Man's best friend outside of a dog, 6: Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi

With Iran in the news, I decided to clear out the growing Persian presence on my shelf of books to read. Most of the news coming out of Iran at the moment is pretty bad, though there are some funny exceptions to that rule. Anyway, the first book up is Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, which has certainly made the rounds of the book club circuit over the past year.

It's not hard to see why this book is so popular. Iranian society remains a mystery to most people in America, and this book goes a long way toward undercutting some of the more outlandish notions we may possess about them. In particular, it becomes immediately evident that while the public face of Iran is one of religions hardliners and fundamentalist rule, the society there was, and still is, vastly more modern than we ever give them credit for. American ignorance can hardly be considered shocking by now, and it says something that of the few Americans who can recognize Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as President of Iran that very few realize that though he may be an anti-Semitic provocateur, he has very little power over any foriegn policy issue whatsoever (that would be the milieu of Ayatollah Khamenei and the clerical establishment). Neither of these political forces represents the actual population all that well (not that I would dare to suggest a similar principle applies with regard to American society...) Iranians love their illegal satellite dishes, their forbidden music (click on the second link above), and just about all the other things that we would love in the same circumstances.

Nafisi's book does present a thorough treatment of one facet of life that Americans do have trouble imagining: life under the rule of a truly oppressive government, especially during wartime on one's own soil. While we were sending weapons openly to Iraq and under the table to Iran, the people there were suffering under the double threat of foreign missiles and self-imposed political terror. The choices faced by liberals and intellectuals were truly terrible, much worse than anything their counterparts over here have had to go through. Even in the most extreme cases where the US government spied on peace groups, they didn't just haul people off and summarily execute them. As for those who wholeheartedly get behind an ideological movement, Nafisi has even less respect for such people than I do. There have always been many people out there, especially among the young and impressionable, willing to slaughter their fellow men for the sake of Revolution, or God, or Country, or any other capital-letter ideal, but the ends are almost never happy ones. Among the most striking passages of the book is the trial of The Great Gatsby by one of her classes, where the book is accused of all manner of evils and recommended for banning by the hardline students, as if the ideas themselves are dangerous. One could suggest of course, that this is the ultimate failure of debate: if an idea you dislike is so very appealing, then you have failed in your duty to build a better counterargument.

I should say that discussing the book only in terms of its grand themes does it a disservice: it is not a mere political statement, but a memoir, and a damn good one at that. Centered around the private sessions the author held in secret with seven students who were devoted to literature, the book doesn't scream it's positions on imagination and individual expression, it paints them in rather fetching language. If anything, Nafisi is at her weakest when dealing with her own reactions to newsworthy events: in describing her own reactions she seems to get so involved that she loses some of the strength of her narrative voice. Instead, she is at her best describing the others around her: how they react, how they interact, and how they maintain their own concepts of identity in the midst of a regime trying to undercut it through physical and mental intimidation. Nafisi is clearly from the school of teaching via contrast and comparison, and it is the reflections and refractions between she and her students, her students with each other, and all the other pairings upon which this book has earned its reputation. Definitely worth a read, if for no other reason to remind us that the people that many people in our government are looking to bomb to smithereens in the near future are very much like us once you look past the headscarves.

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make

Having been swamped by work, I never had time to comment on the biggest news about the 2008 Presidential candidates from the past week: Elizabeth Edwards, wife of John, has cancer, and from the sound of things it's not good. She was treated for Breast cancer in 2004, and it has now returned and has spread to her bones, which is currently incurable. Treatable in some cases, perhaps, but incurable. This has led to numerous stories in the media wondering if it is right for John Edwards to continue his campaign, as if somehow this is a decision to be made by us, rather than the Edwards'. Needless to say, I am not particularly sympathetic to this point of view. I think better than anyone, Ana Marie Cox (formerly known as Wonkette) sums up the media and personal dynamics pretty well:

Over time, voters may react negatively to image of a man pursuing the presidency as his wife struggles with an incurable disease. But whether or not that is the image they see is another question, and that creation of that image largely depends on how we in the media frame the Edwards' decision. Specifically, such an image will emerge if we depict that choice as Jay did: as a man -- John Edwards -- torn between "his duties as husband and father to three children, including a 6 and 8 year old" and "his duty to his country and the cause of winning the White House."

First of all, this framework presents what might be -- in the eyes of both John and Elizabeth -- a false choice. From all they've told us, the Edwards family sees those duties (as husband, as father, as candidate), as overlapping. Surely, one reason John Edwards is running for president because he wants to be a part of creating a better world for his family. Which brings us to the second problem: The decision to keep the campaign going was not John Edwards' alone to make. (And I find the presumption that it could be startlingly archaic.) John may find himself pulled to simply concentrate on his family, but I think Elizabeth would push back. I think she already has.

Does it seem selfish that he continues to run? Think about it this way: Your doctor gives you a year to live. Of course you decide to pursue the things in life you either put off or gave up on. You follow your dreams, as they say. You sail around the world. You read the Bible in Aramaic. You reconcile with a family member. For Elizabeth Edwards, the answer to the "what would you do if you only had a year to live" question is simple: Get my husband elected President.

Is that decision selfish, given that the couple has two small children? I can't say -- and I'm not sure if anyone who doesn't know the family can -- but I don't think it's a question with a standard answer.

Having some experience with traumatic events, I can safely say that how one deals with trauma, or loss, or death, or any other deeply serious issue has a tremendous amount to do with how one personally chooses to, or just instinctively does, react. In the aftermath of the Simon's Rock shooting, I was cracking jokes in the hospital starting from the time I was on the operating table (true story). It helped me rationalize things. Sure, there were times in the following months and years when I mourned, and times to have long philosophical conversations about it, and times to act a bit defiantly to prove I was alive...and all of those were appropriate at the time. For those who have trouble imagining me angry, they should have seen the fire I was spitting when an unnamed family member who does not read this blog, as far as I know, challenged me on my ways of dealing with my memories, thinking that he knew better than I (this may be something of a giveaway as to whom I am referring).

When my aunt developed breast cancer, and especially toward the end where the news got progressively worse, she tried to pack as much life out of her remaining time as possible. I'm sure she also spent time mourning, as did any number of family members before and after. If the Edwards choose to take the fighting path, more power to them (if they had chosen to drop out of the campaign, more power to them in that, too). Family is important, but let's try to remember that he is campaigning for the presidency of the United States.

Simply put, John Edwards has a legitimate shot to become the most powerful and influential person in the entire world, able to set an agenda that could conceivably help out millions of people (i think so, and I certainly think that he thinks so). If he and his wife agree that this is the higher goal, and that they are both capable of it, how in the name of anything good and holy can you try to argue he should drop out. This isn't just a job, or some kind of passing fad, it is the presidency of the United States, and that title used to mean something before the current administration decided to crap all over it. I can't say I envy the Edwards' the pain and grief they will likely have to face in the much too quickly approaching future, but they are entirely justified in their priorities. There is a legacy at stake here, for the candidate with the strongest social vision of any of the current candidates (Obama has him on general tone and eloquence, but Edwards wins on pure vision of how to make us a better country). They, as a couple, are in a position shared by only a handful of people the world round, and seem well aware of that potential. If they choose to prioritize the greater good with the time they have, and people want to complain about that, forgive me if I have to think it speaks vastly more poorly about the latter's morals than the former's.

