Hunting The Muse

Bully Bush

E.J. Dionne writes about Bush and the Iraq war buildup in hindsight.

Instead of reaching out to doubters, Bush derided them. On the campaign trail in September 2002, he characterized Democratic members of Congress who wanted a strong mandate from the United Nations -- exactly what the administration is seeking now -- as evading responsibility. "It seems like to me that if you're representing the United States," he said, "you ought to be making a decision on what's best for the United States."

There's the bully factor again. It's obvious he's deliberately overlooking something. It's hard to concisely phrase it, partially because you know you shouldn't have to. But that's the point - he knows it, and is just rubbing your face in it.

Because honestly, if he were to say that to your face, and were in a position of power above you, how could you respond?

"I am trying to make a decision on what's best for the United States!" Defensive. Powerless.

"Well, that is the question, isn't it? What's best for the United States?" Indecisive. Philosophical in a time of urgency.

"What??! How dare you! You, you - ! ^#%#@#!" Unprofessional. Weak. Amusing.

Remember how bullies maintain power. It's not by being powerful themselves, it is by convincing others to deny their own power. The power Bush had here was that everyone else was convinced that they should fall in line and support him. It wasn't that Bush was a mastermind, it was that everyone else folded. This power is something that should have been opposed, and wasn't. Imagine this response:

"This man who calls himself a president, who has the most honorable position in our government, is cheapening the office by using third-rate bullying tactics. His behavior is beneath his charge. His actions do not meet the standards of his duties. If his instructions are for the government to subvert its own processes, then he clearly does not have American interests at heart. We in the Senate have an honorable and sacred duty, and it will not be subverted by such empty language and stunted vision."

The tone is different because, unlike the others, it does not accept any part of the message it is reacting to. The other responses, even while they are in opposition, are accepting the validity of Bush's power. They've accepted a premise that has made them weak, and are struggling against their own denials. The latter response isn't encumbered in that manner.

Busy Week

I'm reviewing my stats, and I believe I have just had one of my most busy weeks ever. This week I:

• House Hunted
• Made an offer on a house (didn't get it)
• Drove to Seattle and back for a three hour class one day - a ten hour chunk of time
• Billed fifty-nine hours of other work.

Honestly, I'm usually not all that busy from week to week - that's by far my record for hours worked in one week since I started consulting. Programming is odd because the time you bill is pretty much always time when you are thinking very hard - you don't bill for work/social things like a lawyer would. And, I'm not one of those supergeekfreaks that can live on jolt cola, pizza, a textbook, and the amber lighting of a flickering monitor screen. So that's a red-letter week for me. Just goes to show what kind of motivation you can find when a client you care about is in dire need.

It would have been cooler had the house offer gone through, but oh well. And I wasn't able to do my homework for the class... so it's not all peaches and roses. But pretty cool overall.

Hello Daily Kos

I'm seeing the hits spike up a bit, thanks to kos' front page link over at Daily Kos.

I've been interested in wiki technology for a while. Aside from my participation over at the dkosopedia, I've written some plugins for movable type to enable wiki integration. In addition to my RevisionPlugin, I've also implemented a kwiki plugin on my weblog that enables me to link to and include wiki nodes inline in my weblog.

I think something like this could be really cool for intra-wiki communication - say that on your weblog, you wanted to refer to a bit of information on another wiki. With a plugin like mine, but enhanced, you could type in one command and have the content of the wiki node - hosted across the weblog - quoted directly on your weblog.

For an example, one line quotes the following wiki node from my own wiki:

The "Social Proof" I describe above is another tool that could be used in the dkosopedia - breaking a political argument down into component parts, each of which can be proven through political education and logic. If the community challenges a piece of the proof, then the parent proof would be challenged. As an example, here is the conclusion of one such Social Proof, NaderShouldNotRun:

Drill down to examine its subproofs. The "proof" (really just an argument offered for discussion) is currently contested.

Florida Vote Purging

In 2000, several thousand eligible voters that were almost assuredly Democrats were kept from voting by a partisan plan allowed by Jeb Bush. It is all documented in "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy", by Greg Palast. Suburban Guerrilla points out that it is happening all over again. Yes, there were lawsuits that were filed and settled that were supposed to ensure it wouldn't happen again. Yes, the lawsuits are being ignored. Yes, that has happened before, too.

Oregon And Ashcroft

Notes on the Atrocities has some great coverage on Oregon, Ashcroft, and all the vague terrorism connections in our state. Give it a read.

