy goodness. (Via TBogg.)
Cindy Adams at Page Six says:
GORE is not out of politics. Trust mother, kiddies. Folks who are close to him who are close to me who is close to you say his opting out of the next presidential campaign does not - n-o-tttt - mean he'd refuse the nomination. About to sweat for it, he wouldn't. But accept a draft, he would. Just letting you know what I know as I know it, y'know.
Tuesday, 28 January 200312:55 GMT: Permalink
The Daily Howler wonders how Sean Hannity and others can claim that the rich pay a so much higher percentage of their income in taxes than the poor when the truth appears to be somewhat different:12:12 GMT: Permalink
Top fifth of earners: 19 percentAs Tim Noah has already noted, our current tax system is already mighty close to being a flat tax, despite what you may have heard. The progressivity of the income tax helps to balance out the far higher percentage bite that other taxes (such as payroll tax) take out of working peoples' pockets, but note that the working poor actually end up paying a higher percentage out than almost anyone.
Next fifth of earners: 17 percent
Middle fifth of earners: 16 percent
Next fifth of earners: 14 percent
Bottom fifth of earners: 18 percent
Epicycle has been following the recent calls in the UK to ban replica guns (January 8th & 9th entries), in the wake of a murder case which, of course, does not have anything to do with replica guns but with real guns that are already illegal. He also discusses the "landmark" deal between the RIAA and some tech companies to switch tactics on file-sharing (15 January entry).04:10 GMT: Permalink
A glimpse into the future: Watch the invasion of Iraq! Flash presentation; via Through the Looking Glass. (BTW, "spunk" doesn't mean the same thing in the UK as it does in the US, if anyone missed that - and Tony Blair, I'm certain, would not be saying it in public.)02:15 GMT: PermalinkTed Barlow is looking at the wealth of minorities, and why blacks have less of it than whites even at the same income levels.
From Avram Grumer's journal, "Ted [Turner] has long been working against worldwide clitorectomies; Ted is a man who puts his money where his mouth is! — Jane Fonda (according to Liz Smith, via Gawker)
Orcinus on how The Washington Times (among others) may have helped cause 9/11. And lots of other good posts. Like this one, in which he says: Oh, in case anyone had forgotten amid all this Newspeak: Democratic liberalism -- especially questioning, probing and ultimately pragmatic liberalism -- is a quintessentially American product. Fascism -- particularly the kind that brooks no questioning -- is not.
From Off the Kuff:01:33 GMT: Permalink
Rob reports on this article about abstinence-only education as it's practiced in Lubbock, Texas (which as Rob also notes has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in Texas). Abstinence-only is how Team Bush wants sex ed taught around the country, with an emphasis on the dangers of sex and contraception.
I'm curious about something. If sex is as dangerous as they make it out to be, then surely everyone in the Bush White House would have practiced celibacy before marriage. I mean, I'm certain they would never tell Americans not to do something which they themselves have done. Still, perhaps a few reporters should start to ask about it just so we can be sure:
"Ari, you were married last year. Were you and your wife virgins at the time of your marriage?"
"Ari, I understand that Condi Rice has never been married. Is it fair to say that she's a virgin?"
"Ari, I know that President Bush considers sex before marriage to be risky and unhealthy behavior. Would Jenna and Barbara say that their parents have taught them to remain chaste before marriage, and would they say they have listened to their parents?"
I feel confident that President Bush, his staff, and his family have been leading us by example on this important issue. Don't you?
From Jessa Crispin at Bookslut:
L. A. Weekly has an interview with David Rees, the mind behind Get Your War On.And there's also a pointer there to an interview with Kurt Vonnegut."Poul Anderson's classic fantasy, The Broken Sword, knocks The Fellowship of the Ring into a cocked hat, says Michael Moorcock," in Saturday's Guardian.
Monday, 27 January 200314:39 GMT: Permalink
Emma outlines four warning signs of propaganda.Don't forget to check out Nathan Newman to get the picture on, well, almost everything.
Sunday, 26 January 200322:46 GMT: Permalink
Eric Alterman offers a warning about an impending event:22:22 GMT: Permalink
These are dangerous times. George W. Bush is set to make another State of the Union address.The last one was a doozy. Few speeches in political history have caused so much damage based on so little forethought by so many wise guys.
Media Reform Information Center tells you a lot, with a comprehensive list of resources, on media concentration and reform. (Thanks to Howard Rheingold for that one.)22:06 GMT: PermalinkAnd here's something I didn't know, from Drudge last year:
Back when the stock was riding high and the smell of merger was sweet as NASDAQ, Federal Communications Commission member Michael Powell found no conflict in voting on the largest media marriage in history, between AOL and TIMEWARNER -- even though his father, Colin, sat on the board of the online leader!(Pointer courtesy of Paul Younghouse.)Michael insisted that the FCC needed to tread carefully before disqualifying any commissioner's participation in a vote just because of some "fuzzy" connection.
Fuzzy: Despite his father's options on about $13.3 million worth of AOL shares and his management role at AOL, Michael, 38, did not recuse himself from participating in the FCC's decision on the merger -- voting in the affirmative.
Anne is Peevish, and passionate with it. I like it.21:29 GMT: PermalinkI'm amused by the fact that Thought Crimes has given the former Governor of Texas the title "Prejudice Bush".
From Lisa English at Ruminate This:
America, right now, on this evening, just days or weeks before unnecessary war, is being covered as if this were Any Other Time. Any Other Story.It's Not.
Things are wrong....really wrong in our nation, and I've a sense that the media is almost there...you're almost to the point where you're set to question as loud as we are questioning. I implore you to go there...
We've got ourselves trouble...right here. Right here in River City. Big Trouble...with a capital T, and that stands for Truth and we need you...American journalism, now, more than ever.
We need you to get us the hell out of this mess.
Saturday, 25 January 200316:19 GMT: Permalink
Skimble has an unpleasant story about a woman who was led away in handcuffs when she tried to pick up her regular prescription for the meds she takes for her brain cancer. No one considered it worthwhile to check her records or call her doctor first.15:01 GMT: PermalinkSkimble also names First Draft by Tim Porter as Underappreciated Blog of the Day. With a subtitle like "Ink-Stained Kvetches About Newspapering, Readership & Relevance", it is naturally of interest in these parts.
Liberal Oasis has the run-down on how Edwards and Dean performed before NARAL (and has a few words about Al Sharpton as well). It's also time to check out the series of posts Get Donkey has been doing on Howard Dean - Part III and Part II were just recently posted, but Part I is from a few months ago.14:14 GMT: PermalinkAnd on that subject, I've added another poll to the Presidential Poll page, so vote again!
Gee, do you think I should be worried?13:36 GMT: PermalinkAtrios has quoted a segment of CNN Newsnight with Aaron Brown, saying, "So this is where we are." It starts like this:
BROWN: All right. Back to Iraq and a couple stories that brought a chill today. The State Department warned all Americans living abroad to be prepared to be evacuated. A senior official not denying that the possibility of war triggered this most unusual worldwide advisory.You know, this is getting personal.
Hear Susan McDougal interviewed by Diane Rehmn about how Ken Starr tried to use McDougal to manufacture evidence against Bill Clinton.13:02 GMT: Permalink
Sound familiar?Okay, guess who the press said this about:
He is dogged to an unusual degree by two questions: Who is he, and why? Indeed, his friends have spent more than a little time lately talking about [him] as "a changed man"—the implication being that he's not the undisciplined opportunist that so many critics believe him to be… I'm suspicious. He's nearly [x] years old, and at that age, at any adult age, you are who you are, no?They're just re-writing the script for Kerry, of course. This is quoted from The Daily Howler, where Bob Somerby answers that last question:
Actually, it all depends on whose story you're telling. For example, according to Standard Press Corps Accounts, George W. Bush became a New Man at age 40, then did so again at age 55 (after 9/11). In fact, if the press is on your side, you can stop being "who you are" as many times as the corps likes.Just like if George Bush changes his clothes, he's some kind of a hero, but if Gore does it, it's a pathology. Somerby finds more idiotic attacks on perfectly normal behavior by Kerry in the same article (like, how strange that a man talks about his career in a restaurant - when he's talking to a reporter). But, most importantly, he finds what may be the thing that's really sticking in the reporter's craw, and it also has a familiar feel - of their favorite target, Bill Clinton.