Send lawyers, guns and money...The shit has hit the fan

Tonight's title comes from the late Warren Zevon (better known perhaps for "Werewolves of London"), and happens to be the inspiration for one of my favorite blogs, found over to the right side in the blogroll. Also, take a look over there at our two new additions, Mad Poet at the Gate, featuring the poetic stylings of the lawyer most closely related to me, and Elaine's blog, featuring the poetic stylings of of someone who is a very kind and generous soul in spite of the fact she married a lawyer.

There are two important political developments to talk about in the news the past few weeks, which, much to my continued amazement, show Democrats showing good sense and fierce organization (?!?) and Republicans neither whatsoever. The Democrats did a good thing with the passage of today's Iraq War funding bill. Everyone in the world admits it's not perfect, but it does put the President in the awkward position of needing to veto a bill finding the troops in order to avoid having to meet some actual benchmarks for a change. To quote Atrios:

Shorter GWB: The troops need funding which is why I'll veto the bill which would give it to them.

I think the most persuasive statement about the morality of this bill came from Chris Bowers at MyDD, who wrote the following to liberal critics of the bill:

My point is this: don't tell me that I am less principled, moral or ethical than you because I am supporting this measure even though I don't think it goes far enough. I am certainly not going to do the same thing to you, because I don't really see how either of our positions will result in a more ethically acceptable outcome. I arrived at my position because, in my final analysis, I believed the politics of the situation demanded it. You could respond that I should appreciate the ethical values of actions in and of themselves, rather than in the context of their consequences, but if that is your position than ultimately it represents an ideological difference between the two of us that will not be settled either in the discussion of this post, or before the House vote tomorrow. I do not see an ethical high ground in the progressive debate on this vote, and thus political considerations take precedence. Now, I don't think we handled the politics of this vote as well as we could have, but a progressive engineered defeat of this bill would make the political situation even worse. Republicans have to be the ones who hold this bill up, and / or fail to implement it, not Democrats and not progs. If the war will continue either way, then it must be clear that it was their decision to continue it, not ours.

If we must have this war, and given the lack of veto override numbers in Congress, we will certainly have this war, it is time to make sure Republicans own it, so the nation as a whole can let them know the depth of our profound displeasure in 2008. The choice must be as stark as possible, and the House has gone a long way towards accomplishing that task. From a pragmatic point of view, and let's face it, that's all we have for the moment with our bellicose and incompetent leadership running the show, tonight's NYTimes headline says it all: Democrats Show Surprising Unity.

On to Republicans who seem completely disorganized. This isn't just a passing phase, by the way, their incompetence has driven the number of people identifying as Democrats to the highest numbers recorded for decades, and R's to the lowest. Still, the bungling of the Justice department with respect to the US Attorney's firings is staggering, even before the news that Alberto Gonzales apparently blatantly lied to Congress about meetings he attended but claimed he did not. Note in the story how many different stories DoJ officials are still telling: in general, when you have so many diverging and contradictory stories, it is because everyone (perhaps minus one) is lying. At it's heart, the story is exactly what Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking points Memo has been saying for months (he's the blogger/journalist who the media is belatedly recognizing as kicking their asses on this story): Karl Rove and GWB tried to turn the Justice Department into a partisan enforcement arm of the Republican party:

Now we know with crystal clear proof what we really already knew a week ago: that Alberto Gonzales was lying about his role in the US Attorney Purge. So add that to the list of all the other things he's lied about.

But don't get distracted by the lying or even the cover-up.

Right-wing shills want to chalk the blundering administration response to US Attorney Purge scandal to incompetence. But just as we can infer the force of gravity from the descent of the falling apple, the panicked succession of lies and dodges out of the administration implies not incompetence but guilty knowledge of underlying bad acts.

This isn't about the AG's lies. It's not about the attempted cover-up. It's not about executive privilege and investigative process mumbojumbo.

This is about using US Attorneys to damage Democrats and protect Republicans, using the Department of Justice as a partisan cudgel in the war for national political dominance. All the secrecy and lies, the blundering and covering-up stems from this one central fact.

Even though many of the "finest" legal minds on the right, and a number of befuddled centrists fail to see how this is so troubling, let's lay it out, very simply and cleanly.

1. Karl Rove, acting as the President's political advisor, has long wanted to use the DoJ as a partisan operation for permanent Republican dominance, seemingly forgetting that his entire party is vastly incompetent at governing. This is, for instance, how over 80% of local investigations by US Attorneys turn out to be targeting Democrats. Still, some US Attorneys seem to be reputable, so the White House decides to remove them from office.

2. The White House has the power to do this legally, since they got Senator Arlen Specter to allow a provision into law to replace US Attorneys without Senate confirmation. They then pushed out 8 US Attorneys, including many in key swing states who had the gall to investigate criminality by Republicans, or alternately fail to prosecute innocent Democrats on trumped up voter fraud charges. This is not to say the entire process is legal. Senator Pete Domenici, Representative Heather Wilson (both of New Mexico), and Republican party officials in Washington State may have very well obstructed justice by attempting to interfere with ongoing investigations by leaning on prosecutors.

3. Even though the White House actions may have been technically legal, if the details got out they were so blatantly anti-democratic that even our tepid media would have erupted in outrage. Thus, they did what administrations like this always do: they lied to everyone who asked about these issues, claiming no political interference. Lying to the media is one thing, however, lying to Congress another. The latter is criminal, and apparently encompasses a number of the higher-ups at the DoJ, including the AG himself. Remember, lying to Congress is a crime.

4. Some in the media continue to focus on the details of the firings, which, as we just went over, were technically legal. This ignores both the reason behind the firings, which was to turn the DoJ into a partisan enforcement service, something that should worry any rational human being. It also ignores the coverup, which is blatantly illegal. There is an important reason why you cannot legally lie to Congress: they provide the only oversight over the executive branch until November 2008!

Of course, this is the bush administration, so we can be pretty sure that Gonzales also lied about not giving DoJ investigators the right to investigate the warrantless wiretapping program, even though it was his conduct that was going to be investigated. WE can save that for next week, however.

Truth twenty-four times a second #4: The Lives of Others

First of all, some bloggity news to pass along. A certain paternal relation of mine has finally decided to set up his own blog, Mad Poet at the Gate, featuring a number of poems ranging from Koans to reminiscences about science fiction writers. It seems to be a household thing, as his wife has a blog, too. Seriously, if you appreciate language, check them out. Even if you don't, check them out, and maybe you will. If nothing else, you can try to figure out how one writes in Kanji on an English-language blog...

Last night, I got to see this year's best foreign film Oscar winner, The Lives of Others, in the theatre. I have to admit, it was good, and even though the academy pretty clearly made a mistake by selecting it over Pan's Labyrinth, it's not a horrible choice. Choosing Crash last year for Best Picture, for instance, was a much poorer judgment.

The Lives of Others is set in mid 1980's East Germany, when the Stasi, or Secret Police, still ruled the country through fear and a vast web of informers, and the early signs of Glasnost and the fall of the Wall were still completely invisible to just about everyone. Like a lot of the books and movies I've seen recently, and most of our daily political news, it concerns the use and misuse of power. At it's heart is the Stasi agent assigned to monitor a seemingly loyal playwright, who gradually realizes that his assignment has much more to do with the personal agendas of the powerful than with any real state interest. It is here that the film manages to make it's most profound moral statement, in that Wiesler, the Stasi agent, can hardly be considered to be pure of heart for realizing the evil of his orders. After all, he has been instrumental in ruining countless lives, many of whom were likely innocent, all in the name of duty. His affront at being used against a personal rival, rather than an enemy of the state, is as much from a personal sense of pride as from any innate goodness. Still, without giving away the ending, we have a clear case where Wiesler manages to fundamentally do good in the world, where most would have not, and that must count for something.