House

Made an offer on a house today. Eek!

Times: Sorry

The New York Times > International > Middle East > From the Editors: The Times and Iraq

The New York Times does what the Administration won't: acknowledge they were trafficking in false information about the Iraq war.

FBI Apology to Portland Lawyer

My Way News has another article on Brandon Mayfield, the Portland lawyer that was wrongly arrested for the Madrid bombings. The FBI has issued a rare apology, and it looks like Mayfield might sue. Hopefully this will draw more attention to the abuses of the Patriot Act.

Also, the NY Times (!) has a scathing editorial about the case.

The Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation ought to hang their heads in shame over the mistaken arrest and jailing of a Muslim lawyer in Oregon who was supposed to be a material witness in the Madrid train bombing case.

Finally, the Times even made reference to it in a surprisingly well-done examination of Bush's latest commercial.

Dr. Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart (from The Daily Show) received an honorary doctorate and gave this commencement speech. It's worth a read.

Lets talk about the real world for a moment. We had been discussing it earlier, and I…I wanted to bring this up to you earlier about the real world, and this is I guess as good a time as any. I don’t really know to put this, so I’ll be blunt. We broke it.

Desertion Sentence

TalkLeft: Mejia Convicted of Desertion, Sentenced. This solider fought in the Iraq war for a while and then decided not to return after a break, protesting the policies behind the war. He tried to go the conscientious objector route, but the military wouldn't let him. Sentence: court martial, one year in prison, and a bad-conduct discharge. Note that this is the same sentence as the soldier found guilty of torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib.

Portland Lawyer Not Terrorist

Unbelievable. So, that lawyer here in Portland? He was released. "Oops! Sorry, never mind! Here's your life back!"

Favorite Songs

According to iTunes (and my super-snazzy song-rating playlist system), my top favorite all-time (since I started using ITunes) are:

• Josefin's Waltz, by Dervish (from At The End Of The Day)
• Boston and St. John's, by Great Big Sea (from Road Rage)
• Reasons Why, by Nickel Creek (from Nickel Creek)
• Boots Of Spanish Leather, by Dervish (from Spirit) (original by Bob Dylan)
• All Aboard, by me, from me!

I think I'd have to agree. Actually, I like other songs more than mine, but I listen to it so much because it's, you know, mine. :-)

All Summed Up

Atrios sums up the logic for us:

The horrible torture that was done by 7 bad apples was the totally right thing to do which the prisoners deserved even though honorable men like Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't have approved such a thing even though they should have.

Prison Realities

I saw an article that reported that the Abu Ghraib guards in Iraq were also taking the prisoners to areas where they knew other prisoners would rape them, and then left them there and allowed it to happen before taking them back to their cell. They're trying to say it's not torture because they didn't commit the rapes themselves.

Oh, gosh, I'm sorry - that wasn't Iraq. That was our own American prison system. I was confused.

The Times reminds us that prison atrocities aren't only happening in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Here's the question, shouldn't this outrage us more than Abu Ghraib does?

God willing, this outcry will lead to enough people coming to their senses that we'll realize we have to start looking at our own prisons, too.

Weblogs

The movable type licensing fiasco has led to a lot of impending switchers. I've been wanting a better weblog for a while, myself.

But here's the thing - I'm a weblogger and a programmer. I'm fluent in both php and perl. Fluent enough to pay my bills, anyway. Not fluent enough to kick the asses of the famous perl/php programmers that lead well-known open-source projects, but fluent enough to be the senior developer of an ad-hoc freelancer team.

Pretty much all of these better, newer content-management systems - wordpress, textpattern - are php. That's fine. Php is great - and better than perl - for implementing the more common 80% of needs out there. Faster, lighter, more quicksilver, and it gets out of the way. Blog software is a good match for that because the whole point of CMS is to make a redundant process very easy.

But for that last 20%? Perl rules. And if you're a good perl programmer, that first 80% is fine, too.

There's a great wiki suite for perl called Kwiki - tiny, ultra-flexible, and very extendible. It's a wiki for programmers, that practically invites you to get into the guts and change things and extend things. And since movable type is in perl as well, I was able to write a plugin that combined the two. Now just by typing kwdiv: HomePage, I can make any of my wiki nodes appear inline in my weblog:

And it also incorporates my revision history plugin, which I was also able to easily add to my weblog because it was written in perl.

