iPhone Thoughts, 6 Months On

I was reading Farhad Manjoo's year-end technology wrap-up on Salon, and he talked a lot about the iPhone. He also included a pointer to a post by Harry McCracken of PC World (any relation to Ed, I wonder?) about the iPhone's shortcomings. And it got me to thinking about my experiences with the little guy.

The first thing to say is, I went down Harry's list and kept thinking, "Geez, I don't really give a rip about that." Things like Skype, using Lotus Notes (ugh!), Slingbox . . . he just has an interesting set of priorities. After 6 months with the iPhone, I'm still loving it. It is far and away my favorite purchase of the year, and while I can't wait for the upgrade--Doug's estimate: June of 2008--I have a hard time getting irritated for it's faults.

What do I want in an iPhone Rev. 2.0? Right now, just a few things:

• 3G; while I can live with Edge when I have to, it is definitely far too much slower than 3G. Apple says they'll have it next year. (June?)
• A2DP. I'm stunned that I can't use Bluetooth devices like the Cardo S-2 on the iPhone. That was boneheaded. (Another June fix?)
  
• Better ear-buds. The ones that come with the phone break in just a few months, and at $30/pop, that's not okay.
• More memory. I can live with 8GB, but it's not really 8GB. The OS takes up some space (about .75GB), and I have found that if you pack it too full, weird things start a-happenin'. I have found you need to leave about 1GB of free space, which is pretty annoying. But since the Touch comes in a 16GB model, I'm thinking this problem will be solved soon, too. (June?)
• There are lots of games available on the web for the iPhone now. I don't want them; I want games that are native. Jeez, Jobs; the friggin' iPod nano comes with games--what's up with not having any for the iPhone? Get on the stick!
  

With regard to some of Harry's specific complaints, I wanted to give my countervailing opinion:

• "The iPhone requires too many clicks to get stuff done." With all due respect: baloney. Perhaps Harry can get to stuff quicker or with less clicks on his 8525; I couldn't say. But I do know that on my wife's RAZR, my old v180, the HTC Universal, and any number of other phones I've tested that it's generally a pain in the ass to do almost anything not "dial a phone" related. Where do I go to turn on Bluetooth? How to I use the video camera? (My wife has had her RAZR for 3 months and didn't even know it had a video camera!) How do I download ringtones? Etc. On the iPhone, I never get lost in menus and I rarely guess wrong about where some feature is located. The interface is simply superb, and as a guy who documents software for a living, believe me, I've seen a lot of lame interfaces. It may take "more clicks," but who gives a rip as long as it's fast?
  
• "The iPhone doesn't have enough storage to be my primary media player." Well, it doesn't have enough space, that's true. On the other hand, it's far and away the best media player I've ever tested, and I've tested a bunch. I've tested several that had 30GB or 60GB of storage, and frankly the extra space isn't worth the screen that's not as good, the interface that's not as good, and the lack of quietness that those devices always have.
• "The iPhone's virtual keyboard is surprisingly good; the 8525's real one is better." Maybe. On the other hand, I'm not using the iPhone to type notes on; I just use it for SMS and answering the occasional email, and it's just fine for that. I don't want to trade a virtual keyboard for a real one unless I get something of the quality of an HTC Universal or an OQO version 2. And those babies cost over a grand, and weight 3 times as much. I don't think that's a good tradeoff. Your mileage may vary.

One final thing I wanted to mention: as a phone, the iPhone is by far the best cell phone I've had. It's reception is better and more consistent, I can hear better with the stereo earbuds, and it's interface--in case I haven't made this clear--is excellent. So I don't know what the people are expecting who complain, but I have been way happy just on the phone end.

It's not a perfect device, by any means. But it is the only device I have ever actually be willing to carry on my hip; all other devices have gotten tossed in a gear bag. The iPhone? Naw; I clip it on my belt in a beautiful Vaja case. And while you may not know it, for me, that's saying a lot.

Corporate Stupidity

A couple of months ago, Farhad Manjoo of Salon posted about this last summer's snit between NBC Universal and Apple. The short form: NBCU wants more control over the price of downloads of their content from iTunes, and Jobs was insistent that the price remain the same for everything ($1.99/download). So NBCU said "Screw You," and walked away from iTunes, taking their bat and ball with them.

Why am I writing about this now? Because NBCU's policy only became effective early this month. And so now, while the writers are on strike and it might be a good time to download shows from iTunes that you haven't seen before, you're hosed, because they're gone.

And I don't mean just the latest seasons; NBCU pull their entire catalog. And this isn't just for NBC shows; it's for NBCU-produced shows. So while Heroes and 30 Rock were on NBC and are of course gone, so is Monk, which is on USA. And Eureka, which is on SciFi. And so on. Don't matter about the channel; just matters about the production company. And who the hell pays attention to that?

This is asinine from so many different directions that it's hard to unpack. But consider these few main points:

• NBCU loses all the iTunes users. That's a lot of users. Yes, they're offering their stuff through other channels--e.g., Heroes is available through Amazon.com's UnBox--but how many iTunes users are going to want to fart around with a new format, try to come up with conversion tools, or whatever? (You can currently only watch UnBox videos on your computer.) Those iTunes users are lost.
• If NBCU jacks up the price--as they clearly want--who will pay? While I would hesitate to say "all," I have to believe that the vast majority of their content is available through torrent download sites. One of the great advantages to iTunes is that it is reasonably priced and easy to use. If NBCU makes it unreasonably priced and difficult to use, who on Earth is going to pay when they can use some other difficult method that's free?
• I don't know how much NBCU was making for their downloadable shows, but for their back-catalog, not only are they not stealing away their own viewers, they're getting that legendary holy grail of business: money for nothing. They upload their episodes to iTunes--episodes that may be years old--and people pay for them. That revenue is now gone. And for what?

As a personal user, I have purchased 'way more TV episodes than I probably should have, simply because it was easy and reasonably priced. I watched half of last years' episodes of Monk through download. All of Heroes. A few episodes of Eureka. And now NBC is getting no revenue from me--none--because I simply don't watch commercial TV. I'll wait and order the DVDs from Netflix. That's not a lot of money--$100, maybe--but now NBCU will get none. Multiply that by tens of thousands, and that's a lot of dough. That they were getting for no extra work.

I always knew that entertainment companies were idiotic about new media distribution formats, but this really takes the cake. NBCU wins the Doug Corporate Boneheads of the Quarter award. Congratulations, guys!

Grocery Store Rant

When the fambly and I moved from California to Austin, we were able to leverage our real estate in CA to get a pretty nice house in Austin, which turned out to be in a frou-frou neighborhood.

The nice thing about our neighborhood is that it is close to everything, including downtown, but feels like its own little neighborhood. Plus we can we hear all the big concerts in the nearby park; last summer we listened to the Stones by opening our windows, and I could hear Dylan while I walked the dog.

On the downside, there's a lot of pretty conservative folks here--a problem for a yutz from Santa Cruz--and all the stores like to be "upscale." Which means that the hardware store looks more like a boutique. But the worst, as far as I'm concerned, is the local Randall's grocery store.

First of all, everything there is overpriced; the nearest H.E.B. is quite a bit cheaper (and a lot farther away). But also, they introduce new products, and then as soon as I learn to like them, yank them away again. I've lost track of how many "Doug enjoys this!" items have come and gone in this place, while still being available at Albertsons or H.E.B. But the worst is, they've upgraded their store twice, and we've only been here 5 years or so. And how do you reckon those upgrades are paid for? Not lower prices at the checkout, I'm telling you.

First, it was adding faux-wood floors to the produce section and a Starbucks outlet. Aside from the fact that I don't give a rip what my grocery store floors are made out of, there's a Starbucks right across the friggin' parking lot! I hate to break it to these folks, but when I go to a grocery store, I want groceries, not Starbucks, not wooden floors, and certainly not marble tile floors (which is what they are putting in now). Groceries. You know: milk, eggs, butter, bread; that sort of thing.

If I want a frou frou fancy-pants grocery store with all the hard-to-get stuff and organic produce and so on, I'll go to the bloody World Headquarters Whole Foods 5 miles away. In the meantime, stop taking away my yogurt breakfast bars and keep your marble tiles.

But the worst thing in the new remodel there is, they took out the "Express" checkout line and installed those idiotic "self checkout" machines. Let me ask you this: when you go to a store that has those things, how long are the lines manned by actual human beings vs. the lines at the "self checkout" machines? Personally, I always see lines where there are real, genuine people, but hardly ever at the self checkout.

This is a greed thing, pure and simple. Higher prices, smaller stock, fewer employees, greater profit. None of it is for the customer who--in case I didn't make this clear--just wants groceries.

I could go into what's lame about these self checkout machines--they're really badly designed--but I'll leave that for another post. I think by now everyone knows that I am hardly a luddite--I am a regular poster to Gear Diary and own an iPhone, for crying out loud!--but I am happy to complain about corporate greed and lame engineering when I see it. And that's what this is, kids.