Friday, 24 January 200315:13 GMT: Permalink
Just for grins, I've posted a Presidential Poll at The Sideshow Annex. Vote!14:10 GMT: Permalink(And speaking of that little thing, Liberal Oasis has the latest run-down on some public performances by Democratic presidential hopefuls.)
Just a little reminder that Moose & Squirrel's Information One-stop really does have links to all sorts of online resources, and that he posts the weekly columns by Gene Lyons for those of you who don't live in Arkansas. Gene is in a pretty bad mood lately about all those polls (like this one). (Joe Conason obviously has a bad taste in his mouth as well. They're not the only ones....)
Thursday, 23 January 200316:05 GMT: Permalink
The article Voter News Service: What Went Wrong? still raises more questions for me than it answers. I tend to assume that even where malfeasance in local election returns seems frequent, we're still looking at individual phenomena rather than a deliberate, widespread pattern. Even after the 2000 election, that's still my prejudice. But I keep looking at all these articles about VNS and I can't help noticing that every example I recall seeing of a significant disparity between the exit poll data and the actual returns had the Democrat winning in the exit poll and the Republican winning - often by a substantial margin - in the final ballot tally. Other weird data (like several winning candidates in different voting localities of varied populations all getting exactly the same number of votes) also seem to favor the Republicans.There are, of course, numerous reasons to be suspicious in such cases. In 2000, one Florida county reporting a lead of several thousand votes for Gore in the ballot tally suddenly lost all of those votes. We were told it was a computer glitch, but it seemed a very odd glitch to me and it's never been explained why the first rather than the second figure was the one "known" to be wrong. Given the dramatic difference it made and the fact that the occurrence was so unusual, I would have expected closer examination of the subject. Since we now know that a considerable amount of illegal activity was going on in order to force a Bush win in Florida (among other places), it would seem to me that we should all be even more vigilant about keeping an eye on things. Yet little effort seems to have gone into investigating the rather significant number of oddities that occurred in 2002. (Atrios made several posts documenting these problems at the time.)
And then there's:
This second debacle meant the end of VNS, as the news organizations said they would look at new ways of tabulating national and state results. Insiders close to VNS say the media organizations will likely rely more on their own individual exit polling and that of the Associated Press exit polling data in future elections. Battelle Memorial Institute, the Columbus, Ohio-based technology firm charged with overhauling the VNS system, was terminated.This is almost funny; I think Battelle had other reasons for not mentioning its ties to VNS on its site - such as protecting VNS from association with a group that was suspected of being highly partisan."There's no way the networks are going to do anything that's connected to Battelle going forward," says one network analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity. "That ship has sailed."
Battelle Memorial Institute representatives declined to comment. Even before it got the boot, the organization appeared to distance itself from VNS. Its corporate Web site made no mention of its work or association with VNS.
After the 2000 fiasco, though, "VNS decided it was time to make a real effort to fix the system."You know, this seems to me a strange idea of what constitutes an improvement. There's certainly no reason to think a company VP would be more able and knowledgeable than someone who actually worked in the department that was specifically responsible for dealing with such data; quite the reverse, in fact. One might almost get the impression that a decision had been made to make sure the results were politically comfortable to networks rather than accurate.The first step was to change the VNS board of directors. Before the 2000 meltdown, the board was composed of representatives from the election units of each network. After the 2000 fiasco, a vice president from each network was on the board.
In the main, though, we have the very real problem of ballot machines programmed by people with strong ties to the Republican Party, being overseen by organizations and media that are also, at the very least, more sympathetic to the Republican Party than to the public at large - and no reliable watchdogs. In many cases, we are looking at machines that can not be checked. We're getting increasingly anomalous results and we have no way to figure out why these anomalies are occurring. We know that cheating at significant levels is going on, and we seem to be ignoring it. If this goes on, it would not be surprising at all for Republicans to get landslide final tallies when the real voting was exactly the opposite of the official results. And no way to prove it.
Wednesday, 22 January 200323:34 GMT: Permalink
Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) speaks:13:38 GMT: Permalink
"Surely, we can have effective relationships with other nations without adopting a chip-on-the-shoulder foreign policy, a my-way-or-the-highway policy that makes all our goals in the world more difficult to achieve," Kennedy said a speech delivered to the National Press Club.
[...]
"I continue to be convinced that this is the wrong war at the wrong time," Kennedy, the Senate's leading liberal said. "The threat from Iraq is not imminent and it will distract America from the two more immediate threats to our security: the clear and present danger of terrorism and the crisis with North Korea."
[...]
Kennedy said Bush had issued an "eloquent denunciation" of segregation last month when he criticized racially charged comments by Sen. Trent Lott, R-Mississippi. But Kennedy said the president's action did not match his words, faulting his choice of judicial nominees and his opposition to an admissions policy, targeting minorities, at the University of Michigan."An administration that takes such a course, whether out of conviction or political calculation is no friend of minorities and no force for civil rights," Kennedy said.
[...]
Kennedy asserted the president's proposed package of tax breaks would benefit disproportionately the wealthiest taxpayers."We cannot say it is wartime for the rest of America, but still peacetime for the rich," Kennedy said, referencing Bush's calls in the past for Americans to make some sacrifice in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Get the vote12:27 GMT: PermalinkFrom Tapped:
WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT. Blogger Jeff Hauser (link here) writes in to note that the discrepancy between the political power of the Plains, Mountain and prairie states and their actual populations is much worse than our purely hypothetical figure suggested. The Dakotas, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming make up 10 percent of the Senate and less than 2 percent of the population. As The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg pointed out in this stimulating review of Robert Dahl's How Democratic is the American Constitution?, the Senate basically guarantees a kind of political affirmative action for conservatives (albeit an indubitably constitutional kind):Well, it made Nick Kessler think:
Here's a little thought experiment, inspired by Dahl's reflections. Imagine, if you can, that African-Americans were represented "fairly" in the Senate. They would then have twelve senators instead of, at present, zero, since black folk make up twelve per cent of the population. Now imagine that the descendants of slaves were afforded the compensatory treatment to which the Constitution entitles the residents of small states. Suppose, in other words, that African-Americans had as many senators to represent them as the Constitution allots to the twelve per cent of Americans who live in the least populous states. There would be forty-four black senators.Fascinating stuff, isn't it?
Since my last post about Wyoming, the state's been mentioned by TAPPED and others discussing Michael Lind's Atlantic Monthly article on how vast, depopulated regions affect politics. TAPPED made some good points about the article here and here. Something else that comes to mind about Wyoming and its 493,782 residents is that they get two Senators and a Representative, while the 572,059 residents of Washington, DC get none of these.Why aren't Democrats fighting harder for DC representation? This cause is good policy and good politics. It wouldn't only please the Democratic base, but would also appeal to independents as a matter of fairness and justice. Let the Republicans insist that DC residents (60% of whom are African-American) don't deserve votes in Congress but that the smaller population of Wyoming (92.1% white, 0.8% African-American) does; let them swear up and down that it has nothing to do with race. And see if anyone believes that the city wouldn't have representation in Congress by now if it were mostly populated by white conservatives.
One reason I'm not terribly impressed by all the stories about how sordid the porn industry is has to do with the fact that I know how the rest of the entertainment industry works - particularly the music business, which often makes the porn industry look downright graceful. I've said a few things here before about how they treat their artists, but do check out Ted Barlow on how "Payola never really went away, it just got outsourced."12:12 GMT: Permalink
It's been a while since I considered anything he wrote worth quoting as more than laughable, but every once in a while, it must be admitted, William Safire will speak truth about something most in mainstream media just don't seem able to face. This time, On Media Giantism:11:39 GMT: Permalink
You won't find a movie nominated for an Oscar with the heroine — fighting to expose the dominance of media conglomerates in the distribution of entertainment — crushed by the giant corporation that controls film financing, distribution and media criticism.You won't find television magazine programs fearlessly exposing the broadcast lobby's pressure on Congress and the courts to allow station owners to gobble up more stations and cross-own local newspapers, thereby to determine what information residents of a local market receive.