Movable Type's license made the hacking a stretch, but it being in perl is what makes the plugin development so interesting. But now the licensing is more restrictive and I want to see what else is out there.

So I want a perl weblog package. Something that is to weblogs like kwiki is to a wiki. I have ideas - it's common for blogs to be integrated with discussion software. But I want them to also be integrated with a wiki (which you see sometimes), and with an issue-tracking system (which you never see, aside from cvstrac, which integrates cvs, bugtracking, and a wiki, which I'm completely in love with), and with voting, and with revision histories, and with other collaborative tools. I need something I can extend really easily.

So for me the weblog package doesn't so much depend on what features it already has, as it does on how the backend looks. Maybe one of the php suites has a kickass backend architecture, but right now I'm still biased towards perl.

I've looked at blosxom and I don't like how it's tied to the filesystem hierarchy. And right now, it looks like the only other perl option to consider is Scoop.

If anyone knows of a weblog system that will make me twitterpated, let me know.

What We Want To See

I'm reading this great article about integrity in television journalism, and while it doesn't make the point explicitly, it reminds me of another point I've seen before. Television producers sometimes mention that viewers will say they want to watch one thing, when what they really want to watch is something else. For instance, given the choice between "When Animals Attack" and a documentary on space exploration, viewers will overwhelmingly say they want the documentary. But they'll watch "When Animals Attack."

You know, that's largely true. I don't see the point in arguing that. But the problem is, they use it as justification to broadcast "When Animals Attack." They say, "We're just giving the viewers what they really want to see."

It's really stupid. And I don't just mean that it's worthy of being vented about. I mean it's stupid from a business perspective, from their perspective. Don't they know there's a long-term marketable benefit towards appealing to our better selves?

You can already see the negative business impact in the network television entertainment schedules. All the reality shows - the quick bucks - tend to die out quickly, and many of the networks have massive holes in their schedules now, larger than in previous seasons. There's not many franchises anymore, no long-term investment, and hardly any reason for viewer loyalty. It's self-destructive.

It's too bad. It's kind of like marketing yourself as a fitness instructor, and then when you're hired, only taking your clients to the doughnut shop. They'll love you, and eventually fire you.

Bush Game

Next time you watch George Bush give a speech, mentally preface every one of his statements by imagining him saying "Repeat after me:".

I'm telling you, it works great. It's the perfect illustration of what kind of a creepy, bullying leader Bush is. "Repeat after me: Donald Rumsfeld is doing a great job. Repeat after me: Iraq will greet us as liberators. Repeat after me: We've got the terrorists on the run."

Cheese Danger

Joi Ito writes about an appetizer he had at some high-falutin' conference:

For dinner we had Raclette, kind of a precursor to cheese fondue where they shave slices of Raclette cheese of as they heat the surface. The trick is not to drink a lot of cold water with the cheese or it turns into a hard ball in your stomach. It was great though. Yum.

Can I just say eww?

Krugman On Trust

Along the same lines of Condemning, Condoning, Paul Krugman writes about the Bush Administration's demand for trust.

Condemning, Condoning

Just so no one is under the impression that the government being "unaware" of the Abu Ghrain tortures is an excuse for giving them a pass, let's remind people how this works.

A short but incomplete answer is "plausible deniability" - shielding a leader from the details of an operation, either to protect against the risk of the leader betraying details, or to protect the leader from blame if the details come out.

The reason this answer is incomplete is because it implies a level of conspiracy that is unrealistic in most cases - a shadowy group that has everything bad thing planned out to the most minute detail.

The real truth is less mysterious, and more disturbing. What happens in these cases is the same thing we see in our tax laws - loopholes deliberately built into the system. You set up a construct. You break parts of the chain by removing things like oversight, or checks and balances. You focus on the results without focusing on the process. Four words will do it - just wave off the details and command, "Just get it done." And that's basically it - by applying pressure without oversight, you have a breeding ground for corruption. By focusing on the results, you give a pass to the corruption that supplied them. And due to the lack of oversight, you're insulated from knowledge of the corruption.

Corruption doesn't need to be planned - it just needs to be allowed. And that's what happened here. And why is it that the government should be held responsible? Because they allowed to to happen when they knew better. They are basically saying that they didn't know that ignoring the Geneva convention would lead to its rules being broken.

There's a point where refusal to condemn something is the same as condoning it. If it's on your watch, and if you should be able to anticipate the results, then allowing something is encouraging it.

