Monday, November 3, 2008
Standing in Awe of Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald is my favorite political writer right now. He is consistently insightful and always logical. His arguments about what has gone wrong with this country and what to do to make things better are more profound and spot-on than virtually any other writer. But sometimes he just let's loose and articulates the disgust that so many people feel:
George Bush is the person in whom the Right placed its blind faith, the one they
glorified and held up as the ultimate standard-bearer of what they believe in.
And now he -- and they -- lay in shambles and disgrace. No matter what metric
one uses, it's difficult to overstate what a profound failure the Bush
presidency is, and everyone -- including Bush -- knows that. The most important
aspect of this Tuesday's election is to finalize their humiliating repudiation
and to bury them for what they've done.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
This Looks Like a Fun Day Trip
This video is one of the craziest things I've ever seen, and I pride myself on seeking out crazy religious videos. Watch and enjoy.
At 1:20 in, it sounds like the raspy-voiced narrators says, "God, send us another Jesus movie." I think he's saying movement, but I prefer to hear it as a call to Mel Gibson to give us the sequel everyone is waiting for.
At 1:20 in, it sounds like the raspy-voiced narrators says, "God, send us another Jesus movie." I think he's saying movement, but I prefer to hear it as a call to Mel Gibson to give us the sequel everyone is waiting for.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Video I Made for Drunken Politics
Jamie Kilstein, Allison Kilkenny and I hung out at the Ralph Nader rally a few days ago. I shot and edited this video for them.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Point of Departure
For some reason I can't embed video on this bloggy thing. Maybe I'm just not that good at computers. Watch this though.
The woman they interview is not representative of this country, obviously, but she does illustrate the worst of the American psyche. From Goldwater and Nixon, but especially since Regan, to John McCain and Pallin, the GOP has been the party of division and hate, winking at white voters, reasurring them that they have allies in government.
While it appears unlikely that that strategy will work this year, these tactics have the unfortunate effect of creating monsters like the woman in the video above. She doesn't even know what she's saying. She doesn't know why she hates Muslims, but she knows she does.
Idiots like this aren't going anywhere, but when you watch something like that, it's hard to feel any connection with that person at all. How could she and I, or she and any of my friends, ever have a real conversation? How could we get to a point of agreement from which to start?
That's a troubling thought. It's a cliche to say, "some people you can't reason with," but what if there are some people you can't even talk to? I can't really remember anyone back in Iowa that ever talked like woman in the interview. I'm sure I could've sought out people like that, but if you were just eating a pretzel in the mall food court you'd never overhear, "Obama is a terrorist."
Maybe people like her are very rare, but their ignorance is so deep and profound it multiplies their small numbers into standing armies. Maybe I had blinders on in Iowa, and that kind of hate was only just below the surface. My high school had a cross burned on its lawn several years before I went there. The town was outraged, as I recall, but that's upsetting nonetheless. Even with that event it's hard to know how many people sat in their living rooms secretly approving of the burning cross, only to denounce it in public.
Which brings me back to Obama and the Bradley effect, named after Tom Bradley, a black man who lost the governer's race in California in 1982. The effect, which offers an explanation for discrepancies between voter polls and how people actually vote (racism), has been talked about a lot concerning Obama. It looks like he's far enough ahead in the polls for the effect to not matter, but it is impossible to know how many people secretly identify with the woman in the interview. If Obama does lose, which is looking increasingly unlikely, then the only explanation will be the Bradley effect and voter disenfranchisement. If that happens, it will answer some of the questions I've posed. In a bad way.
The woman they interview is not representative of this country, obviously, but she does illustrate the worst of the American psyche. From Goldwater and Nixon, but especially since Regan, to John McCain and Pallin, the GOP has been the party of division and hate, winking at white voters, reasurring them that they have allies in government.
While it appears unlikely that that strategy will work this year, these tactics have the unfortunate effect of creating monsters like the woman in the video above. She doesn't even know what she's saying. She doesn't know why she hates Muslims, but she knows she does.