More than anything else, films like this (and Pan's Labyrinth in its own way) show just how dangerous it is to place loyalty to an ideology as one's primary goal. As we've seen in Iran (I'll be reviewing Reading Lolita in Tehran in a few days), in North Korea, in the US invasion of Iraq, and countless other places, ideologues typically believe in pretty sounding words that fail miserably in practice. One could strongly suggest that it took Marxists about a century to pretty much prove this point completely, as East Germany demonstrated just a few years later. When ideologues gain power, the results range from bad to tragic, with almost no room for any good outcome. For the pawns in their games, it doesn't matter if you are a loyal soldier (cough...Scooter Libby...cough) or a well-meaning crusader whose strings are being pulled from above (paging the US Attorneys): you are still a pawn, and in the end their moral failing will compromise you one way or the other.I have a great deal of sympathy for the fired US Attorneys, but it is important to remember that they were willing to be quiet about what seems to be a vast plan to obstruct justice until the Department of Justice decided to rub it in their faces. Up until that point, justice was just as perverted, but they felt none of the current compunction to speak out. Then again, as we argued before, even if injured pride moves you to do the right thing, you've still done the right thing...

As a film, The Lives of Others, features any number of strong acting performances in a story told very tightly until the surprisingly loose, John Irving-like ending. If the academy was fooled, it was because they went with a good Actor's movie over better Director's movie. It's almost excusable, but disappointing to see one of the truly visionary films of the past few years lose to a well-told but significantly less ambitious film. Still, though, this one is very much worth seeing. Remember, as the second best foreign film of the year, it is probably the second best film of the year as well (The Departed might make the top 10, if I'm feeling charitable, but last year was not a proud one for American film). More than any I saw last year, it is a deeply humanistic film, one that really does a tremendous job in finding the humanity amidst our boldest and bravest choices and most craven moral compromises.

high times

First, tip o' the hat to the co-blogger and his missus for putting up with me and the mini-me. This was our first meeting since starting this venture, and of course we mostly swapped music and played with the kidlet rather than developing a serious business plan.

Second, a wag o' the finger to people you'd rather forget who appear out of the past. Remember Ken Starr? The ol' rascal's back and representin' at the Supreme Court. Specifically, he's arguing that a high school principal can suspend a student for holding up a "Bong hits 4 Jesus" sign outside the school grounds. Really.

I recommend the whole article - IMHO Dahlia Lithwick is the funniest and also most clear-headed writer on judicial issues, especially SCOTUS arguments (maybe madpoet has his favorites.) Just check out this graph:

Starr insists that "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" promotes drugs. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asks whether a sign that said "Bong Stinks for Jesus" would be more permissible. Souter asks whether a simple sign reading "Change the Marijuana Laws" would also be "disruptive." Starr says that interpreting the meaning of the sign must be left to the "frontline message interpreter," in this case, the principal. Then Starr says schools are charged with inculcating "habits and manners of civility" and "values of citizenship." Yes, sir. In the first six minutes of oral argument Starr has posited, without irony, a world in which students may not peaceably advocate for changes in the law, because they must be inculcated with the values of good citizenship.

I know, it gets so old and cliched, because we have to ask this all the time, but why do right-wingers instinctively hate America's freedoms? There is a set of ingrained cultural signifiers, e.g. the sweet leaf which has yet to harm anyone, that for some reason really get their goats. In this case, this was just a sign that mentioned pot (outside the school) which is somehow undermining the entire education system. It takes a special kind of mind to try to justify this level of meta-absurdity - not unlike the one that took tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to produce long and boring graphic descriptions of sexual acts and published them for the world to see, all in the name of defending family values?

Man's best friend outside of a dog, 5: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne

Somehow, I managed to re-read TS for our book club here at UIUC, and then ended up too busy to go to the book club meeting. Why did I read it the first time, you ask? Well, it's the second important novel ever written in English (after Clarissa), and the second great postmodern novel, after Don Quixote. For my original take on TS, you can take a peek at my old book review page. For those unfamiliar with the book, the title may be dignified, but the novel is anything but. it's a long series of tangents on philosophy, political and religious jokes, amusing anecdotes, further digressions, and just about anything other than either the life or the opinions of its narrator. For the first four books, we are treated to the story of his conception (it doesn't go well) and birth (even more poorly). Eventually, we get to his accidental circumcision as a youth while pissing out a window, a book devoted to insulting France, and the almost but not-quite romance between his uncle and a local widow...but this is beside the point. Tristram Shandy is not centered around its plot, but around its fun with language and storytelling. Sterne is a constant practical joker (much like Cervantes), with a true talent for blue humor, rather impressive for an 18th century clergyman.

In many ways, the novel shows off just how much society has changed with time, especially with regard to moral values. Needless to say, people today are vastly more prudish than they were back then. Yes, I said more prudish now, not the reverse. There is nothing more amusing than the editor of this edition stumbling in his attempts to explain some of Sterne's bawdier references, even though Sterne himself was never so shy (to be fair, Sterne himself edits out the really dirty parts, but in such a way that there is no mystery whatsoever as to what he is implying). I have a real beef with the editing team, it should be said. The endnotes fail to translate any number of the parts written in foreign languages, fail to explain some crucial allusions unfamiliar to a modern reader, constantly refer to works that no one outside a graduate English program could be expected to track down, and have a bizarre obsession with TS's citations in the OED. The introduction is a horrid piece of 50's literary criticism, of virtually no interest to anyone but a diehard Shandean, which in no way even attempts to explain how the novel has remained influential to this day.

Quoth wikipedia:

Today, the novel is commonly seen as a forerunner of later stream of consciousness, self-reflexive and postmodern writing. However, current critical opinion is divided on this question. There is a significant body of critical opinion that argues that Tristram Shandy is better understood as an example of an obsolescent literary tradition of "Learned Wit", partly following the contribution of D.W. Jefferson.

I believe our editor was from the latter school, which is deeply, deeply misguided at best. I would have to argue that when a book clearly influences any number of modernist and post-modern writers (Joyce and Rushdie are mentioned by wikipedia), many of whom seem to have taken notes on the style of writing via digression, it needs to be classified as such even if there is a gap in the historical chain between then and now. Needless to say, no book so influential today can be properly considered only in terms of an obsolescent tradition. If anything, I think it shows off more just how misguided critics of PM fiction tended to be, given that virtually every aspect of popular culture is moving steadily in the direction of self-reflexivity (remember, on the first day we founded this blog, Time Magazine named us people of the year!).

Anyway, back to my main point. It is almost shocking to see just how modern the sensibilities of the 18th century were, at least with regard to the vastly more buttoned-up taste of the 19th. We often forget, in these days or rapidly lapsing Victorianism, that it wasn't always like this. Maybe 19th century Brits had some serious sexual hangups that required about 150 years and the introduction of pay cable and the internet in order to break down, but the 18th sure seem free of these problems. In the end, we can deny human nature for decades, but in the end people are much more the products of our animal ancestors (Sterne would likely say "animal spirits") than your average Conservative would care to admit. The second novel ever written in the English language begins at the moment of its narrator's conception, and I mean the exact moment, and ends with a celebration of its own place as a Cock and Bull story, where I would note that the allusion there means exactly the same thing now as it did them. Speaking of the closing line, it was used as the title of Michael Winterbottom's rather shockingly good movie version of the novel, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a free mental cheat sheet in place before they read the book.