Silliness

• For a long time I've wanted Hollywood to make a film called "Mary," starring Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary Beth Hurt, Mary Elizabeth Mostrantonio, and Mary-Louise Parker. I mean, after all, why not?
• Do you ever wonder if the airplane shoe bomber realizes how many millions of hours in productivity he has cost people in this country? I mean, because of that one guy, millions of people are forced to take off their friggin' shoes every day. It's insane. My guess is: not.
• How come every season has one name except Fall? Fall is my favorite season personally, but why is it that it is named Autumn and Fall? Yes, yes, I know it's because it's descriptive, but we don't call Summer "Hot", Winter "Cold," and Spring "Thank God I can finally go outside in my shirtsleeves." Did Autumn bribe a Senator in 1827, or something?
• A lot of people see a relatively simple invention and slap their heads and say, "I wish I had thought of that!" In my Dad the engineer's case, it was the weed whacker. "Some fishing line and a little motor on the end of a stick? I should have thought of that!" The guy had a couple of patents, but lamented not inventing the weed whacker. What's yours?
• Why is it people say they trust someone "implicitly?" "Implicitly" means that it goes without saying, so if someone tells you that they trust you "implicitly," they are telling you, and so it obviously is no longer "implicit." Why can't they say "I trust you completely," or "absolutely," or even just "I trust you?" But by declaring your level of trust as "implicit," you are immediately negating it. Goofy.
  

The Writer's Strike

While it certainly doesn't have the cachet of the Iraq war or a massive fire in Southern California, I have been following the Hollywood Writer's Strike with some interest and, unsurprisingly, have some thoughts.

The issues seem to boil down to the fact that the writers want a piece of the New Media pie--internet downloads of the shows they wrote for, and such--while the studios and producers would prefer to give them, well, a pittance.

Now, I'm a writer. I don't write "Pushing Daisies" or gags for "The Daily Show," but I do make my egg and butter money putting words down. And my view of the system in general is the same as how I view computer software: without the creative people, the sales folks don't have anything to sell. Without software engineers, no software, and no product. Without writers, no scripts, and therefore no shows.

I may be harsh, but "producers" aren't really "producers," nor should they be called such. Producers, in the film/TV sense are really financers and salespeople. They put up the money, and they sell the product. You need them, of course; no money, and nothing gets created. But without the writers, nothing gets created. And you can't make money off of something that doesn't exist.

So my bottom line is pretty clear: the producers should stop trying to keep all the swag to themselves, and share it fairly with the writers. Because while they don't like to admit it, without writers, they're nothing but bankers and salespeople. And while there's nothing wrong with bankers and salespeople, you just don't see a lot of them riding around in Ferraris and hanging on the arms of famous actors.

Fluorescent Light Bulbs

Look, I'm all for going green, using less energy, and helping decrease my carbon footprint. I work at home. I hardly drive. I try to be judicious with the house temperature. I recycle. And I even use those new swirly fluorescent light bulbs that you see advertised everywhere these days. There's just one problem:

They suck.

They're supposed to last longer. They have supposedly fixed the "fluorescent lighting sucks" problem. The fact that they cost so much is supposed to be compensated by a longer life.

Bushwah.

I've installed these things in all the places in my house where the quality of light doesn't matter to me. You know: the pantry, the back room where the cat litter is, the laundry room--places like that. And I can safely say that they do not last longer and they haven't fixed the "fluorescent lighting sucks" problem. I've had to replace the bulb above the litter box twice now in three months; the bulb above the entryway once in two months. The other bulbs have given me the same longevity, which is to say, not much. Certainly not significantly longer than the incandescents they replaced, and absolutely not enough to justify the higher price.

Not to mention that the quality of the light makes my eyes itch.

I'll keep buying them and putting them in the "I don't go there often" areas of the house. But I have to say, I just wish the marketing for this was honest, rather than trying to convince everyone that the higher price doesn't matter because of the longer life, and that the quality of the light is "comparable." Sell it on a "saving the planet" thing. Sacrifice a little, save a lot. That kind of thing.

Because, and not to put too fine a point on it, they suck.

Obama: The Non-Boomer Candidate?

Andrew Sullivan made an interesting point in his Atlantic article on Barack Obama--well, interesting to me, at any rate. He pointed out that while Obama is technically a Baby Boomer--he was born in 1961--he is not a classic Boomer.

I have long maintained that the argument that the Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are a monolithic mass with similar views is completely bogus. A person such as Obama, or myself, has very little in common with someone born in the late 40s who went to college in the 60s. While women were burning bras, students were marching, and folks were dropping acid in the Haight and listening to Jefferson Airplane, folks born between, say, 1958 and 1966, were watching Scooby Doo and the Brady Bunch and going to elementary school.

There is a huge gulf between folks like me, and folks like Clinton. My Mom--born in 1943 and technically not a Boomer, has a lot more in common with Boomers than I do. Or Obama.

Boomers were out in the forefront of a lot of issues and causes that were incredibly important and highly controversial in their time. Civil rights. Gay rights. Women's rights. The Vietnam war. But Boomers can also be incredibly self-interested, to the point of not even believing that other generations before them did the same things they did, or had similar observations. Other generations didn't have their insights into how to be married, or raise children, or balance work and home, or anything. They need to share (or inflict) their brilliant observations and deductions on us all!

There's a reason why Steve Wozniak's music festivals were called the "Us" festival.

In any event, Obama is not a Boomer. My generation has always been overlooked, to the point where we don't even have a name. The "wedge" generation? The "tweeners?" Who the hell knows? We appreciate the good things the Boomers did, and roll our eyes at their self-involved naval-gazing, and get on with our lives. Which includes cleaning up some of their worst excesses.

So when it comes to Democratic candidates, as Sullivan points out, the difference is not just that he's Black and she's White, or that he's a man and she's a woman; it's generational. He doesn't carry the baggage of the 60s. When Clinton was meeting Kennedy, Obama was in short pants. Clinton didn't inhale; Obama's response to the same question was (in essence), "Sure, I smoked pot in college." After all, aside from graduates of Wheaton College, who the heck didn't? Obama didn't go to giant protests in his 20s, he went to Law School.

I'm not saying my generation is perfect; we're not. But we're not going to repeat the mistakes of the Boomers, or refight their fights. We're done with all that. It's our history, not our former current events (if you see my meaning). We'll make our own mistakes, but we won't re-do the Boomer's mistakes. And frankly, I find that comforting; I'm personally pretty tired of living with Boomer stuff. It would be nice to have someone like me in charge for a change, instead of someone like Bush or Clinton or Other Clinton. Don't you think?

A brief follow-up . . .

Many columnists and commentators now have either comment sections or their email addresses with their columns. The sad and infuriating thing is, they totally ignore them. Joe Klein is the worst; he has stated outright that he ignores them. (God forbid you take feedback from your audience, Joe!) But as near as I can see, the "mainstream media" folks all ignore them.

David Broder gets tons of email filled with scorn. Does he adjust his policies? Heck no; he pens a column about how out-of-touch the emailers are! (They're your audience, you doofus!) Shailagh Murray writes a sneering article about Chris Dodd actually--heaven save us--standing up for Civil Rights by blocking the horrific telecom amnesty bill. Every single comment is negative. Does she do anything about it, or even acknowledge it? Heck no! She just goes right on peddling her tripe.

Honestly, it makes me want to fly to Washington with "Mr. Spoon" (as we call him here) and bend these clowns over my knee, paddle them, and then send them to their rooms with their internet privileges revoked. Bad columnists! Go to your rooms!

Ignoring The People

So much for frivolity.

One thing that's been driving me absolutely nuts since the Democrats won back Congress is how much the inside-the-beltway folks are completely ignoring their constituents.

Personally, I'm used to being ignored; my Senators are both hard-right Republicans (including the execrable John Cornyn), and "my" Representative is Lamar Smith, who doesn't "represent" me in any way whatsoever. I hate it, but I'm used to it.

On the other hand, it really frosts my country ass that these Democrats that were put into Congress specifically to stand up to President Bush are caving in left and right. And it angers me even more that they not only flagrantly ignore their constituents, but also, like Nancy Pelosi, actually scorn them. Pelosi sneered at people protesting her limp Speakership by saying "If they were poor and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they would be arrested for loitering, but because they have 'Impeach Bush' across their chest, it's the First Amendment."

Yes, Nancy; exercising their Constitutional rights--which you're trying to give away at the behest of a President with a 24% approval rating--is so annoying!

As if that isn't bad enough, the "liberal mainstream media" continues to pump out the meme that Democrats are stupid and doomed if they stand up to Bush. With the support for the war hovering around 30%, and with Democratic support for the war in single digits, the press nonetheless continues to opine that Democrats who stand up for civil rights, for pulling us out of Iraq, for returning to sane domestic policies, are stupid or naive or self-immolating.