Nor will you find many newspaper chains assigning reporters to reveal the effect of media giantism on local coverage or cover the way publishers induce coverage-hungry politicians to loosen antitrust restraints.
Should we totally deregulate the public airwaves and permit the dwindling of major media down to a precious few? Should we reduce choices available to cantankerous individualists who do not want their information and entertainment limited by increasingly massive mass media?
[...]
Does this make me (gasp!) pro-regulation? Michael Powell, appointed by Bush to be F.C.C. chairman, likes to say "the market is my religion." My conservative economic religion is founded on the rock of competition, which — since Teddy Roosevelt's day — has protected small business and consumers against predatory pricing leading to market monopolization.One of the Democrats on the F.C.C., Michael Copps, is concerned that "we're relying on institutions to cover this debate which have interests in the outcome of the debate." That inherent conflict of interest is why I have long been banging my spoon against the highchair.
Republicans in the House, intimidated by the powerful broadcast lobby, don't admit that some regulation can be pro-business; neither does the D.C. Court of Appeals, which wants further "granulating of evidence" that endless merging harms competition. In the Senate, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, grasps this. Perhaps Commerce Chairman John McCain will see T.R.'s trust-busting light and start heavy granulating in hearings — before merger mania afflicts TV and film the way it is debilitating local radio.
Busy Busy Busy is, as usual, wonderful. Did you know that Newt Gingrich has re-emerged to tell us Why they really hate us? Elton says: It's not because they despise freedom, after all. And it's not because of all the treaties we've rejected or withdrawn from; in fact it has nothing to do with our foreign policy at all. No, teenagers worldwide hate us because of our loose women.11:02 GMT: PermalinkAnd check out Off the Kuff on how the death penalty does not bring "closure" for the survivors of murder victims - and can actually make things worse.
I can't help the feeling that all those lightbulb jokes have inspired Paul Krugman:
A liberal and a conservative were sitting in a bar. Then Bill Gates walked in. "Hey, we're rich!" shouted the conservative. "The average person in this bar is now worth more than a billion!" "That's silly," replied the liberal. "Bill Gates raises the average, but that doesn't make you or me any richer." "Hah!" said the conservative, "I see you're still practicing the discredited politics of class warfare."[Update: And now I see that Ted has quoted the joke, too. Figures.]Am I caricaturing the debate? Alas, not at all. Whenever anyone points out the systematic tilt of the Bush administration toward the rich, the administration and its defenders immediately raise the cry of "class warfare." Yet when you look at the arguments the administration actually makes on behalf of its policy, they are as silly as that of the conservative in the bar. The difference is that the administration knows exactly what it's doing.
For example: On Saturday, in his weekly radio address, George W. Bush declared that "the tax relief I propose will give 23 million small-business owners an average tax cut of $2,042 this year." That remark is intended to give the impression that the typical small-business owner will get $2,000. But as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, most small businesses will get a tax break of less than $500; about 5 million of those 23 million small businesses will get no break at all. The average is more than $2,000 only because a small number of very wealthy businessmen will get huge tax cuts.
Tuesday, 21 January 200319:46 GMT: Permalink
From Elayne Riggs:18:48 GMT: Permalink
Preserving True LegacyBy the way, I was interested in the notes in Elayne's source code, too. It's always helpful to click on View|Source if you're looking for tips on HTML, but this is even more so.A number of bloggers (like Ampersand and August Pollack and Eve Tushnet and Dwight Meredith) have been talking about how certain conservative elements have coopted the famous line from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech, I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, as some sort of "proof" that if he were alive today he'd be against affirmative action - conveniently ignoring the operative phrase "one day," which great level-playing-field day is, unfortunately, still a ways in the future. But Tom Tomorrow (link also at sidebar) points out another sin of omission, courtesy of an old article on FAIR's website in which Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon note, "The remarkable thing about this annual review of King's life is that several years -- his last years -- are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole... By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his 'Beyond Vietnam' speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before he was murdered -- King called the United States 'the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today'... Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they're not shown today on TV." The thing that struck me is that neither this article (which admittedly was from 1995) nor Tom's blog mentioned where you can read and hear some of these speeches, so I did a brief websearch. I love how the Internet is in many ways doing the opposite of what it may have been intended for - with just a little effort on the part of your average browser, it's very good at retrieving bits of history that might otherwise be ignored or forgotten. Here are some good audio excerpts courtesy of the National Radio Project, and here is some more info about King's anti-war activism from the MLK Jr. Papers Project. Here's the entire "Casualties of the War in Vietnam" speech, and here's the "Beyond Vietnam" one. Now more than ever, I think it's imperative that we remember and honor MLK Jr.'s anti-war stance as well as his anti-racism one. (Obligatory
CanadianComics Content just forSnagglepusssngrfxz: Ho Che Anderson's first two volumes of King are available from Fantagraphics, which says here that he's currently working on Volume 3, of which they have a couple pages sneak-peek, and hopes to release it this year.)
Irritating Events: Read the rest of this story from Peter David that contains this paragraph:18:30 GMT: Permalink
At which point Shana nearly reached over the counter and beat the woman senseless, except she realized that apparently no one she'd encountered at George Bush airport had a lick of sense anyway. The woman then took the bag and threw it onto the carousel as if she were tremendously put upon and being made to do something far beneath her, rather than her job.PAD also reports that Todd McFarlane is still dissing Neil Gaiman.
Gary Farber is just plain not listening:16:50 GMT: Permalink
PETE TOWNSEND: Count me in as another who has always respected and enjoyed the hell out of this man's music, and who he generally has seemed to be.Again, bear in mind that Townshend has openly admitted that he went to paid sites and looked at child porn. No one is contesting this. He looked. He did it. He has, under British law, possessed and made indecent images of children and incited the distribution of such images. It is irrelevant whether he understood that he was "making" an image under British law, or whether he had any intent to distribute or incite the distribution of such images. By his own admission, his actions fit the interpretation of these crimes as stated under the law. His intentions and reasons do not matter.Count me also as someone who is extremely dubious about accusations of involvement with child pornography until they are soundly proven.
Count me also as someone who believes there has been for some years a classic hysterical witchhunt going on in the Anglosphere on the topic, with absurd assertions such as that "children must always be believed" being made.
So count me as someone believing in Pete Townsend's innocence unless or until he is proven guilty, and finally count me, radically, as someone who finds the laws against possession of child pornography, as opposed to laws against abuse of children, also dubious, whatever I may think of such material, or the people who produce it (and, for what it's worth, looking at it, and engaging in the act of producing it, are Not Actually The Same Thing).
No, that doesn't mean that his situation is hopeless. He can hope that the Crown Prosecution Service will decide not to prosecute him - or if the CPS does decide to prosecute him, and if Townshend decides to contest the charges in court and is able to get a jury trial, he can hope for jury nullification. But that's the only way he gets out of it - he's already admitted to the crime in rather considerable detail, and the law itself allows no defense based on his reasons for having done it. So it makes no sense when Gary goes on to say:
But The Smoking Gun, the invaluable Court TV site, has a document they suggest supports Townsend's account that he was engaging in research on the topic related to his own past. Here's the nut quote:Of course, we'd have to be able to read his mind to prove that, but it doesn't matter - "research" is not a defense under the law.
Townshend's paper, which he once posted on his official web site, also notes that the "pathway to 'free' paedophilic imagery is--as it were--laid out like a free line of cocaine at a decadent cocktail party: only the strong willed or terminally uncurious can resist."I hope Townsend is indeed proven, rightfully, to have only engaged in research...