Speed of lightning, roar of thunder, Fighting all who rob or plunder: Underdog, Underdog.

Hi y'all, sorry about the hiatus, but work has been keeping me busy for the past week (no need for sarcastic comments about working hard, hardly working, etc.). Anyway, I had to weight in on something eventually, and certainly one thing is at the forefront of my mind: the NCAA basketball tournament, and why I'm a Democrat. Yes, those two are related. We'll get to the latter in a second or two.

First, the Big Dance, which as a 64-team single-elimination team sports tournament shares what has to be the most exciting format in all of Sports This is not American triumphalism or some such, I just mean the format itself, which is shared, for example, by the national cup tournaments in European soccer, the FA cup being perhaps the most famous, especially to readers of Nick Hornby. The key to the format is that there are never 64 really evenly matched teams in any sport, so you end up with numerous underdog vs. favorite matchups, especially in the early going, which then morph into Cinderella stories in the middle round. Typically, midnight strikes eventually, leaving us with a bunch of good but often surprising teams presenting us with the cognitively dissonant fact that all you have to do in order to win the whole thing is to win six straight games, yet only one team manages the feat. Needless to say, it's also the best format for gambling pools nationwide, since you need virtually no inside basketball knowledge whatsoever to fill out a bracket. I usually pick some possible upset picks from the #2 and #3 seeds, since everyone picks #1 seeds and it lowers the marginal value in betting with them, and then hope that they'll go far. I should mention this virtually never actually works. Still, it makes it more fun to root for underdogs throughout the entire tournament. That way, I've successfully hedged my bets. When favorites win, my bracket looks better. When underdogs win, I'm happy on a personal level. As a side note, since I'm really not alone in these rooting interests, it explains why debates over who should be in the tournament (aka "Who's on the bubble") are essentially meaningless. The Illini were one of the last teams in, making fans in Champaign and several counties in Central Illinois happy. The rest of the nation, not so much. Had Drexel, or Missouri State, or Bradley, or a smaller program made it, everyone not from Virginia Tech would have been rooting for the upset. Instead, no one cares.

Rooting for the underdog goes to the heart of my liberal political beliefs, of course. Up until 2006, being a Democrat we very much like rooting for a mid-major program. They show some promise, but you just know that they're going to lose in the end. Thankfully, sometimes Cinderella makes the final four, like George Mason last year, and sometimes those in power fall, like Duke this year in the first round (to Virginia Commonwealth). Anyway, back to actually making a point. The democratic party, in its ideals, certainly appeals to those who root for underdogs (in practice, politicians are politicians first and people second or third, and appeal primarily to deep-pocketed donors). Unions over corporations, the poor over the rich, the right of people to vote over the right to suppress it, etc. Seriously, for those who speak badly of unions, WTF? I'm not suggesting that they are perfect, but you have to be seriously deranged to believe that corporations needing protection from their workers is a more pressing issue than the reverse. On the death penalty, what does it say about your very soul if you are more comfortable seeing an innocent man murdered by the state rather than a guilty man go free? Karl Rove, the man seemingly behind the US Attorneys scandal (there's a shock!) wanted certain people fired for failing to investigate "voter fraud", which in practice means anecdotal evidence of some trace amount of illegal voting by non-citizens. The favorite republican tool to stop this: odious voting registration requirements that suppress minority turnout. Seriously, if you don't like the rules of the game, just change the rules in order to keep the other side down (see Bush vs. Gore for more of this kind of policy).

At heart, I really dislike people who root for the big guy over the little one (no height-related comments from the peanut gallery please). It basically means that you are picking your sides based on who you think will win, rather than who should win. It's like being a Yankees fan, only toward life, rather than just baseball. We're not kids anymore, crying because we lost a little league game, or a talent competition, or something like that. Especially in cases where the big guy is a combination of corporate interests that value profits over people, along with their theocratic allies who value profits over prophets, and a scattering of macho bullshit idiots who think that war is a game not much different than basketball, but for the traumatic injuries, deaths of soldiers and civilians, millions of refugees, etc....well, let's just say to root for the little guy.

More tomorrow night when I'm in the mood to be a bit coherent. Until then, here's hoping for Upset City, baby!

algo divertido

Since my illustrious co-blogger is busy (for a change?) I figure we can have a little fun. Here's an awesome video from the dearly departed Mr. George Harrison, and watch out for a little help from certain friends...


If you want to discuss the obvious or obscure symbolism of the video in the comments, be our guest. Possible topics: are pajamas philosophical garments, or just closer to "institutional" attire? What's up with fake boobs hanging out? And why is moustache on John Cleese inherently and unmistakably evil?

Barack and crabbiness

I don't envy what Barack Obama has to go through. Here's an excerpt from a passionate letter about the attitudes of black intellectuals gathered on Tavis Smiley:

But then it happened . . . my enthusiasm came to a screeching halt! Here we go again . . . that same gratuitous question mainstream media outlets across America seem to be commissioning ambitious black folk to answer and justify: Is our brother, Barack Obama, down enough with the cause to deserve our support?

I just knew this panel of amazing minds and deep souls would once and for all stop the madness and give a resounding, "we're not falling for another Rove-ian mindtrick to sidetrack us from the substantive issues at hand to debate your historical lies and give credibility to your ignorance." I just knew this conscientious crew would cite to Obama's academic excellence and obvious intelligence, his outstanding achievements, his proven commitment to our community through his life's work, his impressive legislative record, his coalition-building skills and political experience. But instead, Malcolm's proverbial crabs started grabbing, pulling, pinching and reaching for dear brother Barack's neck. I was mortified.

Two observations:
1. From my uninformed perspective, I'd guess that lack of monolithic support from the "black community" (whatever that means) will probably play in Obama's favor in the broader population.

2. The tendency to "eat their young" is certainly not limited to African-American intelligentsia. A lot of groups, political, ethnic, cultural, scrutinize those closest to them more harshly than others, perhaps reflecting deep-seated insecurities, or the human tendency to magnify differences with those near and dear to you.

Whatever the outcome, I think Obama's is by far the most exciting campaign happening now, both because of who he is, what he says, and how he connects with people.

It's not a crime! It's legal, perfectly natural...

I'll be going off tonight on fake scandals and the reporters who love them, but make sure to scroll down and play dkon's youtube clip first, since it'll put you in a better mood either before or afterwards (or both).

My current favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama, found himself enmeshed in a scandal today...only, it turns out that it's not really much of a scandal at all. He turned over proceeds from his book into a blind trust, realized later that he was receiving more info about the investments he let a broker make than he should, and decided the best course of action was to take all his money and place it into mutual funds instead, to avoid a conflict of interest. Thankfully, Obama understands the fast-paced media cycle and responded in the same day:

Senator Barack Obama said today he did not believe it was a conflict to seek investment advice and use the brokerage services recommended by a friend and political contributor. He said he was not aware he had invested money into two of the same companies supported by some of his top donors.

“At no point did I know what stocks were held,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “And at no point did I direct how those stocks were invested.”

I'm not even sure that this is a scandal even if he knew, since he and supporters were investing in the same companies, not in each other's projects, and as mentioned before he didn't even know about where his money was going so one can't really say he meant to do anything. Still, it's good to know that the story got smacked down, because otherwise it is safe to assume that FoxNews would have had a field day, like they did with the fake madrassa story, and the fake controversy over his church's creed, and the fake controversy about his middle name, and ....