You can read it over and over: Howard Kurtz, David Broder, David Brooks, Shailagh Murray, David Ignatius . . . pretty much anywhere. There are a few who step outside this nonsense, like Paul Krugman and Dan Froomkin (See? Not all Jews support neocons/Likud!), but in the main, the press is not listening to the people they theoretically serve. And they wonder why their subscription numbers are decreasing!

When the politicians we elect and the press that's supposed to keep an eye on them aren't paying attention to what "the people" want, where does that leave us? Personally it leaves me battling fury and depression.

Something Totally Frivolous

This is completely frivolous. You have been duly notified.

I have a son who's only 9 and loves the usual 9-year-old boy stuff; cartoons, superheroes, transformers, and that sort of thing. He dragged me to see Transformers in the theater (which wasn't nearly as painful to watch as I was afraid it was going to be). And of course he had to have the latest Fantastic 4 movie as soon as it came out.

So here's the thing: Jessica Alba, while a pretty wooden actress, is a babe; no doubt about it. A very attractive woman (although personally I prefer her with her natural brunette hair color). And what I can't figure out is how they managed to make her look unattractive in this movie. I mean, seriously. She looked fine in the first one; why does she look so weird in this one?

Partly it's her hair; they did something to it that makes it look like it was ironed flat, like an early-'60s folk singer. And partly it's those blue contacts; like a lot of people who don't wear contacts regularly, she does this round-eyed thing when she has them in. But somehow, throughout the whole movie I was distracted by this strange-looking woman wearing spandex who sort of looked like Jessica Alba, but not really. It was weird.

Yes, these are the things that sometimes occupy my tiny brain. Hey, I told you this was frivolous. I don't rant about politics all the time!

You know, it used to be that "conservatives" (with a small "c") were the ones who wanted the Constitution to be adhered to strictly and stringently. It was conservatives who wanted limited government, a balanced budget, and a government that was most assuredly made up of three coequal branches. It was conservatives who said, "Government isn't the solution; government is the problem." It was conservatives who told us not to trust the government.

Not any more, I guess.

In an article in the "Weekly Standard," Michael Goldfarb instead tells us what the new Conservative (big "C") position is: we should all shut the heck up and do whatever the government tells us to do, because it's the "patriotic" thing. Because now we can trust the government. And of course it doesn't matter that they've stripped habeus corpus away; these good ol' boys that are in charge couldn't possibly want to jail and arrest anyone but "bad guys." These folks are good people, and will always do the right thing!

Forgive me if I bear in mind this idiotic war in Iraq, the fact that these "good people" were illegally spying on folks for years, and the fact that they now want to bomb Iran to "smithereens." (Hey, Norman Podhoretz said it; I ain't making it up).

How on Earth are we going to make it through the next year intact with these nuts in charge? Tom Paine would have started shooting people by now. I think Heinlein put it well in "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls," believe it or not:

I sat down and shut up. I felt that I now understood the new regime: absolute freedom . . . except that any official from dogcatcher to supreme potentate could give any orders whatever to any private citizen at any time.

So it was “freedom” as defined by Orwell and Kafka, “freedom” as granted by Stalin and Hitler, “freedom” to pace back and forth in your cage. I wondered if the coming interrogation would be assisted by mechanical or electrical devices or by drugs, and felt sick at my stomach.

I'm not one for hysterics and crying "Wolf!"; I've got friends who do it a lot better than I do. But in this case, how can I help it? I hope we make it through the next year intact.

Barack Obama's Lapels

I can't believe I'm even writing this, but that's the level political discourse has sunk to in this country, I guess.

Barack Obama is taking heat--and I honestly can't believe this--for saying he won't wear an American flag pin in his lapel. There are stories on Fox News, Time, and probably everywhere else.

This bugs me in so many ways it's hard to unravel, but the first thing is, isn't it bad enough that the press spends 'way more time talking about poll numbers and fund raising figures rather than what the candidates actually, you know, say they're going to do on healthcare or the environment or taxes. Now they're talking about a friggin' lapel pin. What next, what the candidates eat for breakfast? "Obama eats yogurt for breakfast! What an effete wimp!"

It also reminds me, disgustingly, of how much politics and the inside-the-beltway media are like High School. Doesn't matter how smart a guy is, doesn't matter what he stands for; it just matters what he looks like. Does he look "Presidential?" Oh my God, he wore a red tie today; what does that mean? And the pressure to conform to what the clique thinks. Don't do something out of principle; conform. Everyone must wear a lapel pin! Everyone must eat with Real Folks in a diner in New Hampshire in the dead of winter. Everyone must put on a flannel shirt and stride across a corn field in Iowa, post-harvest. Conform conform conform!

And the final thing is, ask yourself this: how many people out here in the "real world" wear lapel pins at all? Hell, in my industry damn few people wear suits, and those that do--salespeople and marketing people--are not exactly held in high regard by the technical folks. And I have never seen any of them wear lapel pins. (Here in Austin in the summer, most folks don't wear socks, let alone suits.)

I know it's different in the NorthEast to some degree, but even so most of the people I see all the time, in two states, wouldn't go near the $800+ suits the candidates all wear. They'd look kind of silly in a cornfield, or a tire repair shop, or laying pipe at the shipyard, or on a hacker writing code. And lapel pins? Feh.

So we have a manufactured flap over a piece of accoutrement that probably no one would have noticed if the press hadn't picked it up. And now the bloviators are trying to get Obama to regret it and conform.

Man. And people wonder why my generation is so darn cynical.

Trusting Business vs. Trusting Government

I was just thinking the other day about "liberals" vs. "conservatives," and came to the realization that they both are kind of silly when taken too seriously.

Think about this: Conservatism, to some degree, can be boiled down to "let the market work it out." In other words, they have a lot of trust in Big Business, but distrust Big Government. Liberals, on the other hand, have a lot of trust for Big Government, but distrust Big Business.

The obvious internal contraction of these positions seems to slip by most everyone.

If you can trust Big Government, why are you so distrustful of Big Business? And vice-versa? A big, faceless Entity that is run by a whole lot of People You Don't Know; trusting either one of them too far seems the height of folly to me.

Take global warming, for example. The impression that I get from conservatives is that they would like the Invisible Hand of the market to deal with it. The thinking being (I guess) that eventually it would become more economical to do something about global warming than ignoring it, and the companies would switch to more environmentally sound policies. (Or alternatively, customers would stop buying environmentally damaging products, forcing producers to come out with environmentally sound products.)

I don't believe it, however. If watching the auto industry fight tooth and nail against any government-mandated innovation--including seatbelts, for crying out loud!--is an reasonable example, my belief is that, say, energy companies would continue to burn coal and oil and whatever else in as polluting a way as possible until they ran out of coal and oil. At which point they would demand government subsidies for alternative energy research, and start selling home and personal filtration systems to prevent folks from getting sick on all the gunk in the air.

But, you know, I'm a cynic.

On the flip side, the believers in government would have the government crack down on everyone in the industry. The natural follow-on to that--that business will become so inefficient that it will die or jack up the price to the stratosphere--seems to escape some folks. So they will squawk when their gas rises to $7 a gallon and their monthly heating bill rises to $1000. And then they'll want government to do something about that.

These are extremes, obviously. I'm exaggerating for effect. But the point is, you have to have a balance. There are some thing business is better at (goods and services at low cost--how many stories have you read about overbudget government projects?), and there are other things (worker safety and watching the environment being a big pair) that Big Business has a proven track record--hundreds of years, baby!--of sucking at.

So let the radicals at either end rail on--there wouldn't be any progress without pushing the boundaries. But let's not go overboard, because Big Anything taken at its word is dangerous, it seems to me.

Fascist State, the Overused Cliche

People located all over the political spectrum tend to overuse terms like "fascist" to describe their foes. Catastophisizing and demonizing is a lot easier to do than engaging in actual debate. The downside is, the actual meaning and power of those terms gets diluted and worn down through overuse (similar to comparison to the Nazis), so that when they might actually be valid, people just roll their eyes.

But consider some facts. These are actual facts, not hyperbole.

Yesterday, at an appearance by John Kerry at the University of Florida, a student who was unruly and disruptive was in the process of asking John Kerry a long, hostile, and somewhat incoherent question. The other students in attendance were trying to shout him down, but Kerry requested that they let him finish. What happened? The police came, Tasered him, and took him away.

In its first term, the Roberts court considered the case of Morse v. Frederick, where the Court upheld the School District's right to suspend a student because he put up a banner that said "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" when the Olympic torch bearers ran by. Not during school, mind you; outside of school.

(I'm not going to go into here the mental gymnastics the members of the Supreme Court go through to justify this nonsense. Just as an example, donating large sums of money is constitutionally protected free speech, but wearing arm bands to school is not. Yeah, okay; whatever. Jefferson and Hamilton are probably fighting for grave-rolling privileges with John Jay.)

