Hunting The Muse

First Amendment Battles

Quote of the day:

"[F]or the first time in the 182 years since the founding of the Republic, the federal courts are asked to hold that the First Amendment does not mean what it says, but rather means that the Government can halt the publication of current news of vital importance to the people of this country. In seeking injunctions against these newspapers and in its presentation to the Court, the Executive Branch seems to have forgotten the essential purpose and history of the First Amendment ... I can imagine no greater perversion of history." - Justice Hugo Black, giving the 6-3 decision favoring the Washington Post over the government for the publication of The Pentagon Papers.

(taken from an article at salon.com)

Damn. I'm hungry for more of that.

Dean's Day

I've been having a lot of fun watching the Dean Campaign today. I was mildly surprised yesterday when they blew through the six million fundraising total so easily, which was a very big accomplishment - I found an article likening him to the six million dollar man ("we will build him stronger... faster...") - but I didn't think there was a chance they would hit seven million the very next day. But there it is, 7.1 million as of midnight EST. Really amazing. People are going crazy over there on the comments of his weblog, I haven't seen so much political optimism for a long time.

On the same day, there's more mutterings that Nader might choose to run again. Reading his announcement, I got thoroughly turned off by him for the very first time. He said something about how it didn't seem that the Democrats had anyone who would be able to beat Bush, so he's thinking about running. That judgment is nothing but self-serving this early on. If he actually had constructive intent, he'd run in the Democratic primary. They've got Kucinich in there already, it's not like Nader would have to compromise his platform to run as a Democrat.

But instead he has to make it about increasing the viability of the third party, when actually it turns out that he probably damaged the Green party last time. I don't get the feeling that local and state Green candidacies are taking the nation by storm. This seems to be more about a destructive protest effort than anything else now. It has a whole "damn the consequences" vibe to it, and even kind of reminds me of the soldier who said he had to destroy the village to save it.

I'll say it again - voting Green might be voting one's principles, but if you try to do so through using an unprincipled voting system, the end result is NOT principled.

The best way out of this is for Democrats and Greens to come to an agreement - have the Greens support a Democratic candidate in exchange for issue concessions, and in exchange for Democrats using their vast resources to bring about statewide preference voting in as many states as possible. You get Condorcet voting (NOT IRV) implemented in a few swing states, and then Green and Democrat can both be happy without either turning into a spoiler candidate.

Calpundit

CalPundit

I've checked out this apparent lefty blog four times so far, and every single time I run into a weblog entry that just seems to want to suck the progressive energy away from people. I don't really feel like continuing to read the weblog, not enough to get a firmer opinion, but right now, I don't really feel like the author is necessarily a conservative activist in disguise. I think he just must have major issues about getting mad. He's probably one of those guys who thinks that it's not constructive or something. There's definitely a place for being measured and reasoned, but you take that to an extreme and you become a passionless apologist.

The Administration's Language

A Nation of Victims

An excellent, excellent article about the language of Bush's administration. Its conclusions includes advice on how to combat his language. I hope Dean keeps it in mind.

Here we go again... Texas Redistricting

Texas Lawmakers Head Back to Capitol for Special Session on Redistricting

This along with the California recall effort are the two most important state political battles. Either one could lead to a large congressional swing in favor of the republicans. There are no current battles that could lead to many more democratic seats, although the Democrats seem to have recently won their battle in Georgia.

California Taxes And Denialists

So, in California, both houses are controlled by Democrats, and they have a Democratic Governor. However, in order to raise taxes, they need a 2/3 majority. This is the root of all its problems, want to bet they don't need a 2/3 majority to cut taxes? This was probably yet another republican trick to manipulate politically unsophisticated people into thinking that Democrats don't have their best interests at heart.

Here's how it works. You get a whole bunch of people and you give them services they learn to rely on, that you pay for by taxing them. Then you gradually lull them into complacency and encourage them not to see the linkage between the taxes they pay and the benefits they get from the taxes. Then you pound home the message that their taxes are being wasted, over and over and over again. You don't have to prove it, you just appeal to their fear and desperation about money. You of course encourage their desperation about money in the meantime by telling them how horrible their lives will be if they have less of it.

You convince them that you have their interests at heart and want to protect their pocketbooks. You tell them you won't let the big bad government take away any more of their money. You appeal to their greed and their fear, and you buy their votes.

