Arkansas Executes Mentally Ill Man. Charles Singleton was mentally ill. The courts declared him too unfit to be executed because he couldn't understand why he... [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]

What does it say about us that we forcibly drug a man so that we can then kill him. Was he sane when he committed the crimes? Was he only sane after we arrested him and forced medication on him? What a twisted story! We make a man sane just so we can kill him because we can not kill him if he is insane. Unbelieveable. If I were in a religious mood, I would say that these are the sorts of moral conundrums that God will judge us on. And, I believe, he will see we failed in this case. This is another reason why Arkansas is right up there with Texas as perfect demonstrations for why the death penalty is misused.  10:14:31 PM    

The Ongoing Flame-Out of David Brooks.

Kevin Drum's jaw drops to the floor as he views the ongoing total flame-out of David Brooks:

Calpundit: OK, let's get this out of the way: I was mistaken to ever think that David Brooks was anything other than a hack. I could swear that I've read good stuff by him in the past, but I guess not. I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

His column in the New York Times today is the latest offering in a developing conservative meme: neoconservatives, he says, don't really exist, they don't have any influence if they do exist, and "neocon" is just a codeword for "Jew" in any case. This argument is so deeply dishonest and morally offensive that it's hard to even know where to begin with it.... [W]hy would Brooks write this stuff? And why is the Wurlitzer being cranked up to pretend that "neocons" (complete with scare quotes) are little more than a figment of liberal imaginations? What's the agenda here?

[Semi-Daily Journal]

Neoconservatives are not some boogy man of the left. they are a cohesive group with a definite political philosophy. Their religion has nothing to do with the criticism they have attracted. I wondewr who provided the talking points for this column?  10:06:49 PM    

Read MoveOn's Reply To The RNC

"Moveon.org: Bush=Hitler" [Daypop Top 40]

These ads were 2 of the 1500 that were put on the site for viewers to vote on in order to get a smaller pool. They are not any ads that actually will make it to TV. In fact, 3 million people voted for the 15 ads that made the finals and neither of these 2 ads did. As the MoveOn reply states, compare this with the comparison of Sen. Max Cleland, a triple amputee veteran of Vietnam who was compared to Osama Bin Laden by Republicans in an ad.

Or how about this new ad discussing Dean being shown in Iowa. A man says 'Well, I think Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading ...,' and the woman continues, '... body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.' Looks to me as though the conservatives are actually putting abusive ads on TV right now. I guess they must be getting a little scared if they have to start preemptively criticizing liberal commercials before they have even been shown on TV. What tools.  10:04:00 PM    

"The Vermont Governor: Dean Narrowing His Separation of Church and Stump" [Daypop Top 40]

I am similar to Dean. I do not want to discuss my feelings on religion nor do I really care about someone elses. My standard reply is that my relationship with God is a personal matter that I do not feel comfortable discussing with anyone. I hate watching politicians pretend to be the sort of religious man that different groups want him to be. I hate reading columnists discuss the fact that his wife is Jewish and he is Christian so why are their kids not being raised as Christians. As history has taught us, a man's professed religion has absolutely nothing to do with his being a moral or a just man. So why do people think it does?  9:39:53 PM    

Wishful Thinking

'I Got a Witness': Plame Investigation. John Dean gives his theory on why Ashcroft removed himself from the Plame investigation: Dean contends that the progress of... [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]

Dean has made for some interesting reading on this case. As someone who was a mid-level person who 'turned' on his President, he can bring some useful insights into the process.  9:28:50 PM    

The Lobster Police. Why are federal officials prosecuting people for importing lobster tails in plastic bags instead of cardboard boxes? Or because a... [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]

If lobsters are criminalized, then only criminals will have lobsters. I love how we can chose ANY foreign law to enforce. Neat.  9:24:02 PM    

Capital Games: Never Apologize, Never Explain. The Bush clan's stories on WMDs and 9/11 are falling apart. Will they pay a price? [The Nation Weblogs]

As I discuss Laura Bush's misleading statements below, it is always good to remember that she is ismall potatos compared with a true master such as her husband.  9:14:54 PM    