In its term of office, the Bush Administration has suspended habeas corpus and given themselves the right to slap American citizens in jail without trial and without accusing them of a crime indefinitely simply by calling them "enemy combatants." Bush has unilaterally declared entire sections of various laws invalid simply by issuing "signing statements." And finally, he's continuing a war in direct defiance of the opinions of a majority of Congress and the American people.

These are facts; I ain't making this stuff up.

At the risk of being pedantic, "fascism" is defined as "a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition."

Now I know some people will consider it hyperbole, and we are certainly a ways from, say, Germany in 1937, but what term other than "fascist" can be used to describe where we are today? We have police tasering people to shut them up; people pretending to be secret service and stopping citizens from attending speeches because of bumper stickers on their cars; White House press secretaries saying that we "have to watch what we write; watch what we say"; people who dare to debate the wisdom of public policy not disagreed with, but accused of being traitors and "giving comfort to the enemy."

And when when we have a President who values personal loyalty above competence, who fires military leaders when they dare to say things publicly that are at odds with what he wants to hear (remember Gen. Shinseki?), and whose Administration engages in vicious retaliation against anyone who doesn't do their bidding (Carol Lam, the former U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, who was fired for not persuing "illegal voting" hard enough, and of course Valerie Plame being outed as a covert CIA operative as punishment for husband having the temerity to question Bush in the pages of the NY Times being just two examples), what else can we call him but "dictatorial?"

So as much as it puts me in danger of being accused of hyperbole, I have to say we live in a fascist state. It is not being abused to the point it could be, no, but it's a fascist state. If the State Apparatus wanted to slap me in jail tomorrow under some trumped-up pretext, they could. And that's a fascist state, folks.

Liveblogging Bush's Speech

I have a huge amount of trouble listening to Bush speak. For one thing, he's a miserably bad speaker, even worse than his father. For another, his policies are asinine, and that bothers me immeasurable. But finally, the way he swallows his words drives me absolutely insane.

Even so, I listened to part of his speech tonight, and have a few comments:

Bush: "In Iraq, an ally of the United States is fighting for its survival."
Doug: I kept wracking my brain wondering which ally he was talking about. Great Britain? No; they were leaving, and their survival was assured. Iraq itself? They weren't a country yet. The Shiites? The Sunnis? The Kurds? He must be talking about Iraq, even though it doesn't have a central government, and isn't really an "ally," so much as a colonial state.

Bush: "Eight months ago we adopted a new strategy."
Doug: No; eight months ago you ordered a new strategy. We didn't have anything to do with it, and something like 2/3 of us don't agree with it.

Bush: "We are seizing the initiative from the enemy."
Doug: What enemy? It's a friggin' civil war. It's like fighting fog. Doesn't he even read his NIEs? I'm so sick of this guy dividing the world into "enemies" and "allies" I could just hurl. The world's more complicated than that, Mr. President.

Bush: We will reduce from 20 combat brigades to 15 by next July.
Doug: We would have to do that no matter what happened with "the surge," unless we wanted to implement a draft. If Bush dropped a rock, he would take credit for the force of gravity when the rock crashed to the floor.

Bush: "As . . . the Iraqis assume more control over their own security, our mission in Iraq will evolve."
Doug: How is this different from "As they stand up, we will stand down"? It's back to the future, baby!

Bush: "I have benefited from their advice."
Doug: Since when? Has there ever been a time when Bush has followed advice that's contrary to what he wanted to do in the first place?

Bush: "The principle guiding my decision on troop levels in Iraq is: 'Return on Success.'" (Trust me: you could hear the capitals and quote marks when he was speaking.)
Doug: Horseshit. The principle guiding your decision is: 'Turn the Mess Over to My Successor.'"

Bush: Talks about future presidents remaining in Iraq.
Doug: I am absolutely overwhelmed by the arrogance of this man trying to force us to follow his insane, moronic policy after he leaves office. His nerve is simply unbelievable.

Bush: He mentions Iran gaining nukular weapons if we are "driven" out of Iraq. (How about if we just, ya know, leave?)
Doug: I pray every day that Cheney doesn't get his way, and get a war with Iran before he and Bush leave office. I hope others are praying with me. I say this with no irony whatsoever. It scares the crap out of me thinking about it. They are clearly beating the drum for it. How they think they can fight another war when they are already breaking our military apart, I have no idea. (A draft in the waning days of next summer?)

Bush: "Iraq could face a humanitarian nightmare."
Doug: He really doesn't listen to his daily briefings, does he? After more than 2 million refugees, with power and water only intermittently available in the capital city, let alone the other cities, he doesn't think Iraq is a humanitarian nightmare now?

Bush: He links Iraq to 9/11 again.
Doug: Why does he still get away with that? Has he no shame?

Bush: He reads an email.
Doug: I sure wish he would read one of the ones I've sent him. He could delete the curse words for public consumption.

Bush reminds me a lot of guys I used to read the postings of on USENET back in the day (late 80s, early 90s). It's clear that he believes that if he repeats something often enough, it must be true ("Iraq is a central front in the war on terror;" "We can succeed;" "Iraq was a safe haven for terrorist prior to 9/11;" etc.). You would think that, by the age of 61, he would have learned that just because you can repeat something 3 or more times doesn't make it true.

At the beginning of his speech, Bush said "In the life of all free nations, there come moments that decide the direction of a country and reveal the character of its people." He's right. Unfortunately, this country--or at least, the political class of this country--will not make those decisions by either defunding the war or impeaching this horrible President and Vice President. So we are stuck with this insane, suicidal policy that means nothing but death, destruction, loss of American credibility, and further waste of money, until he leaves office. I sincerely hope that the next President does not follow Bush's idiotic advice and continues his stupid adventure in Iraq. I pray that we don't. But nowadays, I believe anything is possible.

God bless America, and please please hurry.

Iraq: Let's Sum Up

So good ol' General Petraeus--who I am sure is an excellent general, as well as clearly being a sharp man--is explaining to us why we should remain in Iraq basically indefinitely. Let's review a few facts--just facts--about Iraq. Just for perspective, y'know.

• Since the Iraq war began, the U.N. estimates that 2.2 million people have fled Iraq. The population of Iraq prior to the war was 26.7 million people. For perspective, 2.2 million people is more than the entire population of Houston, TX, the fourth largest city in the country. Imagine the entire city of Houston leaving the country. Imagine everyone in San Francisco and San Jose packing up and leaving those cities empty. But it's worse. If the same percentage left the U.S., it would mean 24.8 million people leaving the country. That would empty out the entire state of Texas and New Hampshire and Vermont.
• Estimates of Iraqi deaths since the war began range from 426,369 to 793,663. Again for perspective, the population of San Francisco is 744,000.
• We are spending two billion dollars a week on this war. Just today on the radio I heard that the Austin Independent School District received a grant for 330 million dollars over the next five years for drug prevention. So five years of an entire school district's drug prevention money is less than 20% of one week's worth of funding for the Iraq war.
  
• President Bush and General Petraeus have both trumpeted Anbar province as a success story recently because they have been working with Sunni sheiks. On Septeber 3, President Bush met with Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha. Yesterday, Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha was killed by a roadside bomb.
  
• On August 19, seven U.S. soldiers in Iraq had an Op-Ed published in the New York times in which they were highly critical of our mission there. On Monday, two of them died. Another of them is currently terribly injured from a gunshot wound to the head.

(If these last two items aren't as eloquent an indictment of a failed policy as anything I have ever heard, I don't know what could be.)

These are facts about the Iraq war. This is raw data. This is not spin. This is just data about the war that Bush and his enablers (such as the folks at National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, and so on) want to keep going indefinitely. This is the war that the Washington political establishment and the "mainstream media" have collectively decided is going to go on unchanged until there is a new President 16 months from now.

Can someone please explain to me why we--and by "we" I mean the 2/3 of this country that doesn't want us to be involved in this war--are still in Iraq? What madness is this?

Just Once

Today (and tomorrow and for the rest of the week, for all I know) General Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Crocker (how appropriate!) will be testifying before Congress about conditions in Iraq.

We all know what those conditions are, of course: the Bush Administration's incompetent war has unleashed a civil war and sectarian violence; there's ethnic cleansing going on; several million refugees have fled the country; Americans are not considered "liberators" but "occupiers"; no progress towards a "national" government is being made (nor should we expect any, since the tribes pretty much hate each other); and we are now trying to police all this with 160,000 troops, many on their third, fourth, or fifth deployment, in a country of, what, 40 million or so? Those are the conditions.

So Petraeus and Crocker will get up and spill their absurd blather about the "progress" that's been made, the cowardly Congress will fork over more billions to the incredibly unpopular Bush--who has proven again and again his inability to run a war--and we will continue this charade until a new President takes office in 2009. Despite poll after poll showing that Americans overwhelmingly want us out of Iraq. As do the Iraqis. As does most of the rest of the world.