Here's what else you do. You pass an amendment saying that you can't raise taxes unless a 2/3 majority accepts it. That way if there's a budget shortfall, you can blame anyone who wants to raise taxes, and you can also blame them for cutting needed services. When there's a surplus, you blame them for taxing too much and for having taxes that are too high, and when there's a shortfall, you blame them for not thinking ahead.

So now you set about ruining the economy. You manufacture an electricity shortage by deregulating public utilities and then selling all your state power to other states, claiming a shortage, and massively raising your prices and margins to "ration" the state. You get the state to bankrupt its surplus while you pocket the profits. If you get sued, that's okay, they won't get enough money back to make up for what they lost.

You also get lucky with a nationwide recession that doesn't impact your own party since you're all rich and powerful legislators. You encourage the recession to require more service cuts and tax raises so you can further blame the people that are unable to stop the service cuts and are trying to raise the taxes.

You refuse any and all suggested tax raises and rub your hands with glee as your state falls apart around you. You cut up the safety net, you kick the elderly out of their nursing homes, you cancel summer classes in community colleges, you fire thousands of academic faculty. You blame the Governor for attempting to raise taxes after irresponsibly handling the economy. You blame the Governor for cutting needed services after irresponsibly handling the economy. You oppose the Governor taking any action at all, and support a recall of the Governor on the grounds that he isn't taking any action at all.

If you're able to stomach doing any part of that, then congratulations - you have what it takes to be a California Republican.

I hate these guys. They are denialists. That is my term for someone whose only reason for living is to deny (subvert, stand in the way of) anything that someone else does, while advocating nothing. And if you think about it, it's true - these Republicans are advocating nothing. They only know how to ruin; they create nothing, solve nothing. They amass power and money for no purpose, they use these resources as ends when they are supposed to be used as means to create good. They turn motion into stagnation, energy into density, life into death.

And it is hard to oppose. They will seek to compromise their opponents' integrity at every turn. They will use guilt, shame, and fear at every opportunity.

The only way to oppose it successfully is with truth. To battle them you must be skilled with recognizing false choices. You must have the ability to articulate subtleties clearly. You must be able to starkly illustrate grey areas. You must be able to hit back without losing your footing. You must be guiltless, shameless, fearless. You must beat them not at their own game, but instead by forcing them out of their game, by refusing to even accept their rules.

And when you start to learn how to expose them, it starts to become easier. When they attack you in front of others, you realize you don't have to be embarrassed, or cover yourself in defense. Instead, you can turn to the audience and explain to them exactly what they are trying to do. You can expose their tricks, their lies, their games, their lack of advocacy.

I would love to see a day when we have a leader that can expose these stunts. That can show us how amusing their harrumphs and indignance and donald-duck-like sputterings are when they are called out. A leader that realizes that the way to fight them is not to appease them, nor to humor them, nor to engage them, nor to ignore them, but to simply banish them into their own sphere, their own right place, where they can deny each other to their hearts content, until they form their own black sticky mass of hatred and stagnation and density and death, separate from those of us who chose to live in peace, constructive intent, motion, emotion, and freedom.

Complicated Case

High Court Orders Review of Redistricting Plan (washingtonpost.com)

And here was the most complicated case of the Supreme Court's day the other day.

Every ten years after the census, every state's congressional districts get redistricted by the legislature. It's a bit study of demographics, it's partisan, it's a huge mess. If the republicans are in power of the legislature, then they can redistrict everything in the state so that republicans have the maximum chance of getting elected to the national House of Representatives. This kind of strategy is why over 95% of the house races nationwide are not even competitive, because the districts around the candidate have been districted in such a way that that area's demographics do not threaten the office holder.

In southern states with a lot of black voters, the Republican strategy has been to redistrict in such a way so that the black voters are all clumped together to make very large majorities - this means that black representatives are more common, but it also means a bit of wasted voting power for the black voters, which means that the black representatives are more likely to be participating in a representative body that is hostile to their interests.

In Georgia, a democratic legislature tried to redistrict Georgia so there were as many small black majorities as possible in many different districts, so as to create more democratic districts, even though each had less of a strong majority.

The Republicans appealed to the Supreme Court on the grounds of the Voting Rights act, by saying that this was reducing the chances that black representatives would be elected to the House of Representatives.

As if that weren't backwards enough, the disingenuous Republicans LOST... by a 5-4 margin... with the conservatives in the majority. The liberals (souter, breyer, ginsburg, stevens) dissented by saying there was still opportunity to use that rational for political abuse, but also agreed with the conservatives' rationale otherwise that the Republicans were full of baloney, dealing a defeat to the Republicans and allowing Georgia a better chance to keep a districting plan that is more uniformly Democrat.