Daily Outrage: The Banality of Atrocity. An Ohio newspaper reminds us what the last guerrilla war was like. [The Nation Weblogs]

Looks like we may be on the beginning edge of a similar curve of violence. One Lt. Colonel chose retirement over a court martial for beating an Iraqi prisoner. British soldiers beat and kill an Iraqi prisoner in their custody. (Broke his nose. Hooded him and then allowed him to suffocate. Gosh.Beat him while he told them he could not breath. Nice interrogation methods. Somehow offering $8000 to the family does not seem adequate. I hope they nail someone's ass for this.) Three Americans are discharged instead of facing courts martial over beating prisoners. Beat a helpless, shackled, blindfolded person and you get to chose between going to jail or not having to stay in Iraq anymore. Such a deal!  9:11:50 PM    

Daily Outrage: The Anti-Weekend President. The Bush Administration publishes advice on how employers can screw workers out of their pay. [The Nation Weblogs]

Compassionate conservatism. What happened to that. Not only do they want to remove overtime payments for 8 million people in order to expand it for 1.3 milion, but now they provide tips for comanies to get around paying even those 1.3 million overtime. I love the 'lower their hourly wage so that they will have to work time and a hlaf just to stay even.' How absolutely cynical!

Here is the chickenshit response from the spokesman:

'We're not saying anybody should do any of this,' department spokesman Ed Frank said.

8:42:51 PM    

Daily Outrage: 'My Lump in the Bed'?. Who wrote George Bush's love poem to his wife? And why lie about it? [The Nation Weblogs]

Wow. She actually said he did not write the poem. Although she sure implied it, saying it was waiting for her when she returned. And how stupid we must be for thinking he wrote it, since it started off with 'Dear Laura'. Since she said he husband was a poet and then read a poem. Even though USA Today said it was her husband. I do not remember hearing them try and correct that. The President was right there and said nothing. No one tried to dissuade the papers after they told us that George wrote it. Now two months later, after all the wonderful publicity, she just states tht she was kidding. And the reporter just let it go at that. Thanks for being so quick with the clarification. I do not know how we could have made such a mistake!

It is simply disingenious to now say, 2 months later:

Well, of course, he didn't really write the poem. But a lot of people really believed that he did.

8:34:23 PM    

Retrocrush's "Worst Love Scenes" swiped by British tabloid. Boing Boing pal Mark Plattner says: "The UK tabloid 'The Daily Star' stole a story from RetroCrush entitled 'The Worst Sex Scenes Ever: A Look At The Most Unsexy Sex Scenes,' then passed it off as their own. It was picked up by at least 30 other media outlets and The Daily Star was credited with the story. When pressed on the issue, the News Editor was quoted as saying 'Well, if it's on the internet it's up for grabs.  You can't copyright anything on the Internet.' Webmaster and writer of the article Robert Berry is calling for legal assistance." Link [Boing Boing Blog]

I love it. Steal someone's work, claim it as your own. And give such a woderful justification. They should get themselves sued It was to prevent things such as this that we have the copyrights we do. But corporations have twisted and pulled it so cuh that it apparently only has meaning for corporate awyers.  12:26:45 PM    

'Any'.

Here’s Wolf Blitzer’s current poll question

Do you think any of the Democratic candidates for president can beat George W. Bush?

I honestly don’t know what this means, so I figure I’d throw it over to the LazyWeb. It seems to me that if I answer ‘Yes’, I’m implying that I believe that any of the Democratic candidates for president can beat George W. Bush. And that’s false since I know Sharpton and Kucinich can’t. (At least if we ignore distant possible worlds they can’t.) But if I answer ‘No’ I’m implying that I don’t believe that any of the Democratic candidates for president can beat George W. Bush. And that’s false since I know Dean, Clark, Kerry etc can all handily whip Bush.

The problem is that ‘any’ behaves differently in positive and negative environments. Maybe this is just a presupposition failure, as in “Have you stopped voting Republican?” but I don’t remember seeing it discussed before.