Oregon Lawyer and Madrid

TalkLeft: Guilt By Association?

This thing about the Portland lawyer that was arrested for dealings in the Madrid bombings has been all over the front pages of our newspapers here in Portland.

There's some serious backtracking going on... now it appears that he was never actually in Spain, and that the police aren't so sure it his his fingerprints in the van after all.

Bush and Bullies

One meme I haven't seen enough of is the one that points out that Bush is a bully. Bullies are odd creatures. They appear at unexpected times, they threaten consequences before they enact them, they're powerful, they're unsophisticated, and they're weak-minded.

For the first two years of Bush's presidency, his strength was that he was willing to advocate extreme policies, do what wasn't customary. If a tax cut request would have reasonably been in the range of 200-400 billion dollars depending on the party, he'd ask for a trillion. He changed the terms of the debate through extremism, and people didn't know how to oppose it because they were stunned.

Kissinger wrote of revolutionary powers and those overtaken by them:

"Lulled by a period of stability which had seemed permanent, they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertion of the revolutionary power that it means to smash the existing framework."

Now, there's a difference between a revolutionary and a bully. A revolutionary has ideas that actually can take virally take hold in a population. A bully is merely unsophisticated and forceful. Still powerful, but ultimately alone. Bush's causes are great for his base, but there isn't much chance of his platforms being supported by those that might have opposed him at first. They've already abdicated this; every time they market a Clear Skies or Healthy Forest act, they are choosing not to market what they actually advocate. I'd worry if it were titled the Trees Become Houses act and had wide support. No, Bush isn't a revolutionary. Their only hope is to sneak their objectives through, not inspire people to their cause. Bullies aren't leaders.

People were a bit lazy and fat and happy in 1999. Yes, the dotcom crash was a bit scary, but people were still coasting on the success of the decade. They were not in the mode to accept the possibility that a bully would show up. This is part of what opened up the space for it. Bullies need room to sneak.

And this is one of the weaknesses of a bully. They need to sneak, but eventually what they are doing will become obvious. People realize what is happening. Sometimes they realize too late to stop something bad from happening, but there is always a realization. A bully's success comes from obfuscation, distraction, wheedling, and threats.

But it's also a clue of how to oppose a bully.

I was bullied in school. Enough to be affected by it, enough to recognize one when I see one. Bush has Ashcroft. He advocates making the Patriot Act permanent. He makes up insulting nicknames for people he works with. He uses the language of domination and intimidation. He's definitely a bully. One of the hardest things for a child to learn is how to oppose a bully. I was often told to just ignore it, but that only helps one to cope with or accept it, not oppose it. The other obvious option was to stand up to them directly. People think that's honorable, but the thing about bullies is that they are small, stupid, and subhuman. They are not honorable. Plus, due to practice, they are probably better at violence than you are.

It's difficult to know how to stand up to a bully, but it's possible. Bullies are a mixture of threats, cowardliness, subterfuge, and idiocy. One rule in dealing with a bully is to never, ever, ever accept their terms. You can expose them sometimes. You can challenge them sometimes and demonstrate to others how they run. You can stand up to some of the threats and demonstrate their emptiness. And sometimes you can flat-out ridicule them. But the number one thing to remember is that bullies get their power by convincing others not to express theirs. In order to oppose a bully, it's not so much about opposing them on their terms, as it is championing yourself on yours.

Great Moments In Satire

Rob Corddry in reaction to the Abu Ghrain torturings:

"There's no question what took place in that prison was horrible. But the Arab world has to realize the U.S. shouldn't be judged on the actions of a-- ... well, we shouldn't be judged on actions. It's our principles that matter. Our inspiring, abstract notions. Remember, just because torturing prisoners is something we did doesn't mean it's something we would do."

Absolutely classic. The audience knew it too - you could feel it sinking in to them before they went back to laughing.

Reflecting America

Josh Marshall refers us to this Times article, which explores the connection between American prisons and Abu Ghraib:

The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time.

The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country's criminal justice system.

Are they sorry because they are shocked, shocked that something like this is happening when they had no idea?

Hi, I'm America - May I Punch You In The Gut?

I haven't written anything about the who Abu Ghraib torture thing.