If that don't beat all I don't know what does. It just goes to show you that the folks that more visibly call themselves Republican these days are just completely insane. They are so far off to the right of your basic conservative that they really are insane.

Windshield Death

ABCNEWS.com : Woman Gets 50 Years for Windshield Death

Fifty years?

I don't know much about the different variants of death, negligence, and sentences, but this feels a bit excessive. She was driving under the influence of drugs and I think I heard that the pedestrian had the right of way when she hit him. This led to his death. On top of that was her negligence in not reporting the accident in the one to two hours after the impact. It just seems weird to call it murder, when she had no intent before the accident, and when her role in his death afterward was in doing nothing to actively physically bring about his death. But maybe death through negligence really is murder according to the law. I don't know.

That said, I don't understand prison in this regard. I can't really suggest a better alternative; I'm not sure one exists... but she's not really the type that society needs to be protected against. She wouldn't make a pattern out of this. Her punishment is entirely punitive. Using prison for purely punitive reasons seems wrong, when they're full of people that society needs protection against. I don't know. Something about this is all wrong.

We The People...

Nice little quote in the comments section of one of the blog entries at Daily Kos. He's responding to Clarence Thomas' petulant dissent where he says he's looking, and he's looking, and gosh darn it, can't seem to find a specifically mandated right to privacy anywhere...

You can't go looking for a right to privacy in the Constitution, for that is impossible, you have to go looking for a right we gave to the government to deny such a right.

Here's another great one..

We agree to allow the government to take away some of our liberties to live in an ordered society - its not the other way around - not the government giving us liberties if we can prove that we should have them. Why shouldn't something you do with another person in privacy without hurting anyone else be off limits to the government - why shouldn't that be part of the essential liberties you maintain and do not sacrifice in order to live in an ordered society? I completely do not understand this perspective.

The discussion is fascinating, partly because it reflects on Santorum's quote about the legal rationale also being applicable to legally allowing incest, bigamy, bestiality, adultery, etc. Scalia made the same noises in his dissent, even going so far as to include masturbation. Heavens, anti-masturbation laws might be struck down. Anyway, it is worthwhile to actually think about each of these things, isolate where the parallels break down, and think about what is consistent:

• homosexual sex acts: this is defined as consensual private sex between people of the same gender. Now explicitly constitutionally allowed.
• masturbation: this would also be protected when engaged in as a private, consensual (hahaha) sex act. (Honestly, I'm not sure there are any anti-masturbation laws to strike down.)
• molestation, bestiality: In both cases, the subject is not able to responsibly give consent. The parallel breaks down. They are still illegal, the laws against them are still constitutional.
• incest between consenting adults: It starts to get interesting here - the most convincing argument was that states could have a reason to control this because it can lead to public health issues through inbreeding/recessive genes. Honestly, on a legal framework this feels iffy, because in my mind, they could have used that same line of thought to restrict anal sex due to the slightly increased risk of disease passage. Remember, the exercise is to find a way to reconcile these different behaviors in a way that does not include moral judgments. Also, I think I got initially convinced that there were laws against this all over the place when there might not be. If there aren't, I don't think it's necessary to implement them.
• bigamy: If we use the judgment that bigamy marrying a second spouse without the first spouse being aware of it, there is no contradiction; this is simply a break in contract, the illegality of which is not challenged by the ruling
• polygamy: consensually having multiple spouses. First, it appears today's ruling is about privacy more than equal protection; meaning, constitutionally allowing consensual private behavior, not challenging the definition of marriage. So with polygamy being against the legal definition of marriage, the constitutionality of its illegality is not challenged.
• adultery: Again, a break in contract. The constitutionality of its illegality is not challenged. (I found that some states do have criminal laws against adultery.)

A quick personal note: I believe the laws against polygamy and adultery are stupid. Having something be illegal isn't the only way for something to be wrong.

The most interesting case to think about is consenting-adult-incest, because it can include same-sex incest. With today's decision, the only legal distinction between the legality of adult consensual homosexual acts, and the illegality of adult consensual same-sex incest, is the matter of the incestual couple being related by blood and sharing a family unit. The possibility of deformed offspring is out of the equation. The only grounds on making it illegal is the family ties issue. How is this not a moral judgment?

So, is adult consensual incest (non-procreation) even illegal? I guess I don't know. I've got this Coors billboard saying "Here's to twins!" on my drive home. Nudie magazines do sister shoots all the time. Can't be illegal everywhere.