And honestly, just once I'd like to see a few things happen:

• While testifying before Congress, I'd like a Senator or Congressman say to Petraeus or Crocker, "Bullshit. That's all bullshit. The situation there is a mess, our presence is making it worse, and we should get the fuck out. You are excused from this committee. Don't let the door smack you in the ass on the way out."
• While giving yet another B.S.-fueled press briefing, I'd like the White House press corps to absolutely refuse to swallow the baloney spewed by Dana Perino or Tony Snow, and start throwing rotten fruit when they say things that are obviously and demonstrably lies.
  
• I'd like one of these loudmouth Senators who grandstand about being tough to actually vote that way. Phil Specter leaps to mind.
• I'd like to see someone the entire White House press corps agree beforehand on a question to press President Bush on, and to keep asking him. No matter who he calls on, keep asking the same question until he actually friggin' answers it. Even the foreign press people. Even the Fox News people. It's high time Bush actually gave a straight answer.
• I'd like to see someone interview a high-ranking official and when they blatantly lie, call them on it. For example, when Cheney said, "You're out of line," I wanted the interviewer say, "No, sir, I am not, and the American people deserve an answer to the question." These people are criminals, and we deserve answers. It's time to stop letting them get away with their dodging and ducking.
• When Bush goes one of these obnoxious photo ops, when he uses the press as his sickening lap dogs to sell this absurd war to the public, I want them to stand up in a body and say, "No thanks; we're not going to be part of your propaganda machine." If he gives one of his heavily-scripted speeches in Iraq, and no one is there to film it, did it happen? Would that whatever press maven he invites on his next Turkey Trip to Iraq this November have the juevos to say "No," so that his trip is only filmed by official Army propagandists.
  
• I'd like to see Bush booed, seriously booed, at one of his major speeches. No matter how carefully they vet the audience, how carefully the script the speech, I want him booed, long and loud. At the State of the Union. In front of the VFW. I don't care; I want that guy booed. I want him to know how the other 77% of us feel, and I want him to know it in his bones.
  

Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?

Bush Derangement Syndrome--the Right-wing Version

As a method of dismissing arguments against various Bush-authored or Bush-proposed policies without presenting counter-arguments, some folks on the Right like to say that their opponent suffers from "Bush Derangement Syndrome" (BDS). Said syndrome, the implication goes, means that the sufferer cannot see the good and wise things in whatever it is that Bush proposes because of their blinding hatred for All Things Bush. And they certainly have a point to some degree; there definitely are some people who can't listen to Bush without rejected whatever he says out of hand. (Of course, I would argue that Bush has brought this on himself to a large degree.)

But there is a flip side to BDS, and that is that some folks on the Right simply can't see anything wrong with things that Bush proposes because of their blinding love for All Things Bush.

I personally think this is exemplified by Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online (who was kind enough to print my accusation of same in its entirety, but too cowardly to print my contradiction of her implied [but not stated] argument), as well as anyone whose last name is Kagan, or is related to that family in any way by marriage.

But it reached an absurd height when Fred Kagan recently opined that Bush has reached Lincolnian rhetorical levels in Iraq. To recap: Bush snuck out a side door of the White House, concealed his destination from most of the press corps, avoided Baghdad (presumably because the insurgents now have sufficient anti-aircraft capability to make it dangerous to fly in and out of the Baghdad airport), landed in al Anbar, had a photo op, looked al Maliki "in the eye," and then scurried on to Australia. Kagan's view: Bush's speech in Iraq was comparable to The Gettysburg Address, and turned a corner on the Iraq war. (Another one! We've turned so many corners there now, I've lost track.)

The Blame Society

I just read this report on the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech earlier in the year, and what struck me about the article was how it was played: "Report faults Virginia Tech response." I couldn't help thinking of a couple of things simultaneously:

• An episode of Star Trek (the original series), "The Conscience of the King," where Kirk discovers that a Shakespearean actor is actually a cover for an old mass murderer from years ago. Kirk wants to bring him to justice--the implication is that he wants to kill him, and McCoy asks him: "What if you decide he is Kodos [the mass murder]? What then? Do you play God, carry his head through the corridors in triumph? That won't bring back the dead, Jim!"
• In Michael Crichton's Rising Sun, Detective John Connor is explaining one of the differences between the Japanese and American ways of dealing with problems to Detective Webb Smith. Connor explains: "The Japanese have a saying: fix the problem, not the blame. In American organizations it's all about who fucked up. Whose head will roll. In Japanese organizations it's all about what's fucked up and how to fix it. Nobody gets blamed."
  

Now believe me, it's not that I don't believe that killers shouldn't be brought to justice; I do. And it's not that I don't believe that the Japanese don't point fingers; I think they do. But this was a horrible tragedy, and the knee-jerk tendency to apportion blame, rather than fix the systemic problems, strikes me as, well, insane.

Another good example of this is the recent Utah mining disaster. There is absolutely no question in my mind that both mine owner Bob Murray, Bush Administration head of mine safety Dick Stickler, and probably some others have a major hand in this disaster for doing everything they could to maximize profits at the expense of safety. It's clear, and they should obviously pay.

But the much more important issue here is, what is the systemic problem that should be addressed? Clearly, the cronyism of the Bush Administration--the tendencies that gave us "Brownie" and "Fredo" Gonzales and all the other "loyal Bushies" who are in high positions for reasons of loyalty and cronyism rather than competence--is the problem here, much more so than the rank criminal negligence of a couple of people. And that is the problem that needs to be addressed, much more than apportioning blame. Because once the perpetrators have been removed, don't we want to make sure that this sort of thing never happens again? And you can't do that just by laying blame and slapping a few assholes in jail.

And that's what I kept thinking about the Virginia Tech newspaper report. They are laying blame at the feet of the Tech officials. People who are probably getting up every morning taking Paxil and Prozac to get through the day, feeling horrific guilt at their mistakes already. What good is done by an official report that points a finger at them? Does that bring the people back to life? Does that make the people who made the mistakes feel better, or perform better? Does it make Virginia Tech's safety situation improved?

Fix the problem, not the blame. That way, maybe it won't happen again.

Bush's View of Iran (Yes, Iran)

Yesterday, in front of yet another military audience, President Bush gave a speech about Iran that can only be described as extreme sabre rattling.

(And let me just say as a personal aside that, as the son of a Naval officer, it offends the heck out of me that Bush continues to use military audiences as a prop for his speeches. Bush's family used its political connections to get him into the Texas Air National Guard to avoid active duty service in Vietnam, and then he skipped out on even completing that. His Administration has presided over one of the worst-run wars in our nation's history, a war that we most assuredly didn't need to fight. His Administration has treated its wounded veterans poorly. He is forcing his reserve and national guard personnel to serve second, third, fourth, and deployments without sufficient time between each. Desertions and suicides among active duty personnel are up at 50 year highs. And this man has the temerity to use our brave veterans as back-drops for his desperate efforts to continue his disastrous policies? To say that this enrages me exposes the inadequacies of the language.)

Can anyone listen to this speech--or even read excerpts of it--and not think that Bush and Cheney are absolutely determined to fight yet another war, this time with Iran? We have had reports that Cheney believes that war with Iran is necessary, and that he doesn't "trust" a future Administration to "deal with it," and that he has been maneuvering Bush to begin one. With this speech, it is clear that Cheney is winning his bureaucratic battle. And I can't say strongly enough how much this terrifies me.

Folks, the military is now so close to collapse that even the Joint Chiefs are saying that we have to draw down the forces in Iraq starting next year at the latest, like it or not. Almost all the experts believe that any military action against Iran would only make the situation there worse, not better. The terrorists that we really need to go after are in Afghanistan, not Iraq or Iran. Bush and Cheney have proved over and over again that they are utterly incompetent at running a war. And now they want to begin another one? I am petrified, to be honest.

And any commentators and other folks who are trying to comfort themselves by thinking that Congress will stop these war mongers are fooling themselves. First of all, the Democrats have proven again and again that they are craven cowards when it comes to stopping Bush from his insane war mongering. But second of all, Bush and Cheney believe--and have put forth their various theories to bolster their beliefs--that the "War on Terror" means that they can fight "the enemy" wherever that enemy is, even on U.S. soil (hence the arrest of Jose Padilla without charges, a U.S. Citizen on U.S. soil, who was slapped in a military prison).

So bear this in mind: Bush believes that as Commander in Chief, it is his duty to go after terrorist wherever they are. His speech yesterday makes it clear that he believes that they are in Iran. He has also made it clear that he believes that Congress' 2002 vote to "authorize the use of military force" (AUMF) gives him the authority to use military force for the entirety of the "War on Terror." Congress telling him otherwise now is not going to stop him. The only thing I can imagine stopping him is a huge public outcry, or the military command flatly telling him no. And I frankly can't imagine either of those two things occurring.

So I'm terrified that sometime in the next 12 months, we're going to be at war in Iran. I wish I were wrong. But I honestly don't think so.

Can no one stop these insane maniacs?

The Sad Story of Senator Craig

As I've said before here, I'm completely baffled by homophobia. You're a guy who wants to marry another guy, or a woman who wants to marry another woman, hey, be my guest. I just don't understand what all the hubub is about, and I never will.