But the point of my post is that while the Townsend document might be evidence towards support for Townsend's story, to me, it points, slightly, in the opposite direction.Well, I don't want to see the material itself, but that's certainly not the only reason I don't click on spam links (for child porn or anything else). I never decode any attachments that I haven't asked for beforehand, and I treat any advertised "child porn" as either an out-and-out hoax or entrapment. But then, I know about the law, I know the history of mass-mailed "child porn" spam, and I don't trust any mail sent via Outlook Express.No matter where I stand on free speech and free thought, as opposed to supporting the illegalization of actual child abuse, Townsend's quote reads very oddly to me. Because I don't know about you, but the fact that I can likely find lots of child porn easy as I get spam has never in the slightest tempted me to go look for it, or even look at it when offers arrive -- as they do on a daily basis -- in my inbox.
It takes no "strong will" or "terminal incuriosity" at all. It would take the opposite -- overcoming an overwhelming case of the creeps -- for me to go looking at pictures of young kids engaged in sex.
Most people (especially if they use Outlook Express) are not as clued-up as I am, and anyone who gets their information about "child porn" from the British news media is probably utterly confused about both the content and the state of the law. (I'm still occasionally stopped in the street and asked to sign petitions asking for child porn to be banned. Since "indecent" images of people under the age of 16 - including many things that most people don't think of as "child porn" - have been entirely illegal since 1976, that should tell you something about how well people understand the situation. There are always plenty of signatures already on these petitions when I see them.) I regularly find myself having to explain these things to journalists who cover this subject as a profession.
But, as I've said before, that doesn't mean I have no curiosity about what's out there, and I'm astonished at Gary's suggestion that wanting to inform yourself is not a temptation. This subject is no different from any other: no matter what you hear about it, you don't know that it isn't all lies until you look for yourself. Gary might assume that the subject matter would revolt him, but since he's never looked, how does he know?
I have seen some of the material that the police have said was "child porn" and seized, or threatened to seize, or that others have expressed outrage over, but only because it was obvious to any sane person that it wasn't disgusting, revolting, and appealing only to prurient interest. Sometimes these pictures are actually carried in the press - when they express their own outrage that such images are being seized or labelled as "child porn" by people who seem to make a lifestyle of attacking all nudity. In other words, most of the child porn I've seen is not disgusting or revolting at all. Quite a few of the pictures turn out to be cute, or charming, or even quite beautiful. (Well, many are disgustingly saccharine, but that's something else.)
So I can't even predict that if I looked at all the advertised "child porn" on the 'net I'd actually see anything that disgusted me. How can I know? I've never seen it!
But when I've asked people from other countries to verify charges about certain newsgroups carrying "thousands of images of children being raped," what they usually tell me is that after nine hours of trawling through those newsgroups, nearly all of what they saw fit into the cute, arty, or saccharine categories, and maybe only one or two pictures actually fit the description of what most people think of as "child porn".
The horrific stuff that the police claim is to be found in those "private paedophile rings" may or may not really be there, but no one can try to find out. Given the extraordinary powers that the police have managed to acquire under the blanket of this issue, that, in itself, should be shocking.
Geez, Gary, doesn't that make you curious? I mean, if nothing else, who's watching the watchmen?
Recommended Reading16:23 GMT: PermalinkLisa English at Ruminate This on THE BIG-BOXING OF AMERICAN MEDIA - or... Why is Time-Warner showering politicos with all-expense paid European vacations? Tell me something...what would be your reaction to learning that some special interest group was sending their favorite and most accommodating Congressmen, Senators and their families on all-expense paid trips around the world?
Malpractice tort reform made absolutely clear at Liberal Oasis.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden does some research on those people who collect animals until their homes are overrun.
Joshua Green on Reagan's Liberal Legacy in The Washington Monthly.
Greg Palast interviewed by Hustler:07:14 GMT: Permalink
HUSTLER: Your book also mentions Bush and intelligence failures prior to September 11, right?PALAST: CIA and FBI agents told BBC Television, for which I was reporting, that they were ordered not to investigate Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks such as al Qaeda. The FBI agents "accidentally" left a file about the Bin Laden family on the desk of one of my researchers. They called up and said, "Oops, we left our file on your desk by accident. You haven't read it, have you? Well, we'll be back to pick it up in 30 minutes-unless you need 45." The FBI agents handed us material dated September 13, 2001, two days after the attack. It was on that date that the FBI was finally released to go after two members of the Bin Laden family, who they had already identified as being involved with a suspected terrorist organization. But by September 11th, they were flown birds.
HUSTLER: What happened to other members of the Bin Laden family living in the U.S. after 9/11?
PALAST: Just after the no-fly restriction was lifted, a private Saudi Arabian jet airlifted the Bin Laden family members out of the country before the FBI could talk to them. Everyone thinks there's just one black sheep in that family, but the FBI agents were telling us at BBC they think there's a couple of gray sheep, and they had some questions for the family members. There were a lot of people dead under the rubble at that moment when those people left.
HUSTLER: What had American policy been regarding the Bin Laden family prior to the Bush Administration?
PALAST: Bill Clinton had already put a go-slow on investigations of Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks. Clinton had always taken the position that we can't annoy our dear friends, the Saudis, even if our dear friends happen to be funding terrorists like the al Qaeda network; however, he never actually stood in the way of investigating them, whereas George W., according to FBI and intelligence agents, said, "You can't go there. You may not look. You may not investigate the American Bin Ladens."
HUSTLER: So the FBI and CIA agents were pissed at George W.?
PALAST: They are furious. He blindsided our intelligence agencies. How could a trillion-dollar intelligence operation like the CIA not foresee the most deadly attack on America since Pearl Harbor? The answer is not because Bush knew about September 11 in advance. Rather, they were told not to look because of connections that are political, personal and financial between the Bushes and the Saudis. When these agencies were told not to look, there was a lot not to look at. There was a 1996 meeting between the al Qaeda financial arm, Saudi billionaires and key international arms dealers. There was a discussion about which Saudis would pay how much to al Qaeda. Now if I can find out about it, and the French intelligence had a mole in the meeting, you can bet that our trillion-dollar CIA could find out about it; so why wasn't there follow-up? Why wasn't there action? How about a note to the Saudis saying, "Do us a favor: Stop giving money to people who are killing us."
Electrolite alerts me to The Bitter Irony of the Week in this article by Bob Herbert saying that the Senate has declared 2003 the Year of the Blues. In its honor, you can listen to Paradynamic Roadhouse on the 'net, just like Patrick is doing.06:10 GMT: PermalinkMeanwhile, I quote this para:
In his book "Deep Blues," Robert Palmer described a visit he made in 1979 to the Mississippi Delta home of Joe Rice Dockery, who had inherited from his father the remnants of a plantation on which an astonishing number of great blues musicians had lived and played.I quote it only because it mentions Robert Palmer. Warren A. Gardner came over and woke me up one morning in 1969 at my place on East 3rd Street and told me I had to come and hear his band. He dragged me to Hoboken to watch them practice and, boy, I'm sure glad he did. They were called The Insect Trust ('cause Warren used to hang out with Burroughs), and I still listen to their records. And I still love the wistful woodwind sound Bob Palmer laid down on "The Eyes of a New York Woman" (lyrics from Pynchon's V).Warren talked me into coming down to Memphis to work on the blues festival with them, and I stayed with Bob & Mary Palmer, and Mary's brother Bill, in the house they rented while they were down there putting it all together. It's still the best music festival experience I ever had.
After I went back to Washington, I ran into Bob once on M street, but that was the last time I ever talked to any of them. In fact, I don't think I even ran into anyone else who'd heard of any of them, until I saw the special on Deep Blues on television here, a few years back. (I've seen more people I know from back home on TV since I moved here than I'd ever seen when I still lived there.) Once I was on the Internet, I tried to look for friends I'd lost track of, and couldn't find any of them (not even Phil Wolcott, and the only person I know who might know where to find him is Nils Lofgren, and I can't ask him, either). The one exception was Bob Palmer; I found his obituary.