I suspect that this might actually come down to disguised morality, by which I mean judgments that those predisposed to incest are mentally ill and need help, while those predisposed to homosexuality are not mentally ill. I suppose they would feel the need to supply some biological evidence of this. This whole path is just strewn with problems.

But what is most frustrating about this exercise is that we are letting ourselves be convinced that in order to differentiate between these things, we have to keep ourselves from making moral judgments. This is a bad, bad position to be in. The statement that we've subconsciously accepted is that it would be impossible for anyone to prove which subjective moral judgments are Good and which ones are Bad. The right-conservatives love this because it allows them to both throw around their "morality" as a disguise for intolerance, while also denying the left any room to practice and preach their own morality.

So I think the real exercise is to find out where the parallelism breaks down between our morality and their "morality".

I want to chew on this a bit more, but I think there honestly is a distinction in there somewhere. The morality that defends rights to privacy and civil rights, yet still opposes certain behaviors, recognizes that sometimes one needs to defend the people that are not currently able to defend themselves. Intervening with counseling and social services is an example of that. But what is interesting about this is that if someone finds out someone they care about is in an incestual relationship, and they are concerned about that, they don't need to involve the law to intervene.

And that's part of what it comes down to I guess. The right believes that a clear moral judgment compels them to make a law limiting that "immoral behavior". The right believes their religious beliefs of what behaviors should and should not be limited... should, by definition, be translated into law. The left can actually have all the moral judgments it wants; we just don't always think they need to be translated into law. I personally think laws should be more about keeping one group from removing the rights of another group.

Scalia evidently believes that populations have the constitutional right to remove human rights from other people through simple majority rule. That's really what it comes down to. It's good that his beliefs were defeated today.

(Fair warning, I reserve the right to revise this posting. ;-) )

Potential Washington Vote Fraud

Washington State is attempting to ram through a voting bill that allows electronic voting machines with no paper trail. This is bad, bad, bad. Tomorrow is the last day for public comment on this matter. Here is an informational article on the matter. Here is the page that has info on how to comment. This is what I emailed to them:

You must, must, must include a voter verifiable paper trail in any electronic voting system. Democracy is invalid if the citizens don't trust the democratic process. Voting is how citizens voice their power. Citizens cannot trust democracy if they can't verify their power. Asking citizens to rely on government to trust government-appointed analysts is circular thinking, and is not sufficient; the point is to allow the CITIZENS to verify the process.

You must protect against any appearance of impropriety. A black box voting process where we cannot see the workings has the appearance of impropriety. Do not support any effort that does not allow a voter-verifiable paper trail and does not allow for random sampling to check results.

Update: - Nice, they wrote me back and told me my comments would be included as part of the public record for this issue. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but at least it increases the likelihood that it would actually be read when it matters...

Dean Slams Scalia

Dean, Tell Us What You REALLY Think

I cackled when I read this quote.

Scalia's intemperate dissent in this case shows why he should never have been appointed to the Supreme Court in the first place and why he is not fit to serve as Chief Justice should a vacancy occur. His increasingly shrill opinions have become an embarrassment to the Supreme Court.

Taxes

USATODAY.com - IRS: Richest got richer between '92, 2000

So, take the richest 400 taxpayers in America. Just 400 people, small enough for, say, attending a play together.

Those 400 people made 1.09% of U.S. income in 2000. Just 400 people.

The average federal income tax rate for those 400 people? 22.3%.

That's lower than MY tax rate, how about yours?

This is in 2000. Since then, Bush has cut their taxes, created a deficit, and then cut their taxes two more times.

And they accuse the middle class of declaring class warfare?

iPhoto Weblog Plugin

esigler.2nw.net temp. web page

Evidently this man wrote a plugin to enable iPhoto to automatically post photos to a weblog. Very cool.

Supreme Court Pro-Privacy Opinion

"...times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom."

The opinion is here (pdf).

Isn't that quote great? That's a history book quote. That's awesome.

Update: One of Scalia's unbelievable arguments in dissent is comparing gays to nudists. That there is no law against being a nudist, but there are anti-nudity laws, and that these laws are constitutional. Similarly, there is no law against being gay, but there should be able to be laws against homesexual *behavior*. He didn't bring it up in direct argument against overturning the law, but it's an unbelievable argument. In arguments of analogy, the trick is to find the place where the parallelism breaks down. Here the one that just screams out is that there is no anti-nudity law that applies to private behavior. That means that taking a bath would be against the law. What an idiot.