Idiots like this aren't going anywhere, but when you watch something like that, it's hard to feel any connection with that person at all. How could she and I, or she and any of my friends, ever have a real conversation? How could we get to a point of agreement from which to start?
That's a troubling thought. It's a cliche to say, "some people you can't reason with," but what if there are some people you can't even talk to? I can't really remember anyone back in Iowa that ever talked like woman in the interview. I'm sure I could've sought out people like that, but if you were just eating a pretzel in the mall food court you'd never overhear, "Obama is a terrorist."
Maybe people like her are very rare, but their ignorance is so deep and profound it multiplies their small numbers into standing armies. Maybe I had blinders on in Iowa, and that kind of hate was only just below the surface. My high school had a cross burned on its lawn several years before I went there. The town was outraged, as I recall, but that's upsetting nonetheless. Even with that event it's hard to know how many people sat in their living rooms secretly approving of the burning cross, only to denounce it in public.
Which brings me back to Obama and the Bradley effect, named after Tom Bradley, a black man who lost the governer's race in California in 1982. The effect, which offers an explanation for discrepancies between voter polls and how people actually vote (racism), has been talked about a lot concerning Obama. It looks like he's far enough ahead in the polls for the effect to not matter, but it is impossible to know how many people secretly identify with the woman in the interview. If Obama does lose, which is looking increasingly unlikely, then the only explanation will be the Bradley effect and voter disenfranchisement. If that happens, it will answer some of the questions I've posed. In a bad way.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
A Message of Tolerance
If you want to see some amazing on-scene footage from a McCain/Palin rally, click the link below. Also, if you want to see some of the most vile garbage you can imagine spewing out of people's mouths, click here. One in the same, folks.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Eagle Eye-Gauge
The other day I saw the made-for-the-dollar-store-movie-rack "film" Eagle Eye. What follows is my analysis, as far as one can analyize an artless, thoughtless catastrophe that fails both in concept and execution. That was a fun sentence, wasn't it? I guess I should say "spoiler alert," but in all honesty you should not see this movie, so I can't imagine I'm ruining anything.
Without getting into the specifics too much, here's the basic outline. The pentagon created a robot who serves as a centralized information gathering system, and who monitors all the pieces of intelligence that are too complicated or vast for humans to deal with. It's only job is to keep "the homeland" safe. This robot--Eagle Eye, I suppose--gets all pissed off because the President of the USA won't stop bombing innocent Arabs, which makes this movie almost a documentary. As a result, a bunch of Arabs want to blow up America. This is called "relevance" in Hollywood.
To take care of this problem, Mr. Eagle Eye enlists the help of Shia LaBouf (sp?), a lovable loser with daddy issues and a dead brother, to kill the president. What? Yes, that's right. To make the country safer, Sr. Eye tries to trap LaBouf into killing the entire executive branch during a State of the Union address. Is Monsignor Eye wrong to think that the country would be better off with the president dead than alive? Who's to say? That's just one potentially valid opinion among many. One thing I do know is that the EE wanted to install the Sec. of Defense in the White House, and to that I say, "no thank you."
Of course the robot is destroyed and Shia ends up with his arm in a sling, and the president and his cabinet members are all fine. You're supposed to be happy about all of that, but it's not clear why. It's a pretty weak resolution, but I suppose you can't really end a movie with the destruction of a branch of government looking like a positive thing, even in Sean Penn/George Clooney-run Hollywood. I wish you could. That movie would almost have been worth it if a robot-installed dictatorship saved the day in the end. To quote Plato, "Our society should be run by philosopher-kings, but, failing that, I would like to see a robot and a warlord take the reins for a while."