So I don't like to try to find old friends on the 'net anymore. But I'd still like to find Warren. And Phil.
And it's good to see Bob's work remembered.
I wish Jesus really was George Bush's favorite philosopher. If you share that view, you might want to check out Real Live Preacher.05:20 GMT: PermalinkDigby shows us a fine example of what a real President should sound like on Martin Luther King Day.
Many fine things at Mark Kleiman's page and I can't pick just one.
Joe Vecchio asks a good question about news coverage of the demonstrations this weekend: Why are there no aerial views of the crowds to give a better idea as to their size? Yeah, remember those?
Emma matches a Founding Father's words up against Scalia's claims of what the Founding Fathers intended.
Planet Swank found an Internet Connection Speedometer.
I'm a sucker for this kind of thing. Okay, they weren't your very closest friend, but they were part of your life and when they're gone you just can't let the occasion pass without saying a few words in remembrance of what they meant to you. Skippy tells me things I didn't know about Richard Crenna, and James Capozzola remembers Richard Silbert.
Monday, 20 January 200318:25 GMT: Permalink
Says Pontificator:17:58 GMT: Permalink
By filibustering all right wing ideologues, the Democrats hit the trifecta:1. They stop right wing judges
2. They lay a trap for Republicans – forcing them to defend the religious right; and
3. They make Bush look weak, since he won't be able to get done what he wants to get done.
Once again, say it with me:
All right wing ideologues nominated by Bush to the Federal Bench must be filibustered in the Senate.
New Scientist has a cover story with some very sad news:15:32 GMT: Permalink
GOING BANANAS(Features are subscription only, but you can get the story at Yahoo.)
The world's favourite fruit could disappear forever in 10 years' time. Is there anything we can do to prevent this slip-up, asks Fred PearceAnd speaking of cover stories, someone really should tell
TIME that Bush is not America, and Europeans know this.
Check out Don't link to us! (via Random & Irrelevant).Smythe's World has an additional snippet on Townshend (but perhaps might like to read my most recent post on the subject).
Mark Evanier has a story in which Penn & Teller horrified the masses.
E-mail from Kevin Hayden says: "Your readers might enjoy sampling some of Hicks' Relentless."
Sunday, 19 January 200323:58 GMT: Permalink
From Columbia Journalism review, CABLE WARS:23:33 GMT: Permalink
Robert Lichter, president of the Washington-based Center for Media and Public Affairs and a paid consultant to Fox, says: "I've never been able to figure out how competition makes cars better and television news worse." He means that the struggle to grab viewers is currently dragging the whole cable news environment down. "In other industries, competition creates new and different products. In television, it makes all the products look the same. That's weird."So three networks are fighting for audience, one is trailing considerably, another has highest credibility but a third has the highest ratings. (Reassuringly, however, Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw still have a bigger piece of the pie. For now.) I bet CNN could be doing a lot better if they let Atrios run things, myself.
Deborah Orr makes a game try at a relatively sane view of the story on Pete Townshend in The Independent, but...22:21 GMT: Permalink
All these men are among the 7,272 or so whose credit card details were handed to the British police in the wake of the US paedophile sting codenamed Operation Avalanche a year ago. Each and every one, by virtue of the fact that they appeared on the list at all, was a suspect. Investigation of the list has resulted, so far, in 1,300 arrests, with priority given to those who had committed sex offences before, and those who work with children.So the first arrest we hear about is Pete Townshend? Gee, do you think the cops were thinking of publicity rather than the public safety when they decided to release his name?
At the time of writing though, only one had been subjected to trial by media. Poor old Pete Townshend is busy spilling his guts to the press, desperate to explain that, while his dark places are crepuscular enough to warrant researching a paedophile website, they are not so black that he feels anything but revulsion at what he sees.Curious. Most of the child abuse in Tommy is psychological ("You didn't hear it, you didn't see it..."), with the exception of the physically abusive encounter with Cousin Kevin. There's no question that Kevin hurts Tommy, but the song everyone is pointing to on this issue, "Fiddle About", was written by Entwhistle, not Townshend, and whether Tommy is really experiencing "abuse" is less than clear. While it's true that "wicked" Uncle Ernie gropes Tommy, it's interesting that Tommy doesn't seem to hold it against him after his miracle cure when he lets Uncle Ernie help run part of his enterprise at Tommy's Holiday Camp. Moreover, I seem to recall reading an interview in which Townshend said something to the effect that the deaf, dumb and blind kid's experience wouldn't have been of "abuse". (Not that I'm questioning Townshend's motivations, but it seemed to me at the time that he had a point, and all this now seems to me a lot of disappointing back-tracking.)His defence is compelling. He says that he looked at child pornography on the internet as part of his work on his autobiography, in which he writes about the child abuse he underwent himself when he was five or six. He cites the rock opera Tommy as containing material which draws on that buried experience, and also much charitable work in which he tries to combat child abuse. His account is entirely credible.
His actions, nonetheless, are condemned by all of the expert agencies working in this field. Or as Mark Stephens, vice-chairman of the Internet Watch Foundation, puts it: 'It is wrong-headed, misguided and illegal to look at or download or even to pay to download paedophiliac material, and if you do so you are likely to go to prison." Which is good advice for any person curious enough to imagine for any reason that they may be justified in trying to find and look at this sort of material themselves.Mark is a good guy and often a fine defender of free speech (plus, I owe him for a pretty big favor he did me), so this is another disappointment. It is certainly very illegal to be anywhere near sexual images of children, but the legal position is about the only thing that's true in that paragraph. (Mind you, it's equally possible that Mark has been misquoted out of all recognizability, as I know from personal experience.)First of all, there are many legitimate reasons to review child pornography, or to want to see for yourself how much is out there, on the net or in circulation by any means. The police are constantly claiming that there are extraordinary amounts of child porn available, and any honest reporter who wishes to comment on the subject, from any side, would reasonably want to see the evidence for themselves.
I'm forced to rely on sources from other countries to tell me how much actual child porn is really on the 'net, because there is no legal way for me to do primary research. So I can never give first-person accounts on a matter I'm a relative expert on; I can only report what others have said. I'm certain that the police have made highly misleading statements on the subject; I just can't prove it. Many activists and journalists simply take the cops' word for it and state it as fact. I can't, because a lot of it makes no sense. (A few years ago the cops were claiming that there were warehouses full of child porn up and down the country, but that they had no powers to investigate. Leaving aside the fact that there really wasn't any reason to believe such warehouses existed in the first place, there is no question that if the police had any evidence that they exist, they have had all the power they need to investigate since 1976 when the original child porn laws were passed.)
But even if you're not a researcher, it's perfectly reasonable to want to know what people are talking about when a subject is constantly being dragged into the public discourse; in fact, I'd say it would be odd to have no curiosity about it. (I have to admit that, despite the fact that this falls within my area of expertise, I don't really have any desire to see this stuff - but then, I didn't have much desire to see the material I looked at when I did my statistical analysis of adult magazine porn, either. The material didn't move me, I'm afraid; I just regarded looking at it as something I had to do if I was going to be able to write on the subject with any confidence. Still, I did want to know how much truth there was to what people kept saying about pornography.) It doesn't surprise me at all that many people hear this subject constantly raised and want to see what the hell everyone is on about. Surely, this curiosity would be amplified if one was feeling a strong identification with other sexually abused children. (But even without that, don't most people stare at car wrecks, even if they don't have any desire to cause car wrecks?)
So, no, I don't think looking at these images on the 'net is entirely unjustifiable, or that it's inexplicable in the absence of a sexual desire to look at them. I think Townshend's reasoning is perfectly normal, including the fact that he stupidly assumed that because his motivations were "honorable" he was not doing the same thing that all those other poor souls who've been busted for it were also doing. That's just how people are. Everyone feels free to condemn everyone else for doing what they think other people are doing, and they never think that maybe they aren't so different from everyone else.