Ocean Eggbeaters

Sky High

So basically, you put a giant eggbeater in the ocean and send the water up into the sky. Then it rains on deserts. And 100,000 of them will reduce the ocean level by a meter in case global warming makes them rise. Cool!

Revisionist History

The Neal Pollack Invasion

Well said. Evidently if you question the reasons we warred Iraq, you're a bunch of Hitler lovers.

Black Music Mon-- Whoops, Too Late!

Mt. Molelog :: Black Music Month, 2003

GW declared June "Black Music Month" - on June 24th.

Way to throw a brother a bone.

Stocks And OS X

I've been piddling around to find the best stock portfolio management software for OS X, and the pickings are pretty slim.

There are a bunch of super-expensive high-end applications for daytraders, which isn't what I want. I don't want to spend the money, and I don't really want to focus on technical (chart analysis) research right now, or hour-to-hour price swings. I want to focus more on fundamentals.

But what I really need is a good solid portfolio management application that tracks current holdings, past holdings, and recalculates my performance accurately as I buy and sell partial positions to average down.

iStock appears to be the best of the lot right now. It has some nice charting features, allows multiple portfolios, and is $12. However, I'm left confused about how to calculate partial buys and sells.

The way it normally works is that if you have a position that you have bought into multiple times at multiple prices, you basically just add up all the costs and commissions, divide by the number of shares (including dividend-awarded shares which are free), and get the average cost per share.

If you're going to sell partial shares, the most accurate method is to do lot identification. You sell specific shares that you bought on a particular date, calculate the gain or loss against that particular purchase, and recalculate the avg cost of the remaining shares by ignoring that lot.

Most of these portfolio applications don't have lot identification though. So I'm trying to figure out a better way to do it. And really I'm not sure there is one, at least not one that would reconcile with the numbers I have in Quicken. I'll probably just have to fake lot identification.

What went along with this was finally going back through all my transactions back to my first brokerage account, and tracking through the performance from day one. After the crash, I got real lazy because I was running away from the numbers. There were some numbers I was never able to look up, like the 401ks that just take some money and give you quarterly reports and never tell you what your purchase prices were, but aside from that I have all my retirement account numbers put together and while it's discouraging, it wasn't the huge punch in the gut I always assumed it would be. Maybe I'm just ready for it now. My current portfolio is basically worth half of what I bought it for, although it used to be a lot worse. Luckily I also got out of some other stocks a long time ago, and all those were for a net gain, and I also put some more cash away in the meantime. So I have the ability to start buying back in, which I'm going to do... slowly. I'm hoping to slowly make back the money I lost, which should get easier over time as I start putting more capital in. The good point for me is that that huge crash happened to me pretty early in my investing life.

So all in all I'm making headway on my three-part project. The first part is to get my portfolio squared away and accurate. The second is to get the system together that will help me to decide when to partially buy and sell my current long-term holdings - I think I have that with the "AIM" technique. The third part will be to get together my system for analyzing new prospects, and figuring out how to balance my portfolio in the best way. I haven't started with that yet, but might be doing so over the next month or so.

Helloooo Blog

Well, for some strange reason a week has gone by since my last entry. Not sure how that happened. Sometimes I get overwhelmed enough that I don't feel as able to express myself. This last week was also busy. I've been preoccupied by my house hunt, I went to Bend for two days to do some hiking, and there are rumors that work will be picking up again soon.

For the house hunt, I'm mired deep in both mls number hell and getting to know neighborhoods. Portland sucks for house hunting. I hate it. Maybe every city is like this. I want a small cute house and I have decent money to offer. Shouldn't be a big deal, right? Instead I get tons of LARGE houses thrown at me that turn out to either be dumps or in crappy neighborhoods. What sucks is that I'm looking in Northeast, which changes in quality within four-block regions. Impossible to search for regions that small on the web-based services.

The other thing that sucks is that the best online service I've found so far is realtor.com, which lets me save searches and save favorite listings, but doesn't tell me what houses are no longer available, doesn't allow me to annotate notes, and doesn't let me specify things like maximum square footage or smaller areas to search in. If anyone knows search engines with greater granularity, let me know.

Six Degrees Of Blog

Downhill

Now, this is really cool. Type in one blog. Type in another blog. Find out how many degrees separate them, of blogs linking to blogs.