Without getting into the specifics too much, here's the basic outline. The pentagon created a robot who serves as a centralized information gathering system, and who monitors all the pieces of intelligence that are too complicated or vast for humans to deal with. It's only job is to keep "the homeland" safe. This robot--Eagle Eye, I suppose--gets all pissed off because the President of the USA won't stop bombing innocent Arabs, which makes this movie almost a documentary. As a result, a bunch of Arabs want to blow up America. This is called "relevance" in Hollywood.
To take care of this problem, Mr. Eagle Eye enlists the help of Shia LaBouf (sp?), a lovable loser with daddy issues and a dead brother, to kill the president. What? Yes, that's right. To make the country safer, Sr. Eye tries to trap LaBouf into killing the entire executive branch during a State of the Union address. Is Monsignor Eye wrong to think that the country would be better off with the president dead than alive? Who's to say? That's just one potentially valid opinion among many. One thing I do know is that the EE wanted to install the Sec. of Defense in the White House, and to that I say, "no thank you."
Of course the robot is destroyed and Shia ends up with his arm in a sling, and the president and his cabinet members are all fine. You're supposed to be happy about all of that, but it's not clear why. It's a pretty weak resolution, but I suppose you can't really end a movie with the destruction of a branch of government looking like a positive thing, even in Sean Penn/George Clooney-run Hollywood. I wish you could. That movie would almost have been worth it if a robot-installed dictatorship saved the day in the end. To quote Plato, "Our society should be run by philosopher-kings, but, failing that, I would like to see a robot and a warlord take the reins for a while."
Friday, September 26, 2008
Sexy Hank Paulson Luvs Sexy Nancy Pelosi
From today's Times, and basically everywhere else too:
"...the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up...”
If my sources are correct, Nancy Pelosi was planning on exploding the world for some reason until Paulson came in and was like, "I love you, will you marry me?" and her San Fransican-values heart melted like gay butter.
Ok, enough nonsense. I'm not sorry to see the bailout get held up for a day or two, if only to keep it directly in the news cycle. Whether or not that will stoke public outrage remains to be seen, but the more attention focused on the lack of oversight in that bill, the better.
"...the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up...”
If my sources are correct, Nancy Pelosi was planning on exploding the world for some reason until Paulson came in and was like, "I love you, will you marry me?" and her San Fransican-values heart melted like gay butter.
Ok, enough nonsense. I'm not sorry to see the bailout get held up for a day or two, if only to keep it directly in the news cycle. Whether or not that will stoke public outrage remains to be seen, but the more attention focused on the lack of oversight in that bill, the better.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Silver-lining
So, if there is one silver lining to be found in the coming economic catastrophe, I think I've found it. I'm hoping that bin Ladin is reading the headlines and thinking to himself, "you know what? I'll just let this play itself out. Yeah, yeah, 'death to America,' but you know what, I'm kind of pooped."
At this point, America has become Willy Loman. You know he's gonna die before too long. America is just wandering around going, "I'm very well liked." No, you're not. You never were. Also, George Washington, the author of America, banged Marilyn Monroe, so, you know, it's a pretty good analogy.
At this point, America has become Willy Loman. You know he's gonna die before too long. America is just wandering around going, "I'm very well liked." No, you're not. You never were. Also, George Washington, the author of America, banged Marilyn Monroe, so, you know, it's a pretty good analogy.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Nevermind, I Take It All Back
From today's New York Times:
"The first thing to understand is that a bailout plan doesn’t have to cost anywhere close to $700 billion, so long as it’s designed well. The $700 billion number that you see everywhere is an estimate of how much the government would spend to buy deteriorating assets now held by banks. Eventually, the government will turn around and sell these assets, for a price almost certain to be greater than zero."
Hear that kids? "Almost certain to be greater than zero," certainly inspires confidence in me. You can't make that promise to other people. Mom, I know your birthday is coming up in a little bit, and trust me, your present will almost certainly be better than nothing. But, depending on the economy, it might be nothing. (I'll get you something nice, Mom)
"The first thing to understand is that a bailout plan doesn’t have to cost anywhere close to $700 billion, so long as it’s designed well. The $700 billion number that you see everywhere is an estimate of how much the government would spend to buy deteriorating assets now held by banks. Eventually, the government will turn around and sell these assets, for a price almost certain to be greater than zero."