There's a better article on the subject in the same paper, by Johann Hari. I have numerous quibbles with it, but it bravely acknowledges that most reportage about child-molesting has been too superficial and misleading, and quite rightly suggests that the current fashion for hate speech against "paedophiles" is doing more harm than good.
And there's a fairly sane article in The Telegraph, as well, noting that an awful lot of police manpower is being squandered to little useful effect.
Dewayne-Net Radio Weblog reports:13:18 GMT: Permalink
News.Com: RIAA: ISPs should pay for music swapping. Rosen suggested one possible scenario for recouping lost sales from online piracy would be to impose a type of fee on ISPs that could be passed on to their customers who frequent these file-swapping services. The other important item in this story is the statistic that peer-to-peer activity on ISP networks today accounts for 30 to 60 percent of all traffic.Well, we've heard it all before, haven't we? The poor old music industry is suffering because the Internet has provided all that FREE PROMOTION to artists, so they have to make up some story about how, gosh, all that downloading is costing "artists" a bundle and we have to charge someone for it.Don't fall for this rubbish. They used the same lie to get a tax added to audiotapes, claiming that artists were losing royalties - but the artists don't see a penny of that money, and they won't see this money, either. (Note that people who buy audiotapes must pay this tax whether they ever record other people's music or not. The same will be true of all Internet users who will have to pay this overhead even if they never get music via the 'net.) The only good news about this particular angle is that ISPs who have hitherto remained apolitical on the issue might finally figure out that they have something tangible at stake here and take the side of their customers.
Spell this out to your legislators: The way artists and music companies sell recordings is by promotion in the form of FREE listening for the public; the more people hear the music, the more likely they are to buy it. Web radio and file-sharing increase the level of promotion, thus increasing demand for both commercial recordings and live performance. The record companies take virtually all of the proceeds from sales of recordings, and the artists really, really need live performance in order to survive. Artists are not hurt by file-sharing.
The entire line of argument about "pirating" by file-sharing is just a rip-off of the public by the recording industry, as well as an attempt by them to prevent artists from being able to benefit from alternative promotion that the industry can't steal more money off of them for. The recording industry wants control of artists, and promotion is one of the ways they get it. The slimey deals going on between the corporations and the big radio networks are the real scandal, and the way recording companies abuse their artists is the real theft; don't let them get away with it.
Now here is a story I'd like to know a lot more about:12:29 GMT: Permalink
As of 3:55 PM, Monday afternoon, the We The People Internet broadcast provider was forced by his provider, Time Warner, to cease providing transmission of the WTP-TV broadcast stream and the FTP download of the archived LIBERTY HOUR file.OK, I'm not geeky enough to figure out whether there's a purely technical explanation for all this, but even if there is, it should remind people that it's just plain stupid to think the Internet has made all the communication and free speech arguments moot. I've been telling people for years that nothing has changed in terms of your right to communicate and your freedom to do so; there is always a way to stop you unless you are willing to sneak around the system, and there have always been ways to sneak around. But the largest voice still goes to those who have the money and power to dominate the public discourse - the owners of big newspapers, big broadcast networks, and now big cable/satellite owners.Here's what we can release at this moment.
On Friday afternoon, while still under the impression that Time Warner had permanently fixed whatever "technical problem" caused them to knock our live broadcast off the "air," we posted the links enabling people to watch and/or download the event.
On Saturday, two computers at the White House were used to watch the entire event and eight computers at the IRS were used to watch and download the file.
By Sunday evening, 10,031 people had watched the event and another 5300 people downloaded the file to their PCs.
Beginning on Sunday and continuing on Monday, we received numerous messages from people about a "sluggishness" problem they were experiencing -- it was taking up to 15 hours for the FTP download of the file when it should only have taken 15 minutes. Something or somebody had so severely throttled our provider's "big-pipe" transmission bandwidth that downloading was slowed to a "crawl."
Not only was WTP being affected but also our provider was being affected. His business was being affected by the inordinate amount of time required to transmit data.
Urgent calls by our provider to his provider, Time Warner, for an explanation of the reason for the loss in transmission capability resulted, finally, in Time Warner's suggestion: "Turn them off." By "them," Time Warner was referring to WTP.
With his arm being twisted, and in the interest of protecting his business, our provider was forced by his provider to cut us off from his server.
Reluctantly, he did so at 3:55 P.M. Monday afternoon.
As soon as he did so, his full "big-pipe" bandwidth capability became available to him and all the problems he had been experiencing since last Tuesday night cleared up.
Techie geeks used to tell me the Internet solved these problems, that you could now say anything you want and not have to worry because you had encryption and anonymizers and what-have-you. Well, they were wrong. I'm pleased to see I'm hearing this rubbish from the libertarian geeks a lot less often than I used to, but now it's the excuse Big Media uses for suspending the old public interest rules - while at the same time trying to foreclose on free access on the 'net itself. You've got to keep an eye on these people, folks, and don't let them buy the 'net out from under us like they have everything else.
Skimble receives a rather worrying visit from someone who claims to be doing a public health survey.11:53 GMT: PermalinkMark Fiore gets right to the point in this cartoon about Executions.
I listened to the Relentless CD and it made me laugh out loud a lot.
Note to Hugo: You could try composing first in a straightforward text editor, such as Notepad, so you can see those spaces (but always putting spaces after periods should be a reflex). I use TextPad, which I like because it shows the HTML in different colors from the plain text. I'm told there are better ones, but I'm pretty happy with TP, which is free and simple and lets me make little macros for those strings I use all the time (and doesn't force those dumb "Smart Quotes" on me). [Update: Ooops, sorry - it's shareware, but that's okay, I approve of shareware, too.] As for mail & news readers, I don't even understand why anyone would use either Outlook Express or a browser to collect mail when you could at the very least get Free Agent (and Agent itself is worth paying for).11:12 GMT: Permalink
From Democrats.com:
Why Did Al Sharpton Endorse Senator Al D'amato (R-NY) in 1986?When Tim Russert asked Rev. Al Sharpton why he endorsed right-wing Senator Al D'Amato (R-NY) for re-election in 1986, Sharpton replied: "We did not feel that he was going to be a conservative Republican." Joe Conason writes, "Everyone in New York knew that Al D'Amato was 'going to be a conservative Republican,' because six years earlier he had defeated Jacob Javits, the liberal Republican incumbent, in a bitter primary that featured his right-wing credentials and financing from ultraconservative national organizations. Everyone in New York knew that Green was the progressive candidate (including all the African-American politicians of any stature). Actually, D'Amato purchased the endorsement of Sharpton's 'ministerial group' with a federal grant. Sharpton's covert relationship with the Republican Party didn't end back then. On election eve in 1994, he lent his considerable presence to a George Pataki rally at a Harlem church."
Saturday, 18 January 200317:37 GMT: Permalink
Calpundit explains why Condi Rice should support Michigan's affirmative action program. In fact, he explains it so cleanly that even the White House should be able to understand it. Of course, there's a pretty good chance that they do understand it and are just a bunch of race-carding swine.15:54 GMT: PermalinkMeanwhile, Atrios says that Bush lied about Condi's role in the decision to oppose AA.
The Daily Brew says:15:35 GMT: Permalink
To make a long story short, Bush is terrorizing millions of Americans, and is set to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, because Karl Rove thinks this will get him re-elected. First, the Bush administration is using bogus terrorist alerts to, well, terrorize the country.Second, the Bush administration going to attack Iraq for manufacturing weapons of mass destruction even though UN weapons inspectors haven't found diddly.
Where is the honor? Where is the dignity? To any rational observer, Bush is a sociopath in command of the world's mightiest military. Yet Time magazine is gushing his praises on its current cover. Here at the Brew, we are beyond irony. We have entered the realm of pure disgust.
Great take-down of Safire's stupid article about Turkey, from Charles Dodgson.15:13 GMT: PermalinkSkippy notes that "the president welcomes the fact that we are a democracy and that people in the united states, unlike iraq, are free" to protest, [white house press secretary ari fleisher] said. - and then lists a bunch of people who have been arrested for peacefully making use of their 1st Amendment rights. Skippy also has a new acronym I like: S.T.R.I.F.E for Bush's plan to Stimulate The Rich Idle Folks' Economy. (He also renames the estate tax the "entitlement tax".)