Another thing that confuses me, though, are people like Senator Larry Craig. I'm not confused by him being in the closet; I understand that. There are times when, as a Jew, I find it mighty uncomfortable to tell people that I'm Jewish (e.g., around Christmas). I get that. If a gay man or woman wants to remain in the closet, I'm content to let them.

But when a gay or lesbian gets married to a member of the opposite sex, then I start getting a little confused. I definitely understand the impulse to have children. And for men and women of Sen. Craig's generation, it was definitely much harder to be in a committed same-sex relationship. I get that. (Although I have a lot of problems with gays and lesbians who marry, have kids, and then leave their partners because--sorry, wife (or husband) and kids!--I have to follow my same-sex bliss now! Hey, after the kids are raised and gone, knock yourself out. But up until then, the partner and kids should pay the price for your confusion? That just seems wrong to me, not to mention selfish.)

But Sen. Craig didn't just marry, he then became a Republican politician who not only voted for, but actively supported, anti-gay legislation. And that's most assuredly not okay. It's not even hypocritical; it's actively wrong. Quisling, back-stabbing; apply whatever epithet here you want, it's just plain wrong, bordering on evil. "I--a rich, powerful man protected by my position--will outlaw this behavior, knowing full well I can engage in it in secret because of my wealth and position." (It reminds me of wealthy, vehemently"pro life" Republicans who--I have no doubt whatsoever--would secretly take their daughters to a doctor for an abortion should they become pregnant at the age of 15 even if it meant they had to fly her from Tupelo to Boston. But I digress.)

Aside from being plain wrong, it confuses me. Why is he doing it? I can understand him voting for these positions--he's a Republican from a deeply Red state. But to actively support them? Is it some kind of weird denial thing? Does he make his fiery anti-gay floor speeches immediately after one of his bathroom trites in a fit of remorse? Is he like an adulterer who immediately goes to the confession booth seeking absolution from a priest, or an alcoholic who, severely hung-over the next morning, begs the lord for forgiveness and swears to never, ever drink again? I don't know, but it baffles me.

Supporting the Troops

Yesterday--in a stunning display of audacity for a man who used the National Guard to hide from his own service in the Vietnam War, and then skipped out on even that--President Bush said, among other profoundly unbelievable things:

Our troops are seeing this progress that is being made on the ground. And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they're gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq? Here's my answer is clear: We'll support our troops, we'll support our commanders, and we will give them everything they need to succeed.

Somehow, I sincerely doubt that the first question on the minds of "the troops," many of whom are on their third or fourth deployment, is "Will my elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under me?" No, I'm guessing that the question at the forefront of most troopers minds is, "When the hell can I go home from this insane war?"

And frankly, I wonder why the Democrats don't pound on exactly that point more often. (Ans.: they're cowards.) I mean, who supports the troops more? President Bush and his war-mongering compatriots, who want to continue throwing them into the middle of this endless civil war indefinitely with no clear plan for "victory," or even an end? Or the folks who want to bring them home?

If I was on the ground in Iraq, I know how I'd feel.

So don't listen to all this hoo-ha about how trying to wind down the war through cutting the funding means that you "don't support the troops." It's garbage. The only way the Congress can bring the troops home is through the "power of the purse." That's their only option. Bush, like it or not, is the Commander in Chief. Congress controls the money; Bush controls the command structure. So when they try to cut off his funding, it's not because they "don't support the troops," it's because they want to bring them home.

So ask yourself who is more supportive of the troops: the folks who keep voting to endless fund this boneheaded war, or the folks who are trying--through the only means available to them--to bring the troops home. And then call ol' Rush Limbaugh and tell him.

I apologize for the rant, but it infuriates me when folks on the right insist that if you don't give Bush all the money he wants with no conditions, it means you "don't support the troops." I wouldn't trust this group to run a game of Clue correctly, let alone prosecute a war; why on Earth should we give them a blank check with the lives of our sons and daughters? Good grief.

Here We Go Again

Two months ago, the craven Democrats completely caved and gave George W. Bush--Mr. 30% Approval Rating--yet another blank check for the war. The commentariat at the time said that Gen. Petraeus promised September report on "the surge" would be the make-or-break point, when--if "progress" wasn't shown in Iraq--Republicans would start peeling away from Bush.

I, on the other hand, was a lot more cynical.

And now we see that everyone is maneuvering for the September game. First of all, we find that the good General isn't even writing the report himself, the White House is. (Of course, they say that they were always planning on writing it, and anything you believed otherwise was your own misinterpretation!) Second, the report is going to be delivered on . . . wait for it . . . September 11! Yes sir! Just a coincidence, though! Nothing nefarious about that, sirree! And of course, Bush has already started giving speeches decrying anyone who doesn't write him another blank check as "pulling the rug out from under the troops."

And of course the cowardly, craven Democrats are buying it. Senators Levin and Warner, after a two-day trip to Iraq where they were given what Sen. Jim Webb so accurately termed the "Dog and Pony show," are talking about "progress" in Iraq. Let us bear in mind two things:

1. Levin and Warner were Iraq two days. Two days isn't long enough to tour the Smithsonian Museum, let alone get even the remotest idea as to how the situation is in a war zone. Hell, you can't even get through more than a couple of wings of the Smithsonian in that time.
2. Levin and Warner got all their information from military sources. What are military sources going to say? "Yes, Senator; we're getting our asses kicked over here."

Make no mistake, this trip was about one thing only: political tail-covering for when Warner, Levin, and other Democratic Senators make their next craven vote in support of Bush's disastrous war. "Well, we went to Iraq and saw enough progress to justify continuing to try!"

And Republicans, of course (as I again suspected quite a while ago) are most assuredly not peeling away from Bush.

The lack of political courage on the left simply sickens me. While these politicians bicker and squabble and refuse to stand up to an incredibly unpopular president prosecuting an unbelievably unpopular war in which American soldiers are dying to prop up a government that a lot of Iraqis don't want (and a lot of Iraqis would like us to leave, I might add), Osama bin Laden is rebuilding his organization over in a completely different country.

The insanity of this absolutely boggles my mind.

The Accelerated Primary Season

I know I'm probably alone in this, but I have a simple solution to what the blovacracy calls the "accelerated primary season" (that is, the attempt by other, more populous and diverse states to have some actual, honest-to-God say in the Presidential primaries, rather than just leaving it all up to Iowa and New Hampshire).

Lately, a lot of states have been moving their primaries up to February and even January, in an attempt to give their states some relevance, rather than having so much influence being held by the predominantly-white, small population states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Which seems reasonable to me; as I carped in an earlier post, I got tired of living in California and having no say in picking my party's Presidential candidate. Iowa and New Hampshire are responding to this effrontery by moving their primaries and caucuses even earlier, to the point where Iowa may end up having their caucus in December of 2007 (believe it if you can). I get the impression that Iowa would move their caucus to the first Wednesday in November the day after the election if that's what it took to keep their "first caucus" status.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I've got nothing against Iowa or New Hampshire. Nothing. I just think it's absurd that these two highly-unrepresentative states have so much say over who gets to be President. We can see where this has gotten us the last several times around (Dukakis! Mondale! Bush! Kerry!), and I think it's high time we made some changes. And given that Iowa has a law that requires they have the first caucus in the nation, there only one obvious way to do it:

Pass a law.

Yup. Time for those Congressmen and women and Senators who spend time grubbing for money for bridges to nowhere, who hide bricks of money in their fridge, who pass resolutions to rename french fries "freedom fries" and try to pass idiotic amendments to the constitution to outlaw flag burning (yeah, that's a huge issue that keeps me up at night) to get off their duffs and tell the good folks from Iowa and New Hampshire that enough's enough, and that it's someone else's turn now. I don't care who; make it a rotation, or something. Start in Minnesota or New Mexico for all I care. But Iowa and New Hampshire have had it long enough, and someone else should have a turn.

I'm not holding my breath, though. And my Uncle John (resident of Derry) is going to kill me.

Lies About Torture

I've been holding this one in for a while, because I keep waiting for someone else to write about it--mainstream media (Dan Froomkin of the Post, Dan Savage of the Boston Globe; somebody), bloggers (Glenn Greenwald or Andrew Sullivan both seemed like good candidates), but no one has. Neither have I heard Keith Olbermann address it, either.

Not this issue of torture and the U.S. policy towards it. We've all heard and read plenty about that. No; I'm talking about the absolutely Orwellian approach to defining and talking about torture that the Bush Administration has taken. And I don't know about y'all, but it absolutely outrages me. (And while I don't know about anyone else, it is clear as crystal to me that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and a lot of other members of this Administration--Yoo, Gonzales, and others--are clearly guilty of war crimes.)

Let me 'splain.