Obama's not the only one whose been bitten by crappy gotcha journalism. John Edwards was gotcha'd for selling his house through a realtor below market price to a political opponent. Again, I have no idea how this is supposed to be a conflict of interest, and neither did the Washington Post ombudsman, who smacked down the reporter who filed the bogus story, John Solomon. Solomon, formerly of the AP, is famous for misleading hit pieces, most recently on Harry Reid for another non-scandal, and was once described thus: "The consensus: he's lazy, and takes hit jobs handed him on a platter by opps research teams (and anyone will do.) And doesn't do much to clean it up.".

Seemingly every presidential candidate is vulnerable to this crap. Hillary got pilloried by the Drudge Report, and then CNN et al., for a quote taken massively out of context. Even St. John McCain, the patron saint of moderation and maverickosity was on the receiving end of another Solomon smear that was considered so blatantly unfair that lefty bloggers were up in arms.

Remember, many politicians are out-and-out criminals, like Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, and likely Tom DeLay. Sen Pet Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, both Republicans from NM, seem to have interfered with an active investigation, thus obstructing justice, in the recent US Attorneys scandal. Still, not every scandal is real, and many of these stories are steaming piles of donkey poo, poorly sourced and poorly fact-checked, designed to attack a candidate without giving them a fair chance to respond. For goodness sakes, it's not like investigative journalists can't find enough real scandals out there, but some are just too lazy to do it.

What brothers are for...

Here is something to amuse the fine blog-reading public. My brother Tim hipped me to this:

Liar, liar, pants are on fire, your tongue is as long as a telephone wire

Today was a bad day for the administration. In the morning, we had suicide bombers killing over 100 Iraqis as reports filtered out of 9 more US troop deaths. Around noon, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, was found guilty on four counts of obstruction of justice and perjury. All day long, Congress heard testimony from US Attorneys forced out of their jobs, supposedly for performance reasons, but apparently for either prosecuting Republicans or not prosecuting democrats enough. One thing is clear from the last two items: nothing coming from senior levels of the administration can be trusted anymore. Here is a basic summary of their malfeasance:

1. They let subordinates lie for them, and then fall on their own swords to protect the boss. This is clearly the case for Libby, who lied to protect Cheney when everyone else in the administration actually told the truth to the FBI. Note that this indicates that Cheney is the paranoid power behind the throne; Karl Rove told Patrick Fitzgerald the truth about leaking a CIA agent's name, knowing that the media would follow up ineffectively. By the way, regardless of the ongoing trial, Bush promised to fire anyone connected to the leak, and Cheney and Rove both admitted doing so under oath. I somehow doubt they will be tendering resignations any time soon. Perhaps the media should harp on this a bit.

As to the prosecutors, they were honorable in their duties, even in the face of government interference that they considered tantamount to obstruction of justice. The higher-ups in the Justice Department smeared them anyway,m because that is what they do, and are now being bitten in the ass for it.

2. There is no accountability in our government, because the media gets too distracted. Anna Nicole's death, in the days that it happened, was still a smaller story than the continuing suffering in New Orleans, or Darfur, or Iraq, or any number of places. The Bush administration never fixes any of these, they just wait for the focus to pass. This is good for them personally, bad for their party, and horrible for the nation. As I mentioned yesterday, though, they don't really seem to care, so long as the bucks keep flowing their way. Look at Walter Reed, whose problems were outsourced to a former Halliburton executive, or Iraq, many of whose problems were outsourced to Halliburton, or ...you get the point.

In scanning tonight's news, there were stories in the NYTimes and WaPo about the administration's failure of credibility, but we all know tomorrow that they will still report the government's side in the interests of "fairness" failing to properly note the administration's global lack of any credibility on just about any issue. This needs to change.

3. Democrats are still being very, very cautious, which is dumb. It is time to say, repeatedly and publicly, that the administration specifically and Republican party in general is no longer a credible governing force. Afghanistan, Iraq, New Orleans, Walter Reed, Congressional pages, Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, Macaca, Ann Coulter, the list is endless, on every issue one could name. Time after time, it is time to treat them with the scorn that they've earned for years now. Rather than embrace a phony bipartisanship to sound nice, Democrats need to claim an alliance with the American people, fighting for the issues we support against a government that has functioned for the past six years as a kleptocracy. Taking the other side seriously as anything but an impediment for passing an agenda worthy of the American people is a waste of time at this point. They've fucked us over for long enough, and it is time for the grownups to take over. End of story.

Money, so they say, is the root of all evil today.

In the continuing furor over care at Walter Reed, it seems even more bizarre that the VA system is considered to be the best healthcare system in America according to any number of recent surveys...until you realize that the two statements I just made have no relation to each other at all. Walter Reed, like many of the problematic medical facilities out there, is a military hospital run by the Department of Defense, in this case by the Army. Bethesda Naval hospital, as the name implies, is run by that service branch. The VA system, on the contrary, is run by the Department of Veterans' Affairs, a completely different branch of the government. The latter has been hurt lately by an influx of new wounded veterans without a corresponding increase in its budget and the fact that it's current head, Jim Nicholson, is a Republican toady:

He has been accused by some veterans and the organizations that represent them of being primarily a mouthpiece for the Bush administration and of being slow to respond to increasing strains on his agency as returning soldiers move from facilities like Walter Reed, which is run by the Defense Department, into the veterans affairs system.

Critics say he has under-emphasized his agency’s budget needs to Congress, has not responded to calls for more mental health workers and brain trauma specialists and has failed to overhaul disability claims procedures. Some leaders of veterans groups say Mr. Nicholson is less communicative than his predecessors.

Still, VA care is among the best in the country, as this Washington Monthly story demonstrates:

And so it goes today. If the debate is over health-care reform, it won't be long before some free-market conservative will jump up and say that the sorry shape of the nation's veterans hospitals just proves what happens when government gets into the health-care business. And if he's a true believer, he'll then probably go on to suggest, quoting William Safire and other free marketers, that the government should just shut down the whole miserable system and provide veterans with health-care vouchers.

Yet here's a curious fact that few conservatives or liberals know. Who do you think receives higher-quality health care. Medicare patients who are free to pick their own doctors and specialists? Or aging veterans stuck in those presumably filthy VA hospitals with their antiquated equipment, uncaring administrators, and incompetent staff? An answer came in 2003, when the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published a study that compared veterans health facilities on 11 measures of quality with fee-for-service Medicare. On all 11 measures, the quality of care in veterans facilities proved to be "significantly better."

Here's another curious fact. The Annals of Internal Medicine recently published a study that compared veterans health facilities with commercial managed-care systems in their treatment of diabetes patients. In seven out of seven measures of quality, the VA provided better care.

It gets stranger. Pushed by large employers who are eager to know what they are buying when they purchase health care for their employees, an outfit called the National Committee for Quality Assurance today ranks health-care plans on 17 different performance measures. These include how well the plans manage high blood pressure or how precisely they adhere to standard protocols of evidence-based medicine such as prescribing beta blockers for patients recovering from a heart attack. Winning NCQA's seal of approval is the gold standard in the health-care industry. And who do you suppose this year's winner is: Johns Hopkins? Mayo Clinic? Massachusetts General? Nope. In every single category, the VHA system outperforms the highest rated non-VHA hospitals.