From Seeing the Forest:
He's saying here that we'll eventually pay a great price for Bush's deficits.I want to point out that the costs of tax cuts for the wealthy arrive sooner than that. We currently pay over $300 billion per year for interest costs because of Reagan's budget deficits. That amounts to a $300 billion tax increase, paying for Reagan's tax cuts for the wealthy. The kicker is, by and large, the wealthy receive that interest.
So what we saw in the early 80's wasn't just a tax cut for the wealthy, it was also the creation of a huge government spending program, almost the largest item in the U.S. budget, almost entirely to the wealthy. This is also what the Bush tax cuts mean for our future. A huge spending increase - increased future debt interest payments from us to the wealthy.
The current tax cuts are coming out of our Social Security money! We pay into Social Security, it runs a surplus, but that surplus is going out to the tax cuts for the rich. So not only will we have to pay interest to the wealthy, we will have to pay that interest instead of retirement payments to ourselves.
Friday, 17 January 200316:04 GMT: Permalink
The big news of the week has been the response to the Knight-Ridder Poll asking this question:15:29 GMT: Permalink
As far as you know, how many of the September 11th terrorist hijackers were Iraqi citizens: most of them, some of them, just one, or none?"Many remarks have been made about how stupid people are, or at least how poorly the news media conveys important data to the public (and I won't argue with that second point at all), but I do find it downright scary that people can get angry enough to support war without having cared enough to notice the national origins of the hijackers. Surely it's not a secret that most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, rather than Iraq? Yet more people thought "most of them" were from Iraq than actually got the right answer to this question.Most of them 21%
Most of them.. 21
Some of them ..23
Just one........6
None...........17
Don't know.....33
Obviously, a lot of that is thanks to the White House having worked so hard to misinform the public and tie 9/11 to Iraq, but if the Clinton administration had tried to pass off such lies as fact, you know the press would have been all over it, and they certainly would have called him a liar outright. (Hell, even the fact that Gore was telling the truth didn't protect him from being called a liar.) But Bush and his pals just skate through with stuff like this because the press just doesn't seem to care. Folks, we're talking about killing people, for dog's sake - doesn't this stuff count on your "moral clarity" scale?
Still, bottom line: Ordinary people should bother to notice. Yes, the press at this point should be spelling out that none of the hijackers were Iraqi, but a year ago their actual nationalities were all over the media and now only 17% remember that?
It's no surprise that the farther from the truth respondents were, the more likely they were to support Bush. But that doesn't tell you whether you have to be stupid to support Bush or whether it's just the same stupid people who always seem to support "the president" no matter who it is. In this media milieu it's never easy to know what's really going on, but in matters of life and death it would be nice to know that people at least care enough to try, and you really don't have to try very hard to know how many Iraqis were among the hijackers. (Well, at least the official story, anyway.)
Eric Alterman asks: "And how come nobody told me Tom Waits had a letter to The Nation?" (Read the other letters on the page, too.) Hey, nobody told me, either, and I didn't even know about the original article by John Densmore he was commenting on. It's nice to know that there's still someone who thinks that integrity and the music are more important than having more money than they need. It makes a nice contrast in a world run by people who have more money than any 40 people need but still live to pinch every penny and still make more, even if they have to destroy thousands or even millions of lives to do it.03:04 GMT: PermalinkPS. I will never, never forgive Michael Jackson.
I see people are doing it again, so let me re-quote Jim Henley from last autumn:02:00 GMT: Permalink
Also, a refresher for the native-born: The President is not "our Commander-in-Chief." He is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. (You can look it up.) He is also Commander-in-Chief of "the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." If this happens, it will be in the papers. If you ain't in the uniformed services or the active duty militia, you ain't got a commander-in-chief. It's a republican thing, with a small 'r.'The very best kind.
Another weblog I hadn't noticed before, Peace Tree Farm, sees A clear and present danger:01:00 GMT: Permalink
An Associated Press story in Tuesday's paper brings us still another chapter in the continuing attack on American values by the Attorney General. Here's the relevant quote in Curt Anderson's report:"Out of fear, ignorance and occasional bigotry, faith-based groups have been prohibited from competing for federal funding on a level playing field with secular groups," Ashcroft said in a text of his speech released at the Justice Department.
"Fear, ignorance and occasional bigotry" is apparently Mr. Ashcroft's code phrase for the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States...
Blimey, Maureen Dowd has actually written a straightforward piece about Bush.
Thursday, 16 January 200315:17 GMT: Permalink
Notes from a class war13:04 GMT: PermalinkBob Somerby thinks our media might not be interested in the people who really keep things running. He quotes Tony Snow, among others:
SNOW: Our tax code right now is insanely imbalanced. Half the public pays nearly 100 percent of the income taxes, which mocks the idea that citizenship demands that each person pull his or her weight. Two generations ago, as Paul [Gigot] pointed out moments ago, Americans celebrated success and urged kids to do well and accumulate wealth. We're now on the verge of a society that cleaves into two classes: those who pay taxes and those who get tax money from Uncle Sam.It's actually pretty scary that we now have people in mainstream media who talk like that. As Somerby notes, some of the people who "don't pull their weight" in this formulation are those who work hard, may even hold down two jobs, so that other people can receive goods and even luxury services at cut-rate prices. Somerby writes:
We thought Tony's rhetoric was very tough, coming from a nice man. But in the current climate, that's sadly unsurprising. On Saturday, we had listened to talk host Bruce Elliott on WBAL as we drove from Baltimore to Richmond, and Bruce's rhetoric was even tougher (we happen to know and like Bruce, too). Indeed, we pulled to the shoulder and wrote some things down; according to Bruce, "the bottom fifty percent"—who pay 3.9% of income taxes, he said—are "the non-productive, non-working in our society." During this same segment of his show, Elliott, without any question or comment, fielded absurd anecdotal accounts of alleged bizarre tax outrages. On talk radio, you get to say any fool thing you want—a long as you support Lower Taxes.Once upon a time, this language was generally only used against "welfare cheats" in public. Then it moved up to being used against the once-noble "truly needy" and began to cover all people on welfare, regardless of how they got there - indeed, virtually anyone who depends on a government check (even a soldier's pension) has been a target. But it is now "legitimate" for our media to treat people who work hard for their (private sector!) wages as freeloaders who apparently contribute nothing with their labor, sucking our economy dry while returning nothing in exchange for the money.Are the bottom fifty percent of earners "non-productive and non-working?" That would be a tough case to make. We stayed in a Richmond hotel that night; its chambermaids pay no income tax, but they seemed to be working quite diligently. Non-productive? The fact that they work for such low wages helps make the rooms affordable for the higher-income types who use them. (Dare we say that their low-paid labor is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich?) But decent people are saying rough things as a hard-right mentality sweeps through our culture. Bruce and Tony made some tough-talking claims. But those are hard to square with the facts about people's real lives.
Even if we ignore the fundamental lie behind the suggestion that low-income workers don't pay taxes, this is an immoral way to talk about the people who take the jobs that most of us don't want, at wages those of us who are lucky enough to choose wouldn't work for.
Electrolite says:12:00 GMT: Permalink
Try to imagine the media shitstorm if a Clinton cabinet officer had remarked, as Bush administration defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld just did, that Vietnam-era draftees offered "no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services."Some people argue that "in context" Rumsfeld's remarks aren't so bad, and that he's essentially right about how little the draft contributed to the Vietnam war. And while I am certainly opposed to the draft, it should be pointed out that framing the question this way is not entirely honest. Compare the situation in World War II - where units trained and served together throughout the war - with the policy of shipping guys in and out - singly - for their "War Year" in 'Nam. You don't have to be a genius to figure out why such a policy might lead to inefficiency.
[...]