[Crooked Timber]

Aother good example of how the old media, and its members, so seldom understand. I do not believe Blitzer is purposely trying to obfuscate the question. He just did not put much efort into its construction because he does not really care what answer it gives. he will get something he can use. The falsity in these sorts of online polls, which allow the entertainment arm of the media called 'news' to get some grist for the mill for free, is so obvious and their contempt for any sort of real conversation with the people online so large that it easily reveals the wide gulf separating those who get it and those who do not.  10:09:06 AM    

The Revenge of Hank, the Angry Drunken Dwarf (Clay Shirky). We now know the answer to that eternal question “When will they ever learn?” The answer is “Never. They will never learn.” Lo, and behold, BBC Radio 4 decided to poll their users (stop me if you’ve heard this story... [Many-to-Many]

I love it when a major media tries to go the 'openess' route and poll their consumers. This sort of thing almost alays happens because they just do not get it. People can smell when openess is only a ploy. Rado 4 did not really want to do whatever the users said. We know this because the people tested them. Instead of saying, this is what they want, we get excuses and discussions of hijacking. Sure, the poll may have been hijacked but it also demonstrates the inability of Radio 4 to really understand what they were doing BEFORE they did the poll. Because if they had really understood and wanted an honest grass-roots response, they would have taken precautions to prevent hijacking. Most of the polls using today's technology, if they are really interesed and understand the technology, take steps to prevent the easy misuse of the technologies. Those that do not care enough to understand what it is they are asking, do not.Thus, Hank, the Angry Drunken Dwarf amply dsiplays that most major media have little or no concern with what people really want. They simply want to sell advertising. They give themselves away much too easily when they attempt to carry over this attitude to the newer technologies, where this attitude is too easily exposed. Then they cry about it afterwards. Pathetic.  9:57:02 AM    

Bush in 30 Seconds finalists. The Bush in 30 Seconds finalists are posted. This was the competition to come up with a 30-second, Creative Commons-licensed political ad exposing the Bush regime's failings, with the winning spot to be aired in commercial slots bracketing the State of the Union address. Here's my favorite, but the other 14 finalists are also very good.

Link

(via Lessig) [Boing Boing Blog]

Whether you agree with the sentiments or not, the idea that people could make their own political commercials is pretty transformative. A single person with a camcorder can now mimic or surpass a huge ad firm. Creative tools can now more and more be put in the hands of the creative talents with less and less control by non-creative minds. A scary world for those who live to control.

These ads are pretty amazing political ads and put the standard ones we have see to shame. Using images, music, edittig and rhetoric, many use the medium to create extremely effective ads that are only 30 seconds long. My Country is a wonderful example. Could the effective use of today's technologies, along with networked populations, have a large effect on the older technologies, such as TV? Would the ability to more rapidly find creative talent using the Web supplant the direted talets of politcal consultant? It seems as if MoveOn will find out?

Plus, you have to appreciate a site that uses Apple's Quicktime to display the ads.   9:38:45 AM    

How PowerPoint destroyed the space shuttle Columbia. Today appeared my net column on how PowerPoint was partly to blame for the Columbia disaster (written in Finnish, Kuinka PowerPoint tuhosi avaruussukkulan). The idea for the colunm came from an NY Times article, as described in a little note I posted here.

But I started to write about my personal view on the matter only when I received the booklet The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint by Edward R. Tufte. This booklet is definetely necessary for anyone using PowerPoint or any other presentation package. [Universal Rule]

I attended a seminar by Tufte several years ago. It was a real eye-opener on the idea of graphic design for information transfer, and how it was useless if done improperly. It also had a wonderful exchange between Tufte and an audience member that I constantly paraphrase. It went something like this:

Tufte said that all the greatest designs had the hallmarks of a single overall view, that one mind controlled the process. It was obvious to him that the Macintosh was the result of one or a few minds who had a single vision of what needed to be created and made that vision happen. Microsoft Windows looked as if it had been designed by a committee, with each members suggestions simply tacked on, resulting in a design that had no real coherency.

Now the good part. An audience member asked, Well what if you take a project, provide a single, coherant vision and it rurns out to be a failure? What then? To which Tufte replied that you should be fired!!

8:35:17 AM    

What Is the Point of the Republican Party?.