I tried linking to mine both from David Winer and Mark Pilgrim, who I still perversely enjoy linking together in the same sentence. I got three and four respectively, and both were due to ONE article I wrote that happened to get passed around blogspace: Blogging Sucks For Conversations

Gingrich On The Daily Show

I watched Gingrich appear on The Daily Show today. Always funny to watch these guys try and smooth-talk. First thing he attempted was to butter up his relationship with Clinton by saying how they did a lot of good things together like balance the budget. God, I would have loved for Stewart to interject there. Excuse me, do you mean to imply you're actually in favor of balancing the budget? Funny, none of the other Republicans are. The other thing was how he said he was successfully able to get past all the distractions of the witch-hunts and do some real work with Clinton. So, he's patting himself on the back for being able to get past those pesky obstacles that he created. Oh, that's wrong? You mean you condemn the witch-hunts; the impeachment proceedings? I'm sorry, could you clarify?

Dean Has A Real Blog

Blog for America

Looks like Dean finally made the switch to movable type. Glad to see it, glad to pull it into my aggregator.

Power And Politics

"Choice is an illusion between those with power and those without."

This is a quote from the latest Matrix movie. I've been thinking a lot about power the last few months, and I'm glad a pop culture movie seized on a concept that is very relevant to the political culture.

Power has many meanings. One meaning is the ability to limit another's set of choices. To set the agenda, to frame the parameters, etc. Even better yet, to do that while making the subject believe they still have full choice.

Would you like a chocolate bar or a bag of chips?

There's another kind of power though - the ability to recognize these techniques and tricks, and negotiate your way around them. Even better yet, to demonstrate this to others so they also realize they don't have to be constrained by these choices.

Who says you're the candyman? I didn't agree to that. I want both. I also want lobster.

One thing I've noticed recently is that the Republicans are pretty darn good at the first form of power, and the Democrats aren't very good at the second. This isn't just because the Republicans are in control of both houses and the presidency. They were also successful at this in the 2000 election.

There were more than a few Democratic failures in the 2000 election, but two of them in particular had to do with this kind of power play, and Gore/Lieberman's discomfort in wielding power.

The first one was Gore's refusal to campaign on Clinton's record with the economy. Gore succumbed to his opponents' power here. He let himself believe that there were only two choices: either campaign on Clinton's record and introduce Clinton's immorality, or, ignore the morality thing by ignoring Clinton.

By accepting this, he bought in to outside analysis (and manipulation) so much that he allowed himself to be convinced that he had no power to actually change the terms of the debate. He was certain that campaigning on Clinton's record would mean that some people would see him as condoning Clinton's social behavior. The Republicans were of course in favor of this interpretation. So all in all, the Republicans treatment and exposure of Clinton ended up being worth it. It got them close enough to have a contested 2000 election.

The second example was Lieberman's handling of the military absentee ballots. There was plenty of evidence to believe that the Republicans were taking advantage of overseas military absentee ballots to inflate their side of the count, but they successfully made it an issue by claiming that the Democrats didn't want to count the military vote. Gore and Lieberman were essentially convinced that this was not a challengeable issue, and eventually publicly requested that all military ballots be counted and be given the benefit of the doubt. In hindsight, it turned out that the difference might not have been enough to change the election outcome, but it was a significant impact. This was again an example of accepting the interpretation that the Republicans were asserting on them: accept how we are counting the overseas ballot, or admit that you are anti-military. Lieberman made the choice that he believed was the better of the two, but the real issue was that it was a false choice. He was taking no power, and was yielding to the Republicans.

This is why life is hard for the Democrats right now. They've gotten out of the habit of cultivating their own power, and are used to only railing against (or meekly accepting) the Republicans' power. And so far, the only presidential candidate I've heard point this out is Howard Dean. He brought it up when talking about the tax cut. "The instant they said they wouldn't accept something above 350 billion, the issue was over." He seems genuinely mystified that the Democrats see this as a victory. The Democrats are habitually allowing themselves to be manipulated into situations where they only choose among the choices allotted to them by the Republicans. This is why it's important to find a candidate that can point out false choices, that can object to the premise of a scenario presented to him, and can actually take steps to change public support of an issue by how he acts - in short, someone who actually is a leader. They're in pretty short supply on the Democrat side.

Personal Update

As time goes on, I'm getting more interested in politics than ever, and this weblog is a big reason for it. The writing I've been doing has just happened to push me in that direction.