I've been wondering when the mainstream media (MSM) was going to call Bush and Cheney on their obvious B.S. when they stand up there and say, flat-out, "We do not torture." Bush does it any time he is asked about it, and Cheney just did it a couple of week ago on Larry King. How on God's green Earth can they do this when we know that the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo has been using waterboarding, hypothermia, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and other techniques that were used by (for example) Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, the Gestapo, and others?

It's simple, folks: through the assistance of spineless lawyers like John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and Steven Hadley, the Administration has redefined torture to not include those actions. Torture, for these folks, only includes activities up to and including death and organ failure. Other than that, all bets are off (or as Cheney says, we went to "the dark side"). So when they say, "We don't torture," or "We abide by all legal obligations," make sure to add in your mind, "and of course, we don't consider waterboarding, stress positions, forced hypothermia, or sleep deprevation 'torture'."

How do we know this is true? Because any time one of these folks is asked about a specific (let's not mince words here) torture like waterboarding, they always dodge the question. "We don't reveal specific methods," Cheney likes to say. This is a huge pile of hooey. They know that if they "reveal specific methods," they will be admitting that they do torture, and won't be able to lie in front of the American people any more. So they duck and weave and dodge, and don't admit to the obvious, which is that they've redefined these horrible acts so that they don't consider them legal torture, even though any civilized human being would.

I know that I am out there by the lights of some folks, but I truly believe that these folks are war criminals. They have approved--and continue to approve--the torture of human beings. They secretly violated the fourth Amendment to the Constitution (illegal search and seizure), and once caught, insisted that they have a right to violate it. They violated and continue to violate the FISA law. They are criminals, pure and simple, and they are getting away with it. They have broken their sacred oaths of office ("preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution," remember?). And they are torturing our fellow human beings, who have been convicted of no crimes, and in most case not even accused of any crimes.

These are the people in charge of our country today. I can't decide what boggles my mind more; that we live under the rule of such people, or that there are actually people out there (Steven Hayes of the Wall Street Journal, for example) who continue to defend their behavior. I am constantly torn between sadness and overwhelming rage.

A Few Words on Gay Marriage

Last night the Democratic candidates for President had a talk about their stances on gay marriage, civil unions, and related issues. It almost goes without saying--these days, anyway--that they danced around the issue, talked a lot about "civil unions," and basically did everything they could to not say they were in favor of gay marriage while implying that they were, so as to cover all the bases without opening themselves up to "traditional values" attacks later in the campaign.

I understand their fear, but I think they're cowardly. Of course, as they demonstrated last weekend when they caved to President Bush, Democrats are pretty consistently cowardly these days, so I shouldn't be all that surprised.

(It almost goes without saying that this is not the kind of forum the Republicans will have any time soon. The Republicans have made a pact with their social-conservative wing to oppose things like stem cell research, abortion, gay marriage, and things of that nature, and so bloviate endlessly on those topics. Which is incredibly ironic, because almost any individual Republican--of a certain monetary class--is completely open about any social issue. If an upper-class Republican teenage daughter got pregnant, there would be an abortion. If an upper-class Republican son or daughter were gay, they would be accepted (witness Cheney's daughter). If an upper-class Republican needed the research and treatment that can only be provided by stem cells, they would want it. And so on. But they've made their Faustian bargain, and so publicly they maintain their absurd hypocritical stances.)

In any event, I find this whole business to be a lot of hooey, honestly. It breaks down into two pieces:

Religion: If you are gay and want to get married in your religious tradition, that's something you have to work out with your priest/pastor/rabbi/imam/whatever. Not an issue for the state.

State: Here's the rub, eh? A married couple has rights that a non-married couple does not. My wife can inherit, can take responsibility for our children, our finances if I am incapacitated, and a whole host of other things. If I'm sick and in the hospital, she can visit me. We can file federal income taxes jointly. And on and on.

Some folks say let's create a "civil partnership" law, that marriage is "sacred," that we don't want to "dilute" marriage by "allowing" gays to marry, that having gays marry would be a "threat" to "traditional marriage," and other such nonsense. What a crock.

Let me take this one piece at a time:

Civil partnerships: Can you say "separate but equal?" Didn't we try this before and have it not work? It's just a cop-out. Either go whole-hog and let folks get legally married, or admit the truth: you don't want gays happy and committed to each other.

Marriage is "sacred": That's not for the state to decide, it's for religious leaders. Go talk to them. Otherwise, shut up.

Threat to "traditional marriage": This is the silliest of all. First of all, there's no such thing as "traditional marriage." How many wives did Solomon have? Was that "traditional?" Second, how on Earth is two guys getting married a threat to my marriage? Or anyone's marriage? If your marriage is so shaky that reading about Bruce and Steve getting hitched down at Zilker park this Sunday causes your wife to leave you, pal, your have a lot more problems than outlawing gay marriage is going to cure.

I have been around gays and lesbians my whole life. Literally. When my parents went on a second honeymoon to the Virgin Islands when I was 10, they left my siblings and I in the care of a gay man. We've all had gay and lesbian friends since we were children. And here's the thing, homophobes: all three of us are married with children, and none of us have been divorced. I've been involved with the same women in a monogamous relationship for 14 years now. There were gay and lesbian couples at our wedding. I've been to gay and lesbian weddings myself. And wow, gee, my marriage is spectacularly unthreatened! Imagine!

Look: some folks find homosexuality "yucky." I get it. You don't like it. You don't want to admit it out loud, so you hunt for reasons--religious, legal, what-have-you--to support your feelings of discomfort. But they're all rationalizations. All I'm saying is, keep your yuck feelings to yourself; stop trying to legislate them and force the world to abide by your prejudices. These folks just want to get married, be happy, and have the same rights as everyone else. That's all. They don't want to rape your sons and daughters. They don't want to steal your wives and husbands. They just want to settle down, live their lives, and have the same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that you enjoy. Why should you let your feelings of yuck stop them? That's just wrong.

A Few Thoughts

Took a few days off with the wife--didn't leave town, but left the kids behind with Granny and got some peace and quiet. Which included no blogging. Not that anyone noticed.

But it's also hard to blog from a place of howling, incipient rage. I'm still so angry about the Democrat's craven cave-in to Bush on domestic spying that I can barely think about it.

But, you know, there have been other things going on.

Barry Bonds broke the all-time home run record for Major League Baseball and, like a lot of folks I suspect, I don't have the slightest idea how to feel about that. Yeah, yeah; he's innocent until proven guilty, I know. But anyone with half a brain knows the guy has been shooting up performance-enhancing drugs of some kind or other. I mean, your head doesn't grow 2-3 sizes after you turn 35 for no reason, you know?

On the other hand, he's not exactly operating in a drug-free vacuum, either. How many of the pitchers that he has been facing are shooting up? How many of the other players who are making circus catches in the field are shooting up? How is that effecting his numbers? Who the hell can say?

One thing for sure: the guy is an incredible player. Would he have broken the record without the drugs? I dunno. Probably not. But we'll never know. Would Babe Ruth have created the record if he had had to face Negro League pitchers, sliders, and modern bullpens? Would Ted Williams have broken it if he hadn't had his career interrupted by two wars? Who the hell knows? Textbook definition of "mixed feelings," anyway. No wonder Obama didn't know how to answer Keith Olbermann in the debate; I didn't know how I'd answer.

Speaking of which, yeah, Obama looked silly saying that Canada has a President. Of course, if that's the worst he can do, he still looks 1000 times better than the Current Occupant. And Joe Biden, for all his sniping, doesn't have the slightest friggin' chance of winning the nomination, so he can just fold up his smirk and go home, as far as I'm concerned.

The thing that scares me was on display over on the Republican side. I mean, it was scary enough who they chose as moderator ("Now, live on stage, boy wonder and callow youth Geoooooorge Stephanopolas!"), but that rogues gallery they have running . . . what if one of them actually, you know, wins? President Authoritarian Guiliana? President Stay-the-Course-in-Iraq McCain? Or "I don't have any convictions whatsoever except that I really really want to be President," Mr. Mitt Romney? (Am I the only one who thinks he looks like Herman Munster?) I understand that the Republicans are unhappy with this crew--I know I would be--but what if one them actually wins? It's a scary thought; enough to make me run for the Klonapin at night.

Sold Down the River Again

Words can barely convey my disgust for how, once again, our civil liberties, the Constitutional guarantees this country was founded on, have been sold down the river under pressure from a President whose approval ratings stand at 28% so that Congress wouldn't be accused of being "weak."

I cannot state this too strongly: no, I don't want to die in a terrorist attack. I don't want my family to die in a terrorist attack. I don't want anyone to die in a terrorist attack. But I would rather die at the hands of terrorist than to have all the principles that our country is founded on chipped away by fear-mongering, small-minded, short-sighted men and women whose goal is the unlimited expansion of executive power.

Our founding fathers fought against this kind of tyranny--against warrantless surveillance, against being held without being charged, against secret courts, against all the things Congress is handing this bunch of criminals currently running the Executive branch--and enshrined those principles in one of the best-written documents in recorded history. And now, our elected representatives are selling it all out for the chimera of "safety." Such is the foundation that every tyranny is built upon throughout history.