Not convinced? Consider what vets themselves think. Sure, it's not hard to find vets who complain about difficulties in establishing eligibility. Many are outraged that the Bush administration has decided to deny previously promised health-care benefits to veterans who don't have service-related illnesses or who can't meet a strict means test. Yet these grievances are about access to the system, not about the quality of care received by those who get in. Veterans groups tenaciously defend the VHA and applaud its turnaround. "The quality of care is outstanding," says Peter Gayton, deputy director for veterans affairs and rehabilitation at the American Legion. In the latest independent survey, 81 percent of VHA hospital patients express satisfaction with the care they receive, compared to 77 percent of Medicare and Medicaid patients.

No, the current problem lies with Walter Reed and the military's hospital management. In many ways, they are suffering from the same problem as a number of government agencies do: complete hubris and incompetence in the face of a Congress and media that basically spent six years ignoring their roles as guardians of the public interest. Just like the Justice Department decided that it could can a bunch of US Attorneys and no one would notice, just like the administration decided to put cronies in charge of FEMA and no one would notice, just like they decided to make up the reasons to fight a war, and are trying to do it again, hoping no one will notice...it's just the way that they operate.

If I told you that Halliburton is ultimately at fault, would you be shocked? At this point, you shouldn't, because Halliburton's fingerprints are all over the scandal:

In a letter from the committee to Weightman, the members said the Garibaldi memo “describes how the Army’s decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was causing an exodus of ‘highly skilled and experienced personnel.’ ... According to multiple sources, the decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed led to a precipitous drop in support personnel at Walter Reed.”

The committee’s letter also noted that Walter Reed awarded a five-year, $120 million contract to IAP Worldwide Services, which is run by Al Neffgen, a former senior Halliburton official.

The committee also noted that more than 300 federal employees providing facilities management services at Walter Reed dropped to fewer than 60 by Feb. 3, the day before IAP took over facilities management. IAP replaced the remaining 60 employees with 50 private workers.

“The conditions that have been described at Walter Reed are disgraceful,” the committee statement said.

“Part of our mission on the oversight committee is to investigate what led to the breakdown in services. It would be reprehensible if the deplorable conditions were caused or aggravated by an ideological commitment to privatize government services regardless of the costs to taxpayers and the consequences for wounded soldiers.”

The committee letter said the Defense Department “systemically” tried to replace federal workers at Walter Reed with private companies for facilities management, patient care and guard duty — a process that began in 2000.

“But the push to privatize support services there accelerated under President Bush’s ‘competitive sourcing’ initiative, which was launched in 2002,” the committee letter states.

During the year between awarding the contract to IAP and when the company started, “skilled government workers apparently began leaving Walter Reed in droves,” the letter states.

“The memorandum also indicates that officials at the highest levels of Walter Reed and the U.S. Army Medical Command were informed about the dangers of privatization, but appeared to do little to prevent them.”

The memo signed by Garibaldi requests more federal employees because the hospital mission has grown “significantly” during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It states that medical command did not concur with their request for more people.

“Without favorable consideration of these requests,” Garibaldi wrote, “[Walter Reed Army Medical Center] Base Operations and patient care services are at risk of mission failure.”

Seriously, it's not a new scandal each time, it's the same scandal being created by the same folks, whose effect always seems to be to poison this country. It's not that all of them are evil, though some may be, it's just that they don't really give a shit, and that's a bad thing for the people running the country to think.

And that is how I know...when I try to get through on the telephone to you...There'll be nobody home

There was a brief period when I was first introduced to Slashdot, the web's leading technology news source, when I used to leave comments. I soon realized it was pretty useless, given the general chaos in their comments, which span the full range between insightful points and babbling idiocy, with very few people aware of the difference in spite of their extremely complicated comment moderation system. Still, it should be pointed out that there are precious few stories about anything technical that escape their attention, and three from tonight really made that clear. I'll skip straight to the linked articles, since that is where the real interest lies.

First, a quickie about a mission to go sample the Earth's mantle with a deep sea mission. MSNBC reports that the exposed mantle is located near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where matter is upwelling, slowly pushing America and Europe apart, though nowhere near as fast as our President has been doing so. No one is quite sure exactly why the crust seems to have ripped open in this one spot, according to the article, though they seem to think the crust above fractured and was more tightly bound to itself than to the mantle below, leading to fissures. Given the huge uncertainties we have with respect to the physics of what happens underfoot, especially compared to the ease with which we study the stuff above, I'm sure that anything they find will be more than interesting. Heck, just last week they announced that a big chunk of the mantle beneath China contains as much water as the Arctic Ocean, though no one has much of an idea how to access it anytime soon.

Switching over to matters above, if you will, the NYTimes has an article about our evolutionary conditioning to believe in God. Just to set up the basic parameters:

About 6 in 10 Americans, according to a 2005 Harris Poll, believe in the devil and hell, and about 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles and of life after death. A 2006 survey at Baylor University found that 92 percent of respondents believe in a personal God — that is, a God with a distinct set of character traits ranging from “distant” to “benevolent.”

The article mentions several interesting psychological studies, demonstrating that as young children we first believe that everyone thinks exactly the same (i.e., exactly like us), and later that we still seem to believe in omniscience, especially with regard to our parents until about age 5 or 6, and essentially suggests that God may be the residual of this belief.

Now, I might be genetically predisposed to be a non-believer, since neither of my parents are believers, but I am wary of the "nature instead of nurture" tone of the article. There is a strong social component to religion, especially given the role played by parents in teaching religion to their children (you have no idea how hard it was not to use the word "brainwash" there). Also, there is a bizarre tendency in humanity to believe completely random crap about just about anything, no matter how contradictory those beliefs may be, rather than admit to not knowing. Ask people if there is gravity on the moon, and more people will tell you "no" than "I don't know" (the answer is yes, of course, since mass is a source of gravitation and the moon has quite a bit of it). For reasons beyond me, people would rather believe their lives have an inherent point, even if we can't really define it, rather than admit we have no idea if we do or not. Most of it comes down to a sense of perspective: people ignore the fact of just how small and insignificant we are on the global scale, much less an astronomical ones. Maybe this is the byproduct of evolution: we specialize in explaining things, with very little regard to whether or not the explanations are correct, and uncertainty just flusters our well-evolved brains. Then again, I really don't know.

Finally, having looked up and down, let's just look all around at the invisible things all around us, in this case Wi-Fi networks. John C. Dvorak of PC Magazine, who is a very good writer, suggests that cellphone companies will try to kill off citywide WiFi projects, which would compete with their overpriced, tortoise-paced cell-based internet networks. He's certainly right about the telephone companies, who like just about all media/communication companies are fundamentally shortsighted about literally every technological issue with which they have to deal. I just wonder whether he fully understands kids these days. To anyone used to Hi-speed internet (let's say 10 Mbps or so), dial-up speed is physically painful. So long as there are restaurants and coffeeshops with free Wi-Fi, I'll blissfully ignore the existence of slower connections. If trapped at an airport without Hi-speed, I'll watch a DVD or read a book. I doubt I'm alone in this, it's just that a slow connection seems like a waste of time in the end. Outside of an airport, where exactly can one not find a coffeeshop these days? I would certainly look at paying for city-wide WiFi , but anything else is just a bit too close to the telegraph and the Pony Express. Thankfully, the cellphone companies don't have time on their side: free municipal WiFi may be hard to get implemented, but once in place it's hard to see what could make it go away. Besides, once Apple takes over the market with the iPhone, and then switches over to a WiFi/VoiP basis rather than cell when possible, how much longer will the cell phone industry be around, anyway?

Well maybe I am the f@ggot America, I'm not a part of a redneck agenda

First a followup from yesterday, and then the newer stuff, including a movie review for a very good film that I really should have heard about long before now.