I joined the Dean meetup crew tonight for Portland and I'm hanging out on the lists and seeing what goes on. It turns out they want music composers for various media projects so I signed up for that too. I haven't attended any meetings yet but I might in the future. I'm still not entirely sure I want to endorse the guy - I like what he says, but he still just looks a little bit funny to me. People might scoff at me for making that judgment, but I'm of the belief that the form someone takes reflects their essence - and if I see him hunched over a bit too much, lips tight together with teeth open inside, looking up out the top of his eyes, then I'll draw the conclusion that he's still a pretty closed off guy. Not entirely sure yet that he's who he presents himself to be. His smile's a bit weird too. When he's not relaxed, his smile looks a bit too much like The Joker. However, I really do think that sort of thing will solve itself over time, as I suspect most of that is due to him feeling pretty nervous and compressed inside as he gets things moving. He'll get used to the higher stakes.

I'm thinking a lot about politics in general, and especially what it means to be powerful in that realm. What political power is, how it is used, and more recently, how that kind of power contrasts to what true power is. This ties into how I'm viewing myself and what I can do in my own life to accumulate more power but also wield it responsibly. I think one of the bigger issues with it is reconciling the idea of power with the idea of having power over others. One thing I find unfortunate is that as people become more powerful, they attract more people to them that want that person to have power OVER them. It's a bit creepy and I find myself resisting the idea.

This is relevant in several spheres in my life right now. For my business, one of the possible next steps would be to accept employees. For my writing, there's becoming more of a respectable source... eliciting reaction, and the accountability that suggests. In general, putting oneself out there in any way means that one is more accountable, either to others or to oneself. It's hard to reconcile the power you gain with the freedom from responsibility you risk losing.

Other than politics, I'm looking for my first house, and it looks like that might be settling itself very soon. The hunt starts in earnest this weekend. Soon after that I'll be getting that grand piano I've wanted since I graduated from college with that degree in music. I'll be getting some good condensor mics and may soon be posting audio files of some of my compositions here afterwards.

My programming business is going well; it seems relatively solid and stable. I have room for another one or two main clients but I can't complain about what I have right now.

And it looks like I'll be expanding that business into a more wide-ranging production services business. In addition to programming, I'll be sending out referrals to local graphics and media professionals. And that opens me up to being able to provide services in the other main area I am interested in - music production. I've started to do some film scoring lately, from a side project of my own, to an indy film in NYC. I've potentially got some other projects including an audio drama project and an art documentary, and a friend of mine and I are putting together a demo tape to market ourselves to local media groups for some income. I hope it takes off, both in terms of outside interest, and in terms of my own passion really latching on to it. Right now it's one of those things that I'm really abstractly interested in, but I'm not yet sure if I will enjoy doing it twenty hours a week.

So that's the personal update. Time to get back to posting commentary and links, I guess.

There's a chance I'll be revamping this blog to have the politics and the technology each have their own page. I'm still mulling that one over. Let me know if you have comments.

Blog Political Spectrum

Here's an interesting graph of the supposed right-left spectrum of many of the popular political spectrum blogs out there. Predictably, many of these bloggers are objecting to where they are placed. :-)

Voting Reform Bill!

Congressman Rush Holt Website

Yippee!!!! This is awesome!!! EVERYONE should actively support this bill!

Was Wolfowitz Misquoted?

Just Well Mixed

Jason mentions a hell of a quote by Wolfowitz, but I found another entry that brings the quote into doubt. Another AP article (sorry, no link) that yields another context:

The United States hopes to end the nuclear standoff with North Korea by putting economic pressure on the impoverished nation, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Saturday.

North Korea would respond to economic pressure, unlike Iraq, where military action was necessary because the country's oil money was propping up the regime, Wolfowitz told delegates at the second annual Asia Security Conference in Singapore.

"The country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse," Wolfowitz said. "That I believe is a major point of leverage."

"The primary difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options in Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil," he said.

Joke

Funny joke I read on another blog:

Knock knock!

Who's there?

Well, you damn sure know it's not weapons of mass destruction!

Dean In Iraq

Just One Minute

This is a great suggestion for Dean. Have him provide medical help in Iraq for a week. Wonder if he'll hear about it.

Howard Dean On Charlie Rose

I saw Howard Dean on Charlie Rose tonight. I'm not really sure how that went. Charlie bogged him down a bit in the questions about how he contrasted himself with the Senators, because Dean kept refusing to question their integrity. Best answer would have been to say that it's not so much about integrity as it is about leadership. I feel like the interview ended well, though. He seemed more improvisatory when he said he hoped that the race came down to nerve. I think his charisma is better when he doesn't think so much about staying on message.