David Brooks argues that the Republican Party has no reason to exist--save to channel money to favored businessmen and their lobbyist friends:

Op-Ed Columnist: Running on Reform: ...The G.O.P. used to have a governing philosophy: reducing the size of the state.... But reducing the size of government can no longer be Republicans' animating principle... Republicans have no credibility on this subject.... Now Republicans control everything, and over the past three years the size of government has still increased.... Republicans have learned through hard experiences that most Americans do not actually want their government sharply cut....

With its old governing philosophy obsolete, the Republican Party is adrift domestically.... Meanwhile, corporate lobbyists have jumped into the vacuum. If principles aren't going to guide the Republican Party, the opportunists are happy to take control...

[Semi-Daily Journal]

The GOP used to be about fiscal responsibility, also. But once they got into power, they did what so many have also done. Forgot their principles in the glory that is power. I do not trust most people who want to gain political power. That is why our form was set up to be so inefficient. the Founding Fathers feared this too, so they created a form of government that hobbled almost anyone who wanted to DO things.We run into problems when the checks and balances are not working, when it is run effeciently, because the horrible quest for more power simply overbalances the system.

The biggest check on power gathering is a strong populace, something that has saved us in the past. I am sure it will save us in the future. Perhaps that is where Dean's campaign is heading. Whether it will be enough for him to win, who knows?   8:21:37 AM    

DLC: Wolves in Democrats' Clothing... (Harley Sorensen). DLC: Wolves in Democrats' Clothing... (Harley Sorensen) [Common Dreams]

A nice little discussion about the DLC and why Dean is poison for it. When the middle gets called extreme left, you know that we have entered the world of Orwellian newspeak.  8:11:37 AM    

There's something not happening here, and you know what it is, don't you, Mr. Jones?.

Driving around yesterday, I caught a couple minutes of Dick Morris on the Sean Hannity radio show. Hannity is a right-wing talk host of the Limbaugh school: good humored, simplistic, self-righteous, entertaining. For political fist pounders like Hannity, Howard Dean has become the new Bill Clinton: a human punching bag. And right now the target couldn't be bigger. Dean is on the cover of so many magazines [~] including both Time and Newsweek [~] that I lost count of them at the newsstand yesterday. Even the New Yorker called out Who is Howard Dean? with 60-point type from a promotional flyleaf on its cover.

Hannity, of course, had been pounding Dean ceaselessly in the half hour leading up to the Morris call (and for who knows how long before that...I wasn't listening). Morris gave Hannity some of what the host wanted: a prediction of failure for Dean against Bush. But Morris also gave Hannity something the host had no idea how to counter: an unwelcome commentary on the bashing itself.

The amazing thing about Dean, Morris said, is that he is strengthened rather than weakened by all the punches he takes [~] both from the media, and from his rival Democratic candidates, whose own punches are delivered again, repeatedly, by the same media. That strength, Morris said, comes from the source of his support: connected citizens on the Internet.

[SNIP - read all of this post] [The Doc Searls Weblog]

My mom was talking about Dick Morris when I was visiting, so he must be making the rounds. While we will have to wait to see how the Internet really shapes the election, since not everyone is connected, it is interesting to see that Dean is really the only candidate so far who seems to have the same Teflon nature as seen with Bush. No matter how many gafes, flip-flops, etc. Bush makes, his core is only strengthened. They give him more money.

Dean seems to be the only Democrat candidate with a core bearing these same traits. They will be very important in the coming election, as they are in any election. You have to have a core who sticks with you, and gives money, no mater what happens. That is why i think Dean will be the candidate. For most, a loss would end their run. They are dependent on cash that is fickle, coming from ormal party machinations. Dean's core would most likely up the amount of money donated, rather than withhold it.

It will be interesting to see how the also-rans respond to Dean. I expect that the ones who are Washington insoders will not be happy. For the same reason the DLC will not be. Dean is beyond their control.Frankly, if Dean somehow got elected, it would be really interesting to see how Washington responds. It could well be that mainstream politicians of either party will not be too happy. He might clean house in ways that the party machinery is not too happy with. But he would always have his core to reach via the Web.  7:32:40 AM