The media blackout on Coulter basically continued today, but for a halfhearted effort from the NYTimes, which first compared her to Hillary Clinton (yes, they are both polarizing, Hillary for proposing a halfway decent healthcare plan and Coulter for being a bigot), and then attempted to apologize for all the speakers who preceded her at the CPAC meeting, failing to note that last year at this very venue she contented herself with just making raghead jokes. This was premeditated, no matter how dumb the media chooses to play it, when they play it at all.

I brought up Atrios yesterday, and today featured one of the best descriptions of his blog and methods from the also-excellent Ezra Klein. Discussing Atrios' world-famous "wanker of the day" award, Klein explains exactly what it does and does not represent:

Among other things, the lefty blogosphere was founded on a critique of the mainstream media that argued, contrary to popular belief, that the media was not actually liberal. The individuals who comprised it may have been tolerant on cultural issues, but years of sustained attacks from the right had cowed reporters into a hollow set of "objective" protocols that served to obscure truth rather than enhance it. Simultaneously, decades of sustained attacks on liberals had spurred "serious pundits" to underscore their independence by routinely attacking the left. The result was a media which may have voted Democratic, but was fairly hostile to progressivism.

"Wanker of the Day" is not an argumentative feature, it is a reinforcing one. It exists to repeatedly provide evidence for a critique of the media that is only now leaving the margins. Atrios's epiphany was that you had to actually prove it day after day, not merely argue it. Since this was a somewhat counterintuitive take on reportage, it had to be buttressed -- and not just once, but repeatedly. Now, you can argue about the language ("wanker") or even deny the feature's legitimacy, but it does have a point -- it's not simply rhetorical extremism or red meat.

And let us all say, amen.

BTW, in case anyone wondered about the US Attorneys reference I made yesterday, the same exact wanker media/good blogosphere dynamic is summed up perfectly here at Talking Points memo, which also has pictures of Mitt Romney with Coulter, and this little chestnut on the whole affair, sent in by a reader:

From TPM Reader RB:

As I read the reaction/fallout from Ann Coulter’s remarks at CPAC this week I’m annoyed by the entire progressive reaction to it and most of the many other outrages committed on a daily basis by the Republican Party.

Why doesn’t a progressive with an audience say something to the effect “This is who and what the once proud and honorable Republican Party has turned itself into. It is a party of hate, intolerance, incompetence, greed, treason, fanatical, hostile to science and reality, and totally corrupt. They have no honor and no shame. They’re fascists and a cancer on our great nation, plain and simple and this is just another example of that.”

You'll note the clever meta trick of publishing said reader comment on a progressive blog with an audience...and again, let us all say amen, brother.

So, on to the movie reviews. On the recommendation of one of my colleagues, I finally saw Idiocracy, by Mike Judge, the guy who created both Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill, and wrote and directed Office Space. It stars Luke Wilson as a completely average American who is accidentally placed in hibernation for 500 years, during which time the stupid people in the world so completely outbreed their smarter brethren that the entire country is plunged into idiocy. This should not be taken as racist (maybe classist), more a comment on today's race to the bottom popular culture. Given Judge's past, it should come as no surprise that TV, along with global corporate greed, proves to be a popular target for Judge to parody. The satire is a bit loose, but the movie is sustained throughout by a clever and funny visual feel (everyone wears shiny clothing more littered with ads than your average NASCAR driver), and a selection of targets that few would want to defend (mostly corporate conglomerates and their incessantly stupid advertising, along with dreadful reality TV). It's certainly worth renting, and given its complete lack of notoriety should be easy to find in a video store.

One of the funnier points that the movie makes is that there is an unfortunate association made in popular culture between intelligence and feminization. Judge does this by having his idiots of the future call lots of things "gay", satirizing the same macho bullshit redneck culture attacked by Green Day in the lyrics giving us tonight's post title (from "American Idiot", just like last night) and personified by Coulter's remarks and her intended audience, who can think of few things funnier than a faggot joke.

One of the reasons I am proud to consider myself a liberal is that this shit does not fly with us. We don't make it a point of principle to constantly attack the "other", whoever they may be at the moment, and are willing to defend them, as Elizabeth Edwards, John's wife, did today:

Although her words did not hurt us, they may have hurt some in the gay community. We are all sick and tired of anyone supporting or applauding or introducing hate words into the national dialogue, tired of people thinking that words that cause others pain are fair game. And we are sick and tired of people like Miss Coulter thinking that her use of loaded words about the homosexual community in this country is remotely humorous or appropriate.

The same dynamic is always in play whenever homosexuality is brought up: idiots go on the attack against what they perceive to be an easy target, and those of us who aren't assholes are left to argue against them. In response to a former NBA player coming out of the closet, we had this lovely quote from former player Tim Hardaway:

"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known," Hardaway said. "I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

Somehow, he perceived this as the proper Christian response, as would Ann Coulter as well, which is even scarier. The intelligent comeback came from former players Charles Barkley and Reggie Miller, respectively, and credit to them for saying it:

“I played with gay guys, I’ve got gay friends. I don’t care if a person is gay or not, only God can judge a person. But any jock who thinks he’s never played with a gay guy is sadly mistaken. Any team you’ve been on, at some point, you’ve played with a gay guy.”

“It’s a lack of education. For everything we’ve overcome as African-American athletes with a lot of the racial discrimination, I believe he needs some type of counseling or help to overcome his phobia. This is another black eye that David Stern has to deal with.”

I'll note that even though times may be changing slowly, they are changing. It may not men much to hear these words from someone randomly on the street, but these are prominent (hall of fame caliber) athletes, albeit in one of the two more liberal major sports (the NBA, because of the large African-American player percentage, along with Hockey, because of the European/Canadian influence). Even one of the most conservative institutions in America, the military, is seeing a change in perceptions. According to a 2006 Zogby poll:

Nearly one in four U.S. troops (23%) say they know for sure that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, and of those 59% said they learned about the person's sexual orientation directly from the individual, a Zogby International poll of troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan shows.

More than half (55%) of the troops who know a gay peer said the presence of gays or lesbians in their unit is well known by others. According to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, service members are not allowed to say that they are gay.
...
According to the new Zogby data, however, nearly three in four troops (73%) say they are personally comfortable in the presence of gays and lesbians.

Thankfully, with Democrats now in charge of Congress, Rep. Marty Meehan's bill ending the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy will likely come to the floor, even though the assholes at the Pentagon aren't pleased and say that it will be divisive. in a sense, they may be right. it will end up dividing the assholes and bigots from the rest of America, and about time. There is simply no place left in reasonable discourse for out and out bigots, and it's about time we started pushing this as strongly as possible.

Don't wanna be an American idiot, Don't want a nation under the media

To quote Atrios: Owwww! The Stupid! It BURNS!!!! Parental advisory: Today's stupidity will force me to curse repeatedly.

From today's Chicago Tribune, Mary Schmichdiscussing the new TV show "Are you smarter than a 5th Grader?":

But as for what star is closest to the Earth? Get real. The average person does not need to know that.

Yes they do. It's the fucking sun! It's what powers the entire planet, and allows us to live. How big an idiot are you, first to not know, and then to mock people for not being more ignorant than your average kindergartner?

From today's Conservative Political Action Committee meeting, at which nearly every Republican presidential candidate spoke, we have Ann Coulter, who I'll note was introduced by Mitt Romney himself:

I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.” Audience members said “ohhh” and then cheered.