I also winced he used the civil unions bill as an example of his tough-mindedness because I've recently read articles that describe how he actually signed the bill after being backed into a corner by the Vermont state court (if he hadn't, they could have judged gay *marriage* valid; the article's implication was that he signed the bill as a defense of the term "marriage"). I'm sorry I don't have a source on that; don't know how true it is either. Just an example of how that issue could be turned around on him. Probably better to focus on that bill as a record of an inclusive administration rather than as evidence of him being some sort of proactive activist about it.

Indignant Spooks

CNN.com - Save Our Spooks - May. 30, 2003

Wow. This one's pretty... strongly worded.

It's also the first one I've seen that attempts to distance President Bush from the controversy by saying he was manipulated.

It's starting to get interesting.

Laugh of the day

3 minute dating

This guy's a jerk and I laughed hard, like, continually, while reading this.

Anti-Bush Reasons

Instapundit.com:

Glenn shows his blindness in this exercise for "opponents of war".

Given the choice which would you prefer:

A. George Bush is proven correct. Peace in Iraq. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Bush re-elected.

B. George Bush is proven incorrect. No peace in Iraq. No peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Bush defeated.

The answer to that one is pathetically obvious.

What an idiot. Um, if I'm anti-war, why would I want "no peace"? It isn't that we strongly want all of B. It is that we are certain A is truthfully impossible.

NYTimes Weirdness

Dr. No and the Yes Men

This is dated June 1st, but I swear I've seen some of the phrases repeated in blogspace before:

Dean, a doctor who barely registered in polls last fall, closed in on John Kerry in New Hampshire, and in Iowa, he was clearly the king of every beige ballroom he entered.

and

Dean, smiling uneasily throughout the debate, looked like a guy who had been bad-mouthing his ex-girlfriend and all of her friends, only to run smack into them at a party.

and

Once written off as a little man from a little state, Dean has expertly framed the 2004 nomination fight as a choice between white-hot liberal rage on one side and the room-temperature promise of ''electability'' on the other.

and

''The sad thing is that the Democratic Party has helped the president do this,'' Dean says, although he doesn't sound sad at all. He sounds as if he wants to throw the lectern through a wall.

I've seen them before in discussions I've been reading on liberal politics blogs. What gives?

O'Reilly And Franken

On CSPAN2 tonight, I saw a book panel where Molly Ivins, Bill O'Reilly, and Al Franken each pushed their books. The real fireworks were between O'Reilly and Franken - everyone else in blogspace is talking about it right now.

Most people are crowing about the smackdown that Franken laid down on O'Reilly.

I guess I don't see that. He definitely got into the muck with him, but he certainly didn't wipe up the ground with him. O'Reilly did manage to go into his sanctimonious routine effectively a couple of times and occasionally had airs of credibility. Franken was funny, but I found myself experiencing a sinking feeling when I imagined him hosting that liberal radio show he wants.

He's got the same problem as Donahue. He just isn't SMOOTH. You see his passion well up and he stops being able to speak. He doesn't make clear points, he's all over the place, and while watching the "debate" I found myself more frustrated at the missed opportunities to embarrass O'Reilly than I was proud of Franken's quips.

One thing struck me - during the times when both Franken and O'Reilly would be speaking at the same time and interrupting each other, I noticed that Franken would stutter and O'Reilly would speak clearly. O'Reilly would usually win and Franken would yield. It occurred to me that it's easier to speak without stuttering when you shut off your ears to what the other person is saying. Franken was probably listening to O'Reilly was interrupting with, while O'Reilly didn't give a damn what Franken was saying. I think there's something about that that is telling. Out of the three panelists, O'Reilly was the only person that told someone to shut up.

Finally, the panel ended with a guy at the end asking a decent question about how the discussion mirrored the political state these days, and how we could elevate it to classic discourse. The proper answer is really closest in content to what O'Reilly said, although he wouldn't agree with my "spin". The reason that intelligent discourse and debate are not appropriate right now are because the folks that are in power aren't the appropriate people to engage in it with. It's like arguing with a pig about the mess; the pig's glad you entered the pen and you just get dirty. Many of the folks in power, whether media or politics, are just parasites and leeches, caring more about the majority of money than the majority of people, trading in liberty for power. Their right place isn't in public policy or guardianship. They need to be put out of power entirely.

Hedges' Graduation Speech

Rockford Register Star Online - Local & State

Chris Hedges gave a graduation speech to Rockford College about the war and was booed off stage.

I just read the content for the first time. I don't know what the hell is up with the crazy freaks who were booing him. What a bunch of idiots. The last line of Hedges' speech is: "And this is why friendship or, let me say love, is the most potent enemy of war."