I'm just depressed. It's hard to write when you're depressed. You decide things aren't ideal, and you try and figure out how to fight. There are so many reasons to not fight and you work like a dog to shift paradigms, to find a sliver of hope, something to advocate so you have a reason to fight anyway. You work hard enough and you come upon a vision to advocate - you aren't sure whether you have found one, or simply invented one, but it's enough. You enlist yourself to a cause, you start to feel momentum. And then you realize that concurrently, and silently, something else has been happening. You realize there is rot - while you had been working to avoid it, you find out it was already there. So, the stakes are lower, because you find out that much of the stakes have already been lost.

That's how I'm feeling in a nutshell. In terms of the election, we still have to win, but big deal. It could have been a salvage mission, but I wonder if it's too late for that now.

Michael Moore's New Movie

The New York Times > National > Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush

I have to hand it to Michael Moore - he has a way of creating oxygen for issues that seem laughable at first. There was a time that criticizing Bush's National Guard service was a roll-your-eyes low blow, but the blowback from Moore's endorsement of Clark (when he mentioned it) is what really got the ball rolling there. This sort of negative press, where it's all too easy to cry censorship, plays right into the Democrats hands.

Media Matters

Similar in intent to Fact Check (which I delinked for it being a little too Republican), and Campaign Desk (which I delinked for being boring), there is a new fact-checking website with much bigger names behind it, called Media Matters.

Blogging

My blogging pace has slowed a bit recently - have no fear, it is actually only because there is a lot of behind-the-scenes planning going on. Rebranding coming soon.

Also, I am looking for recommendations of bloggers that enjoy writing about the confluence of politics and technology (although it doesn't always have to be both at the same time). Not A-List bloggers, though - I can find those myself! Bonus points if they actually have web development skills - either programming or front-end.

Spam Rejection

You know, I think there should be some research done into the psychological impact of spam on people who spend a lot of time online.

I just recently went through some reorganization with my email accounts. I had one of my domain names set to accept mail sent to anyone at that domain name and forward it to me - it was just getting slammed with spam. I also had another email address that was a spam magnet and had recently stopped serving any other purpose because everyone that knows me knows to contact me through a different address.

I changed both of them. Now the first is getting a less spam, and the second one is entirely turned off. I'm getting several hundred less spams every day thanks to picking that low-hanging fruit.

The effect? Well, now often times when I check my mail, I actually get no mail. And I have less folders in my mailer. It's odd, it's like there's a lot more space in my "communications with others" sphere. It's silly, but in contrast, it's kind of lonely.

Maybe I'll go write some replies on usenet or sign some online petitions or something... find me some more spamlove...

Jesse Taylor and Jerry Springer

I actually have a favorite blogger. Over the months I've been reading Jesse Taylor's writing, and he's got this mix of analysis, passion, and snarkiness that I think is pretty much perfect. He doesn't use the snark as an excuse not to express himself passionately, and when he does use the snark, it's very funny. Plus, he's prolific.

He's just out of college and just landed a job, as the blogger for Jerry For Ohio, which is Jerry Springer's political organization.

Now, I gotta start with the disclaimers. Jesse's from Ohio and knows more about Springer than I do. And, it's a job. And, Springer has a political history - a former mayor - and is evidently a strong progressive.

But, I just don't know how Jerry reconciles things in himself. From everything I've heard, he's an awesome democrat. But he still condones everything in his show enough to not only participate in it, but produce and incite it. How do those fit together? How?

The thing is that at its root, it is hatred. Encouraging people to put themselves on display and caricature themselves in a negative way is encouraging self-hatred. The motivation has to come from a place of contempt. I do not trust him to champion Democratic ideals, not when the going will get tough. How can I trust that, when time came for compromise, he would not compromise in a way that would only reinforce negative perceptions of the lower class? His show is already an example of that style of compromise. If I were a lower income voter with any self-respect I would not want Springer to represent me.

Jesse got a job as a professional blogger, and he deserves congratulations for that. But I think one of Jesse's first job duties should be to explain how to reconcile all these things, because I'm hardly the on person feeling it. If it's possible to explain it, Jesse's equipped to do it.

Here's an episode of This American Life that focuses on Jerry's early political career. It's eerie to hear people talk about him as one of the best, most talented politicians ever - on the level of Reagan, Clinton, and Kennedy. It starts about 4:30 in.

I've listened to it and was struck by two things. First, I was inspired by even his recent political speeches. Second, his explanations about his role with the show stank of rationalization. This radio piece didn't do a thing to reconcile the two lives of Jerry Springer - instead, it only emphasized the contrast. To me, it's a tragedy - but I don't see myself respecting Jerry until he admits it was a tragedy as well.