That's actually not the idiocy, since Ann Coulter is always like this. No, I'm talking about the complete media blackout. You may not have heard of this, since while it was mentioned on several liberal blogs and Editor and Publisher magazine, it literally wasn't mentioned by a single newspaper or news agency in the country, even though the NYTimes, Washington Post, and AP all filed stories on the day's meeting. From E&P, who seem to actually still believe in journalism:

The New York Times failed to mention the crack about Edwards in observing tonight: "The conference drew thousands of attendees, many of whom waited in a long line out the door for a late-afternoon appearance by Ann Coulter, the conservative author and commentator."

The Washington Post covered the conference but did not mention Coulter at all. Neither did the Associated Press, which also attended.

Seriously, what the fuck? John Edwards got a week of bad press for hiring two bloggers who have in the past taken on the Catholic Church for its support of pedophiles and backwardness with respect to birth control, and all of those news sources were more than happy to run with the story. A speaker at the biggest collection of Republican candidates to date makes a faggot joke in front of the assembled media, and they decide it's not newsworthy? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with this country?

I could actually go on about several other idiocies tonight, given the continuing whitewash of the Walter Reed fiasco by the military (the guy they appointed to take over the facility, General Kevin Kiley, did nothing after being told that patients were sleeping in their own urine).
There is a story in the WaPo about the firing of 8 US Attorneys that completely misses the fact that many of them were fired because they were investigating higher-ups in the administration. Did you know that Carol Lam, the former US Attorney for San Diego who busted Rep. Duke Cunningham, is currently investigating the former #3 official in the CIA for corruption? You won't find that little tidbit anywhere in the newspaper tonight, needless to say, because John Solomon, their new "investigative" "reporter", turns out to be neither.

Seriously, I wish there was a God so it meant more when I say "god help us all"..

There's not been a day, one hasn't gone by, when I don't think about the day he didn't die

Thankfully, while the current administration seems intent on making sure that all our news is bad news (how exactly did nuclear allegations about Iraq, Iran, and North Korea all turn out wrong anyway?...), they are as incompetent with regard to this task as they are to all the efforts they undertake. Today actually brought us two lightly related bits of good news, to offset the cratering of the stock market, the politically motivated firings of several US Attorneys, the first signs of the military taking some responsibility for the Walter Reed debacle about four years too late, etc.

It appears that there is some very encouraging news in the fight against malaria, one of the world's true preventable health crises.

A new, cheap, easy-to-take pill to treat malaria is being introduced today, the first product of an innovative partnership between an international drug company and a medical charity.

The medicine, called ASAQ, is a pill combining artemisinin, invented in China using sweet wormwood and hailed as a miracle malaria drug, with amodiaquine, an older drug that still works in many malarial areas.

A treatment will cost less than $1 for adults and less than 50 cents for children. Adults with malaria will take only two pills a day for three days, and the pill will come in three smaller once-a-day sizes for infants, toddlers and youngsters.
...
Sanofi-Aventis, the world’s fourth-largest drug company, based in Paris, will sell the pill at cost to international health agencies like the W.H.O., Unicef and the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

As to the medical charity, they should be pretty familiar to you, since they are the February/March Rooted Cosmopolitans Charity of the Month, Médecins sans Frontières, a.k.a. Doctors without Borders. They even got the company to agree not to patent the drug, so generic versions will be legal worldwide. Let me suggest that this is an even better time to support their efforts. Your $25 may save up to 50 children's lives, by my count. Seriously, how can you not give at that rate of return on your money?

Further good news on the malaria front comes by way of a study performed in Uganda:

San Francisco and African AIDS researchers reported Tuesday that they had virtually eliminated malaria in a group of highly vulnerable, HIV-infected children simply by providing them with a daily dose of antibiotic and having them sleep under an insecticide-treated mosquito net.

The study conducted in Kampala, Uganda, in collaboration with researchers from San Francisco General Hospital found the bed net and antibiotic combination reduced the risk of malaria an astonishing 97 percent among the HIV-infected kids compared with a similar group of healthy children who did not receive the antibiotic and most of whom did not sleep under a bed net.
...
The antibiotic used in the study is cotrimoxazole -- sold in the United States under brand names such as Bactrim and Septra. The oral antibiotic is produced by generic drugmakers, and can be provided to children for pennies a day. But cost is always an issue in Africa and even the $5 cost of an insecticide-treated bed net is prohibitive for poor families.

Let's do a quick calculation, shall we? The Iraq war currently costs about $200 billion per year, once all costs are factored in. Figuring on two nets per person ($10), we could basically keep about 20 billion people from getting malaria in Africa each year...except for the fact that there are only about 6 billion people on the planet at the moment. Quite literally, in choosing to eliminate malaria or fight a war, we chose the war, and it's not even working out so well...when people try to make moral cases for war, make sure to remind them of these numbers, and then point out the millions displaced and the hundreds of thousands of dead civilians.

A quick update to a point I made about a month ago. Apparently, pressure is growing in Europe to require publicly funded scientific research to be made freely available to the public. According to the BBC:

Last month five leading European research institutions launched a petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new policy that would require all government-funded research to be made available to the public shortly after publication.
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Within weeks, it garnered more than 20,000 signatures, including several Nobel prize winners and 750 education, research, and cultural organisations from around the world.
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For years, the research model has remained relatively static.

In many countries, government funding agencies in the sciences, social sciences, and health sciences dole out hundreds of millions of dollars each year to support research at national universities.

This statement is correct in many fields, but the BBC forgot to note that the revolution has already occurred in several, starting with high energy physics, and now encompassing a significant chunk of the physics world, including the entirety of astrophysics. The vehicle of change was the arXiv preprint server, to which essentially every astrophysics, high-energy physics, condensed matter, and many other disciples' papers are posted either prior to or immediately following acceptance by print journals. As an example, here is the sum of my published scientific output, short of talks that I've given but have yet to post to my personal webpage. There is not a single paper of mine for which you would have to pay for access that could not be gotten for free. Anyone in the world can read them all, not that anyone out there should really want to. Trust me, you don't want to. I don't even want to, frankly. You'll note if you check over there, or you could just take my word for it, that many of these papers appeared in reputable journals, whose editors and referees play a major role in validating the quality of papers. I'm certainly thankful that the published ones had to get an independent reader's approval. Even when the process is a pain, it generally improves the final quality (I'd note to avoid confusion that these revisions can be updated to the "preprint" after the fact, though it is not required).

Honestly, just about any academic field would be better served by this model. The opposition forces, which seem to consist of Nature and possible Elsevier press, are blowing smoke because they have a nice racket going and don't want to even risk it. What's most frustrating about this argument, though, is that many people discuss it as if it were some big theoretical idea, whereas the actual case is that several million scientific articles currently reside on public servers (arXiv has 400,000, and is the third largest that I found with a quick search). Thus you still see arguments like this:

Indeed, soon after the launch of the European petition, Nature reported that publishers were preparing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to counter open access support with a message that equates public access to government censorship.

even though it runs completely counter to the experience of hundreds of thousands of scientists who would be forced to spend literally minutes per paper uploading it to a public archive if they weren't industrious enough to pawn off the task on a grad student. Shockingly enough, and contra Nature if you'll pardon the pun, it is actually useful for scientists to make their work as broadly accessible as possible. In my case, UIUC subscribes to every journal under the sun, but I have no access at home or on the road to anything but the free server, an extremely common problem. This is just not that difficult an issue, frankly. Science belongs to the world, not to publishing houses.