I agree, and have recently argued, that for most modern purposes volunteer armies are liable to be more effective than conscripts. But for a Secretary of Defense to fliply dismiss the value of 1,800,000 Americans' service is stunningly crass. I know teenagers with more thoughtfulness and discretion than Rumsfeld displays. And less vanity.If Rumsfeld were saying that US policy in Southeast Asia undermined the effectiveness of draftees, he might have had a point, but that's not what he was saying. In fact, everything that comes out of him indicates that he was not complaining that soldiers were treated like disposable toys, but rather that he sees them that way himself.
Even in the '60s when schools were trying to make long hair and flowered shirts illegal, they never passed a federal law against rock festivals full of tripping, dope-smoking hippies. Things are different, now. In Britain, legislation making it illegal to hold a dance party of more than ten people was passed as an "anti-rave" measure in the early '90s. In the US, the war on youth culture is well underway, as Talk Left reminds us:Jeralyn also quotes a wonderful rant from John Le Carre on how the US has gone mad:
For the point-by-point analysis, go here."The RAVE Act unfairly punishes businessmen and women for the crimes of their customers. The federal government can't even keep drugs out of its own schools and prisons, yet it seeks to punish business owners for failing to keep people from carrying drugs onto their property. It is a danger to innocent businessmen and women, especially restaurant and nightclub owners, concert promoters, landlords, and real estate managers. Section 4 of the bill goes so far as to allow the federal government to charge property owners civilly, thus allowing prosecutors to fine property owners $250,000 (and put them out of business) without having to meet the higher standard of proof in criminal cases that is needed to protect innocent people."This law could subject you to 20 years in prison. Help stop it now!
How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.But definitely check her out on The Innocence Protection Act, one law that really should pass. And, naturally, I agree with Jeralyn completely that the cops should not be policing fantasy on the Internet.
From The Washington Post, A Tale of Two Governors:10:52 GMT: Permalink
ILLINOIS GOV. GEORGE RYAN leaves office tomorrow, but to the last he is promoting what has become, for a Midwestern Republican governor, a most unlikely signature issue: reform of the death penalty. Mr. Ryan has undertaken an exhaustive review of the state's capital convictions, and he now describes the state's system as "terribly broken." On Friday he pardoned four death row inmates who had been tortured into confessing -- "four more men," he called them, "who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to die by the state for crimes the courts should have seen they did not commit." Yesterday he announced that he is taking an even more fateful step: commuting all 156 remaining death sentences, because, as he put it, "our capital system is haunted by the demon of error -- error in determining guilt, and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die." Mr. Ryan's tenure in office has not been a happy one; he leaves office under the ethical cloud of a continuing federal corruption probe. But his willingness to confront the magnitude of the failure of his state's criminal justice system commands respect. On this issue, he leaves Illinois a better place -- and a model for the nation as to how a state can begin facing the problem of the death penalty.So, he's apparently more willing to "review" the methodology of the study than he is to consider the possibility that its findings have merit - which is odd, since there's every reason to think the study is correct. It's not that I reject the idea of holding research to a high standard - I'm very much in favor of it - but this isn't about that, is it? This is about placing the power to kill above every other consideration. When people's lives hang in the balance, making sure we get it right should be the priority. Everything else is secondary; when in doubt, don't kill.That model, alas, seems to hold little interest for Maryland Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. It's early, but Mr. Ehrlich thus far has demonstrated a breathtaking lack of concern for the evident problems with capital punishment in Maryland. Even before the release of a University of Maryland study of geographical and racial disparities in capital punishment's application, he pledged to lift the current moratorium on executions no matter what the study showed. After the study was released last week, demonstrating that race and geography play huge roles in determining who gets sentenced to die, Mr. Ehrlich said he was reviewing its methodology, and he reiterated that he means to consider death sentences case by case.
Such a cavalier attitude is inappropriate for a man who will wield power over life and death. If the new governor continues to ignore the study results, he will be saying that it doesn't trouble him that Maryland prosecutors effectively value white lives more highly than black lives. Pretending this unfairness doesn't exist won't make it disappear. Mr. Ehrlich may be too busy just now planning his inauguration, but he should take time out to learn from the outgoing governor a few states west.
Spinsanity's efforts to pretend that there is no difference between what is said by the Bad Guys and what is said by their opponents have reached another low in this piece on the debate over Pickering's nomination. Mere statements of fact have become "demagoguing" in Nyan's lexicon; pointing out Pickering's history as a perjurer and racist is somehow not legitimate criticism. Nyhan seems to think that the well-documented charges against Pickering (see Atrios all over the place for this) have some sort of equivalence with RNC spin-points. They don't. The RNC spin-points are lies and distortions; the charges against Pickering are not.From the NYT, Scalia Attacks Church-State Court Rulings - and, as usual, is utterly offensive.
The Planned Parenthood Rally for Choice - watch the amusing little movie, but instead of signing the petition, write to your representatives and tell them you expect them to do everything in their power to preserve your rights. All of them.
Steve Winwood rocks my soul.
Wednesday, 15 January 200314:16 GMT: Permalink
There are many good reasons to oppose a Lieberman nomination, summed up nicely at TomPaine.com.13:22 GMT: Permalink
Lisa English at Ruminate This has found a nifty site with lots of tips for HTML design. I was pleased to find this color chart page that includes the names and numbers for colors in the same place.
Tuesday, 14 January 200323:49 GMT: Permalink
The other day I noticed right-wing blogger John Cole quoting a Drudge "quote" of Sean Penn, as follows:23:22 GMT: Permalink
KING: WOULD YOU GO TO NORTH KOREA?But, as Liberal Oasis points out, this doesn't resemble what's in the transcript. Hmmm.PENN: IRAQ NOT POLITICAL IS HUMAN. I DONT SPEAK OUT MUCH, BUT I FEEL IT IS MY RESPONSIBILITY TO SPEAK OUT AS MUCH AS I CAN. BAGHDAD. CONSCIENCE, AND I DID FEEL, UM, COULD BE GREAT TO TRY TO, UM, DIALOGUE. ARMS INSPECTORS. REALLY UNAMERICAN. MURDOCH. BECAUSE I AM A FATHER. I'D LIKE TO WRITE MORE. NOT PROLIFIC TO WRITE SCRIPT. TO BE DIRECTOR. YES, SURE. CHILDREN BOMBS IN CONSCIOUSNESS, CAN'T READ ARABIC. THANK YOU, LARRY...
KING: GNARLY, DUDE.
Talk Left and Nathan Newman are having a little disagreement about Mothers Against Drunk Driving.23:00 GMT: Permalink
A new musician's site added to the free music list at right, Sara Messenger, a really good piano player with a fine voice. As far as I can tell, most of the .mp3s on her site are complete, although some are just clips. I don't approve of partial tracks, but seeing as how Jackson Browne seems to like her so much, and Laura Nyro was a big fan, I'm making an exception. Oh, and that other reason....)19:11 GMT: Permalink
The cover photo on yesterday's Media Guardian is a still of Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in All The President's Men with the headline, "So what went wrong?" But C. S. Cleebers said it better in 2000, as I noted last October. The Guardian makes the mistake of attributing the problem to 9/11 and the Bush White House, but no, it goes back a lot longer than that.18:46 GMT: Permalink
John Dean thinks Dick Cheney is the guy behind White House secrecy, and that he's at war with Congress. In The Nixon Shadow that Hovers Over the Bush White House, he traces Cheney's mania back to the Nixon administration, and points out that it is all utterly unconstitutional.18:31 GMT: Permalink
Both Elisabeth Anne Riba and Gary Farber wrote to object to the term "Judeo-Christian" quoted earlier in a post about abortion. Elisabeth writes:
I object to the use of the term Judeo-Christian. Judaism is very different from Christianity; in fact, traditional Judaism put's the mother's life and health ahead of the fetus, and thus supports abortion in many cases where Christianity opposes it.The abortion opponents want to create a Christian society, and the only thing Judeo about it is a desire to disguise themselves as somehow more inclusive.