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Saturday, January 08, 2005

Armstrong Williams -- bought by the White House Armstrong Williams -- bought by the White House: " Armstrong Williams, a conservative Christian, was paid $240,000 to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind on his television show. Williams also ecouraged his colleagues at America's Black Forum 'to periodically address' the program. Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: 'It's propaganda.' The amazing thing is that Armstrong Williams is a radical Republican columnist. No Child Left Behind is so unpopular the White House had to pay their own to promote it. " (Via Jim Gilliam.) Is there any reason to believe this is this is the only conservative pundit being paid by this current regime? 1:39:16 PM  Permalink  comment []

Politicizing Tragedy Politicizing Tragedy: " From Political Wire: 'Get some devastation in the back.' -- Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), quoted by the AP, to a staff photographer taking a picture of him before leaving tsunami-stricken southern Sri Lanka. " (Via Jim Gilliam.) 1:36:54 PM  Permalink  comment []

Lincoln Bisexual? Very interesting piece by Gore Vidal examining Lincoln's sexuality, a review of The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. Vidal is such a good, careful writer, and he considers this from various points of view. Of course his novel on Lincoln is just fantastic. Vidal's closing paragraphs are great reading: Some have deplored Lincoln's indifference to Christianity. But it was not religion, it was religiosity that put him off. Finally, as the Civil War got more and more bloody, he began to adjure Heaven and the Almighty though not any particular creed. On this point Tripp makes much of Lincoln's preference for ethics over morality. The first word comes from the Latin for "customs" and the second from the Greek for "customs," but there is a world of difference between the two words. Morality, with which Lincoln had little to do, is religious-based, which means that in the name of religion, say, homosexuality could be proscribed as immoral—and was—while ethics tends to deal with law, cause and effect, logic, empiricism. Tripp writes, "Since boyhood Lincoln displayed a marked capacity to see the big picture in life and to not be swerved aside by smaller (moral) considerations." This already sounds much like ethics, based on widely shared values and poles apart from the petty differences honored by opposite sides of the (proverbial) railroad tracks. Over the years, Herndon canvassed many of Lincoln's friends and acquaintances about Lincoln's character and beliefs. The lawyer Leonard Swett's reply was dated January 17, 1866. After describing a masterful handling of a cabinet crisis that saved Lincoln's administration, Swett sums up: "One great public mistake of his character as generally received and acquiesced in—he is considered by the people of this country as a frank, guileless, unsophisticated man. There never was a greater mistake. Beneath a smooth surface of candor and an apparent declaration of all his thoughts and feelings, he exercised the most exalted tact and the wisest discrimination. He handled and moved man remotely as we do pieces upon a chessboard. He retained through life, all the friends he ever had, and he made the wrath of his enemies to praise him. This was not by cunning, or intrigue in the low acceptation of the term, but by far seeing, reason and discernment. He always told enough only, of his plans and purposes, to induce the belief that he had communicated all; yet he reserved enough, in fact, to have communicated nothing. He told all that was unimportant with a gushing frankness; yet no man ever kept his real purposes more closely, or penetrated the future further with his deep designs." Finally, without this great ethical Lincoln there would be no United States and despite our current divisions, we should be forever grateful not only to him, but of course to his Creator, who, on our behalf, brought him to an early puberty; thus, making our restored Union God's country. I don't know if Lincoln was homosexual or not, or how much that word meant in his time. I'm sure that Lincoln was a different, more complex and interesting person than we get taught in school, and this article points out ways that that's true. 1:25:54 PM  Permalink  comment []

Drunk prank photos Drunk prank photos: "Mark Frauenfelder: Here's a page of amazing 'drunk prank' photos -- pictures taken of passed out people who have been decorated by their supposed friends. Shown here, and incredible balancing act. (Some photos might not be safe for work.) Link (via cityrag)" (Via Boing Boing.) 11:01:01 AM  Permalink  comment []

MSFT anti-spyware violates spyware EULAs MSFT anti-spyware violates spyware EULAs: "Cory Doctorow: Running Microsoft's new anti-spyware product will violate the Clickthrough LIcense on the spyware itself. The license agreement on DirectRevenue's website states that those who have been inflicted with it 'agree that you will not initiate, permit, authorize or assist any third party or application to remove the Software from your computer, or disrupt its operation or the operation of any other user.' DirectRevenue's EULA also claims the right to reinstall itself if any third party software removes it. (Among the myriad spyware-related lawsuits going on, by the way, DirectRevenue is being sued by fellow adware vendor Avenue Media over the DirectRevenue software's penchant for deleting other spyware from users' systems.) So it seemed to me that this poses something of a quandary for Microsoft. After all, the software EULA as we know it today is basically a Microsoft invention, and no other company has been as big a supporter of UCITA and other legal efforts to make sneakwrap licenses completely binding. So Microsoft isn't going to want to go around violating any other company's EULA, not even those of companies of whom they might not completely approve Link (via Hack the Planet)" (Via Boing Boing.) 10:53:52 AM  Permalink  comment []

© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.