Our founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for the principles that we are giving away to Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, and McConnell. We should all be ashamed.

Alberto Gonzales and "The Key"

Dick Cheney--not the guy I would want to be giving me a character reference, given his in-the-teens favorability ratings--came out on CBS news giving his vote of confidence to "Al" Gonzales today. According to CBS news correspondent Mark Knoller, Cheney tells us "I think Al has done a good job under difficult circumstances." And then adds, as everyone who works for the White House seems compelled to when talking about ol "Al:" "The key," he said, is whether Gonzales has "the confidence of the president, and he clearly does."

To which I cry "Bullshit." Gonzales is the Attorney General of the United States, and the head of the United States Department of Justice. He took an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States of America, and he serves us, the people of the United States. He has lied, committed perjury, and done any number of things that protect Bush, the Bush Administration, and his own precious ass. He is not doing his job, which is overseeing the Department of Justice. Rather, he is protecting George W. Bush.

Cheney is wrong, Bush is wrong, the Bush Administration is wrong, their pathetic mouthpiece Tony Snow is wrong: The key is not that Gonzales has "the confidence of the President." The key is whether Gonzales has the confidence of the American people whom he serves, and he clearly does not. If the government was not run by a gang of--let's face it--criminals who think that everything they do is above the law, Gonzales would have resigned months ago, after his first disastrous appearance before Congress. But because Bush and his cronies know that if Gonzales were to resign, their rampant law-breaking would come to light before they could leave office, they are hanging on to him like grim death, even though to do so means they are doing severe damage to the Department of Justice, and to Americans' confidence in the justice system. Quite simply, they don't care. So long as they can leave office without being impeached or sent to jail, they simply don't care.

So in response to Dick Cheney I say: on this issue, like on so many others (e.g., the WMDs in Iraq, the insurgency being in its "last throes," etc.), you are dead wrong. But of course, like on so many other issues, you will never admit it.

The Iraq Endgame

Something Andrew Sullivan said in one of his posts really struck me about the current Iraq mess, and started those ol' neurons a'firin':

Whatever David Petraeus says next month - and we know it's going to be a glowing report of massive success - the reality of Iraq endures. That reality is that there is no Iraq. The "government" is paralyzed between sectarian factions none of which wants a national, political settlement any time soon.

I didn't have any new ideas about Iraq--I'm not a brilliant international diplomat, I'm just a technical writer with a big mouth and lots of opinions who reads a lot--but I started to put some things together in my head. Consider these facts:

• Kurdistan, i.e. northern Iraq, is currently the most peaceful portion of Iraq by far. Further, the Kurds are the only ones who actually want the United States there.
• The current "head" of the "national government," al Maliki, let slip a few weeks ago that the American military could leave any time, so far as he was concerned. He quickly recanted (presumably after a good talking-to in one of his daily video conferences with Bush), but that doesn't change the fact that it slipped out.
• The Sunnis and the Shiites have been fighting each other, no kidding, for centuries. They have been holding grudges about things that have happened hundreds of years ago. Imagine, if you can, Notherners still being mad about the Battle of the Crater and Southerners still holding a grudge about Antietam 600 years from now, and people from Atlanta wanting to shoot people from Boston about it. In Baltimore. And doing so. That's Iraq right now. Do we really believe that these people are going to paper over their differences and form a unified democratic government in a few months? Who are we fooling?
• Despite diplomatic pressure, the Iraqi government went on vacation anyway.
  

So the Doug theory, for what it's worth, is that the Iraqi "unity government" doesn't give a damn about actually doing anything. They know that Bush is leaving office in January, 2009. They know the American people have had it with this idiotic war. They know that the next Administration, no matter who it is run by, will start to withdraw American troops.

Until that time, they are marking time. They are accumulating weapons and training. They are killing as many of the "enemy" (Shia or Sunni) as they can get away with. They are engaging in low-level ethnic cleansing. And once we're out of the way--which is bound to happen sooner or later--Iraq will break up into Kurdistan, a Shiite state, and a Sunni state. The Shiite state may align with or be completely taken over by Iran; I have no idea. There will probably be some pretty ugly ethnic cleansing in various cities. A huge battle for Baghdad.

I could be wrong, obviously; like I say, I'm a technical writer, not a diplomat. But why on Earth should we expect tribes that have been fighting for hundreds of years to get together and create a "national government" in a country that was created by colonialists out of nothing in particular, just for our convenience? It's insane, not to mention delusional and stupid.

I think the sooner we recognize the real situation and deal with it, the better off we'll be. (Hey, the Kurds want us there! Isn't one of our goals to have an ally in the Middle East? How tough is this? Duh!) But unfortunately, we're stuck dealing with the boneheads in the Bush Administration for the next 17 months. God help us all.

"Liberal" vs. "Conservative"; the False Dichotomy

I sometimes get emails or phone calls asking me to take polls, and I always struggle with the question, "Are you a Democrat or a Republican?" And while I have never voted for a Republican, and find it hard to imagine ever voting for one, I don't consider myself a Democrat.

"How can this be?" you might ask. (Or you would if anyone was reading this blog!)

Well, partly it's the excesses of what the parties "stand for." The Democrats are not so much a party any more as a collection of special interests all at war for what they can get. Labor. Minorities. Latte-sipping left wingers. Gays and lesbians. Anti-war folks. Farmers. Not that I don't support some of those causes (personally, I prefer mochas to lattes); but it doesn't seem to be a party of "what unites us," but rather a party of "What's in it for me?" And I just can't get behind it.

Not to mention that when they're in charge, they seem so friggin' incompetent. Look at them now; they're in the majority, and they're still the gang who can't shoot straight. Somehow the Republicans are stopping them with filibusters, and it's the Democrats who are being accused of obstructionism! That's lame. I should be a part of a party that's that lame?

Obvious proviso and caveat: all Democrats are not like that; we're speaking in broad generalities here.

The Republicans, in my view, are even worse. They're only a party of "What's in it for me." Even more, they're spectacular hypocrites. They're all for federalism . . . except when it serves they're own best interests (e.g., Bush v. Gore). They're all for "staying out of your personal life" . . . except that they want to go into your bedroom and tell you how to run your personal sex life, and tell you what you can watch on your TV (including which swear words you can and can't hear), and tell you what books your children can and can't read at school, and so on. They're for a strong national defense . . . so long as they don't actually have to be the ones to suit up and go overseas and fight.

(And even worse, in my book, all the moral stuff they try to shove down our throats, they do "for the children," when what they're really doing is a clear attempt to force their religious values on everyone else. But by the cynical ploy of hiding behind "the children," they can make it seem noble.)

And finally, they come across as just plain mean. "I don't care about what happens to other people so long as I get my tax cuts." "I don't care what happens to other people so long as my programs are put through congress." "I don't care what happens to the 12 million immigrants and their children who are already here; I just want them gone." Etc. The level of plain old meanness behind some of the things the spokespeople for the Republicans espouse is simply staggering. I can't be a part of a party that is so doggone mean. (Think Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and their hate-spewing brethren.)

Again, we are speaking broadly here; not all Republicans are like this, of course.

Which brings us to the completely absurd and false dichotomy between "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans.

Today's Republicans are not "conservative" by any stretch of the imagination. Anyone who supports the huge increase in government that is the Department of Homeland Security, that is the Medicare Drug Bill, is not a conservative. Anyone who supports the trampling on the Constitution that is warrantless wiretapping and the elimination of habeas corpus is not a conservative. (What can possibly be more conservative than habeas corpus? It goes back to the Magna Carta, for crying out loud!) Anyone who supports the economic policies of this Administration, which has spent money like a drunken sailor on shore leave and run up debts that we can never replay, is definitely not a conservative. And anyone who supports the absurd theory that is the "unitary executive" is most certainly not a conservative. I have no doubt in my mind that if you got a single member of the Constitutional Convention, pulled him forward in time, and told him this theory, he would recoil in horror. They fought the Revolution to get rid of a King; the "unitary executive" gives you a king. It is a radical position, not a conservative one.

So like many Americans, there is really no party for me, I'm afraid. I support fiscal responsibility. (Supply-side economics doesn't work. We've tried it in three different Presidential administrations now, and it's been a disaster all three times. Isn't that enough?) I support a strong national defense (but not one that's ridiculously out of proportion to the threat that is posed by the rest of the world--how many aircraft carriers and submarines do you need to fight terrorists hiding in caves in Afghanistan?). I am socially liberal--I think gays should get married if they want, for example. (All you right-wingers bleating about gay marriage are being silly. How do gays getting married threaten your marriage? They certainly don't threaten mine. And if gays get married, doesn't that make society more stable? Your arguments are absurd.)

So am I conservative, or liberal? Neither. Both. It's a false dichotomy. And the silly choice I have to make between the two parties doesn't exactly make it easier. How about you?