Hear that kids? "Almost certain to be greater than zero," certainly inspires confidence in me. You can't make that promise to other people. Mom, I know your birthday is coming up in a little bit, and trust me, your present will almost certainly be better than nothing. But, depending on the economy, it might be nothing. (I'll get you something nice, Mom)
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
The Bailout
The Bush administration, as represented by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, are pushing for a 700 Billion dollar buyup of trash mortgages, hoping to get the bill through Congress by the end of the week. I have nowhere near the brain power to explain where the looming economic disaster came from or what to do about it. That's what makes it so fun! But I do know what I likes, and I don't likes this, from Section 8 of the bill we have to pass like right now guys:
"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."
Hello! King Hank Paulson will rule us benevolently for the next 4 months, then either Obama or McCain will be installed as a primarily ceremonial head-of-state, and his Treasury Sec. will take the throne from Paulson and shred what little monies we have left.
700 Billion dollars is a lot of money, and it belongs to us. You know, taxpayers. Guess who's getting it? People who are rich and educated enough to think they're better than everyone else and could gamble with vast, unthinkable amounts of money to reap huge rewards with no risk. And now we're giving it to some oligarch to pass around like a blunt. And no one can review his decisions. It's perfect.
I just started reading Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe, and let me tell you, this is the perfect week to pick that book up. I'm only a little bit into it, but it's hard to mourn the "end of Wall Street" when you see Wolfe's brutal characterization of the self-identified Masters-of-the-Universe.
I think what makes me smile the most is thinking about all the Econ majors who wanted to make 6 figure bonuses 2 years out of college, because although they will still be filthy rich, they'll have to spend a lot of time hearing about how great it used to be. I think that will make them unhappy. So there is at least one silver-lining to the upcoming catastrophe.
"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."
Hello! King Hank Paulson will rule us benevolently for the next 4 months, then either Obama or McCain will be installed as a primarily ceremonial head-of-state, and his Treasury Sec. will take the throne from Paulson and shred what little monies we have left.
700 Billion dollars is a lot of money, and it belongs to us. You know, taxpayers. Guess who's getting it? People who are rich and educated enough to think they're better than everyone else and could gamble with vast, unthinkable amounts of money to reap huge rewards with no risk. And now we're giving it to some oligarch to pass around like a blunt. And no one can review his decisions. It's perfect.
I just started reading Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe, and let me tell you, this is the perfect week to pick that book up. I'm only a little bit into it, but it's hard to mourn the "end of Wall Street" when you see Wolfe's brutal characterization of the self-identified Masters-of-the-Universe.
I think what makes me smile the most is thinking about all the Econ majors who wanted to make 6 figure bonuses 2 years out of college, because although they will still be filthy rich, they'll have to spend a lot of time hearing about how great it used to be. I think that will make them unhappy. So there is at least one silver-lining to the upcoming catastrophe.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Thoughts about the tactics and actions of some RNC protesters
"There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recongnized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for."
-George Orwell, describing his affinity with the Anarchist Militia in the Spanish Civil War, from Homage to Catalonia.
-George Orwell, describing his affinity with the Anarchist Militia in the Spanish Civil War, from Homage to Catalonia.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Monday, St. Paul, RNC Day 1
Today was a pretty crazy day in St. Paul. Lot's of arrests, lots of pepper spray. Amy Goodman and two of her producers from Democracy Now got arrested. Here's some photos of the day. Thoughts to come later.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
"Say goodnight old man"
After Obama's sad FISA vote I didn't want to vote for him, but now that I know he will beat McCain to within an inch of his life with nothing but his hopeful hands he's back on my good side.
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